The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

You Wanted Pirates...

"Nooo! Pirate Captain Puddles is sleepy! Why're we going to my boat in the middle of the night, Mister Pirate?"

"Because we be needin' to sneak our ship out from where it be moored. Now shuddup, or ye be drawin' attention to us!"

Shinespark slunk along behind the group of pirates and Puddles, the dark-feathered captain leading the way. They knew she was following, but if any of the pirates wanted to do anything about it, Puddles wouldn't let them. She had made it perfectly clear: she wanted an audience, and Shinespark was more than welcome to follow.

With Howe and Neon Nova deep in muttering conversation and Belinda sticking to the side as a lookout, they had left the town behind, trotting inland away from the populated coastline. Golbez had claimed they weren't in a hurry enough to fly, and she couldn't tell if he wanted to stall before getting his ship taken over or just didn't want to carry Puddles.

"Poor Mister Pirate..." Puddles curiously sang, moods spinning like the blades on a windmill. "Nobody told you that boats are supposed to go on the water? How did you get Puddles' new boat stuck all the way over here?"

"That, my eldritch friend, is a very great question," Howe ominously intoned, lugging himself up a steep slope. The lands to the east of the coastline were too hilly for farmland, breaking with the empire's usual tradition of flat, endless planes, and resulted in a walk that was more about swerving to avoid peaks and look for passes than actually go in a straight line. "But our boat is no ordinary seaship! Behold!"

He swept his wing out as they passed around a hillside and a valley came into sight... but nothing was there. His face fell. "Confoundment! I ruined my dramatic unveil. By the breath of Garsheeva, all these hills look alike..."

Golbez sighed, shook his head, and continued leading.

---

As the Immortal Dream sped north in pursuit of Valey and the pirates she was chasing, the entire crew sans Jamjars waited on the bridge, brightly lit and sitting wherever they could find purchase. Maple was rapidly becoming the center of attention, though everyone could tell she wanted to be left alone, so the room formed a nervous circle where everyone watched her out of the corners of their eyes but no one said anything. It was stressful, and Starlight wished they'd stop.

"Maple?" she asked. "Do you want to go back downstairs?"

"No," Maple sighed. "I know everyone is staring. I just... need to think about what happened a little longer."

"I don't suppose talking about it would help?" Gerardo suggested, sitting in the captain's chair with his back to the windshield, Nyala doing the navigating. "Valey was rather vague about what happened, though it clearly involves something you feel poorly for."

"Mmm..." Maple frowned at the floor.

Sirena shrugged, sitting on a wood casing with her legs dangling off the side. "Sounds kinda awkward to me, talking about it in here."

"N-No, I should..." Maple swallowed. "Sorry. It's not that I don't want to talk about it. I just messed up."

Starlight folded her ears as someone else continued the conversation, withdrawing into her own head. After all the talking that had happened last night, and Valey had been there... What did Maple need? What did they all need? Valey had talked about some iron assurance that everything would be alright, or at least being able to pretend a friend's assurance was iron and believe it enough to relax. How it shouldn't have been her job to do that for anyone. But as nice as it had sounded, that was impossible, wasn't it? She glanced around the room and didn't see a single hoof lifted to prove to Maple nothing bad was going to happen. Valey was out there working to actively prevent anything, at least. But it was up to Starlight. No one else wanted to be there and give the reassurance her mother needed.

She hugged her, wiping away the very beginning of a tear of unfairness on Maple's coat. It really did seem nice, the more she thought about what Valey said. If she didn't have to worry about anything the world could throw at her, because someone could protect her from all of it. Or if her friends could do the same, because someone like her could protect them.

"It's alright..." she mumbled, pressing her face into Maple's side.

Maple pulled a hoof back over her, but didn't say anything.

For an instant, Starlight remembered her doppelganger from on the shipdeck the other day. Telling her her problem was that she worried too much... Starlight swallowed. Her mind wandered further, and she remembered the harmonic flame beneath Ironridge, telling her it wanted her to be happy but had no idea how to help her. If even some ancient, mystical, somehow-sapient force couldn't just make the world safe for her, then what could?

Her mind wandered to Garsheeva, and the batponies' Night Mother. A physical goddess, there for the rest of her empire to see, and an ethereal one that wasn't there but all her subjects could talk to through statues... Equestria had had Princess Celestia, too, but her being there and physical and strong enough to raise the sun and the moon hadn't made her strong enough to stop her life from turning horrible. Whatever kind of power this continent's two goddesses possessed was likely a lot less than that, because they weren't even able to stop strangers from hating Valey or ponies from becoming possessed or even pirates from raiding the waterways, despite Garsheeva outlawing it as a religious offense. Some goddesses they were. If she had their powers, she'd...

What even were their powers?

Starlight blinked a tear away, realizing she didn't even know. What she did know was that once, a very long time ago, Willow had told her that even if she couldn't find the perfect place to call home in her travels, it was within her power to make one instead. And she did have quite a bit going for her. Her magic, even if it was somehow broken, was far stronger than other fillies her age, and an ancient tree flame had seen fit to grant her some power to help fix it a little. Then, when she hooked herself up to the harmony extractor, it had created an attack powerful enough to kill a sky's worth of windigoes. That was something they had stopped pursuing completely, wasn't it? Ways to use her with the harmony extractor? Once upon a time, Shinespark had talked about that, too...

Her wandering thoughts were interrupted by Nyala's voice, projected softly around the room with an intercom that was still able to drown out the rest of the conversation. "Uhh, guys?" she asked. "Does anyone else want to take a look out front and tell me if that's what I think it is...?"