710 - Happily Never After
“Are you feeling better now?”
Despite asking as gently as she could, Mystaria’s question still resulted in a look of supreme bitterness from Shadow Star. “Get these damned ropes off of me!” she spat, wriggling in her bonds.
“If we do, are you going to go after Lex and Drafty again?” asked Valor, her expression neutral.
From behind her mask, Shadow snarled. “Stop making it sound like I’m the problem! That miserable bastard is the reason our group is down a member! His old girlfriends all died in a fire because of him! He sliced open Drafty’s face, Mysty’s hooves, and is the reason all the adlets here want to kill us! So why am I the only one who’s tied up?!”
The string of invectives made Valor sigh. “That’s a yes, then.”
“No offense, Shadow, but you have terrible timing,” cut in Spinner, glancing back at where the newly-arrived female adlet – her body language suggesting that, like Shadow, she was very upset about something – was speaking with Toklo’s father. “If you recognize that the adlets aren’t exactly happy with us, then maybe showing disunity in front of them wasn’t the best idea? At least Lex thought we were alone when he flipped out and went nuts.”
“I am not flipping out!” seethed Shadow.
The pointed looks that she received from her friends then left her fuming, but she managed to keep herself from ranting further. Instead, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back, taking several deep breaths. After nearly thirty seconds had passed, she spoke again, this time keeping her voice at a normal volume. “I’m not wrong about him. At the rate he’s going, it’s only a matter of time before Lex gets us all killed.”
“I agree that he’s a deeply flawed individual,” admitted Mystaria diplomatically. “But I think that he wants to do the right thing, in spite of that. And whether we like it or not, we need him.”
“Says you,” snorted Shadow. “I say we turn him over to the adlets, and use that to get in good with them so that they’ll help us rescue Woodheart. Then Lex gets what he deserves, the adlets get justice, Drafty gets away from him, and we get our friend back.”
“Oh now there’s a plan,” scoffed Spinner. “You really think Lex will just sit back and let us turn on him like that? Even if he can’t recharge his spells, I don’t think he’ll hesitate to burn through them if the adlets try to overpower him. Plus he’s still got Solvei, remember? The winter wolf who took out over a dozen yetis without breaking a sweat? I doubt she’ll approve of us hanging her master out to dry.”
“Then what’s your idea?” spat Shadow, lying back with a contemptuous snort. “To keep doing like we have been? Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that hasn’t exactly been working out for us.”
“We could say that about most of our adventures, you realize,” chimed in Valor. “Almost every single time we take on a job, things go peach-shaped-”
“‘Pear-shaped,’ Valor,” groaned Spinner, though the corners of her mouth were turned upward.
The muscled mare scowled at that, but recovered her poise after only a moment. “Whatever. My point is, if anyone knows about screwing things up, it’s us. But we always manage to find a way to come out ahead. This is just...a little more extreme, is all.”
But Shadow refused to give an inch. “It’s completely different, and you know it. Believe me, Lex isn’t someone we can rely on. I’ve seen what happens to mares who depend on stallions like him.”
“Where?”
Spinner’s question made Shadow blink, giving the filidh a confused look. “What?”
“Where have you seen what happens to mares who depend on stallions like him?” repeated Spinner. “I mean, what is it that makes you so sure that we’re wrong and you’re right?”
“I’m from Blevik.”
“Which is why you’ve seen mares at the market trying to cover up a black eye, or stallions who’re only interested in a girlfriend who’ll act like a maid they don’t have to pay,” acknowledged Valor. “But those don’t sound like Lex and Drafty. So like Spinner said: what makes you so sure?”
“Why does everyone keep defending him?!” Sitting up, Shadow struggled with the ropes again, but only kept up the effort for a moment before slumping back down, looking down. “You need to trust me on this. Ponies like him hurt the people around them. It’s what he does. Who he is. And he can’t change that, even if he wanted to.”
The defeated tone in her voice was enough to make the other three exchange looks of concern.
“...look, Shadow, it’s obvious to all of us that you feel very strongly about this,” began Mystaria. “But I think what we’re having a hard time understanding is why you feel that way. You keep saying you’re certain you know what sort of pony Lex is, but you can’t tell us why. And no,” she added before Shadow could reply, “saying that you’re from Blevik isn’t good enough.”
Grimacing, Shadow shook her head. “...he’s a monster. You just can’t see it.”
“Then help us see it,” urged Mystaria. “Tell us what it is that makes you so sure about him.”
Again, their bound companion fell silent. A short distance away, Lex and Thermal Draft were speaking softly, their voices too low to make out. Past them, the voices of that female adlet and Toklo’s father could just barely be heard, despite the two of them having moved out of sight.
“They were just like them.”
Shadow’s quit murmur made Mystaria cant her head slightly, sharing an uncertain glance with Valor and Spinner before turning back to Shadow. “Who?”
“My mom and stepdad,” answered Shadow, her voice barely audible as she kept her eyes downcast. “They were just like Lex and Drafty.”
Three sets of eyebrows rose then. In all that they’d known her, Shadow had never once talked about her family. Now it was starting to become clear why.
“Did you know that the Pony Empire never actually legalized prostitution?” she continued, her voice taking on a derisive tone, though without the fire she’d had before. “A lot of people don’t know that, since you can find whores working openly in any city worth the name, but it’s true. Iliana outlawed the practice as soon as she consolidated her rule. But with one exception.”
To Mystaria, it was obvious what Shadow was referring to. “Kara’s faith.”
The masked mare nodded. “In her religion, selling your body is a holy act, and Iliana needed the entire pantheon behind her in order to bring all the pony tribes together. So anyone who’s a member of Kara’s church can rent out their body without being arrested. It’s why every strumpet on a streetcorner has to turn over a portion of their take to the local chapterhouse; so long as they do that, Kara’s faithful claim that they’re acolytes. They even offer them some support, telling them how to turn tricks better, selling alchemical remedies to protect against disease, and even selling spells that will temporarily keep the recipient from getting pregnant...”
She let out a slow breath before she kept going. “My mother was either too poor or too cheap to spring for that last one, and so one of her clients knocked her up with me.”
Spinner opened her mouth, and the look on her face made it clear she was about to offer up a joke in hope of lightening the mood, but a sharp look from Valor made whatever she was about to say die on her lips.
Heedless of what her friends were doing, Shadow continued speaking. “When she found out she was expecting, my mom freaked out, since pregnant whores aren’t exactly a hot commodity among stallions. So she turned to the city’s largest temple, which like all of Kara’s holy houses was also its largest brothel, and begged for help so that she wouldn’t starve in the street.”
“She didn’t have anywhere else to go?” asked Valor quietly, ignoring Spinner’s irked look. “No family who could take her in?”
Shadow didn’t look up as she shook her head. “I never got the full story out of her, but I think her parents fell in with the Resistance, and came to a bad end. I just know that she’d been a working girl since her early teens.”
The answer made Valor’s brow furrow in confusion, and she glanced at the other two while mouthing “the Resistance?” at them.
“Blevik is run by the doppelgangers, the shapeshifting ponies who, like their mother goddess, are a little bit nutty and a whole lotta slutty,” answered Spinner quietly, ignoring the disapproving look Mystaria shot her then. “The Resistance tries to clear them out, since everyone knows dops are bad news, but most people think it’s a lost cause.”
“It is a lost cause,” huffed Shadow. “Kara’s church is the only game in Blevik, and my mother knew it. She went to them because serious practitioners of Kara’s faith, instead of just affiliated streetwalkers, get to live at the temple free of charge. They still have to sell themselves while learning how to become proper practitioners, since they have to pay back what they incur for food and board, but a lot of what they study involves how to be a high-class call girl instead of a common tramp. How to squeeze a guy while he’s inside you, taking it under the tail without lube, that sort of thing.”
Having grown up in a very different temple environment, Mystaria cringed, but didn’t say anything.
“That’s where I was born, a sacred whorehouse,” sighed Shadow. “I’m just grateful that I don’t remember the place, since we left before I was two years old. Mother had hit the jackpot, you see: she’d gotten married.”
“Married?” blurted Spinner. “Someone married a-”
She snapped her jaw shut, reddening at what she’d almost said, but Shadow didn’t seem offended. Instead, she gave a mirthless snicker. “It’s every harlot’s dream: to seduce a guy to the point of proposing, leaving them set for when they get older and lose their looks. And stallions love it, too; they get to be the hero who rides in and saves the girl from her shameful life, rescuing a slightly-used damsel in distress.”
The scorn in her voice was almost painful to listen to, but after Spinner’s outburst no one interrupted her. “So I guess those lessons my mother had taken about how to blow a guy’s mind, and other parts, had paid off: she’d gotten herself hitched a former adventurer who’d had enough luck that he not only bought out her debt to Kara’s temple, but had a house right there in the city. They might even have been happy together for a little while...”
Her voice softened slightly then, and her gaze turned distant. But it lasted only for a moment. “By the time I was five, it was already falling apart. My stepdad had married my mom because he wanted a live-in doxy who wouldn’t charge for her services and would cook and clean. Instead, he got an actual wife who didn’t enjoy being treated like a servant or a sex object; the fact that she came with a daughter who needed to be clothed and fed and looked after didn’t help either. So it’s no surprise that most of my earliest memories are of them fighting. And then...”
A catch in her voice made her stop, though she tried to pass it off by clearing her throat. “And then he started hitting her.”
“Shadow...”
Valor’s sympathetic murmur was somehow more heartbreaking than the masked mare’s tale, but no one else said anything as Shadow shrugged. “Since he had experience fighting monsters, he was apparently pretty good at beating one defenseless mare into submission. So good that he started hitting her whenever she pissed him off, which happened more and more as I got older. At first he’d only raised a hoof to her when she’d objected to him pressuring her to put out in the middle of the day or hadn’t gotten his laundry done. But later on he did it more and more; when she’d overslept and forgot to make his breakfast, or when she’d misplaced his favorite shirt, or when she tugged on a knot while combing his mane. Anything that made him angry, and he seemed to get angrier every year.”
Again, her eyes turned distant, gazing back into the past. “There were always ladies in the market trying to hide their bruises...and my mom was one of them.”
Out of her peripheral vision, Mystaria could see the female adlet – along with Toklo’s father – returning, but she couldn’t bring herself to pay attention to them, too caught up in what her friend was saying.
“I begged her to leave him, of course,” muttered Shadow, a note of bitterness creeping back into her voice. “But he was the reason we had food on the table and a roof over our heads. Mom was too old to go whoring again, not that my stepdad would have let her, and I was too young. And when I pressed her too hard about it, she’d collapse into tears, and I...I hated doing that to her. So eventually I just stopped trying...and the beatings got worse, to the point where sometimes she’d need a healer to examine her.”
Shrugging as though she’d already finished the important parts of the story, Shadow leaned back as though making herself comfortable. “Things didn’t get better until I was fourteen.”
Spinner cocked her head. “What happened when you were fourteen?”
This time, Shadow looked her friend right in the eye when she replied. “I killed him.”
Mystaria’s jaw fell open then, and Valor looked equally shocked. “You killed your f-, your stepfather?”
“It wasn’t even that hard,” snorted Shadow. “He’d been out of the adventuring business for quite a few years by that point, and I was getting old enough for the son of a bitch to start noticing my body. He’d already started making lewd comments when my mom wasn’t around, brushing up against me, smelling my mane, that sort of thing. I don’t know why he thought I’d be attracted to him, after everything he’d done to my mom, but when I started wearing a short skirt and flirting with him, he ate it up. After that, it was easy to get him drunk one evening and lure him to my bedroom. He’d still kept some of his old weapons from his adventuring days, and with how dark it was...”
Mystaria swayed on her hooves, suddenly feeling nauseous. She’d been so excited to find her parents’ old stuff, particularly her father’s journal. That one of her closest friends had not only suffered so much because of her parents, but had actually killed one of them, was more upsetting that she’d thought.
Her voice nonchalant, Shadow brought her story to a close. “I got rid of his body after that, hoping that everyone would think that he’d skipped town, but I screwed that part up. Blevik might not have the strictest law enforcement in the Empire, but they patrol their sewers just like everywhere else in order to make sure monsters don’t lair in them, and his corpse was eventually found. Lucky me, his old adventuring buddies were upset that their friend’s throat had been slit, and paid for the temple to use some magic that can make a dead body answer questions.”
“The ‘speak with dead’ spell,” muttered Spinner. “It allows for a brief conversation with an intact cadaver.”
“If I’d known that at the time, I would have cut off the bastard’s head and crushed it with a rock,” snorted Shadow. “As it was, he made sure to tell them who’d done him in, and the next thing I know I’m wanted for murder. As you can imagine, I skipped town after that. Luckily my stepdad’s old adventuring gear sold for enough to get me far away.”
“And that’s why you wear your mask all the time,” realized Valor.
“Got it in one,” admitted Shadow. “Blevik might be at the far end of the Empire, but it’s a popular destination for ponies that want to enjoy the very best of Kara’s holy hookers. Since my face is still on a wanted poster there, it’s not hard to imagine that someone who visited the city might recognize me.”
“But what about your mother?” blurted Mystaria. “What happened to her?”
Shadow shrugged. “Dunno.”
“You don’t know?!” repeated Spinner, incredulous.
Sighing, Shadow shook her head. “I told her what I’d done before that son of a bitch’s body was found, but she wasn’t happy the way I thought she’d be. Instead she was horrified. I tried to get her to come with me, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She just kept weeping and saying ‘How could you?! How could you?!’ at me, like she was heartbroken that the guy who’d fractured her leg and bruised two of her ribs the day before was dead. So yeah, when the guards came to our house, I took off without her. After that I spent a couple of years teaching myself how to be a cutpurse, then I met you guys, and the rest is history.”
Spinner shook her head. “Hang on, back up a second. You’re still a wanted criminal in Blevik?”
“The reason I’m telling you all this,” answered Shadow, a thread of irritation returning to her voice, “is so that you’ll know I’m not just blowing smoke when I say that I know what sort of stallion Lex is. He’s the same arrogant, domineering, violent bastard that I grew up with. The fact that he has a trail of dead girlfriends, and his current one is already worse for wear because of him, is no coincidence. Not to mention what he did to Woodheart. So yeah, as an expert on bad stallions, he is one, and we need to treat him accordingly, for Drafty’s sake as well as our own.”
Mystaria opened her mouth, only to falter for a moment. What could she say, in the face of what Shadow had just told her? But at the same time, she knew she had to say something. “Shadow...I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve gone through. But Lex-”
Glancing back at the stallion in question, Mystaria’s voice caught in her throat as she saw him talking to the female adlet and Toklo’s father. But it wasn’t that they were conversing that caught her by surprise. It was that, after a moment’s conversation, he stepped back and began casting a spell, the words and gestures cluing her in that it was the tiny hut enchantment – which created a thin dome of weather-repellent force – that they’d been sleeping under for the last few days.
Sure enough, the silvery hemisphere appeared out of nowhere a moment later.
And then Lex strode into it, the female adlet following after him, leaving everyone else behind as they disappeared from view.
Stats
Page generated in 0.062 seconds
Total duration
933 users online
1,217,141 hits today, 2,314,256 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
What did the shaman want from Lex and what is Mysteria thinking about? let's hope it's not another misunderstanding.
Huh, in my head, it was 50/50 on whether Shadow's backstory would involve her own mother/sibling or herself being the victim. It is sad that she had to leave her mother behind but what's more tragic is Shadow's lack of emotion of not knowing her own mother's fate. Though given how heated she got trying to get Thermal Draft to leave Lex says a lot about her own regrets.
My best guess is that Shadow's mother put up with the abuse was to ensure her daughter had a roof over her head and food to eat and a possible future outside of prostitution like she had so her learning that the family breadwinner is dead and that her own daughter was the killer...well, I can somewhat understand the mother's reaction. Would be more tragic if she had tried to take the blame and was punished in her daughter's stead.
Almost makes me want Lex to stay with Fail Forward for the duration of his time in Everglow for the chance to see them going to Blevik to know what happened but given how much hostility and tension there is between them...
As for Lex and Akna, since they're not fighting, things are looking up though whether it'll lead them to Grisela's lair or not remains unknown.
Given the style of era enviroment the general DnD world is set in, Shadows story comes about average for member of an adventuring party?
slow laugh wonder what all is going on here?
i have a feeling Shadow is in for a huge ass shock in time.
11224175 Exactly what Akna wants from Lex remains to be seen, though I suspect we'll find out sooner rather than later.
As for Mystaria, she's surprised that Lex is apparently opting to have a private meeting with the shaman, considering how he seems to hold the adlets in contempt in general.
11224187 My suspicion is that Shadow thinks that she's over the trauma of her childhood, and of having to leave her mother behind, but she really isn't. If she's mentally prepared herself, she can talk about it head on, and act like it's no big deal, but there's a difference between a wound that's scabbed over and one that's fully healed. As you noted, the fact that she lost control when she confronted Drafty makes it clear that she's anything but over what happened.
As for finding out what happened...well, Blevik is on the other side of the Pony Empire from where Lex and co. are right now, so that doesn't seem likely at the moment. But who can say for sure? After all, a hundred chapters ago we didn't expect that we'd be adventuring on Everglow to begin with, so maybe we'll be nearing Shadow's birthplace in another hundred? After all, there's plenty of twists and turns that I can think of!
11224338 I suspect more often than people of Good alignment would like. As you astutely noted, the state of society in the Pony Empire is such that there's likely to be any number of ponies who are ripe for exploitation, particularly among the young.
11224543 Well, that depends on whether Shadow's backstory was just getting a better understanding of her character, or whether or not it was laying the groundwork for some greater reveal down the line. Both are plausible.