Diamond Tiara awoke with a yawn. She stretched out her legs and rolled out of bed, looking around in the darkness.
"Good morning, mistress," came the voice of Gneech, unseen in the black. "Shall I get the light?"
Diamond nodded. "Go ahead." When he struck the candle up and she could see, she stood up and shook Silver Spoon awake. "Time to get our plan rolling. Let's see if they have a bath, and some food, before we go."
Silver roused quickly, but looked bleary. She grabbed for her glasses and set them on her nose. "Hello Diamond. That sounds great! Did you sleep well? Gneech?"
Gneech dipped his head. "Gneech is good. Ready to go."
Diamond perked an ear at him. "Soon we'll have a bigger place, with a bed for you too." She put a hoof to her chest. "Even my servants are treated well, you'll see." Her encouraging words did much to brighten Gneech's outlook on the day.
They emerged from their room and a male griffon was just prowling through, looking tired. Silver raised a hoof at him. "Hello! Can you direct us to a bath?"
He paused and regarded them, sniffing once. "That way." He pointed down the hall. "Third on the right, but be sure to check the sign. You'll make no friends marching in on them while it's in use."
They thanked him and rushed on to the door. A little sign hung there that read 'Occupied'. Diamond Tiara huffed and crossed her forelegs. "Figures." They waited and eventually a female tiger/eagle emerged and slinked down the hallway, singing a happy song.
The way cleared, they all rushed in at once, and closed the door behind them. Gneech made no approach to the generously-sized tub, instead standing guard as the ponies hopped in. Diamond grinned with triumph. "They have actual faucets!" With a twist, she was rewarded with a spray of hot water, and both fillies sank to their haunches, savoring the rush of almost boiling water, rinsing away the dirt and filth and in their fur and soothing some of the tangles that had built over their long journey.
Gneech glanced around before grabbing a brush and offering it towards the two. "Here."
Silver Spoon turned away and pointed at her back. "Thanks, Gneech. That's, like, really nice of you."
Gneech looked surprised. He had meant to offer the brush, not apply it, but since Silver seemed to expect it, he shuffled in closer and started to scrub her with the brush. Silver let out a happy sigh before looking over her shoulder. "You have to put some soap on it, Gneech." She pointed to where some jars rested, filled with soaps. "Just a little tab is plenty. Thank you, Gneech."
Diamond became a little jealous at Silver getting her back done and wriggled a bit. "Do me next!"
Silver grabbed for another brush. "I can do you while he does me." She soaped up the brush and began scrubbing Diamond with a happy smile.
Ultimately everyone got clean, Gneech included, and they felt better for it. Diamond and Silver felt more in control and just a little more... sane. With their manes and tails brushed out and luxurious, and their bodies cleaned and immaculate, they felt like real ponies again.
Emerging from the bathing room they found a short line had formed. They scooted out of the way and let the next grumbling griffon guard in. A familiar female griffon turned the corner. "Ah, there you are! All ready?"
Diamond Tiara nodded. "We are ready to go. Lead the way."
She nodded at them. "You're looking far better now." She turned for the exit. "Come this way, little ones, we'll see what value there is in what you've brought."
They marched out of the guard station and moved through the darkened lower portion of the city. The air smelled a bit of smog and smoke, and looking up saw a great plumes of it coming from higher in the city, creating great clouds over the city. She looked over her shoulder. "I am Sky Eye. What are your names again? Diamond and Silver was it?"
Diamond nodded. "Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, and Gneech."
"A pleasure to meet you." As they walked, Silver Spoon noticed eyes were on her. Griffons watched them as they went by. Sky noticed her watching them and softly huffed. "Pay them no mind. While you're in my company, they won't bother you. They're hoping for easy marks, and I am not one of those." She raised her polearm. "Buzz off! You won't find any business here." The crowd seemed to disperse slightly, though the attraction of two little ponies and a kobold couldn't be entirely erased.
Sky led the way to a store with a large stylized wand for a sign. "They deal in all manner of magical curiosities here. You'll get a fair price for what you have, if it has any magical properties, and if it doesn't, you'll at least know."
The store was brightly lit, and smelled of nutmeg and old wood. The display was all at the counter, before a portly male griffon perched on a cushion. The griffon brightened at the jingle of the bell above the door. "Ah, Sky! A rare treat. Who have you brought to me today?"
Sky waved back at the fillies and their kobold friend. "Some travelers. They claim they have things worth selling, and I thought of you."
He put a talon to his chest. "Oh, to be remembered. Come, come. Let's see what you have, little ponies. Aren't you both so young to be traveling alone?"
Diamond pointed at Silver Spoon. "I'm not alone, I'm with her."
Silver nodded in agreement. "And I'm with her, and we have Gneech." She pointed at the kobold.
The shopkeep chuckled softly. "My normal policy would be to chase kobolds out with a broom, but he seems very well behaved."
Gneech frowned at the insinuation. "Gneech is very good. He will not embarrass alpha horse." He pointed at the shopkeep. "You better give her good price!"
The shopkeep leaned forward, resting his talons on his counter. "You can trust Sharp Find to give you the straight deal. Now let's see what you've brought."
Diamond Tiara advanced, slipping off her amulet. "Here you are, recovered from the depths of antiquity, at no small cost to ourselves." She slipped the amulet up onto the counter. "The craftsponyship is exquisite, as you can see."
Sharp accepted the amulet and began to turn it around before fetching a rag and working at it to bring it to a full shine. "Hmm..." He flipped it over, then again. "This style went out of fashion quite a long time ago, but it's quite notable. Sun King dedicants would wear pendants much like this." He displayed the amulet to them, drawing a talon along some words. "'In his warmest fires,' a traditional prayer. That hasn't changed, but the icon has. I'm sure you could get something from a collector for that alone." He flipped it to the counter and said a few arcane words, staring at it intently.
After a few moments of quiet, he nodded. "Definately magic. Ah, that's why it hasn't been found in such a long time." He tapped the amulet. "It protects the wearer from magic that would reveal information about them, or locate them." A smile touched his beak. "You were right, little one. This is valuable, if you can find a buyer."
Sky rolled her eyes. "And that's what you're for, is it not?"
Sharp waved a talon. "Don't take all the fun out of it. Yes, yes, I know who would be interested, and all I want is a measly 10%. You could get twenty thousand, easily, with my cut, that's eighteen thousand in your coinpurse."
Sky whistled sharply, which was all the hint Diamond needed to know it was a good number, but that didn't stop her from wanting more. "We're the ones that had to fight dead things and brave deadly traps to find it. 5%."
Sharp frowned at Diamond Tiara. "Oh, so you have some fight in you? Well, being so young, and lucky, I'll let you off the hook this first time. Eight percent, and you should be thanking me for my services. Identifying items is something most people would charge for, little lady, so don't try to bleed me dry of my fair share." He snatched the amulet up. "I'll have your money to you as soon as we have a buyer, but, as an advance." He pulled out a small bag and set it on the edge of the counter. "This should keep you in the meanwhile."
Silver Spoon reached up and claimed the bag. She peeked inside and tilted her head. "It's all silver."
Sharp chuckled softly. "Not silver, platinum. A hundred. Worth a thousand gold. You should be fine while you wait for the amulet to be sold." He pulled out a quill and ink pot and got to scribbling on a piece of paper. "Take this, a receipt. We'll trade for the rest of the money when it comes in, or you can take this to the guard to get me arrested if I try to renege, which won't happen."
Sky huffed softly. "It best not. It's my reputation on the line too." She smiled at the little fillies. "Well, you're off to a great start. A thousand gold's enough to live like a pair of queens for a while. Since that's handled, I'll be on my way."
She turned to go, but Diamond thrust up a hoof. "Wait! One more thing. Can you show us to a respectable inn, maybe not in the bad part of town?"
Gneech nodded. "A place fit for an alpha horse and her servants."
Sky chuckled softly. "Fine. I can do a patrol up there while I'm at it. This way." She led the way through the Lower District and onwards to what she called the Martial District. "Plenty of griffons work hard around here to practice their art, sometimes literally." She gestured to the right as she walked. "That is the Theatre of Souls, right on the edge of the Lower District. The dancing they do in there isn't quite proper for such young eyes, but there are others like it where you can get your fill of refinement." She settled on her haunches and pointed to an inn. "And here's where we part ways. I hope we don't have reason to meet again. Sun King watch over you."
Silver and Gneech waved amiably as she spread her wings and took off.
Diamond was looking at the sign. "The Gilded Promise. I like it. Let's start making ourselves at home."
Gneech bobbed his head. "Gneech is right behind you."
Silver smiled broadly. "And me too. What do you plan to do with the first bit of money we got?"
Diamond clopped her forehooves together. "I have a few ideas..."
Pinkie dangled from a rope, held firmly in her mouth. Below her several large creatures circled, looking up at her with obvious hunger. She gave a sharp tug, hoping to swing herself, but the rope broke instead, dumping her onto the back of one of the shaggy beasts. That set off a frenzy as they bumped, jostled, and tore at one another to get at her as she squealed and fled across their backs. "Last time I trust a map somepony gives me on the street!" It was a lie, but a fine sentiment for the time.
Well, now that they don't have a nondetection up, maybe her Pinkie Sense will lead her in the right direction?
Although I have the feeling she's going to arrive just as Diamond Tiara is crowned queen of the griffons.
...Ok, NOW I'm all caught up. Darn, last minute updates. (jk)
Lost the bet on the amulet being cursed. In fact it was just the opposite. Hmm, if Pinkie's Pinkie sense uses any divination to it, no wonder she'd had no luck finding them.
6208224
No, he wasn't. Nobody wanted to do what he told them to do. Even Sonata resented his orders occasionally and she had the hots for him.
6208576 On the other hoof, Diamond Tiara is looked up to by her group fairly uniformly, though Silver Spoon rankles when told to do menial things that don't need her to do them. But now they have a servant to do those things!
6208576 Yes, he was. It didn't matter if they "wanted" to do what he said or not, they still did it, since they knew he was coming up with effective strategies that could accomplish the goals he laid out.
I believe that should be tiger/eagle. Ho HO! Finding typos really is fun, I see why everyone does it!
Also, looks like DT has some startup capital and a temporary residence. Now she needs to find a business need to fill, or at least an undervalued property to invest in. I really hope the end of this story is Filthy Rich badgering Twilight Sparkle into opening a portal to bring the girls home, only for them to refuse because they've already built a vast financial empire in Everglow.
6209730 Fixed! You win!
Hot running water, in the slums of a medieval society? I'm not saying it's not possible, even with the level of technology, but the effort required to achieve it should restrict its use to upper nobility or better. How did the griffons get so plush?
Oh,
this first time.
lowercase
6210043 Fixed! And it's the guard's house, not the average slummer's house.
6208764 Leadership is not the ability to boss people around, it's the ability to make them want you to boss them around. Lex is intelligent and organized and quite often knows what to do. None of those things make him a leader. If you help someone to accomplish their plan, that's cooperation. A leader inspires others to cooperate with him. Someone talking to a great leader will usually come to the conclusion that the great leader's plan is the best possible plan, and everyone with a brain should help him.
That is not what happens when Lex describes his plans. Lex is explicitly deficient at this exact skill. When he finally got his way at the end of the second story, it was because Sonata took over. She told him to shut up and let her handle it. He shut up, she handled it, and they won. Sonata got everyone to do exactly what she wanted them to do, including Lex.
Lex's desire to rule is not leadership, it's ambition. Sonata has very little ambition, but she can quickly gain support for her agenda even without using her magic. The leadership in the pair is all her.
A significant part of leadership is the ability to inspire trust, either by your words or your example. Exactly one person trusts Lex.
Diamond Tiara, on the other hand, is a leader. She is telling both Silver and Gneech what they want to hear. Wisely or not, they both trust her to make the plans, and aren't even very concerned about what the plans are.
6210068 Competition must be really stiff every time a position opens in the city guard.
6210112 It's no meager position, being trusted to guard valuable things and keep the law. A good guard is very valuable indeed. You'll note that she was very polite, knowledgeable, and generally useful, not the usual stereotype given to guards.
6210138 I did notice that. When you said that the outlaws were kept in one part of the city, I imagined a massive bribery and corruption infrastructure, with no law but the law of the jungle in that region. In light of the premium placed on the guards, perhaps the reason there are outlaws in that region is because you need paperwork to ascend any higher?
6210093 Let's go over this point by point.
I notice that you've moved the goalposts here, since you're no longer talking about leadership as being a popularity contest. In that regard, you've largely ceded the main point - that "kindness" has very little to do with being a leader. You're right that Lex's intelligence and forward-thinking abilities aren't what make him a leader; they're what make him a good leader, which he is. What makes him a leader is that he is able to convince others to cooperate with him. He simply does so in spite of himself, rather than relying on charisma to grease that particular wheel. You say that someone talking to a greater leader will come to the conclusion that his plan is the best possible plan - that's what happens when they talk to Lex.
You're not only cherry-picking your examples here, but you're misrepresenting them as well.
It's notable that you've overlooked how Lex was the one to not only save several people from that train-wreck, but he also healed them, fed them, sheltered them, protected them, and led them back to civilization. He did so despite most of them being afraid of him, because they recognized that he had the know-how and the abilities to do so. That's leadership.
When he reunited with the rest of the group, Lex was the one who came up with the plan to scout the gnoll lair, and then lure them out into a disadvantageous position, wherein his group was able to win handily. He did that because he was able to convince the rest of the group that his ideas were better - which they were - and so they followed his strategy. That's leadership.
Not to mention how he told Apple Bloom how he'd have made sure her family's farm was protected during her and Applejack's absence.
Lex is deficient at communication, but can still manage to convince people that he knows best, because he does. He can do that because he's an effective leader. He got his way at the end of the second story, not because Sonata took over, but because she made up for his poor communication skills and let his ideas, his plans, his vision come through without the accompanying baggage in transmitting them to others. She was a facilitator that magnified his natural leadership abilities.
The desire to rule is ambition; the ability to make it happen is leadership. Lex has both, even if he also has personal flaws that hold him back in some regard (much like most people). Sonata has little ambition, but no leadership skills. Her abilities are entirely based around personal appeal to get them to listen; what she actually has to say is based on Lex feeding her lines. A spokesperson is useless if someone can't set policy for them to parrot.
You're dead wrong, here. Far more than one person trusts Lex. It's just that there's only one person who actually likes him. This is more of you confusing likeability for leadership.
Telling someone what they want to hear isn't leadership, it's pandering. It's also not what Diamond Tiara is doing here. She's telling them what her goals are and how she can attain them, and what part they have to play in that.
This isn't an error, but it feels like she should be saying "Morning, Diamond." instead.
And closed the door behind "them."
The "generously-sized tub."
Well, this was a pleasant surprise: things are actually going well for a change!
I'm not sure when I got it into my head that there was disaster waiting right around the corner for the fillies, but I'm glad to see that it didn't turn out that way. No being charged with trespassing, no finding out that the amulet was cursed, no being robbed within their first hour in the city...just things actually going well for once. It's a refreshing change of pace, and one that's a nice change in tone from how hard the fillies have had it for a while. Hopefully this won't be a fluke.
This change in tone was most obvious in the bath scene, where the girls finally got to shake off some of the stress and tension that they'd been carrying up until now. Indeed, I think that there's more to this than was first evident. Operating under a high degree of tension for too long will test friendships fairly severely; I have to wonder how much Diamond Tiara will stop being quite so awful now that she's no longer fearing for her life, or even in near-constant discomfort, all the time. I doubt she'll suddenly become a little angel, but it really does seem like she's becoming more magnanimous already.
I found it a bit amusing that Sky Eye deliberately pointed out what seemed like a strip club (or whatever the local equivalent is) to the girls when taking them out of the bad part of town. True, she told them not to go there, but she also pointed it out as an example of places that provide entertainment...and telling children where not to go tends to be one of the best ways to make sure that they do. If she really didn't think that the fillies should be interested in such a place, why point it out to them at all? Just ignore it and trust that they'll remain unaware of it. Now we might end up with Diamond Tiara thinking she can start a club like that of her own (as the manager, not as a dancer). "Come on, Silver Spoon, it's called your 'money-maker' for a reason, so shake it!"
I was also glad to see that we're still getting the Pinkie vignettes, especially since it seems that the map she got wasn't very helpful after all. As amusing as it is to consider that she hadn't found the girls due to their amulet of proof against detection and location, I doubt that had much to do with it. After all, her Pinkie Sense is a danger-detector (though there is at least one instance of it detecting danger to someone other than herself), not a locator. That, and they just got the amulet recently anyway. And there are two of the girls to detect, so one amulet shouldn't have been a deterrent. Still, it is fun to consider what the limits of the Pinkie Sense are (I always thought of it as being psionic, myself).
Now to see if Diamond is really the entrepreneur that she thinks she is.
6212068 Things definitely took a turn for the better. Are there no rooms for things to sour? Heck no, of course they can, but they haven't, and the girls are free to scheme and plot. Their biggest obstacle is the simple fact that they are ponies in a city of griffons. If they had the same opportunity in, say, Viljatown, it would be so much easier.
Even Gneech is enjoying the comforts of the city so far. His new boss is way nicer than his old boss. Now if only the griffons would stop staring at him whenever they thought he wasn't looking.
6211763
He isn't though; he always needs help. He is only able to give advice to someone who was already looking for it.
And yet they were all following Sonata instead of Lex. They did what Lex wanted because Sonata told them to.
Twilight was leading that mission, and as a good leader, she listened to her underling's advice. In the context he was clearly asking her permission to use his plan.
Empty promises have nothing to do with leadership.
Sonata came up with the idea to speak for Lex, and convinced him to use it. Every time he tried to say something dumb, she overrode him and said what she thought was better. She was calling the shots.
Who, for example? The Mane 6 don't trust him. They and the princesses are closely watching his new job to see what he does. The people in the train wreck didn't trust him, they trusted Sonata. Willow likes him, but doesn't trust anyone.
6212149
He's not giving "advice." He's coming up with a plan, showing why it's better, and then pulling it off while others play their part in it. That's the very definition of leadership.
This is quite clearly untrue. They were all following Lex, including Sonata. She was just more enthusiastic about it. Hence why that mare with the crippled legs thanked him for doing so much for them. Likewise for why that skittish stallion was worried about what would happen if they "kept" following Lex, which acknowledges that Lex was the leader in the first place.
Another mischaracterization on your part. He never once "asked permission" to use his plan; he flat-out explained why his plan was better, overruling objections to the contrary by explaining his points, which everyone agreed to. This happened twice - once for the scouting, and once for luring the gnolls out - which made it quite clear that Twilight was the underling. She was taking his directions from the get-go (e.g. that they move off to an alcove to renew their spells, that they create a light for doing so, etc.).
An irrelevant point on your part, here, since this wasn't a promise, nor was it empty. It was a viable plan for how to help keep her family's farm solvent, which was why she was so excited about it.
Her idea was "let me help you implement your ideas." That's not calling the shots, that's announcing the shots that someone else calls. She did contribute input, and he considered it and took her views into account, which is an example of a leader accepting additions and changes from a subordinate.
The Mane Six do trust him, they just don't like him very much personally. The princesses trust him enough to cede part of Equestria to him. The people at the train-wreck trusted him enough to follow him even in the face of uncertainty. Even Willow does trust him, at least enough to consider him a friend.
6212149
6212203 So much arguing about a pony not found in this fic. :D
6212225 It shows the enduring appeal of the character.
6212225
Yeah, sorry.
This discussion of the nuances of leadership was relevant because...um...because...Diamond Tiara wants to be a leader! Yeah, that's it, we were talking metaphorically about Diamond Tiara this whole time.