The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Diplomacy Isn't Fun

Valey groaned as the shoreline rocks dug into her back, forming an uncomfortable bed at the site of their crash. Felicity clung atop her and refused to let go, and after partially dropping her to fight off the batponies, she couldn't blame her for it either. But it was quickly becoming a problem, since the sarosians had regrouped and were flying closer.

"Nngh. Felicity, leggo..." Valey shoved as hard as she dared. "I'm sorry, okay? We knew there'd be trouble in a fight! Otherwise I'm gonna sneak and dump you on these rocks, because I need to move!"

"Two more seconds," Felicity mumbled, eyes squeezed shut. "My composure is... lacking..."

But they didn't have two seconds, according to the rate at which the batponies dropped... only Valey's cutie mark said otherwise. The seven didn't dive bomb them, pulling up and hovering low in a cautious circle around them, all watching with wary eyes. Apparently being pinned and prone had the benefit of looking much less threatening.

"Translation time, girl," Valey muttered, giving Felicity's shoulder a shake. "Don't flake out on me... Hey!" She looked up, making eye contact with each batpony in turn. "Friends! No fighting! Friends!" Insistent, she gestured between them and herself with a hoof several times.

One stallion pointed between his legs where Valey had kicked him, and another hurriedly addressed him, making him stop. Several looked hesitant. The round mare, the leader as best Valey could tell, still looked hurt and betrayed. Felicity finally cracked an eye open, adding something in Sarosian.

"Why?" the round mare asked, talking slowly and clearly doing her best. "Why... did you here? Come here?"

"Felicity, tell them we're friends," Valey grunted. "We wanna... We want to help you. Not fight. Please?"

Felicity added something longer and quieter, and the batponies seemed to listen. Some of them even brightened, but the leader's face slowly fell. "Good ponies," she said, pointing to Valey and Felicity. "Bad ponies." She pointed to her companions, including herself. Then, with a wide gesture at the entire bay and a fluence that suggested she'd practiced the words many times before: "Profaned land. Nightmare land."

Valey surveyed the crescent bay, its ends wrapping so far around it was nearly a circular lake. "Wait, you're the bad guys?"

The round mare added something else in Sarosian, a longer explanation, and Felicity folded her ears. "Oh my," she murmured, starting to get her composure back. "They're saying this is a place of exile, darling. A, err, cursed place fit for... ponies who commit crimes." She listened as the round mare added something more, and continued, "They live here away from any dusk statues, cut off from the Night Mother and the world?" Her ears flattened. "The good oppress the bad, and the bad oppress both bad and good... I don't believe our friends here have the healthiest self-esteem. They seem to think anyone remotely well-meaning would be against them, too."

"Are you serious?" Valey groaned, watching as the round mare explained something to her companions and their faces started falling again. "Look, being down because the dumb Empire is hard on us, I get, but you guys are hard on yourselves in Mistvale, too? What is it with the world and sad batponies?" She awkwardly punched the gravel with a hoof. "Felicity, lemme go."

Felicity carefully stood, and Valey crawled out from under her as well, getting to her hooves. All the batponies had landed by now, and some took steps back as she rose. Others fell prostrate, actually bowing as if whatever would happen was inevitable. The round mare did neither, hanging her head and not letting anyone see her eyes.

"Alright." Valey marched toward her, eyes narrow. "I seriously don't care about crimes, and I'm starting to take it personally every time one of you is down on life. So chin. Up!" She pushed up the mare's chin with a wing, and wrapped her forelegs around her in a hug. "This get the message across? I dunno which category of yours I fall into, 'cuz neither of them are about giving bad guys a second chance. Friends," she insisted, ending on a word she knew the batponies knew. "Friends."

The leader tried to recoil in her grasp, but Valey was far stronger and she couldn't get away. Most of the other batponies tilted their heads. "No fighting?" one asked.

"Varsidel," another protested, pointing at the camp.

"From Varsidel." Valey pointed a free wing along the beach towards the distant camp. "Not from Varsidel." She pointed at herself and Felicity, then repeated the process once for good measure without letting the round mare go. She smelled bad, this close, like insufficiency and self-hatred, but with a lot of hope and determination to balance it out. "Are you okay?"

Felicity said something, and a short exchange followed. "...Well, this is a pickle," Felicity finally sighed. "She says she believes you and you can let her go, by the way."

"Oh. Uh, sure." Valey backed off, still regarding the leader. "You okay?"

Her reply came in Sarosian, and Felicity nodded, starting to translate. "Darling, they're saying the ponies in the camp here apparently came in waves. Most of them at first, and at least two individuals at separate times after that. They do want everyone to leave, but don't believe that's what the merchants are doing, and say if we think that we're mistaken or being lied to. They're also very politely asking us again to leave and think if we stay here, we'll end up siding with the merchants even if we say we want to help them now. What I don't quite understand, though, is that they're saying the merchants are trying to defile the land, yet this place is apparently already defiled and that's why they're here..."

Valey frowned. "Do you guys not recognize they're trying to build a boat? They told us you target the boat. What else are they gonna use a boat for if none of them can escape?"

Felicity exchanged words again, then frowned. "They believe we're well-meaning but terribly naive, darling. That if they told us, we wouldn't understand and it would only lead to bad things happening."

"Well, that's fabulous." Valey sat back with a crunch of shifting gravel. "Look, I get that you guys think you're the bad guys, but we can't help if we don't know what you want."

"They've already told us that one, I'm afraid." Felicity smiled ruefully. "They would be extremely grateful if we flew back to our ship and left this land to its own devices. They wouldn't mind at all if we took Harshwater with us, either, but seem to think we'd have to force her to leave." She hesitated as the round mare chittered something more, and added, "They also ask that we tell none about this bay's existence?"

"Bananas." Valey rubbed her scalp. "I guess with a language barrier on top of poor communication skills, there's really no way to understand each other better, is there? It really looks to me like if they just told us everything, I could beat whoever was causing trouble into guacamole and everyone lives happily ever after, but for all I know we really wouldn't get it and telling us would just make things worse. You ever hear of a place like this before, Felicity?"

"Some sort of outcast colony where violators of religious law live in separation from the Night Mother?" Felicity tilted her head. "I can't say that I have. The Empire uncovers, captures and deals with heretics through an extensive network maintained by Meltdown's mana energy administration, but in Mistvale, such matters are usually centralized around the Monk Lords and delegated out on a per-city basis. Often the Night Mother herself becomes aware of them first and informs the council, thanks to her dusk statues, so living without the statues could very well be an effective way to hide. And the continent is sufficiently vast and sparsely-populated that I'd be surprised if there weren't hundreds of places like this..."

The local batponies shuffled politely as Valey and Felicity talked, clearly trying and failing to understand a word they were saying. "Please," the leader requested, looking Valey earnestly in the eyes despite a lot of conflicting emotion on her face. "Leave?"

Valey nodded. "We will take the pegasus," she replied, speaking levelly and doing her best to use as simple of words as possible. "What will you do to the Varsidelians?"

The round mare frowned, and seemed to get it with a repetition. "We will stop the Varsidelians," she carefully said. "We will stay the Varsidelians here."

"Why?" Valey asked, feeling like she was starting to get the hang of talking through the barrier. It was possible, but no wonder the merchants couldn't if they never stopped, sat down and made their best efforts to understand each other.

The leader hesitated for a moment, thinking hard, then turned to Felicity and answered in Sarosian. Felicity translated, "They don't want them to develop, darling. When they have tools and buildings and good shelter, they can spend less time trying to survive and more time getting stronger. Our friends here want to keep them in a state of technological regression deep enough that they're easy to control and never get out of hoof. They say Harshwater has bought the merchants enough time and cover, they're already afraid it's too late."

Valey bit her lip. "If the Varsidelians grow, then what?"

"Grow," the leader said, meeting Valey's eyes. "Love. Foals." She patted her stomach. "Many ponies." She pointed around the crescent rim of the bay. "Town. City." She pointed at the clouds. "Not secret." She looked back at Valey's eyes. "Death. Nightmare Moon."

Valey blinked, her cutie mark beginning to burn. "Buh? What's a Nightmare Moon?"

"Death," the round mare repeated, eyes pleading. "Please leave."

A large net fell from above, ensnaring the entire group of batponies.

"Oh, for crying out...!" Valey hissed, tearing at the sturdy woven ropes clinging to her face. Whatever fiber it was made from was vaguely sticky, clinging to her fur, and the rest of the sarosians panicked, screeching in painfully-shrill voices and struggling against their weighted confines. They had kept a close eye down the beach leading to the camp as they talked, but every one of the merchants lacked wings and no one had thought to look up.

"Is that nine of the varmints?" a shocked, gleeful stallion's voice came from above. Atop a steeply-sloped cliff, five unicorns and earth ponies looked down, surveying their work and looking proud. "Let's see how Harshwater likes this!"

A fuzzy calmness settled over Valey's head, entirely unfitting for the situation. "Calming, darling," Felicity whispered from beside her, a strain of panic in her voice as some of the sarosian shrieks started to subside. "Effectiveness is based on proximity, so I'm not sure our friends up there will get the full brunt, but it's everything I can do. My hairpin is a knife. See if you can cut yourself free!"

"Gotcha," Valey mumbled, craning her neck with the ropes pulling on her mane. Felicity turned her head as well, and Valey got the pin in her teeth, yanking it out and feeling several pinned-back locks fall free. "Nnngh... Gah!"

One strand of rope severed, taking a second or two of sawing. "Please do not cut the ropes," a mare instructed from above, and Valey turned her head upwards again to see.

The unicorn joining the group could have been Shinespark with a dye job, sporting a burgundy coat, short mane with a jagged bang and a slightly-used set of plate armor. Valey dropped the knife. "Lemme go, Grenada. It's Valey."

"Boss?" A stallion with her glanced aside. "You know this mare? She speaks with real words, she does."

Grenada shook her head. "My name is Braen, not Grenada. She doesn't know me. Sarosians! We have a boulder atop this cliff and will use it to crush you all if you try to escape. Nopony cut the net!"

None of the native sarosians understood a word she said, and Valey frowned, trying to get a wing free and curling it beneath her. "What's your problem! Do you dudes not know they don't understand you? Hey, mooks! I'm from the airship that just passed overhead! Ask your stupid boss what she's doing making threats only I can understand!"

Several other ponies at the clifftop blinked, and Grenada visibly paled. "That's a good question, boss," a stallion with a mustache said. "I hope we're not attacking airship folk."

"Well, you are!" Valey bellowed, thrashing in the net to conceal her wing movements as she slipped the sound stone free from her bags.

Grenada's face hardened, and she turned to her companions off the cliffs. "...I have been negotiating with the sarosians in secret for days now. I apologize for not telling you. I know this mare from there. Unfortunately, it seems she has betrayed me. Valey, please stop trying to escape."

Valey reached her mana battery and stopped, hiding both it and the sound stone beneath her as she lay flat on the rocks. She grit her teeth upward and waited, hoping for a familiar buzz.

"...I wouldn't put it past them," another mare on the clifftop said. "So now that we have them, what do we do? Is there any reason not to take them out?"

Suddenly, the sound stone activated. Muffled beneath Valey's fur and the terrified eeeing of the other batponies, it was definitely inaudible at the top of the cliff, but she wouldn't be if she yelled. Baring her fangs, Valey snarled, "Grenada, if you and your good squad drop a boulder on me and my friends from the top of that cliff, Shinespark is on that ship and she's still nearby and there'll be nothing Meltdown and Gazelle can do to stop her from hauling you straight to Garsheeva for piracy! What are you doing on the northwestern edge of this dumb cove, anyway, trying to build a pirate fort in that clearing? Is that why there's so much tension with the locals, even though they just wanna be left alone? We've got a filly that kills windigoes and a sword that can cut anything, and your shiny stolen armor isn't going to help you one bit!"

Grenada opened her mouth to counter, looking halfway terrified and enraged, and lit her horn... but an ovular shadow had already settled over the clouds above, perfectly shaped like the hull of the Immortal Dream. Valey grinned.

Comments

[Mini-Joe]

awwww yeaaaaah!

[Cold Bolt]

Reinforcements have arrived.

[Venlinelle]

Valey blinked, her cutie mark beginning to burn. "Buh? What's a Nightmare Moon?"

It took us 1.2 million words, but we finally get the name of the pony apparently causing so many problems around here.

[sploopy slooder]

Grenada you ignorant slut......but seriously the fuck is wrong with her?