//------------------------------// // 192-196: Dismay // Story: Samudra's Journal // by vren55 //------------------------------// Entry 192 Traitors! Imbeciles! Morons! There were traitors! Seaponies who’d look the other eye as kelpie fry ran. Commanders who didn’t punish their soldiers when they made half-hearted attempts. Lab workers who’d let one or two fry slip away. Don’t they see that we are in a battle for the survival of our species? That if we fail, the ocean will be devoured by a carnivorous species?  I’ve had the tortured bodies of these traitors displayed across the Empire as an example, to show the consequences of what it means to betray the Empire, and its ponies. There should not be a problem after that. Entry 193 Damn Tethys! She’s stolen the bodies of the traitors, had her kelpies dress these traitors in funerary clothing and then given them the last rites! How dare she claim my ponies for her cause! She never even contacted these ponies, much less convinced them to betray me! Yet she dares to write a story where I’m the tyrant empress?  And yet ponies dare to believe her. My ponies whom I’ve served for millennia, and held back the tides to their destruction… there are too many who seem to believe Tethys’s lies. A number of villages have rebelled and I’ve had to send the troops to pacify them. I need to act ruthlessly, and swiftly, less this rebellion spread.  Entry 194 The kelpies have Dragon Turtles, and Leviathans. How in Panthalusa’s name do the kelpies have Dragon Turtles and Leviathans? Not only that, the beasts that they have tamed, are even larger than ours! My forces managed to hold them off at the last battle, but at the cost of several of our own Dragon Turtles and Leviathans and I had to rush to the battle to finally drive the kelpies off. Meanwhile, Tethys was destroying a major lab where we were holding the kelpie fry we captured. Months of research and precious, and increasingly rare fry, all gone!  I need that fry. Typhon is nearing maturity. By then he’ll only be able to eat sapient life and not fish. I can’t… I can’t let that happen to him. He’s my son. In the meantime I’ve ordered my beastmasters to train larger Dragon Turtles and Leviathans. We need to even the battlefield. Entry 195 No this, no that. Can’t this, can’t that. Can my subjects not do ANYTHING without my supervision? My beastmasters can’t train larger dragon turtles and Leviathans because apparently “they’re not strong enough to handle these monsters.” The kelpies did! Those savage monsters could and yet we can’t?  We can’t collect enough tax money based on the quotas. We can’t do a survey to figure out the right tax levels. We can’t find the ponies we’re supposed to tax. That town doesn’t exist anymore. Creator damn them all we’re at war and they can’t figure out solutions to the problems? And then there are all these whispers and kelpie propaganda. We’ve caught sea and deep ponies spreading these lies. They say I’m the cruel, tyrannical empress prolonging the war. That I’ve rebuffed all peace overtures and want to wipe them out. Of course I want to wipe the kelpies out! They’re going to eat Aquestrians!  Why does nobody see that we will never be safe until the kelpies are all eliminated? Why? WHY?! Entry 196 Typhon can’t eat fish anymore. He can’t. The heir to Aquestria can’t eat fish, he has to eat his fellow ponies. What’s another cruel twist of fate that Yoth-Atal has added to my reign. It… it isn’t so bad. We give Typhon the deserters, the criminals, the traitors that have attempted to kill him and those that have rebelled against the kingdom he will inherit. We aren’t monsters about it. We drug them first, and then Typhon can feed on them in peace. He doesn’t like it. No, he hates it. But his hunger forced him to and I made sure to spend time with him, to comfort him after he had to. At least we have plenty of traitors. Tethys has redoubled her recruiting of seaponies and deep ponies. She sends these agents of hers into our settlements, where they tell a highly fabricated version of the war that we’ve been fighting. We’ve driven and caught many of them, but who knows how many still reside.  It… it is a pity, though. Many of our brightest cities centuries past look more like fortresses. That’s what the war has done to us, what the kelpies have done to us.