The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

So Little Trust

Chauncey stood for a while, expression slowly slipping to disappointment as he expected an answer he wasn't about to get. "You're not following at all, are you?"

"Nah. Just thought you were going somewhere else with that." Valey's composure slowly returned to normal, and she wiped her brow. "For a moment I thought you were about to tell me you've got yet more evidence I'm some freaky space weapon and then that you wanted to use me to take over the world, or something. Glad I don't have to tell you that's not happening."

Gerardo cleared his throat from the observation platform. "Mister Chauncey, I do believe you're vastly overestimating my companions' knowledge of the eastern world. Hearing that the vaunted sarosian Night Mother is verifiably different from the progenitor of their race is moderately interesting to me, but all my friends here seem quite unimpressed with your revelation."

Valey shrugged in agreement. "Yeah, to be honest, I kind of figured that was the case in the first place, the Night Mother not being the real thing and all. You're saying this Luna is the Mare in the Moon, right? I've got some old legends from my hometown that said some nutcase up there was responsible for making batponies. Never really believed them until recently, but someone bonkers enough to design living weapons doesn't really sound like the same kind of someone who would sit around all night and listen through a bunch of statues and give friendly advice."

Chauncey gave her a look. "You don't sound like a fan of hers."

"Hey, I've had a raw lot in life." Valey stretched her wings, folding them behind her head. "A whole bunch of it due to circumstance. Hard not to be ticked at whoever built me the way I am." She shot a pointed glance at Nyala's body, formerly Navarre. "But the Night Mother and Garsheeva can go jump in a lake too. Seriously, the Empire is rude to me sometimes..."

"Have you, now?" Chauncey sounded interested again. "Hmm. That's a very common thing for sarosians to say about the Empire. Perhaps you might be able to relate to why I want to change it."

Valey folded her wings again. "Yeah, but I'm not gonna go around making evil statues or treating mares like machines to do it. Look, I get that you're going out of your way to be nice to us, but it doesn't make us any happier about what you're doing."

"Right." Maple stepped up alongside her, glow intensifying slightly. "I was friends with one of the ponies you used like that, you know. Her life was impossible enough already before your mercenaries offered a seed of light, took it away again and made everything worse! I don't know what you want and you still won't get to the point, but we're not working with you when you won't treat the ponies who need it most with the dignity they deserve."

"Treating the foals' mothers without the dignity they deserve? Like machines?" Chauncey's eyes flashed. "Are you sure about that, my little ponies? Because I believe the contrary. What is the Night Mother's claim to authority beyond the genesis of sarosian life? The creation of souls and life is thought of as the realm of goddesses, yet how easy is it to forget what every mare is capable of merely by having a body? The pursuit of understanding is my reverence. If we were forbidden from aspiring to a god's definition of godhood by anything more than those very goddesses' rules, why would their bodies-"

"Alright! That's more than enough." Valey cracked her hooves, pacing dangerously over to Chauncey. "That is the most entitled, egotistical, least compassionate thing I have ever heard, and I was a professional jerk and philanderer back in Ironridge. You have no empathy, less than zero concept of what makes a good leader, your logic has more holes than the roads in the Earth District, and your hat is dumb. So..." She wound up a giant punch, ready to follow up the moment he dodged. "Stuff a durian in it, old coot!"

SSCRRRNNNG...

"Ow! What the...!?" Valey bounced back, tumbling once and shaking her hoof as a barrier of transparent gray hexagons appeared an inch from Chauncey's unamused face, rippling like barely-disturbed water as it deflected her strike and fading soon after. "Bananas!"

Chauncey regarded her coolly. "I'm going to forgive you for that," he said, "and whatever rash thing you do next, because I really would like us to be on good terms with one another."

"Having a single drop of sanity is a good way to start..." Valey gritted her teeth, holding her hoof as if she had just accidentally punched a boulder. "Bananas, I remember that. You broke up a fight with that shield thing outside the school last time we were here..."

"That's very observant of you. It's quite a powerful shield. I enjoy having it a lot." Chauncey turned his back on Valey, walking toward the stairs to the observation platform. "Would you two mind moving aside? I have something I'd like to demonstrate."

Gerardo gave him a look, but grabbed Nyala's soulless, animalistic form and flew closer to the rest of the party, setting her down close. "This is rubbing all my feathers the wrong way," he whispered once he landed. "I am starting to think we should quit while we have what we came for."

"We came to stop whatever was going on down here," Maple corrected, glaring at Chauncey.

Valey scooched closer, massaging her hoof. "Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I can't just beat him up if he's gonna do that. He's serious about not attacking us, but bananas, it's like he's invincible or something."

The room's lights dimmed and went green, and a discordant groan came from Stanza's tunnel.

"Oh bananas!" Valey spread her wings in a flash and threw herself over Maple and Starlight, shoving both of them to the floor. The same crackling, green-and-black beam of energy that had ended Navarre earlier flew from the tunnel, forming instantly between its source and Chauncey... but instead of impacting the stallion, it splintered just before his chest, fracturing into chaotic waves of radiation that fluctuated and bounced around the room. Most of the deflected energy struck the back wall or faded soon after breaking from the main beam, but a few glanced off Valey's back, and she shuddered. "Nngh... Feels like Stanza, alright..."

After several long seconds of trying, the beam dissipated, Chauncey standing atop the platform with his barrier intact, looking unamused. "That's how strong this is," he said as the lights once again returned to normal.

"Are you alright?" Maple yelped, readying a flicker of harmonic magic and pushing it into Valey as the started getting to their hooves. "That was the same thing..."

"Yeah. That hit Navarre." Valey brushed herself off and patted her cutie mark, glaring up at the platform. "Think I'm good, though. I could feel that thing's badness from here. Chauncey! What's your problem!?"

Chauncey returned to the ground floor, pacing back toward them with a frown on his face. "It is a demonstration. You say I lack compassion and empathy?" His eyes flickered between everyone. "I'm going to show you what you're talking about."

Silently, he reached a robed hoof to his face... and drew it away with two curved contact lenses. Beneath, his eyes were entirely gray.

Valey froze. "Oh, you can't be serious..."

"Mane dye and contact lenses," Chauncey said, setting them aside. "Two things that are easy to obtain and very good at altering your appearance. It sounds like you're already familiar with what I look like beneath these robes, but for the sake of holding nothing back..."

With a ripple, Chauncey snuck into the shadow of his own robes, leaving the hat and garment behind. Bright overhead lights burned down at the cloak's edge, and the moment he swam beyond them, he was ejected into the light... or, at least, all of him that existed.

From the waist down, Chauncey was gone, his coat chipping away like a thin shell covering a miasma of infinite purple. Dark stars and nebulae twisted inside a void that might have been a gateway to the heavens' blacker reaches, flowing in an outline that vaguely took the shape of a pony. His front legs suffered the same, disintegrating into magic from his shoulders to his hooves, all four of which somehow stayed attached like the limbs of a shadowy marionette. Nightmare Chauncey regarded all of them dispassionately. "You've seen this before."

"That pirate mare..." Maple breathed.

"...Nightmare Modules, huh?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "Lemme guess. That shield?"

"I have two," Chauncey replied. "The shield, and one I got from a colleague of Navarre's in Ironridge that damages memories. This is the price I'm willing to pay in my quest. So before you accuse me of lacking empathy or compassion, consider I may have traded it for something better."

Starlight gave him an uncertain glance. "You really shouldn't play with those..."

Valey sighed. "Birdo, gimmie your sword."

"With all due respect, I think that's a very bad idea," Gerardo replied, shaking his head and keeping the sword at his side. "So, what I'm seeing here is that a certain someone's quest for godlike powers..."

Chauncey nodded at Gerardo, continuing to show off his eldritch form. "I had the chance to use them and took it. For nearly thirty years now, I have lived without some of the mental trappings of mortality, trading emotion I can feel for emotion I can use. Nightmare Modules are powers encoded and manifested through feeling. There are plenty of emotions I have not experienced since I took this on all that time ago."

Starlight frowned, whispering silently in Maple's ear. "Is he sure? I saved Puddles when I found her. I don't think I wasn't compassionate, was I?"

"Yeah, you know what?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "That really stinks, and I'm sorry for you. But take it from someone who actually has a real heart... bananas, it feels weird saying that... you have no idea what you're talking about. Whatever you might think you're doing with all those mares and foals and stinking Stanza, it's not reverent and it's not nice and they don't appreciate it." She rubbed her forehead with a hoof. "Bananas, I feel like I'm explaining this to a kid..."

"You're hesitating," Chauncey rebuked. "A foal would have thrown a tantrum by now over their repeated inability to show you the truth. I am not less, I am unfettered. And if you can't accept this, how do you live at ease with the goddesses who created these powers?"

"Knock that off!" Valey stomped a hoof. "You're talking in circles. I just said I don't like Garsheeva or the Night Mother! I'm not some hypocrite, I just have my priorities in line, and that involves fighting for my friends and not being a huge jerk to a bunch of mares!"

Chauncey regarded her for a moment, then sighed. "It sounds like you're almost ready to leave. A pity. I haven't even gotten to my request."

Valey gave him a flat look. "If it makes you feel better, we'll listen. But we're not doing anything unless you give us some really good proof it doesn't help you do anything weird or immoral or gross. You don't make sense, Stanza doesn't make sense, I still don't get why you're doing that with the moon glass and the foals in the first place, and frankly? I'm disappointed." She stared at the ground. "I was kind of looking forward to kicking another psychopath like Herman's butt, but you don't even think you're trying to be a villain. You're just weird."

"Bluster all you like. It won't change the situation." Chauncey shrugged. "You could take your sister and go to Meltdown right now, and report me for building an energy farm. But you haven't. I know there are things you want from me as well..."

Valey glared.

"Do you trust me?" Chauncey asked.

"Bananas, no!"

Chauncey shook his head. "I didn't ask if you liked me. I asked if you trusted me. I know you trust me. We're sitting in front of my superweapon in the middle of my laboratory, and you have your prize and an open door to your backs and all the damaging information you need to convince the ponies who can to take me out, yet you're doing nothing. You know how much of a right I have to retaliate, after all you've done to me, and you see me holding my ground. You trust me not to hurt you. You trust I have something I want, and am trying my hardest to earn your trust in return. Don't you?"

Valey groaned, slumping against the ground. "Yeah...?"

"Then you go back to your ship." Chauncey motioned toward the doors. "Think things over. Ask me some favors. And come back once you'd like to know what I need in return for working to restore your sister to herself, and perhaps find a way to solve your own wrong-body crisis."

Gerardo cleared his throat, still holding Nyala's body. "I do believe that is our cue. Everyone, shall we?"

"We're going home," Maple agreed. "Leaving this place underground where it belongs, and I hope we never have to come back again."

"Fat chance of that," Valey muttered as Starlight climbed onto Maple's back in a familiar sign of comfort. "Let's get out of here."

"The elevator will work on your way up," Chauncey called as they turned to leave. "If you need an easy way to return, the full-access password is Princess Luna. And try to return at night, would you? I don't need sleep in this form, though I'm magically less-agreeable during the day..."

Comments

[Mini-Joe]

what a fool, never trade away what makes you a person. i hope he gets /owned/.

[Alchemik]

The effective lich is morally dubious? Whoda thunk it.

[Quinch]

Chauncey just needs a big, pink hug.

[Quinch]

Also... the one that erases memories?

I'm... getting a little suspicious of Navarre's body transfer amnesia here.

[Venlinelle]

Oh excellent, I was hoping he’d stay around. He makes a delightful antihero.

[sploopy slooder]

what the actual fuck. why are they just OKAY with this?! do these assholes not even have a working moral compass? they just half assed being mad and gave up almost immediately......