//------------------------------// // Your Delicious Lies // Story: The Olden World // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// Valey glared at Crystal, eyes widening and then narrowing... and didn't drop her. "You're Stanza? You're bluffing." "Am I?" Crystal glared back at her, pinned upright against the wall with her waist dangling. "Yeah." Valey hovered, holding them in place with the force of her wings. "I've seen Stanza twice. It's a giant defiled dusk statue attached to an organ, shoots lasers and smells awful. So if you want me to bite, time to get explaining." Crystal scoffed. "That thing my grandfather built is a self-perpetuating emotional snapshot attached to some hardware he doesn't understand in an effort to make it do what he wants. It builds itself up through exposure to feelings that resonate the same as its own. But how do you think it all started? Where do you think the baseline to which it compares everything else when weeding out the population's anguish and nihilism came from in the first place? It's nothing but the emotional signature of one wretched mare..." Now, Valey loosened her grip, but not enough for Crystal to fall. "So you're not Stanza. Stanza is just based on you. Yeah, that I can buy a little more." Crystal pushed out with both forelegs, shoving Valey away before dropping to the floor and holding her belly. She kept glaring, waiting for Valey to speak or leave. "And you know what?" Valey flipped to a landing, taking a step back toward her. "That's kinda messed up. You just said Chauncey was your grandfather? This whole city is messed up. Sounds like you've had a really raw deal in life. So do you just hate everything, or is there something special about me?" "My lover is Lord Percival," Crystal hissed. "With a wish from the tournament, he could have become a god. Retroactively granted rulership and status, immunity to the restriction on mixed marriages. I could have hidden beneath the ground until the fated year came and Wallace won the tournament... until you made us lose him! If it weren't for you stealing Puddles... She was the one thing that kept him here, forced him to fight for Izvaldi!" Valey winced, suddenly realizing what Crystal was talking about. "Wait a minute, Percival? So he doesn't care about hanging onto his country, he just wants a wish for sphinx privileges so he can be with you?" "Percival loves me." Crystal's emerald eyes burned, her tail lashing. "He gave me his child. I am his queen." "And he sticks with you even knowing what you're like?" Valey blanched. "You sure he doesn't just like you for your legs, too?" "How much work would you be willing to do to heal me?" Crystal whispered. "You're under no illusions about what kind of person I am. What kind I've been made into. You see the state of my soul." "I'd do a lot more if you'd ask!" Valey stomped a hoof. "Do you treat Percival like this, too? You're trying your hardest to tear me down and make me leave, and if I wasn't really good at being stubborn, bananas, I would have already. In fact, stubbornness is pretty much the reason I'm still here!" "You backed down from inviting me on your airship." Crystal pointed a hoof. "Percival wouldn't. He has even more to lose by being in a relationship with me. You're afraid of helping heretics? This mixed child is his." She lowered the hoof, rubbing herself gently. "Would you fight in the tournament all to burn your wish wishing we could be together?" Valey tilted her head. "Honestly? I've gotten through the second round, and I still don't know what I'm wishing for. So yeah, let's say that's on the table." Crystal immediately froze, looking stung. "You're lying." "Am I?" Valey grinned, getting closer. "Lady, listen: I hate losing. Like, I really, really hate it. And you're giving me a challenge and telling me to back down. I'm not a big fan of you either, but as long as you're being nasty to me and not my friends? You're not even touching the worst things I've feared about myself. So keep trying to make me scram. I dare you." For a moment, Crystal shuddered, looking like her tears might start again. "You're an idiot." "A classy idiot. Who wants to win." Valey took another step and adjusted her mane. "Helping you? Nah, forget it. Walking away after you've ticked me off and giving you what you want? Letting you win? Forget it harder. So congratulations, you're not rid of me yet." She winked at the perfect time to be annoying. "Your turn." "Grrr..." Crystal shook, sliding halfway onto her bed, burying her face and forelegs in the sheets. "No." "No? Come on, I'm starting to enjoy this." Valey grinned, flopping down on the bed before Crystal could climb all the way in. "Because I can tell I'm getting somewhere." Crystal didn't answer or stop, crawling back to her usual position, clamming up and laying down. "Uhh..." Valey shifted uncomfortably. "Did you just lay on top of me?" "This is my bed," Crystal whispered, voice raw. "I need to use it." Valey took a deep breath and relaxed her wings, acutely aware of the batpony atop her. "Yeah, that old fallback isn't going to get rid of me. So stop trying." "Don't care," Crystal mumbled, defeated, going limp. Valey went limp too, counting her heartbeat and stubbornly staying put in a battle of wills. She wasn't going to enjoy this. She wasn't going to think about anything. She was just going to wait and be stubborn. After about five hundred beats, Crystal asked, "Why are you still here?" "'Cuz I'm winning. Duh." After seven hundred more, she asked again, slightly more force in her voice. "Because you goaded me into it, you hag," Valey grumbled, far more comfortable than she cared to admit. "You want me gone? I've got an easy way for that to happen. Tell me something I can do to prove my intentions. Something other than leaving, and that will make you treat me with a little more respect. Or else I'm going to be here for a whole month, because this is really, really bothering me." "You're an idiot," Crystal said. "Yeah, certainly feeling like one," Valey admitted. "But hey, aside from a verbal lashing, it's not getting me in any trouble. Doing the stupid thing is actually fun, sometimes." "An idiot who doesn't understand the way the world works," Crystal continued. "Who doesn't understand that some things can't be changed and even meaningless actions have consequences. You're trying to do something meaningless because you don't understand who you're helping or what it will take." Valey grinned into the sheets. "Yeah, you're saying that to someone who tried to make friends with a windigo. Forget logic and reason, you're not making me back down." "If I ask for your help, we'll be taking advantage of each other," Crystal droned, scowling. "You because you'll work toward an impossible task for no thanks and no reward, and me because I'm a flawed mare who won't be able to help getting her hopes up before you inevitably fail." "Cool. So forget about the long run." Valey continued holding still, still wishing Crystal would get off. "Gimmie a one-day task I can do to make something pleasant happen for you, right here, right now. So your world will end in two months, or you'll have to go underground, or something. The most important events of my life fit within three days. Once your kid is born? We'll see. But there's a whole lot you could do and have and experience between now and then." Suddenly, Crystal was hugging her. "Uhhh..." Valey's concentration broke and she finally reddened, wings twitching as Crystal sat up with her clasped against her chest. "Hello?" "Shhh." Crystal brushed a hoof across her muzzle, burying her face in Valey's mane. "Can you taste emotions?" "Smell them? When they're strong, yeah. I sorta figured it was a batpony thing..." Valey did her best not to shudder or squirm. "Yours are delicious," Crystal whispered against her scalp. "Delicious lies. The same kind of lies Percival gives me, only his are proof of a promise... that when the truth comes, we'll face it together. Hope yields only disappointment. Knowledge shows how twisted people really are, and love is merely the denial of that. Yet we as a species can't help but be drawn to them anyway... I want to know why." Valey blinked, still resisting the urge to struggle as Crystal nuzzled her mane. "Because they're ridiculously powerful! However much you can do on your own, think about how much you can do when you have friends who will do that for you! Bananas, we're not meant to be alone!" "Are you sure?" Crystal's voice darkened. "How do you know what we're meant for?" "For sure?" Valey folded her ears. "I don't. I've just had to infer it based on my life and experiences. But I sure can tell the good parts from bad, and someday, if I ever meet who made us, I'm gonna punch them if their answer isn't the same." "If you ever meet our creator," Crystal whispered. "I want answers too. I want to know why talking with you has to torture me with the possibility of hope, when these emotions are empty. It would be so much easier if we didn't have to try. If we stopped from falling by never getting up and climbing toward a ceiling that isn't able to be surpassed!" "You ever tried asking the Night Mother?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "With one of those creepy dusk statues?" Crystal was silent for a moment. "Dusk statues haven't worked for me ever since they made Stanza." "...Huh." Valey processed that for a moment. "I'm surprised. And here I thought we were gonna get to commiserate about how the Night Mother is creepy and I've never gone to talk to her either." "You're not missing out." Valey grinned. "So, uhh... let me go? And give me something I can do to prove I'll come back?" "There's nothing you can do." Crystal dropped her, and Valey immediately jumped away. "You've done too much already. Go away and think about how I'll feel when you fail. Think about my feelings toward you. Ask yourself why you're helping someone who won't thank you or give any gratitude whatsoever, and come back in a week or more if you're feeling cruel enough to lift me higher before you let me down." "Hey, thanks for the vote of confidence." Valey spun on one hoof, faced her, and winked. "Won't let you down." She didn't need to look to feel Crystal watching her as she left the room. Valey stepped out of Percival's mansion into scattered clouds and bright sunlight. Apparently Garsheeva had broken the storm while she'd been inside... For a moment, Valey filled her lungs with clean outside air, then realized she still smelled like Crystal's perfume. "Oh bananas." She blinked, mind quickly running over being hugged and lain on and everything that had just transpired, and her wings snapped out to the sides. "Oh bananas what have I gotten myself into?" Rushing forward, Valey dashed to the center of the plaza, lifted her head high, and dunked it hard in the fountain, trying to purge her thoughts of needy, curvy mares. "Aaargh!" she yelled, coming up for air, then dunked herself again. Bananas, had she let herself get goaded that hard into the impossible task of helping someone who refused to be helped? Valey heaved her entire body into the fountain, marinating in its cool water and stewing in the events of the past hour. Note to self: don't look for excuses to help needy, no-help-wanting mares who were also hot. Why had she even done that? Was it really because she was just that stubborn? She couldn't have been like this in Ironridge, or she would have been effortless to manipulate... No, scratch that, she already had been. Herman had used her natural tendencies for whatever and she just hadn't cared. Fine, then, better note to self: don't get talked into a bad idea just to prove a point. Now what was she going to do, just run away? Sure, she was fine with helping Crystal on principle, but now that the heat of the moment was over it felt like stubbornness was just an excuse because she was trying not to focus on what she really wanted and... and what she really wanted was to be her old, unchanged Ironridge self and go peeping in a bathhouse or something. And on a mare whose personality was repulsive. Valey had been trying her hardest to forget Crystal was pregnant, too. "Unngh... Why...?" She floated on her back, stretching a hoof toward the sun. Why was she doubting herself so hard all of a sudden? Either she was stumbling on something that hadn't changed from Ironridge, or was automatically assuming she had... Was talking with that mare just that toxic to her, too? Was- "Well well well," a seedy little voice said nearby, definitely in her direction. "It seems I've found someone I was badly in need of finding!" Valey lurched in the fountain, splashing and trying to recover a single ounce of dignity, not recognizing who it was... until she laid eyes on a short, bottle-green griffon with a pin-striped suit and a bowtie. It was Kero. "You know," Valey groaned, "I really have bigger things to deal with right now..." "That's a very big shame," Kero apologized in an annoyingly airy voice. "Because your biggest dealings are about to get bigger."