The first of several Lounge ships descended to the shorn mountaintop, flanked by two other spheres.
Roarke stood up tall, facing the inevitable landing. Jex scrunched over and cowered behind her, eyes plastered to the skystone vessels.
At last, the clamshell front of the vessel slid back. Six figures stood tall, their dark suits venting steam at yellow-glowing joints. In the center stood a particularly tall naga, his glossy visor flickering with an amber strobe. He leaned back on his tail until the sphere came to a complete stop. Then, breathlessly, he leapt down and landed in a nimble squat before the metal mare. He paused to stare at the tiny skystone shard and the dish that had been attached to it before standing up straight. When he spoke through his helmet's crackling speaker, Roarke immediately recognized him as the naga who had stared down Haman earlier at the exchanged.
“Skystone does not simply appear this far south into the central plane,” he hissed, towering above Roarke, along with his companions. “Not unless the material has been excavated, pilfered, or stolen—and in each case it likely belonged to us and us alone.” Cht-Chtung! He extended a manablaster from under his right arm's sleeve. “Explain yourself, pony. I do not grant my attention to just anyone.”
“You're right,” Roarke said. “I did steal this skystone shard.” She gestured calmly at the thing. “I stole it off one of the two goblin battleships Haman equipped with it.” She looked up at him. “Right after I ruptured its engine core and sent it crashing into the mountains.”
The naga leader leaned back. Something clicked from deep within his helmet. At last, he replied, “A single pony, bringing down an entire battleship? Preposterous.”
“Ask your chief navigator to give you a full briefing on the sudden alteration to the landscape just south of here,” Roarke said. “I know you have one such officer per ship who's tasked with performing environmental scans on the topography at regular hourly intervals.”
The leader turned towards a subordinate standing beside him.
The other lizard stood up tall. “She's right, brother. I was performing a scan of the local landscape right before we intercepted the skystone signal. There's a noticeable amount of wreckage ten miles to the south. What's more, this very mountain's configuration no longer matches what we have in our databases.”
The leader turned towards Roarke. “Surely, you had more forces on your side.” He pointed a clawed finger at Jex's emaciated figure. “An inside job, I gather. It takes the merest shove to make goblin kind turn on one another.”
“He was my only ally in this contingency,” Roarke explained. “In truth, if we wanted to, we could have brought down the second battleship as well. However, I chose to contact you instead.”
“For what, pray tell? The naga's head cocked to the side, venting steam from beneath his helmet. “So that we might provide your vagabond limbs with transport to a place of refuge? We are already far from home, cast aloft in a land that despises us. We have no further business here.”
“You have more business here than you pretend to know,” Roarke said. “You've supplied one of the most diabolical warlords in this region with the means to lay waist to an entire culture.”
“Haman is a fool,” the leader hissed. “He will no more succeed than he will grow his own legs back.”
“I never said that he would succeed.” Roarke shook her head. “But what's started here will play into the hooves of an evil force far more destructive than the head of the Cartel. Haman's battleships are just the tip of the iceberg. A changeling Queen named Chrysalis is the one true threat here, and she will use Haman's influence to lacerate a bleeding wound of chaos clear across this continent. It will devour all noble civilizations that cling to this landscape, reindeer and goblin and pony alike. It will even spread in due time to the swamps, where your very brothers will face the consequences of what's begun today.”
“This is all pedantic foolishness,” the leader hissed. He whipped his tail about and used it to latch up the skystone shard. “I only came here to take what is mine. I do not intend to listen to the desperate ramblings of a mad horse.” He signaled to his brethren and the group prepared to leap up onto their sphere.
Roarke leaned forward. “Not even Vaughan?”
Every naga instantly froze. Even those standing on the other hovering spheres noticeably flinched. Slowly, the leader pivoted about to face her.
Roarke's copper lenses pistoned outward. “She who saw one of your brethren at his lowest, and—against all odds—prevented him from bringing great shame to the Lounge all over?”
As the seconds oozed by, the leader marched up to her. He leaned down, peering through his helmet. “You are the Vaughan?” He vented steam, shivering slightly. “You are the one who dragged Razzar out from the abyss so that Quezaat could feast on his foul flesh?
“Granted, I did have some help,” Roarke said. “My true allies await me in Val Roa. They need my help. They need your help.”
“Brother,” one lizard spoke up, fidgeting. “She does match the descriptions of the Vaughan—”
He snarled at them. “Do you think I do not know that?!” He seethed, took a calm breath, then peered down at the metal mare once again. “If this is true—”
“And it is,” Roarke firmly said. “And you have a code of honor to uphold. If my friends and I hadn't interceded, Razzar would have murdered countless innocent souls in his mad quest for unclaimed skystone. He would have left his defiling mark on the face of Quezaat forever. However, that is not the case, is it?”
The leader leaned back. “So now... after all these months... the Vaughan has decided to call upon the code of honor. And to what end?” He growled, “To settle a foreign war in a land that does not concern us? Unacceptable.”
“No, what's unacceptable is your willingness to rob Quezaat of glory altogether,” Roarke said. “For if you stand idly by and let Chrysalis consume Val Roa from the inside out—using goblins or reindeer or ponies—you will only invite doom upon yourself, for Chrysalis will not stop her reign of terror until all of this continent is consumed, from the Grand Choke to Alafreo. The Lounge's swamps have no hope.”
“We pride ourselves in policing these lands quite thoroughly,” the naga said. “We never heard of this Chrysalis.”
“As she would wish it to be.” Roarke paced before the creatures. “Brothers, I do not speak of an egotistical maniac such as Haman who would seek a single hour of glory in spite of all the harm it would do to his own kind. I'm talking about a monster so conniving and diabolical that it has eluded everyone's senses, including my own. If the close brothers of Razzar told you anything upon their return to the Lounge, then surely you must know that this isn't the first time you've brushed with the changeling queen before. She was there, in Stratopolis, when Razzar fell.” She scuffled to a stop, glaring at the leader. “As was I. And I'm trying to help you as much now as I was trying to help you then.”
“Word is that the Vaughan deceived Razzar... infiltrated his ranks... slayed and mutilated naga kind in order to accomplish her tasks.”
“Indeed.” Roarke nodded. “And would you have it any other way?”
“... … ...” The naga leader glanced back at his compatriots.
Jex's gaze darted amongst the masked crowd. He gulped nervously.
“Everything is coming down to the wire, and the continent's fate hangs in the balance,” Roarke said. “Would you intervene for Quezaat's sake? Or let it all go to ruin?” Roarke bore a simple smirk. “The choice—dear brothers—is up to you.”
The leader turned towards her. “You realize, this requires us to break our merchant's code with the Cartel.”
“That's true.”
“Then you acknowledge that, in desiring the harmony of the entire continent, you would willfully endorse the annihilation of a single culture.” The naga hissed, “For that is the only outcome that will result from this. Haman has dug himself a hole that his people will never climb out of.”
“I acknowledge that the Cartel will be irrecoverably changed,” Roarke said. “But that change can only be for the good.”
“How can you say that? You've no clue as to the imps' future. Odds are, another mongrel as bad as Haman or worse will ascend in the vagabond's place!”
“It will not come to that.”
“And what makes you so sure?”
Roarke took a deep breath. Through clenched jaws, she said, “For I will be their leader.”
Jex gave her a double-take, his eyes wide.
The naga exchanged glances while the leader leaned forward. “You? A mere pony?”
“Not just any mere pony,” Roarke said, shaking her head. “But Roarke most Rare... the Vaughan... a mare who understands both peace and violence, and the repercussions of each. So long as the Cartetl are left to their own devices, they will only reap more pain and suffering amongst these lands. Somepony new has to be there to foster their growth, to aim them down a path of true enlightenment and civilized codependency. I understand now that this is my purpose in a land such as this. For beyond the Grand Choke...” She slowly shook her head, exhaling with a shuddering tone. “There is no future for me. The journey ends here. For my friends, I suspect the same, only they must discover it in their own time... after Chrysalis is defeated.”
Jex's mouth hung open. He blinked thoughtfully at Roarke, then at the naga.
The lizards murmured to one another, their helmets clicking and venting with steam.
“So, then...” Roarke reached up and plucked her lenses off, squinting with cold blue eyes. “...are we in agreement?”