Valey burst above the edge of the cliff, ready to see what she could do to break things up without losing control of the situation below. She quickly surveyed the situation; six sarosians remained against seven or eight Varsidelians, but two of the batponies were completely down, and one looked like she was fighting just to stay on her hooves. She set her teeth as the Varsidelians instantly saw her. This was going to be painful.
"Hey! Dudes who understand me!" She dropped into the fray, inserting herself between two struggling stallions with a twirl and forcing them apart. "That means you!" she added, glaring at as many Varsidelians as she could. "Stop. Fighting!"
"An elegant offer of surrender," another stallion grunted, targeting her with a shoulder shove. "As if you'd even think about sparing the likes of us!"
Valey popped him on the chin with the lightest of punches, spinning and decking a merchant who had caught a batpony in a frantic strangle, forcing them to roll away. "Might have something to do with you throwing a net at them!" she hissed, forced to stay moving by the sheer volume of misaimed attacks flying around. "Really should'a thought about learning to... speak their language or something! But I can't tell them to run, so you're gonna have to do it instead!"
She punctuated the last word by rolling underneath another stallion and flipping him prone... but before she could get a response, a batpony dove past her, trying to pounce on the downed enemy. "Nope! Nonono!" Valey caught them by the shoulders, glaring into their eyes with her best 'stop fighting' look. "You guys run too!"
The sarosian gave her a hurt, angry look, though some of the shock from earlier was wearing off. Valey noticed the batponies still weren't targeting her as much as the Varsidelians were, but if things didn't change, that would in a hurry... She frantically glanced around, looking for a better plan.
"Yeah, we're not leaving!" the stallion she had accosted earlier puffed, facing her for a moment until another batpony caught him off-guard. "That would mean leaving our injured to their... Oooomph!"
A nasty left hook hit his side, and Valey winced. Fortunately, there was an idea.
"Hey, bozos!" She leaped, flipping through the air and clearing the heads of most of the brawlers toward where the fallen Varsidelians lay. Three were down, plus a fourth who was obviously conscious but could barely move. "And you." She locked eyes with the wounded stallion. "What do you say I help some of you dudes a little closer to camp, and that makes all your buddies either chase me or trust me, huh? Come on, I need a retreat option-"
There was a loud crack overhead, and suddenly Felicity screamed again.
Baring her teeth in a helpless snarl, Valey vanished in a blink, leaving the downed ponies in place and flying fast for the beach. In less than a second, she cleared the cliff edge to see the fallen Varsidelians having actually backed off, staring upwards in surprise... and a chunky boulder where her friends had been resting.
"Bananas!" Valey dove for the rock. "Sparky! Felicity!"
Before she could even pull up, Felicity surfaced, gasping for breath as she was ejected from the rock's shadow. Shinespark and the round mare were each clutched under one wing, the former now barely conscious. Felicity stared at Valey with panicking eyes, too winded to speak.
"Where'd that thing come from?" Valey hissed, grabbing both of their shoulders, then looking back at the Varsidelians. All their eyes were fixed skyward, and if she focused, she could hear Gerardo's intercom above the battle, but not make out...
Her eyes widened too, a full ten sarosians dropping rapidly from the cloud layer. Some of their flights were unsteady, one even looked recently bloodied, but they had both numbers and surprise, swiftly falling on the beached Varsidelians in the blink of an eye. Two of them crashed, but most swooped past with flyby attacks, one dropping a small carried stone at an earth pony's head. Before the Varsidelians could so much as grab at them with telekinesis to react, the sarosians were up and over the cliff, earning panicked shouts as they joined the fight above.
"Knock that off, knock that off, knock that off!" Valey whirled forward on another rescue mission, trying to force the Varsidelians away from the sarosians stuck in their mist before any beatings could begin. Kicking raised hooves away, shoving ponies back with her shoulders, sides and rear, Valey avoided lethal or bone-breaking strikes, making it to the first downed batpony. Their eyes contracted in fear and confusion, and her cutie mark was too busy warning about everything to tell her if they would attack too.
"Back off! Back down the beach!" Valey spread her wings, pushing the Varsidelians instead. "Felicity!" she hollered over her shoulder. "I need these two immobilized, just in case! I've gotta get up there and save-"
New battle cries rang out from above, and her ears folded at the sound of sarosian screams.
"Darling, I'm... about to pass out myself..." Felicity staggered forward, looking sick.
Another sharp crack rang out from above, and Valey looked up in time to see a boulder strike the hull of the Immortal Dream. She didn't have time to gauge where it would fall; she dove at Felicity, catching her with both forehooves and propelling her back toward Shinespark. "Ngaahhhhh!"
Sparing a precious second to set her down gently, Valey zoomed to the top of the cliff, unable to spend any more time on the two fallen batponies and hoping they didn't get up or continue fighting. The scene at the top was even more desperate than it had been before: both sides held a large influx of ponies, but the Varsidelians had crude weapons, and most importantly Grenada.
A roughly-fashioned spear pierced a sarosian's ear, narrowly missing their eye and earning a shrill scream. Valey set her target and her eyes, blasting forward into a barrel roll that kicked two Varsidelians and a batpony apart, seizing their weapons and hurling them at the sea. Like a fuzzy, green-maned pinball, she ricocheted through the crowd, not caring how hard she kicked chests and faces for momentum as she stole every implement she could get her hooves on, disposing of them in similar fashion. But there were too many of them, and some of the sarosians had the same idea, stealing weapons for themselves.
"You!" Valey pounced on Grenada instead, her momentum tearing furrows beneath the mare's hooves in the ground. "Call this off and sound a retreat, right now!"
Grenada gave her an angry look. "And abandon the best chance we have had to win this land once and for all? You have my thanks for luring them into an easy ambush but we still will have nothing to do with you!"
Without even a grunt, Valey drove her hoof into Grenada's unarmored face, then flipped above and behind her and slammed her face-first into the dirt. Grenada's horn tried to light, and she put a hoof atop it, blocking the aura by pressing it into the ground. She struggled, but had no way to get her forelegs beneath her, and Valey looked up, spreading her wings and raising her voice as loud as it would go. "Hey! Lemon bags! Everybody scram right now or I'm gonna start making threats, and I have your boss! Count of three..."
She turned a few heads, but the message in everyone's eyes was the same: we kill the sarosians, or they kill us. Not one of Valey's racial kin looked ready to give in, despite limps, bruises, slashes and fresh scars on every one of them. There wasn't anything she could say, because none of these merchants wanted to die.
The sky shook again as another boulder impacted the Immortal Dream, earning more cries of warning from the beach. Fortunately, she didn't hear any sounds of combat... yet.
"Bananas, no..." Valey's ears pressed back, and by reflex she smashed Grenada's muzzle harder into the dirt. "Why would you do this? Why would you want to stay here? The locals can talk if you try; you could have made peace! There's gotta be a way they'll let you leave in peace! Bananas, why isn't there anything better I can do!? Fighting is what I'm meant for! Stop this! Someone, anyone, please!"
A magical pressure appeared in her chest, like a gentle force was asking to come in.
Valey recognized it instantly. The Firefly Sisters? A dusk statue? The Night Mother? But the former were in the Empire and the batponies had said there were no dusk statues here; that they lived in exile or separation from their goddess. Then how...?
The sarosians clearly felt it too, a wave of synchronized hesitation sweeping across their faces as one. Then every last one who could stand fell prostrate, ears pressed back in terror and shame as they abandoned the battle, not a single thought spared for their well-being.
"...That works." Valey got to her hooves, refusing the presence like she had every time she felt it before. "Bananas, if this is the Night Mother, she might actually have herself a convert. Alright, mooks!" She stared the Varsidelians down, keeping Grenada's head pinned against the earth with a single hind hoof. "They're sparing you! Get your wounded and go home! The first pony who harms a single hair on any of their heads gets to find out if I can launch them above the cloud layer with uppercuts alone! Savvy!?"
Murmuring swept across the Varsidelians. A few arguments risked breaking out, but no one was stupid enough to act on them, with the ponies who had actually been to Ironridge strongly reminding their companions who they were up against. "I'm not gonna let them fight you either," Valey insisted. "Your dumb leader here is getting tied up and deposed, but we're going to find a way to get you your boat and let you all go home. Whoever's suicidal enough to stay, now's your chance to try it!"
The Varsidelians looked at each other harder, until one of the group's few mares hung her head, muttered an apology under her breath, pulled an unconscious pony onto her back and slunk away.
Like a dam had been broken, the other Varsidelians started to warily leave, gathering their wounded and backing away with all eyes on Valey. Emboldened when the prone sarosians didn't get up or give chase, their retreat quickened, and suddenly Grenada was the only non-batpony on the clifftop.
There was a rush of feathers, and Gerardo Guillaume landed beside her. "What... What happened?" he asked, ogling the sarosians. "Did you succeed? How-?"
"I hoped you wouldn't be dumb enough to bring this down here," Valey sighed, grabbing the black sword from its sheathe at Gerardo's sides. "Hello, confusing melee with lots of batponies? Like me?" She held it in a wing, looking down at Grenada's struggling form. "I need to get down there as fast as possible, especially if that dumb trebuchet fires again. Help me get her armor off so I don't damage it. We're gonna immobilize her legs so she can't run, since the effects are sorta local, and then cap her horn, tie her up, haul her back to the ship, and... I dunno. This is going to be rough on Sparky."
Grenada grunted, pouring an enraged, desperate whine into the ground. Fear and lack of control radiated from her hard enough that Valey could almost feel a sting in her throat.
"Indeed." Gerardo quickly produced a ring and a roll of tape from a pocket on his uniform, grabbing Grenada's head and wrapping her horn. It fizzled with sparks as she tried to light it to no avail; without either air or encasement in a proper conductor, there was no way for a unicorn to activate their corona, and without the light around their horn, spellcasting was impossible.
"Sweet." Valey stepped back as Gerardo got to work on the armor, more than a match for Grenada without her magic. "Squawk if she sucker punches you, or something. I've got friends to see to."
On the beach below, the Varsidelians hadn't yet retreated, though they looked ready to. The two crashed sarosians were both immobilized near Felicity, and Valey guessed it was because they had tried something on Shinespark. Felicity herself was on her side, breathing shallowly, and all the merchants watched them with guarded fear.
"Yo." Valey dropped down slowly, furling her wings and hoping she looked disarming. "Battle's over. You dudes go home. Your boss is deposed, so if anyone sees Harshwater, tell her she's in charge. And if any of you feel like having a promotion, we're gonna get negotiating, and you'll need someone in charge."
A stallion at the front of the posse slowly nodded. "...We will spread the word. Please don't attack again."
Valey wanted to retort that they had started it, but that wouldn't help anything at all. Forcing herself to bow, she watched and waited for them to leave.
Eventually, the crunching of stones against hoofsteps vanished behind the sound of lapping water and a point where the cliff face curved out of sight, and Valey sighed, tension finally starting to drain. "Sparky? Felicity?" She stepped over to her friends, feeling emotionally exhausted and badly in need of a nap.
"Valey," Shinespark groaned, sounding better than her scorched chest fur indicated.
"Bananas, are you two alright?" Valey quickly decided Felicity looked worse, though the round mare she had saved wasn't in good shape either. "Felicity!"
"Q-Quiet, darling," Felicity breathed, badly overexerted and eyes thin. "I very badly need to rest."
"Yeah," Valey breathed, settling in beside her. "You do that."
Carefully, Valey lay down, knowing the stones were a terrible bed, and picked up Felicity's head, holding her ears flat against her head for quiet. Felicity closed her eyes in appreciation, and Shinespark gave Valey a quiet nod of approval. "Give me five minutes," she mouthed, "and I can fly us back up."
A short distance away, laying nearby on the stones, the three local sarosians lay, the round leader disabled by her injuries and the others looking locked up from Mistvale arts. Valey could see their eyes. All three were crying, and all three were humming in harmony a tune she remembered from a night long ago in Izvaldi.