//------------------------------// // Etude // Story: A Duet For Land And Sky // by Estee //------------------------------// The voice had been cold. She had felt the chill in the first moment it had called out to her, and it had soaked into her bones. It was something which had seemingly slowed her movements when she turned to answer, and it hadn't taken long to realize that she simply hadn't wanted to face anypony who possessed such a voice, something which treated others as being barely worthy of hearing. Cold and slow: something which perfectly reflected the pony who had been speaking. And once she'd heard his song... Perhaps there was an instrument which could encapsulate her experience of the rock farmer: if so, it was a comparison she'd never been able to make. She had seen him as something beyond music, a feature of the landscape itself. He had been a glacier. Ice and mass and power, where a single tiny movement might disrupt an entire coastline. She had heard his strength, known it was so much greater than her own, and it had been too late to do anything other than enter the fosse. Not when the price of loss or default was her best friend. A pony who had never been told about what had happened that day, and that was something a now-older mare hoped would be true forever. The cold of a glacier. The mass and sheer power of its movements. Nothing she could hope to stand against, and the chill of that realization had reached her soul. But there had been another truth lurking in the comparison, that the pony was cold and powerful and slow. It was all he was. All he could ever be. And so she had been the one who came out. "Almost wanna call cheat right now!" Applejack called out as her platform steadily moved down the incline, sliding through wet soil. "Dirty as y'are, even before we started diggin', Ah can barely find you against the walls! Ain't no fair, fightin' somepony who's invisible!" It made her think of Twilight, much as the Advocate's last words had brought Pinkie to mind. Get ready. There was a story-honored litany of opening moves available, and one of them was extremely basic. Elstar slowly shook his head. "Words," the stallion dismissively said. "Fight me." ...right. It was possible to insult her cousin -- in fact, in the context of a family reunion, it was almost impossible not to -- but he was currently alert to the possibility of having her use them as a distraction. In that sense, she would have been better off with Akane. Almost at the bottom. "Ah get it," Applejack told him. "Can't have a battle of wits with somepony who ain't got a tool in that kit." And viciously shrugged. "Last pony Ah fought wasn't much for it, either. He did have one good line, though. Jus' before we started. He told me that we'd already saved a step --" When we're both all the way in. Start listenin'. Hear with mah soul, 'cause everything else might get real dubious in a hurry. An' don't talk once we've started, 'cause he might not realize -- She could see his foreknees twitching, and so she knew what his first move was going to be. It just didn't matter, because that was only for the physical and they were both about two hoof-heights away from touching down -- "-- because once we had the grave dug out, we jus' had t' figure out who was gonna get buried!" He jumped, the platform crumbling back into its components at the instant his hooves parted from it, and the action didn't matter, he was attempting a bluff because the duel couldn't officially begin until they were both down -- -- except that she'd jumped at the same time. Her hooves sank partway into the soil on impact. Displaced topsoil, dark in hue, rich in nutrients, and filled with the smallest of corpses. Soil was the end product of so many processes, and the one which let plants grow without the Effect was called decomposition. Everything which died upon and within the earth broke down into that which allowed the next generation to exist. She sank into corpses, and a fountain of broken bodies flew up from the dirt at Elstar's forehooves, arching directly for her eyes. No y'don't! Because that was one of the most predictable opening moves for somepony surrounded by dirt: take out vision, jam clumps into the ears until normal hearing was impossible, force the other pony to temporarily perceive the world through their soul. It was still possible to do a lot that way: it was even the first tool to enter Twilight's new kit -- but you had to be ready to discard your other senses in favor of the inner, and taking a load of dirt to the eyes was still going to hurt. Earth welled up in front of her, coalesced into a dark curve wider than her shoulders and higher than her head, and she heard the impacts as she concentrated on her note, trying to hold the hasty construct together, but she'd just blocked off part of her own vision and that meant she had to move, her flanks were vulnerable and the thing about being in a fosse -- -- she was trying to concentrate on every available sense at once, she was trying to think of everything because there was no other way to be in a fosse, and so she picked up on the next note just in time. Powerful muscles united in a single effort, and her entire body went left just before the cluster of uneven rocks erupted under where her body had just been, shot into the air with enough force to have knocked the air out of her lungs. (She had to go on offense: letting him have the first two chords gave her some idea of how he worked, but it wasn't telling her enough about his strength and she couldn't just allow him to keep her reacting.) His opening moves were storybook, and that had the potential to become a major problem because Applejack was pretty sure she knew which story. If he kept going along that same pattern -- -- but at least he's keepin' t' the terms, 'cause those rocks ain't edged. They would have bruised her, potentially knocked her down, made everything that much easier for his next request because a pony who was prone was already in trouble -- but they wouldn't have cut her. So if'fin we're both thinkin' of the same thing -- You couldn't debate in a fosse: she had no way to simply negate any portion of his next bar. She simply sang a little faster. Jumping to the left had gotten her clear of the now-collapsing shield, and so she was easily able to see the shock on his face as the ground between them heaved, shifted in a wave towards his foreknees, and the soil beneath him swelled, got him above the crest just before it crashed down because they were earth ponies from the same family tree and the stories traveled across generations, parents and fireplaces and curled-up foals listening until it seemed as if they were living the tales and so with the duel begun, her cousin had given up imagination to focus on the best source of tactics he knew. A series of events which, if followed exactly to the oral tradition, would have her try to pull the still-lifting support out from under him. But reality had its own rules, and so she pulled a column of earth out of the wall behind him, aiming directly for the back of his head. His eyes widened in outrage as his soul picked up on what he'd already decided was the wrong note, leaping forward just in time to avoid the blow, and it was the first time Applejack truly heard anything from the rim, starting with the welcome peal of Apple Bloom's sudden laughter, something which was drowned about by Akane's furious "That's not how it works!" before her father's hooves hit the ground and she could hear his notes shouting at the landing site to be nothing more, to not respond to her and she couldn't counter that, so she continued to move left and she was thinking as fast as she could, she had him concentrating on stability, on holding his patch of land together, and since he was standing on something solid... It had never been her best tool: Granny had been her tutor for it, and the elder had eventually (reluctantly) admitted that Applejack wasn't fully suited for all of its uses. But she still had a battered version of it in her kit, and so a low rumble emerged from the fosse itself, the solidified earth under Elstar's hooves that much more vulnerable to vibration. He started, scrambled to keep his hooves, and she knew it wasn't going to last long: simply shifting to softer, absorbing soil would negate most of her effort, and it was actually harder to work small-scale with any attempt at an earthquake: the problem with using anything towards the top of the range was that it had a good chance to create a landslide of soil from the walls and she didn't quite have anything in mind for that. But he was focusing on staying upright, he wasn't looking at her, and a duel freed an earth pony to use everything they had. Every note, all of the chords, every last tool -- -- and then there was just being an earth pony. Her head went down, muscles pushed with greater urgency, her tail lashed and she charged him, because one hard hit would send him into the dirt and once he was down, she could -- -- she saw the little smile, and the recognition of it dropped into the space between seconds. An endless moment where she knew something was about to go wrong. No time in which to change it. You had to think about everything at once in a fosse. Everything, because the world around and under you was offense and defense, every surface holding the potential for victory or betrayal. She'd been thinking about his footing, she'd moved for the charge, and it had created a second where she was no longer considering her own. The ground beneath her hooves heaved, and Applejack fell. The space between seconds stretched, allowed her to recognize what had just happened: he'd pushed up in a slanting plane, throwing her to the right, and it had happened with enough force to launch her a few hoof-heights above the ground. A moment where she'd lost contact, nowhere near enough distance for the earth to no longer hear her, but instinct had taken over and she lost her song in the desperate attempt to get her legs under her again, something which was impossible because her torso was tilting and there wasn't enough time -- -- she hit the ground, landing on her side, and felt the wet soil soaking into her fur, the chill moving into her body just as the cold of a forever-captured voice once had. Most of the instinctive pained cry had been bitten back, enough to keep the dirt out of a mouth which hadn't truly opened -- but her tail was sodden, mane partially covered, the darkness was working into the fur of her mark and the ground was swelling up around her legs, solidifying, she couldn't make it let go because that counted as negation, there had to be a tool to counter his effort and she couldn't think of it and she'd lost her song and he was coming towards her. Still smiling, and that held right up until the moment when the laughter began. Most of it was his. (She could hear Akane, almost lost in mirth on the rim, and it still wasn't enough to mask Apple Bloom's gasp of agony.) Most of the mirth, and all of the dark satisfaction. "Pitiful," he told her. "You really weren't raised properly, were you? A few moves and then you're out." The land was creeping over her torso. Advancing, a few fur strands at a time, across her neck. Heading for her snout. Suffocation. Not enough to kill, just knock her out -- but it was a potentially fine line to be working with. The drizzle was intensifying. Water ran across her lone exposed eye jus' the one, other one's blocked, how does she live like this and she frantically blinked, tried to clear her vision, doing so in time to glimpse the Advocate, who was -- -- looking at the staff. At an emerald which had just flashed green. "An earth pony crossed the border," Rocksteady stated. "We continue." Elstar looked up at that. Paused for a second, as Applejack tried to think, but his song wouldn't stop and she tried to refocus on him, blinked away sapphire-dulling rainwater and a tiny flicker of green until she saw his face again. He was still smiling. Think, think, think, but the dirt was that much closer to her nostrils, he was making it last and -- "-- or maybe you just forgot how to fight on your own?" he snidely asked. "Having too many ponies watching your flanks makes you weak, because you're always counting on someone else to save you." The first pebbles moved into her snout. Began to cluster, dirt thickening the bonds. "And now you're all alone," he whispered. "No siblings, no grandmother, no friends --" -- he's talking. One eye exposed. Just one. Just like -- "-- no Bearer is ever alone!" There was a moment when he didn't react to that, and she thought he must have seen it as an attempt to distract him. To make him look up again, check for other ponies along the rim, pegasi and a unicorn and somepony who was a little of everything. A breach of the Secret. But the staff had just spoken, and so he kept his focus on her. It meant he didn't see it coming. Not until it was too late, and in the last instant before the results hit, Applejack wondered if time had stretched enough for him to fully realize what she'd done. She couldn't credit her aim, because she'd gone for a very large portion of the facing wall -- or rather, the topsoil coating it. Topsoil which they'd (mostly) been so careful with because everything had to go back later and you could only lose so many of its inhabitants before a degree of damage was done. But he'd made the mistake of talking and with enough for the coating coming directly at him, some was going to wind up on target. A portion of the rest went into his eyes. Very little ended up within his ears, and that amount took a very distant third priority over dealing with what was in his mouth. He choked. Gagged. Pulled back, then reared back, tossing his head this way and that, trying to whip everything out on sheer momentum added to frantic instinct, something which meant he wasn't thinking and in losing thought, he lost his song. Applejack didn't send the dirt away from her body in all directions: she had enough focus to make sure a portion hit him. And she was scrambling to her hooves while he was supported on his hind ones alone, the fore pawing at the air as he spit over and over, desperately trying to clear the obstruction, because he'd made her think of Fluttershy and so she'd recognized not just the land, but everything which lived within. But she'd also thought of Apple Bloom, and so a singular smile crept across her half-filthy face as Elstar spit out soil darker than horse apples, along with half of a worm. "What..." he sputtered and better yet, did that instead of anything else. "What are --" Nightcrawlers! Get 'em up t' 'bout a body length an' a third down, moron! And her soul sang, the notes went deep and began to do their work as she charged, her head went into his reared-back form and allowed her a direct hit on the rib cage, he went backwards at the same moment the ground beneath her raised her to the Princess' height above the base and provided a platform from which she could jump down onto him because Rainbow had taught her a lot about what the impact from a plummeting body could do, her hooves went into him at the same moment she pulled a hundred little pebbles out of the soil and pelted his body with them in a flurry of mineral hailstones because they were already fighting dirty and so there was no move more Rarity than that one. She heard Akane scream, and it was the sweetest of music. It still wasn't enough to cover up the new rumble from the ground, and she stepped back in time as her fresh channel opened, because there had been a day when Pinkie had tried to bring her back to reality from the depths of mourning and it had also been the day when she'd learned what the movement of earth could do to water. The underground stream was a fast-flowing one, the channel had been narrow, and it gave her a fairly high-pressure jet to his abdomen -- "NO!" (She wasn't sure how far that one had carried.) "SHE'S NOT ALLOWED!" Akane's biased opinion didn't seem to have any particular influence over her. Instead, she whipped Elstar's face with her tail because it was just about the only move she could replicate for Spike, and then she went for the purest of Twilight's minimal combat principles by taking his own weapon and using it against him. Her body dropped low, went on top of his, and her teeth clamped around his filthy mane just before she pushed her weight forward and down. She held the position for ten seconds. Yanked her head back, and brought his with it. "Surrender!" The word was relatively comprehensible: earth ponies got used to talking with something in their mouths, even when it was greasy and unwashed and made her want to spend a week in spitting. "Right now!" "I --" She didn't let him focus, wouldn't give him a chance to find his song again, and so shoved his snout into the dirt for the second time as the channeled stream soaked it into cloying mud. Counted off ten more seconds during which she could feel his ribs heaving against her body, lungs desperately searching for anything -- -- pulled back again. "Same thing y'planned for me! Same chance! Give up or Ah'll put y'out!" Shoved him down. Counted to ten. Pulled back -- "-- I GIVE!" She let go. It took a few seconds before she could fully stand up again. She thought about the chill which was still soaking into her body, considered that Elstar was going through it as well, and almost started to nudge him upright before remembering that there was still some dirt in her nostrils and that clearly had to take priority. And she thought about how amazing it was that he'd actually managed to get some degree of victimization into his declaration of surrender, that was followed by a few seconds of looking up at the rim to where Apple Bloom was pronking in a way that would make Pinkie proud (although it was putting her perilously close to losing the hat), to her Granny's little nod added to a smile which had first regarded her over the edge of a crib, Rocksteady clearly getting ready to say something -- "SHE CHEATED!" It was a scream. A howl. Rage, denial, and every other way in which the mare failed to accurately perceive the world. The Advocate tried to speak, and perhaps there were words lost in the blast from the next scream. Something which would have been important, a phrase which would have changed so much of what was to come. But Akane had never cared about listening. "SHE HAD HELP! YOU HEARD HER! SHE DID SOMETHING, SHE HAD HELP, SHE CHEATED AND THIS ENDS NOW!" The scream shook the ground. Then it was just the ground shaking. And then the walls of the fosse began to collapse. Moving in to bury her.