The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Write Your Own Rules

Shinespark pushed her way through a door that was guarded by Celestia's soldiers, the guards uncertainly letting her in. The interior was mostly dark, save for a glowing metal ring that didn't look quite like it was constructed from a worldly material. A forcefield rippled through its center, and caught in that was Gazelle. He was wide awake.

"So this is where they're keeping you," Shinespark said.

"Hello," Gazelle replied, his coat haggard. "What are you here for?"

Shinespark carefully evaluated him. Whatever powered the ring's magic, he wasn't struggling at all... either he had tired himself out already, or resigned himself to being stuck. "I'm curious to hear you explain yourself," she began. "And before you start, don't try to manipulate me or win me over. I don't have any power regarding your fate."

"No need for caution." Gazelle waved a paw, the forcefield flexing slowly to allow him the movement, but clearly not tolerating much more. "Mares like you don't amount to much in affairs like these."

"If you'd rather not talk, I can leave." Shinespark stood stiffly, trusting Gazelle wanted to ramble enough to use this as a threat.

Gazelle sighed and shook his head. "If you want my reasoning, it's simple. The students had something I wanted, so I tried to take it. Rule of the strong. That's all there is to it."

His voice was hoarse, and his lips visibly raw. "Really?" Shinespark asked. "So you just stopped caring about anything else besides what you wanted in the moment."

"That's an accurate way to put it," Gazelle replied. "Except I stopped doing that long, long ago. Now I just found better tools to work with."

"You don't care about your future," Shinespark said. "You don't care about staying out of trouble and keeping your life intact? Celestia is well within her rights to ask for your head."

"Have you even met me?" Gazelle's forehead twitched. "Of course I don't! I care about my sister."

Shinespark seated herself halfway between the sphere and a corner, using her haunches and forgoing a chair. "You don't care about her enough to be patient and keep yourself alive and out of trouble while you look for a better way to get her back?"

"What better way?" Gazelle chuckled. "Do you even know what I was trying to accomplish? Have you talked with your filly?"

Shinespark watched him evenly. "I know that you attacked and tried to kill five students and our Starlight."

"False on both counts." Gazelle huffed. "I don't fight fillies. It's a cardinal rule of mine, and I would have left her perfectly alone if she had stopped interfering and trying to protect my prey on any of the myriad times I politely asked. Second, I couldn't care less whether the students live or die. They don't matter to me. What I needed was their brands." His eyes briefly glowed like coals. "Brands are hope. Hope is emotion. Sphinxes eat emotion and sustain both their power and immortality using it. Garsheeva fed herself on sacrifices. If she can do it, why shouldn't I?"

Shinespark didn't even blink. "Who said it was alright that she did it?"

Gazelle rolled his eyes. "No reaction? Of course you already knew. I thought someone was hiding this from me. Just my luck. Lucky you, I'm in a forgiving mood... Or not. I'm stuck, so it doesn't even matter. And isn't it obvious? She said it was alright. Garsheeva. A god. Just like me."

Shinespark set her jaw. "And who gave her the right to set that morality?"

"Oh, you know..." Gazelle whistled innocently. "The hundreds of thousands of souls who worshipped her either as herself or the Night Mother and decided that whatever she says goes? Without ever really caring what she was like. I'll bet you anything they'd do the same for me if I was two thousand years old and sculpted a continent around my own whimsy. Why, she even raised and commanded those poor little sarosians to exalt their holy war of piracy, just so she could dine on them with her other half. That one gives even me goosebumps. But don't you get it? When you're like her or me, you don't need to care about what anyone else thinks is right. You make right simply by speaking. Feel free to disagree, of course. I really don't care one way or the other."

"You're completely insane," Shinespark replied.

"According to your system of rationality, maybe." Gazelle shrugged, his prison flickering and groaning as the energy flashed to keep him contained. "I'm guessing it's one Celestia shares. She gets to make her own rules too, you know. And maybe things really are fluffy enough here you can afford to be nice and sweet and peaceful like that. Ever tell yourself that? How maybe things will be so much nicer and more peaceful here than they were in the north? Now that you're free from all the bad ponies like me?"

Shinespark narrowed her eyes, strongly suspecting he was leading up to a parallel that would degrade her for being from the north just like him. "And that's not how things work where we're from. I'm well aware."

Gazelle pouted. "Well, if you're just here to finish my speeches for me, why do I even bother?" He raised an eyebrow and narrowed his eyes at the same time. "Why are you here, Ironridge princess? Morbid curiosity?"

"Meltdown," Shinespark replied. "What about her? Is she someone you care about?"

Gazelle shrugged. "If you're asking whether she can ever replace Gwendolyn, the answer is no, never, not a chance, maybe in your dreams and get lost, thank you very much. But I care about her a lot when I can afford to. The myriad practical reasons to keep her around aside, I'm quite fond of her."

Shinespark stared into his eyes. "She's trying to commit political suicide to bail you out from Celestia, and as a former head of government I can guarantee you she's going to fail and put both herself and the Empire in a very bad spot. If you care about her, tell me what I can say to her to make her cut her losses, go home and try to make a new life for herself somewhere free from all this."

Gazelle blew a raspberry. "A new life free from all this? She's tethered to technology at the hip. She can't survive without power enough to keep it maintained and rebuild it when she fails. What's she saying, that the Empire needs me to survive? Risking a very unhappy Equestria to squirrel me away to the north through some legal loophole?"

"...Yes." Shinespark blinked. "That exactly."

"Heh." Gazelle chuckled. "I know her well. She's not doing it for me. She's doing it to get Equestria on the Empire's tail. Give them yet another common enemy they need her help to rebuild and face. It's a power play, keeping herself where she can rebuild her armor. Saving me is just a bonus."

Shinespark couldn't stop her eyes from widening slightly. Gazelle saw it and laughed harder. "What? You think she's nicer than me? Anything but cunning, even? Never ask to hear how she got promoted to her position and received her flame powers, then. She might tell you, and your image of her wouldn't like it."

"What are you doing?" Shinespark whispered. "She's your friend. She might even love you. She's the only one sticking up for you right now. How could you ever think it's a good idea trying to turn me against her?"

Gazelle shrugged. "I've never been the brains of the operation. That's her job. I'm saying what I think. But do you really want to know what I'm thinking?"

His eyes took on a gleeful, dangerous glint, and Shinespark hesitated. This might be getting into dangerous territory... "What?"

"Starlight," Gazelle said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I want her gone. I want you and your friends to give up on me, give up on Meltdown, give up on the Empire, want nothing more to do with us and this blasted place and forget all about this and leave us for a lost cause. I don't want you thinking, 'oh, they must have a good side, let's stick around and help-' No! I am a god. And whatever she is, she stood in my way. I despise fighting fillies, but if I have to move her out of my way I'll be forced to do so again. So I want all of you to throw in the towel, pack it in, take that kid and scram. I'm warning you, I have backup plans for how to use you if you don't. Now forget about me, ditch Meltdown and go chase your happily ever after."

Shinespark raised an eyebrow. "And if we kill you now and ensure you won't come back to haunt us?"

Gazelle shrugged, glancing briefly at the cutie mark on his flanks. "I doubt you will. I doubt Celestia would let you. But if I'm wrong, I'll finally reunite with Lyn... and we'll both be far too dead to care."

"...So be it." Shinespark got to her hooves and left.

---

Gerardo greeted Shinespark at the door of Generosity Two. "You look grim," he remarked. "Where's Valey?"

"Off doing her own thing," Shinespark replied. "Not sure where. We met with Princess Celestia, President Kinmari and Meltdown, and after that I went alone to talk to Gazelle."

Gerardo winced, swinging the door wide open. "With all due respect, are you sure that was wise? Certain enemy agents have these ways with words that make them very dangerous to talk to alone."

Shinespark shook her head, seeing that most of the house was up and waiting in the living room, even though it was still half an hour before sunrise. "I already had the condition that there was nothing we were going to do to intervene in his fate. I might break that and advise Celestia to kill him now, and let that lead to whatever consequences it needs to with the Empire. But I also think I've given up on Meltdown and will be leaving her to her own fate as well. The Immortal Dream is my top priority now. This island has ran out of time to offer us."

Harshwater looked up from where she was playing with her feathers on the couch. "You want us to fly? Can Felicity manage that?"

Shinespark winced. "I'm... going to need Valey to help talk to her. We'll have to discuss options. But the good news is that both Princess Celestia and President Kinmari are still in our corner, and both of them could easily group us with the imperials and decide we're not worth the trouble."

"Guess it doesn't hurt to count our blessings," said Amber from the kitchen. "So be honest with us. What's the best-case outcome right now?"

"The best?" Shinespark frowned. "We get the Dream airborne and go back to Ironridge. It's not the life any of you want, but we'd at least be allied with everyone in power. We do this to lay low in case there's political fallout between Equestria and the Empire from Gazelle's attack. Once that's thoroughly over, Princess Celestia will return and we can resume discussions."

"Do we trust her to keep her word on that?" Gerardo tilted his head.

Shinespark paused. "...Yes. I would. She isn't obligated to by any means, but I think she wants to keep tabs on us if nothing else."

"What about Felicity, then?" Amber asked. "If we're heading to Ironridge long-term..."

"Princess Celestia would work with us." Shinespark shook her head. "She said any Writs of Harmonic Sanction we earn and use ourselves would be fine. It's mostly talk of opening the border that could be difficult with political uncertainty, and giving out free writs to ponies who were with Gazelle that could get us mired in things we want to avoid. But we still have two writs now, and she promised to take care of Felicity if we left her behind. President Kinmari would work with us too. But in the end, I can't make a decision on this without consulting Felicity herself."

"What's that about Felicity?"

The door banged open, Valey ducking through and closing it behind her with her tail. "Hey, girl. You beat me home."

Shinespark nodded. "Talking about her fate if we really do have to return to Ironridge."

Valey's ears flopped. "Oh. Yeah. Still kinda holding out for a miracle on that one, but hey. We'll see what she says. So, we thinking that's the plan?"

"That's what we've been hearing," Gerardo cut in.

Shinespark sighed. "I talked to Meltdown, and after her, Gazelle. I think those two are a sinking ship, Valey. I'm not happy about what could happen if Gazelle gets his freedom, and I'm also not very happy with Meltdown either, but we have to consider if we want them to be our problem and if we do, how we solve it. Leaving is... always our answer when things go wrong, but I'm starting to agree with the princess. This may be our best option."

"I just checked out the ship." Valey raised an eyebrow. "You think we can get it flying any time soon?"

"That's up to the students who are helping us," Shinespark replied.

Valey got a little grin. "So you mean it's up to me."

"If you have plans to motivate them..."

"Nyaah. Mind-reader." Valey stuck out her tongue. "Whatever, though. We really wanna mess with a boatload of weird artifacts again? The whole thing where we were flying around with all those windigo hearts... We're pretty sure they're bad, but they're also our fuel."

"Work with the scientists." Shinespark shook her head. "See if there's anything you can figure out. And if not... it's only a month. Once we get back to Ironridge, we can take the hearts to the crystal palace and leave them there until we need them again. I bet they'll be safe there. Yakyakistan had studied them, and thought they could leave them there indefinitely, at least."

Valey stretched. "Cool. I guess this is the plan, then?"

"It's coming together," Gerardo replied. "I can't imagine you'll get away with it without talking to everyone, but, well... you all know my feelings about the open horizon."

"Yeah." Valey nodded, staring at the bedroom door. "Felicity, Ironflanks, Starlight... We gotta find a way to make this work for everyone. Not just the ones it benefits. Wish me luck, nerds. Gonna take a lot of stuff to make this go as well as they deserve."

Comments

[Phoenix Kitten]

Things are moving fast, Valey still has that ace up her sleeve, and for heaven's sake Shinespark, start carrying a recording device!

[ZanyZapper]

I can't remember - did they ever tell Celestia that Starlight is from Equestria? Strictly speaking, legally wouldn't she need a writ to RETURN to the north? Just thinking maybe Felicity, Maple, and Starlight remain behind.

So many questions...

[Phoenix Kitten]

10047876
Nope, as far as Celestia knows, the only native was Sunflower Saffron.

[Oberth Effect]

Gazelle seems a bit more coherent than I expected. Maybe losing once again brought some sense back? Gives some credence to the "chaotic sphinx tantrum" explanation Meltdown was giving.

Why, she even raised and commanded those poor little sarosians to exalt their holy war of piracy, just so she could dine on them with her other half.

I'm curious if this was really her motivation. Cutie marks don't seem to be permanently consumed to sustain Garsheeva's immortality, so what's the purpose of continuing to accumulate more and more?

She's not doing it for me. She's doing it to get Equestria on the Empire's tail. Give them yet another common enemy they need her help to rebuild and face. It's a power play, keeping herself where she can rebuild her armor. Saving me is just a bonus.

Can't say I'm too surprised that there might be a hidden motive for Meltdown's actions, although this particular set of motivations may not be too surprising given how much Meltdown dislikes being unable to use her cutie mark. It might be a bit difficult to rally others to your cause if you're returning in a diminished state, though.

I'm warning you, I have backup plans for how to use you if you don't.

Guess this is another time where Starlight and friends would need to pick between leaving things alone to reach their dream of a happy life and putting that off in the name of a greater good.

Gazelle shrugged, glancing briefly at the cutie mark on his flanks.

So much for the sword taking that, too. Didn't Crystal lose her cutie mark to the sword?

And we still don't know what Gazelle's cutie mark does, do we?

10047647

Maybe they'll get lucky and it turns out the room Gazelle is in is also bugged.

[Argeddion]

Meltdown shook her head.

Pretty sure its supposed to be Shinespark, not Meltdown