THIRD PONY PERSPECTIVE
Mawa couldn’t believe it, after years of captivity, she was finally free! She was trapped up in a sewer but she was still free.
“Hallelujah! I might finally be able to leave!”
“Never got this far, huh?” said her human stallionservant (well that’s one thing to call him), trudging along behind her at a moderate pace.
She shot a look behind to him that had a bit of a glare “No, no I haven’t.”
When she first saw him, she was quite surprised to see the ridiculous amount of scars on his face, which made him look like some old warrior who had waged war for years, he looked quite ugly and a bit scary but given that her escape was possible only due to his own homicidal tendencies, and the fact the guards were provoking him to kill as many of them as he could…she didn’t care.
The human shrugged “Well I didn’t know. Anyways, how much longer are we going to walk this way?”
Mawa stopped “Hang on” she said “There’s a map of the city somewhere in the atlas.”
The unicorn lifted the atlas out of her satchel with her telekinesis: as her horn lit up, Marv whistled “Hey, you wouldn’t have any spells that summoned a cold one do you?”
Mawa was trying to read the book but halted as Marv confused her “A…cold one?”
“You know, a beer.”
“Oh, those? My father doesn’t exactly like those, so he kinda…outlawed them.”
The human groaned “What a waste. What about bootleggers though? They’ve gotta make them.”
Mawa’s eyebrow rose in curiosity as she continued to flip through the book’s pages “How’d you know about the illegal liquor business?”
“Same thing happened in my country in the 20s, when some yahoos made it illegal to sell alcohol, criminals saw an opportunity to make money by making the booze anyway and selling it to whoever wanted it.”
“Wow. How much money was in the business anyway?”
“A lot, my friend Dwight knew more about it, but given the amount of people who died in gang wars…”
Mawa turned back to the book, her eyes a bit wider “Good to know.”
As she looked at the atlas, she’d finally found the page she was looking for, and now knew how far to go.
“Alright, I’d like to have us move around until I’ve gotten to the outside of the walls, but we have to get some extra supplies first, we’re surrounded by a desert.”
“Yeah, the accents kinda gave that away.”
“We also need to get out soon before somepony finds us, if the guards cut off every possible exit, we won’t make it, so getting above ground before they’ve done this is essential.”
“Better not do it too close to the palace though. They’d find us too soon.”
“…Good point. Sorry, I’m just so excited about finally getting out of there, I-”
“Relax kid. We’re not out of this shithole yet.”
“Don’t talk to me like that…pretty much any other attempt I’ve made to escape has been an exercise in failure.”
“Hard to see how you can do that, failing ain’t exactly a skill anyone’ll try to practice.”
Mawa groaned “Are you always like this?”
“Yep.”
MARV’S POV
I sniffed the air, it smelled like shit…but since we were in the sewer, even I knew that’d be inevitable, but strangely enough it was almost comforting…the smell reminded me of home.
Before me was trotting a Unicorn who wanted me to help her to escape her tyrannical father and prevent an arranged marriage between her and an absolute asshole. She was focusing on the path ahead of her, no doubt trying to figure out where to go next.
We had to go find supplies but needed to find a way to get them without anyone catching us, I’d killed two dozen of those maniacs easily, but a whole city full of them was a different story altogether.
I’d gotten this weird Souldrive, a gun, and a sword strong enough to hack a horse’s head off in one swing, there was also my own strength and fighting skills to add to the mix. I was well armed, but I didn’t think I could take a whole army on.
As I began to try and think of what to ask, about what kind of world I was in, I suddenly stepped on something hard.
Looking down I noticed a small flier of some kind, it was pretty much unreadable, drenched with so much water the ink had just dried away and was smudging up the whole thing. It also looked pretty soggy, but there just seemed to be something funny about it.
Reaching down, I lifted off the flier and noticed a small clockwork statue that had the likeness of some horse that was in authority, or at least it seemed like that. I could notice that his eyes were foul and harsh, as if he was permanently glaring; he had a long beard and wore a robe over his head. The statue looked like it was on top of a tiny pedestal with a keyhole and some small holes that looked like they were speakers.
I studied the statue, what exactly was this? It didn’t look like anything valuable was inside, and yet it felt pretty solid and hard to open.
Mawa had moved about ten feet away and realized that I wasn’t following “Hey Marv, could you hurry along…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed what I was doing.
The unicorn clopped her hooves as she approached to get a look at the statue I held, she examined it for a moment, only to recoil with realization.
“You know what this is?” I asked her.
“That’s a Secret Holder, one of my father’s!”
My eyes widened a bit and took another look at the statue, or ‘Secret Holder’ as Mawa called it. I could see a genuine likeness between the two.
“And just what’s this supposed to be?”
“A Secret Holder is a clockwork device, supposedly based after some statues made by a brilliant inventor thousands of years ago. They’re widely used by ponies all over Saddle Arabia to record voices as a sort of diary. Though due to their limited size, most ponies buy multiple ones.”
“And the lock‘s here to keep people from the diary” I remarked to myself.
“Correct, and don’t bother trying to un-”
I ignored the horse and reached in my pockets, I kept a lockpick on hand just for situations where I needed to break into a joint. I was pretty good at it too, there were better lockpickers in Sin City but when I need to I’m very good at the work.
I sat down and inserted the pick, concentrating on the job; it should have been quick, but somehow…I couldn’t even turn it.
“Son of a bitch” I muttered, was this really a lock? It felt more like some kind of sculpture, it might as well have been painted on.
“Uh, Marv” Mawa interrupted, looking right over my shoulder and at the statue “That isn’t going to work.”
“You’re telling me. You sure these things are held by locks?”
“No, I mean the locks are magic. Lockpicking won’t do any good.”
I blinked, magic locks? That was a new one “Damn…what does open this thing then?”
“Well, most ponies can just get magic keys that work specifically for them, and my father carries the only key for his Secret Holders, or…”
Her horn glowed again, and I watched her focus on the lock and make it click open “You can learn a lockpicking spell like this one.”
I had to admit I was impressed with this “If you know spells like that, why would you still be captive?”
“There were some servants who were a bit more…sympathetic; to my plight I requested some magic books so I could try to learn more about magic, one of the books contained a lockpicking spell by pure chance.”
“Huh, so your Dad wasn’t too keen about you learning magic, huh?”
“Nah, he wanted me to learn a couple of spells but those were supposed to be used as a way to make me more desirable to stallions.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I don’t think I need to tell you the purpose of a penis enlarging spell, or a spell meant to increase the size of my flank…”
I cringed “Alright, I get the picture.”
“And thank you too; I really don’t like focusing on this stuff.”
She turned back to the statue “Ah, it’s finally open now let’s see what it says.”
I looked back to the statue, and its mouth began to move, with a tinny version of her father’s Arabic sounding voice.
“This is impossible. How can I create a pure Saddle Arabia if the other noblestallions will actually let these…filthy creatures into their cities? I can’t understand it at all, Griffins and Diamond Dogs are nothing but freaks.
“Yes they refused my proposal again, they wouldn’t hear a word of trying to purge all of the…impure creatures from Saddle Arabia, all because they want the revenue they bring.
“But I won’t stop; somepony has to end these mongrels before it’s too late. I will have a pure world! I will purge this dissidents befo-”
It suddenly cut off “Huh” Mawa remarked “I think he got too short of a reel. His rants generally tend to be longer than that.”
I looked back at the secret holder; I was dealing with some real whackos this time. Reminded me a bit too much of Nazis.
And if I was right, I think I realized just why there were just ponies here.
“Your father…what did he do to all the non-horses?”
Mawa sighed “He had them all murdered. And those he didn’t murder fled the province.
“About ten years ago he started up on some sort of ‘religious crusade’, he brought most his citizens into this fervor as well, and they joined in.”
She shuddered in horror as she remembered hearing about the event, it was pretty clear that she didn’t share her father’s views.
She continued after getting over it “After this, he banned the other races from entering. Because he was the ruler here, he was able to get away with it, and the other noblecolts can’t do anything about it because this province is a tad influential due to the presence of a large gold mine and the fact that it’s also essential to several shipping routes. They literally can’t do anything to stop him and as long as he keeps this business within the province, they won’t interfere with him.”
“But he wants to perform ‘aggressive expansion’ doesn’t he?”
“Not exactly, he wishes to get the rest of Saddle Arabia to follow his murderous creed, but so far he hasn’t gotten any of the nobles to agree with him on it.
“It hasn’t stopped him from attacking other countries though. A decade ago in the country of Equestria there was a terrorist attack done on the city of Manehattan, a pair of Pegasi with bombs strapped all over themselves just flew right into a pair of skyscrapers, killing dozens of ponies. This country’s views on…just about everything, are much more progressive than Saddle Arabia’s and the terrorists responsible for it came from here.
“The ruler of Equestria, Princess Celestia, was going to have a military force go into there and grab the mastermind behind the attack, Sandstorm Blazesoul, and his organization, but shortly after the attack, he was reportedly killed trying to sneak over the border into this province.
“But he wasn’t killed. My father was, unfortunately enough, sympathetic to his cause and had his death faked, even using a skilled unicorn to make the fake corpse look real.
“I saw him only once, but I could tell that he was just as evil and foul as my father. I’d heard a little about what he was doing, and didn’t think much of it at the time. But a servant once showed me a newspaper from Equestria that a friend had smuggled in for her, and I realized just what kind of a pony my father truly was.
“To make matters worse, when my father made Sandstorm a new identity, he set him up as one of the main religious leaders in this city. He even wanted him to preside over my wedding!”
My own eyes widened, I remembered something about the courtyard. At the spot where I saw what was definitely the altar, I saw (in addition to the prince she mentioned) a horse in robes who looked an awful lot like Osama Bin Laden.
“Holy shit” I muttered “They have him here too.”
“Who?” she asked, wondering what I was talking about.
I stopped moving and explained the events of 9/11 to her, and how it was very similar to what she just described here, when I got to the real reason America invaded, she scoffed in disgust.
“So their countrymen die, and your country responds by using this to invade your…Middle East? What the hay kind of world do you live in?”
“A bad one. And trust me, that cowboy was nothing compared to the people running my hometown.”
“Why? What happened there?”
“That’s a story too long to tell. Let’s just say that as bad as your country is, my city has much worse government. It’s corrupt to the core, has been for years. All because of the Goddamn Roark family.”
“Are they the reigning nobles?”
“Not really but I guess you could call them that, since I doubt you have a democracy anywhere on this mudball.”
“Well Equestria’s got a democratic system for some of the smaller government bodies, like mayors and city governments.”
“No president?”
“Nah, they got a Princess though, she’s immortal too.”
“Heh, would she lose it if her head got chopped off?”
Mawa’s jaw dropped “Wh-why the the hay would you want that? Who’d raise the sun?”
“Easy kid, it was just a joke, there was this movie on my world about immortals who were obsessed with cutting each others heads off. It was part of a weird game they had.”
“That sounds…disturbing.”
“It actually ain’t, not even as violent as my head on a Saturday night. Trust me on that.”
“I can…what did you do back on your world?”
“You saw what I did back there, right? What does that tell you?”
“That you’re a violent stallion with some serious issues, were you some kind of hitcolt?”
I growled a little, she didn’t call me a hitman but I could tell what she meant “No, no I’m not. But please don’t compare me to that scum.
“I never really had a steady job, been walking my way through dozens of dozens of them all my life, never could hold one, except for one consistent one.
“There was this bar, Katie’s, I was friends with the owner and she gave me a job as a bouncer, pay was enough to get by, and I was pretty good at it, because really, a big ugly lug like me” I pointed up at my scarred face “Looks real spooky, nobody’d ever fuck with someone like me unless they were real drunk or real stupid.
“My reputation as a local bruiser helped too, I often helped my friends and neighbors out with problems brought on by the other scumbags in the city. I only kill people who I feel have it coming. Like these jackasses who were setting fire to homeless people, and then there’s my view on womanbeaters…”
I stopped myself before I continued, if I continued going off on that, I’d be talking about stuff I really didn’t want Mawa to hear.
“Let’s just say I’d prefer to keep my past to myself.”
“And you can consider my curiosity satisfied…anyway, we have to get out of this sewer soon. We need to get supplies and find a way out.”
I reached back into my pocket and pulled out a cigarette, along with my lighter, and began to light it up.
“Well, I guess we’d better get to work…”