Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
Feather Duster’s eyes widened, clearly horrified by what she’d just been told. “Y-you’re sending me to work for that, that, that…scoundrel?!”
River snorted. “Don’t try and talk as though you’re sophisticated, it’s an insult to those of us who actually are. And yes, you’re going to serve as his personal maid from now on.”
Feather Duster shook her head, a motion that came easily as the rest of her was already starting to shake. “No! I don’t want to be anywhere near him! He’s some kind of monster, I’m sure of it!” She pointed back toward the train station, her hoof trembling. “I don’t know if you saw, but that magic he was using just now? The one that made the all the light? He was changing some sort of, of…creature into a pony!”
“He certainly did,” murmured River, glancing back in the direction indicated. Just the thought of how ravishing Aria had become was enough to make her fantasies take flight once again, imagining herself in the other mare’s place. Certainly, that was a far more enjoyable use of her time than listening to some little nitwit having a panic attack. “And I-”
“Don’t you see?!” cried Feather Duster. “If he can change her into being a pony, then that means that he must be something else too!” She shot a fear-filled glance at the building, as though worried that Lex would hear what she was saying and come after her. “He’s some sort of creature that only looks like a pony! That’s why his magic is so different from a normal unicorn’s! Why he’s so awful to be around!” She shivered, turning a pleading glance back at River. “Please, Miss, don’t send me to work for him! No one here has seen Tryout, and if he’s gone, then I’m all that Cleansweep has! The foals she’s hanging around with now-”
But she couldn’t continue as River took a step closer to her, the expression of icy fury on her face making Feather Duster flinch. “Now you listen to me, you empty-headed little nopony. First, don’t you ever interrupt me, do you understand? While I’m speaking, you are to remain silent until I’m done, no excuses! Second, I don’t care if Lex is a horror from the bottom of Tartarus, you are going to go to him and give him whatever he wants from you.”
The phrasing made Feather Duster’s eyes widen, picking up on the undercurrent. “Wh-whatever he wants from me…?” she echoed.
River smiled, and the expression was cruel. “That’s right. If he tells you to lick the mud from his hooves, you’ll do it for him. If he wants to pluck the feathers from your wings for a spell he’s working on, you’ll give them to him. And if he tells you to bend over and raise your tail, you’ll do that too.”
Feather Duster took a step back, lowering her tail over her rump protectively as she gave River a look of horror. “N-no! I won’t!”
River didn’t let her get away, moving forward as Feather Duster backed up. “Yes,” she replied softly. “You will.”
Feather Duster’s eyes watered, her lip quivering for a moment before she suddenly seemed to find her courage. Mustering herself up with visible effort, she straightened her posture, set her jaw, and furrowed her brows. “No I won’t!” she repeated, her voice louder now. “I don’t work for you anymore, and I don’t have to do what you say!” She licked her lips, breathing deeply as though it had taken everything she’d had to force those words out. “I’m taking my daughter and I’m leaving Vanhoover. We’re going to go live someplace else, and there’s n-nothing that you can do about it!” She flared her wings at that, giving River a look of resolve before turning and marching away, head held high.
River knew that the smart decision was to let her go. If that lowlife was afraid of Lex to the point that it made her so recalcitrant, then she wouldn’t make a good plaything for him anyway. Far better to let her remove herself from the picture entirely. There were still several maids in her employ back at her manor; surely one of them would be more amenable to her plan. It was the smart, logical course of action.
But at that moment, logic was the furthest thing from River’s mind.
“Who exactly do you think you’re talking to?” The words were spoken at a normal volume, but the sheer vitriol in them made Feather Duster jump, turning and looking back at River in alarm. She was right to be concerned: River was slowly stalking toward her with a look of utter fury twisting her features. “I am not some shopkeeper that you can just turn your back on, you miserable little ingrate! You don’t just say you’re taking your business elsewhere! I’m River Bank! I buy and sell ponies worth a dozen of you in an afternoon! You think that you can say no to me? You think that you can just walk away from ME?!”
Feather Duster’s wings spread, but she couldn’t bring herself to fly away. She knew she wasn’t the bravest of ponies – that was part of the reason she’d been so attracted to Tryout, since he’d never seemed to be afraid of anything – but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this frightened. Terror kept her rooted in place, unable to move as River advanced on her like a serpent about to devour a mouse.
River saw the other mare’s fear, but it wasn’t nearly enough to assuage her anger. Weeks, she thought to herself in a rage. Weeks of having to cut corners and stretch funds in Las Pegasus, with everypony there knowing it and laughing at me behind my back! Just the memory was enough to make her bristle, remembering each snide remark and knowing glance. She knew that in their eyes it had marked her as a pretender, a low-class pony with pretensions above her station, and the memory was like a knife in her spine. Then I come home, and what do I find? Everything I’ve spent my life building, gone! That had been bad enough, but she hadn’t even had time to process it before the next disaster had struck. And THEN Lex curses me to not be able to enjoy what little I have left, only to turn around and start parading my heart’s desire right in front of me! And now this piece of gutter-trash, this weak-willed little failure of a pony who isn’t fit to grovel in my presence thinks that I’m so beaten that she can refuse my orders?!
It was the last straw, the final insult that was more than she could bear. It wasn’t about giving Lex a pretty girl to play with anymore; it was about putting this little upstart in her place. And River knew just how to do that. “If you leave,” she hissed, “I will do everything I can to make you suffer for it. You and your little girl both.”
The way Feather Duster’s eyes widened still wasn’t sufficient to soothe the rage coursing through River’s veins, and she kept going. “I have friends and associates in every city in Equestria, and I can ruin you with just one letter to them. I’ll tell them that your work was sloppy, that you were unpleasant and unreliable, and that I fired you because I caught you stealing. And I won’t stop there, either. I will drag your name through the mud across all of Equestria, until everypony knows that Feather Duster is someone they don’t want to be around!”
Feather Duster’s eyes filled with tears. “But, but that’s not…!”
“True? Trust me when I say that I’ll make it true!” growled River, now nose-to-nose with Feather Duster. “I’m a pillar of this community, and you’re somepony that no one’s ever heard of! And I promise you, I will ruin you before you can even arrive at another city, and you’ll find it impossible to work as a maid ever again by the time I’m done.” River didn’t bother to entertain the idea that Feather Duster would ever bother trying a different line of work; her cutie mark made it very clear that she was meant to be a servant. “What do you think will happen to your little girl then, hm? She’ll spend the rest of her childhood living just like she is now, homeless and hungry because her mother can’t find work. And she will know that it’s because of you, and she’ll grow to hate you for it.”
Uncertainty was written all over Feather Duster’s face now, and River knew that she was thinking about the fight she’d just been having with her daughter. “N-no, she…”
Seeing her wavering, River moved in for the kill. “How long do you think it will take before she never wants to speak to you again, hm? How long before she starts wishing that her father was still here and you were the one that hadn’t made it? How long,” she leaned in closer, putting her lips next to Feather Duster’s ear as she whispered the final threat, “before she decides that she has no mother, and you never see her again?”
She could almost hear the little nag’s heart breaking, a sob escaping Feather Duster’s lips. But there was still a flicker of defiance in her eyes as she backed away from her. “I’ll tell the princesses,” she whimpered. “I know they’re here. I’ll tell them that you threatened me-”
River laughed in her face. “Go right ahead. They’re staying in my manor,” she gestured back toward the building. “Of course, when I tell them you’re unhinged and a liar, who do you think they’ll believe? Me, a famous pony who spent the last few hours telling them how I want to do everything I can to help restore my home? Or you, the hysterical mare that’s carrying a grudge against me because I fired you?”
The light of hope in Feather Duster’s eyes died then, drowned by a fresh wave of tears. “How can you do this?” she hiccupped. “How can you be so horrible like this?”
A shudder of satisfaction ran down River’s spine. She’s broken. The despair and hopelessness in the other mare’s voice was what she had been waiting to hear. It settled over her like a warm blanket, reassuring her that she was still the strong and powerful pony that she’d built herself up to be over the years. “You’re the one doing it. However awful Lex is, a real mother would jump at the chance to sacrifice herself if it meant securing a better future for her child. Your selfishness in trying to run away is what’s to blame, not me.”
She leaned back then, having to fight the urge to smile as she saw the tears running down Feather Duster’s cheeks. “B-but I don’t want-”
“You see?” cut in River. “Your home has been devastated, your husband is gone, your friends and neighbors are homeless, and your daughter barely has enough food to eat…and all you can do is talk about what you want.” She let that sink in, giving River a look of righteous condescension for several seconds before she spoke again. “Go work for Lex. Take the money. Do what a mother is supposed to do and provide a better life for your daughter. Or be selfish and suffer the consequences. It’s your choice.”
Feather Duster slumped in place then, continuing to cry softly. River didn’t press her for an answer, able to find it within herself to be magnanimous now that she’d won. Her patience was rewarded a minute later when Feather Duster looked up, all signs of resistance gone from her face. “Alright,” she sniffled meekly. “I’ll do it.”
“Good girl,” purred River. “Now, let’s get you cleaned up before I present you to your new boss. And while we do, I can tell you what you’ll be doing for me in the meantime…”
River bends Feather Duster to her will, without using magic or laying a hoof on her.
Will she get away with this, or is she digging herself even deeper?
Page generated in 0.068 seconds
Total duration
760 users online
1,000,763 hits today, 2,073,628 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
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.®
You're really not helping River's cause here.
I mean, yeah, she's horrible, but Lex is just as bad. "You're not doing what I think is the right thing to do, therefore I'm in the right when I ruin you and make you miserable!" is basically his whole creed. He was going to fight the princesses over it.
9383236 This was pretty clearly River at her worst. In her defense, it was pretty clearly her hitting the breaking point after everything that she's gone through. That's not really an excuse, of course, but I'm inclined to think that we're maybe just seeing her at a bad point, rather than this being who she is all the time...maybe?
9383257 I think there's more nuance to Lex's position than that. Lex's problem with the princesses is that he feels they're negligent with regards to how rulers should act in their subjects' best interests. He's not out to make any one miserable, quite the contrary; he's angry because the princesses aren't doing enough to protect the public good. Likewise, he only punishes ponies when they commit what he considers to be crimes, with virtually every instance of that so far including the offenders preying on others.
River, by contrast, puts people down specifically because it makes her feel big to do so. As far as she's concerned, her success entitles her to being held in high regard by those who haven't achieved what she has, and if they don't give it to her, then she slaps them down to get it.
9383257
Well he is borderline Lawful Evil. Barely just Lawful Neutral because he works for the greater good instead of selfishness.
He is definitely this trope. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WellIntentionedExtremist
9383324 Well, he's definitely a hardcore Lawful Neutral type. But the "Well-Intentioned Extremist" trope is someone who pursues the noble goals through immoral methods. Lex, however, is fully aware that the ends don't justify the means; he fully believes that there are things you don't do, regardless of what you're trying to achieve.
The problem is that those values (like all values) are relative, and I suspect that a significant number of other ponies (such as the princesses) would think that he's already crossed that proverbial line. For example, they'd almost certainly say that cursing other ponies is unconscionable, even if it's done as a punishment for committing heinous crimes. So there's something of a "morals gap" between himself and the princesses, where they each think that they're right and the other party is wrong, and have a system of beliefs that lead to them.
What makes it interesting (at least, I hope it does) is that it's fairly easy to see how both parties are correct. The idea of inflicting punishment (i.e. deliberately lowering someone's quality of life in certain ways, presumably without going so far as to be cruel) in response to crimes, even when the criminal is repentant, isn't one that's hard to understand. But at the same time, the idea that such a thing shouldn't be necessary (or rather, the idea of a society where it isn't necessary, due to the strong moral values of the populace being universal) is also sympathetic. So it's hard to say who's really in the wrong...if anyone even is.
Wont take much for Aria etc to distract Lex enough that he will miss profiling Feather, which would lead to him going through even more self recrimination at the child being affected etc.
9383290
9383257
The thing about Lex's beef with the Princesses is that, given all the evidence, he's pretty much right. I remind everyone that Celestia once used the fate of an entire city's worth of ponies who were already suffering as a test for Twilight? And she even gave her crap intel and crap instructions that if Twi had followed them to the letter would have allowed Sombra to win. And that's just the tip of the iceburg. Just about every major disaster in canon through the end of season 4 can be laid at her hooves, directly or indirectly, and few in the later seasons could be considered partially her fault, if only because she seems to have left Twilight unprepared for anything other than an administrative role.
Now Lex's reign is bound to have problems of its' own, chiefly that non-ponies will probably wind up as second-class citizens at best, but given the Princesses response, or lack there of, to Vanhoover's situation, he's pretty much proved that he deserves a chance. And no, their lack of knowledge about the severity of the situation is no excuse. Given what went down in Manehatten, they really should have assumed the worst and sent in a full relief force.
Yeesh, and here I thought River was already bad enough in previous chapters but to go to this extent? Still, the fact that she recounted her experiences in Las Pegasus up till her arrival in Van Hoover showed how much it had changed her or brought out the worst in here in this case. While it is nothing as harrowing as surviving what the survivors did, it was still unbearable for her and it changed her for the worse.
Still, despite her cruelty towards Feather Duster, River did show qualities that the Night Mare would approve of, dominance over others while recognizing and serving those more powerful than her with intent to gain more power through serving them. She's Night Mare follower material here though whether she'll make the cut or not remains to be seen.
Putting River's traits aside, I think she might have given Feather Duster one of the easier jobs since I doubt Lex would do any of the things River suggested but given Feather Duster's opinion of Lex, she'd undoubtedly be working while looking over her shoulders, worried when the unthinkable happens and if it doesn't, the stress of thinking it's coming will likely affect her severely.
Initially, I had doubts Lex would accept Feather Duster since she works for River and the fact that despite her curse, she's still using her authority to it's fullest extent but the fact that the maid is a pegasus could play a part in Lex not objecting the offer if my thoughts on what Lex saw when he looked at Celestia is correct.
If not, I'm sure the girls, especially Aria, would love to have a servant waiting on them hand and foot and they will likely be instrumental in convincing Feather Duster that Lex isn't that bad. Provided she doesn't also think Nosey and Sonata are also 'monsters' that were turned into ponies too, even if it is true in Sonata's case.
9383612
They might be bad at handling disasters, but the notion that they should abdicate to him because he wrote up what he thinks is a better system of government on paper is kind of insane. And his solution to them not immediately agreeing was going to be to attack them.
Note that so far, he's been handling the disasters in Vanhoover by acts of personal heroism -- the same sort of ad-hoc nonsense that the Princesses rely on. He's yet to even start proving that he can govern.
Even the Nightmare is getting kind of frustrated with his need to do everything personally.
9383693
To be fair, as you kinda noted, Lex has been too busy cleaning up messes to do much governing, and what little he had gotten started kinda got derailed by Xiriel.
so i am thinking Lex needs to add one more curse to River a tell no lie curse, that would be so much fun.
9383612 9383693
The thing is, neither Lex nor the princesses are wrong in their approach to ruling. The princesses seek to rule Equestria peacefully by letting their ponies flourish and grow on their own instead of intervening and treading on their hooves. This involves letting them solve their own problems while giving counsel when asked and only stepping in when absolutely needed. Not the best approach when it comes to us humans but it works for Equestria so the princess likely felt no need for it to change up to now.
Lex's methods are the complete opposite where he intends to set up a system to prevent and contain disasters, prioritizing public safety and function instead of letting the ponies fend for themselves. This involves setting up institutions to control and regulate the system similar to what we do in our own society. However, this will potentially restrict certain freedoms ponies have under the Crown's hooves' off approach but it will be done for their overall benefit, even if it chaffs them for a while.
Neither method is perfect as you noted but both work in spite of their flaws. However, the ponies have lived comfortably with Celestia ruling over them a very long time so Lex's abrasive approach is likely going to cause some controversy in Equestria when(not if) he sets up his system in place so he'll be fighting an uphill battle with setting up his not so little kingdom but hey, he has Sonata and they've made it this far together.
Poor Feather, she should have demanded her salary be quadrupled. And River has really stepped in it now. Almost everyone else knows River has little influence, either because they realize just how little River's prestige is worth in post-apocalyptic Vanhoover, or they were at the mansion and realize River has some sort of really weird tick where she just lives outside on her own lawn. River is quite possibly the last pony in town who thinks River is as powerful as ever.
Does River really believe that Feather Duster would get on Lex's good side one way or another, and then not immediately importune Lex to crush River?
9385306
That's actually a thing? Color me surprised and it's a really cool thing to learn about.
9383493 Well, that's certainly possible. Between Aria's flirtations, Nosey filling him in on what she learned, Sonata's insisting that he reward those foals, and whatever it was he saw when he looked at Princess Celestia, Lex is likely to be rather preoccupied when River gives him his own personal maid.
9383612 You're right to bring up the events of The Crystal Empire (season three, episodes one and two). With the possible exception of the series premiere - since we never quite determined why Princess Celestia vanished when Nightmare Moon returned (though her showing up right when the Mane Six had turned her back into Luna was certainly convenient) - that was the one and only time that the princesses knew about a disaster happening and didn't do their utmost to deal with it. In every other case, they at least tried their best, even if that was quite often ineffectual, belated, or simply ill-conceived.
With regards to Lex's thoughts on non-ponies...he's quite clearly a pony-supremacist, but the story hasn't really touched on why, or how it manifests in a practical sense. That's likely to become more important later on, if for no other reason than we know that Equestria has other sapient quadrupeds who apparently live there, such as cows and donkeys. They don't seem to have any sort of nation or culture of their own, you'll notice, essentially being "permanent guests" in the pony nation. How Lex's government will deal with them remains an open question, one that will be less uncertain once we figure out exactly why he thinks ponies are the master race (though I'm certain I've let that particular line of reasoning slip before in the comments).
9383668 This was, undoubtedly, River at her worst. To be fair, the chapter makes it clear that what we're seeing is her hitting her breaking point. She's suffered several reversals of fortune, and although she's picking herself up by her bootstraps and determined to fix everything, that doesn't change the fact that she hit her limit when Feather Duster refused her. That isn't an excuse, of course; River made it plain here that she feels an extreme sense of entitlement. She achieved a great deal over the course of her life, and she expects to be deferred to by those who haven't.
This, as you noted, is characteristic of the Night Mare. That said, I remain unconvinced that the Night Mare would necessarily utilize some sort of "pyramid of oppression," where individuals in her religion act as masters to those below them while also being treated like slaves by those above them. The problem, as I see it, is that the Night Mare (based on my reading of her in the Ponyfinder materials) wants to encourage individuals to develop their own strength, which runs counter to them being dominated by others. It's paradoxical in nature: the goddess of oppression should want to oppress everyone, but at the same time she wants to encourage others to be strong and self-reliant.
The way I see it, the resolution for this is that the Night Mare encourages what we'd think of as Nietzschean philosophy, particularly with regards to master-slave morality. In that way, she's essentially pushing one big social experiment to try and separate the weak from the strong. Those who adopt a role in life where they submit themselves to the will of another are slaves (whether they're actually, legally owned by someone else or not), whereas the few who have the strength to bear the burdens of leadership are the masters. Her religion is one big campaign to try and get everyone in their "proper" place, with the masters leading pony society and the slaves dutifully playing support roles. Such a thing, she thinks, is what will allow the pony race to survive and thrive into the future.
Lex's own philosophy, by contrast, has a lot of overlap with these, even if there are still important areas of difference.
River, as we see her here, is likely to be one of the slave caste who wishes she could be a master. But we already know she's not; for all her determination, her ultimate plan is to submit to Lex as thoroughly as she can in the hope that he'll reward her with everything she wants. She might still be oppressing Feather Duster, but that's just her jockeying for position among those who are ultimately destined to serve. Slaves that wrangle other slaves are still slaves.
Of course, the irony in all of this is that, as you noted, Lex would never abuse Feather Duster in the way that both River and now Feather Duster herself seem to think he will. Quite the contrary, I'm not certain he'd want a maid at all...though I suspect that you're right in that the girls might want one. Of course, there's not exactly a lot for her to do at the moment, but that will likely change going forward.
9383693 You've made several salient points here, so I'd like to go ahead and respond to each of them in turn.
Is it, though? If you come up with a system of governance that you genuinely believe is better, and you're willing to grant that the head(s) of the current system aren't completely corrupt, isn't openly presenting it to them the smart - as well as moral - thing to do? At worst, this could be called arrogant on Lex's part, because he couldn't imagine why they wouldn't listen to what he had to say and immediately reply with "you're right, you're clearly more suited to rule than we are. We'll step down in your favor immediately."
Again, as opposed to what other course of action? Remember, he'd gone to great lengths to outline why a large-scale government that proactively tried to solve problems, prevent disasters, and encourage improvements to the fabric of society was a good thing (while making it plain that the princesses had been negligent for not having done that). Their reply wasn't so much a rebuttal as it was a dismissal, saying that their way of doing things wasn't bad like Lex thought it was. That was it. At that point, rebellion was the only option left, because the extant government had just refused to do what he'd quite clearly outlined was in everypony's benefit. If not rebelling, what should he have done?
Strictly speaking, disaster relief is governing. Lex has already begun to manage the current group of survivors in terms of securing provisions, medical supplies, and clean-up (e.g. the dead bodies of the ghouls), as well as order more rain clouds for the region and made sure that free medical care is available to whomever needs it, and even started to plan for long-term issues like securing funding to rebuild the city. Not to mention overseeing criminal justice and trying to restart the flow of commerce (where food is concerned). All of that falls under the purview of governance.
Now, he hasn't been able to do more, despite wanting to, but that's out of his control due to numerous enemies being present and other circumstances that needed to be addressed (e.g. Aria's transformation).
True, and that's one of Lex's major failings. Ultimately, any government needs infrastructure in order to be a government. Unless you have a system of simply asking people to do what you want and they agree more often than not - along with simply trying to live as an example of your beliefs in the hope that everyone will follow your lead (and having them actually do it - then any government is going to need infrastructure in order to actually be a government. Ironically, the princesses seem intent on going about it via asking and serving as examples, and the fact that such a thing works (as much as it does) is a testament to the power of friendship and harmony. But it's not the same as actual leadership, or governance, and that's driving Lex crazy.
That said, he can create all the infrastructure he likes on paper, but at the end of the day he's going to need to actually populate it for it to be anything other than an idea of his. That's the hard part (and the part that the Night Mare was ultimately getting impatient about), since he's not good at understanding other people, let alone trusting them to execute the goals he sets. Fortunately, he has a few more people around him now who might be able to help...
9384645 The thing about a curse of honesty is that there's actually a fairly high degree of plasticity as to what constitutes "truth." There's a great example of this in one of the earlier Drizzt D'Urden books, where Jarlaxle is speaking to one of the higher-ranking drow priestesses. He knows she has a discern lies spell active, and he gleefully dances around it by saying half-truths and technicalities and other evasions, letting her twist things without so much as a magical countermeasure. River strikes me as being able to do that also; just look at how, when she spoke to Princess Celestia, she turned her curse into a point of pride with a small fib.
9385681 It's true that River's influence is largely based on Vanhoover's socio-economic structure, a structure which no longer exists. However, the thing to remember is that the survivors of the disaster were also invested in that structure. They might not have had everything that River did, but they certainly had more than they do now. Which means, in other words, that they want that structure back. It's a certainty that if you asked any of them if they could go back to their pre-disaster lives, they'd all say "yes!" in a heartbeat...even if that meant going back to a life where River Bank was one of the most powerful ponies in town.
What that means is continuing to acknowledge River's influence is a means of preserving a part of Vanhoover; more than that, it functions as an implicit statement of hope that everything that was lost could be regained. The ponies in the camp aren't treating the old order as if it was swept away because they want that order back...or at least as much of it as they can, since I suspect that it's starting to become clear to them that Lex is going to center things around himself now. Still, I can see them treating River like she's still a big shot because that's how things were, and letting go of that means letting go of a piece of a past they desperately want back...even if they don't consciously understand any of that.