Alistair lied on the ground in shock, unable to utter a word to the mare he once knew and long considered her to be gone forever. Realizing his inability to speak, she smiled.
"Well don't tell me you're not even gonna say 'hello.' It's been about six months since we last saw each other. Don't you miss me?"
"S-Shale," he managed, "w-what are you doing here?"
She moved the blade away from him, her voice turning a bit more serious. "I could say the same to you. Skulking around in the woods in the dead of night and then attacking my group. Not a good way to present yourself if you don't mind me saying."
Alistair shakily got to his feet, still feeling the throbbing pain in his head. The crowd of ponies surrounding him shifted to his mounting position, many holding their blades out in defense to ensure he stayed right where he was standing. Alistair knew he could take some of them in a straight fight but the number that were present as well as the position he was in my the situation all the less unfavorable, especially with dozens glaring hostilely at him.
Realizing this, Shale quickly turned to them. "Get back to your duties, I can take it from here."
The group dispersed around them, leaving the two alone by one of the fires, both inspecting the other for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
Shale looked...different. While her gray earth-pony fur and purple mane were still how they'd always been, something in her eyes looked different. She seemed a little less strained, less encumbered like an enormous weight had been lifted from her conscience since they'd last been together. Something had always been on her mind, and it appeared she'd finally resolved whatever that was.
Her youthful liveliness was still written across her expression even though Alistair knew she was closer to forty than she was thirty. Her age had never been too apparent to him; she always was good at masking it with her personality. But there, at that very moment, she looked much more weathered than he remembered her to be, which he couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Other than that she was still the same pony with some minor changes, and from the way she was looking at him, it was likewise between them. They stood there silently for a moment, continuing to look at one another over the crackle of the fire beside them.
"How've you been?" Alistair asked casually.
She brought a hoof through her mane. "As good as any mare could be from where I'm standing. Losing hope in what you're fighting for and then destroying it can take a toll on anypony. You know?"
Alistair's eyebrows raised in exclamation. "It was you who gave the order to retreat?"
She nodded. "It was the only choice I had. Either let innocent lives be spent on a losing conflict or save as many ponies as I could. I knew from the beginning that the attack wouldn't work, and I knew there was no way to convince you of that, especially in the state that you were in. That attack was the end of the Night Lords. Our future, our entire destiny, teetered on that gamble pulling through. And evidently, it didn't."
"I'd rather not talk about that..." Alistair said while crossing his arms and looking toward the ground.
"You'll have to at some point. We all think about it whether we want to or not. Well, whose left of us anyway."
The boy looked confused for a moment. "What do you mean?"
"You probably already know that when the Sun Guard tracked the Airships' flight patterns back to the Crescent Isle the fortress had already been torched, with the remaining portions decimated by explosives. I issued those orders and afterward, in front of everyone who was left, announced that the Night Lords were over."
"Most accepted the decree, some weren't happy about it but agreed to the notion, and others...They go by different names now, remnants really. My team and I tried to track them, but it was no use. There were too many and too spread out over Equestria. We didn't have the resources or the manpower to keep up with all of them and pretty soon I lost most of what I had on them."
"Is that why you're here then?" Alistair asked with an edge, gesturing to the camp and its prisoners. "You think we're Night Lord remnants?"
"Oh, Celestia no! I can tell just from looking at them that these ponies wouldn't hurt a fly. No, something else has come up, something larger than that. Come with me and I'll explain."
She walked over to where the main tent was and went inside. With a look behind him and back into the words, Alistair followed after her.