Chapter 6: Brutality and Civility

Gryphondale, the single largest city that isn't a ruin this side of Equestria. You had to hand it to them it was a bustling city full of ponies. The residents lived safe if brutal lives. The men were trained as legionaries from childhood and the women were property even if they were free ponies they had little to no standing in Legion society. Artemis and Aroma walked down a road approaching the city. Many slaves toiled in the farmlands outside harvesting the crop while their masters watched.

"How are they doing that?" Aroma asked? "Farming, I mean."

"Well, I'm no agriculture expert but I heard they blasted away the topsoil and were able to reliably grow new crops." Artemis answered.

"New crops?"

"Y'know like mutfruit, maize, a-rad flowers. Meat is still in their diet to."

"What's a a-rad flower?" Aroma was confused.

"I couldn't tell you exactly but it's like a post-war plant that naturally reduces radiation in your body. Mixed with other herbs they grow it can make a healing potion, it's not as effective as radaway or pre-war medicine though."

"Then why don't they use pre war medicine?" Aroma asked bemused.

"Think about it. It's the one thing about the Legion I respect, they're self reliant. They are building a new civilization with the resources they have and they're doing well. They might brutal killers but these are brutal times." Artemis said begrudgingly.

Aroma nodded taking what Artemis had said into consideration then something caught her eye and a disturbed look crossed her face.

As the road neared Gryphondale pikes with the impaled heads of ponies decorated the street in a twisted manner. Ponies hung from nooses while flies swarmed the corpses and then Aroma saw the Legion specialty. Crucifixion.

"Celestia above....." Aroma eeked.

The blue stallion on the cross looked severely beaten before being tied up. "Raider" was written on a wooden plank that was nailed to his chest. By the looks of his eyes and mouth he had been up there for days before dying. The stallion stirred weakly.

"Luna! He's still alive." Aroma exclaimed. She lifted a bottle of water and tried to give it to him but Artemis quickly grabbed her hoof.

"Don't." Artemis hissed.

"We have to help him!" Aroma cried.

"If we help him, they'll slap us to cross to!"

"But, but how can we help him then?" Aroma asked.

We can't. Besides, after being up that long. Taking him down would kill him."

She could tell Aroma was not completely satisfied with that at all. Artemis began walking to the city gate Aroma took one last glance at the raider then sped off to Artemis.

"Why does the Legion do that?" She asked disgusted.

"It instils fear." Artemis answered. More impaled heads and crosses began to appear the closer they got to the city wall.

"Stop right there!" A gate guard ordered in a commanding voice. He had the typical legionnaire repertoire, a iron cuirass with a red undershirt on.

"State your business!" He barked and legionaries on the wall watched.

"We're just passing through to buy some supplies and be on our way." Artemis told him. Aroma was to intimidated to speak.

"Relinquish your weapons and proceed in gate." He ordered.

The other legionnaires with him walked over and searched Artemis and Aroma. Relieving them of their weapons the gate opened and they walked in.

"You will receive your armaments upon your leaving." Then the doors closed abruptly.

Gryphondale was bustling inside the gate. Ponies and griffons went about their business. Mothers herded their foals, soldiers were walking through the crowds, slaves struggled to carry absurd amounts of baggage. There, at the center of the city was Citadel Spire a tall tower from before the war that had been repurposed as the Legion's base of operations. You could see were they built on to the tower adding barracks, stairs, other buildings and even a dock for griffon legionnaires. She had to admit the frankenstein tower looked odd with all the additions that had been built on to it but it also made a symbol of the Legion's terrifying presence.

"What do we do now?" Aroma asked, the city was breathtaking to her.

Artemis began to think of a plan while. She didn't want to stay here to long. The longer they stayed the higher their chance of getting in trouble with the Legion became. The best plan was to find a caravan and get back on the road and she also wanted to see someone. Aroma felt her stomach rumble.

"How about we get some food first before we do anything." She suggested.

Artemis nodded in aggreance. The duo set out to find some food. Gryphondale didn't have restaurants or diners like she was used to. The Legion had a long house with bedraggled mares preparing food and serving it to anyone who paid.

"I'd like a squirrel with a sparkle cola please."' Aroma asked nicely. The mares looked to each other worried.

"W, we don't have sparkle cola. We have water." She replied expecting retribution.

"Oh, that's okay." Aroma answered nonchalantly and accepted the water.

They proceeded down the line until they came to a black stallion that wore Legion armor and dark goggles.

"22 dinar." He said.

"Huh?" Aroma replied.

"Hold on Aroma I got this." Artemis handed the stallion two gold coins and two brown coins."

"Thank you, move along."

~As they ate.~

"Say. What was that dinar thing." Aroma asked with food in her mouth.

Artemis put down her food and pulled out two bottle caps and one brown denarius. "It's Legion economics, they mint their own money. One brown denarius is worth two caps." Artemis explained.

"But, why and how do they mint money?" She asked. Artemis sat back and held the caps and denarius in between her talons.

"They mint it with forges they built. They'll melt down scrap metal or mine for ore and smelt it. They did this because it gives the Legion more fiscal power, traders in this area would prefer dinar to caps because they're worth more therefore merchants become embedded with the Legion. A brown denarius is worth two caps, a silver denarius is worth 5 caps and a gold denarius is worth 10. Hence why I gave him two gold dinar and two brown. Or I could have gave him 44 caps. Thus dinar are more convenient." Artemis explained then took a breath.

"Anymore questions?" She added.

"No, I think you got it." Aroma chuckled.

Artemis and Aroma finished their meals and disposed of their refuse. You couldn't wantonly abandon your garbage, not here. This place was strict. You ran the risk of getting twenty lashes tied to a post if you littered. There were no empty sparkle cola bottles laying about. The brutality of this civilization was hard to bare but it was safe and stable but damn.

"Aroma I want you to wait in this area. Try not to stand still or the guards will become suspicious and give you a reason to move. Just stay in this vicinity, I need to go see someone." Artemis instructed her and gave her some silver dinar.

"Do some shopping, everypony likes to shop right?" Artemis added.

Aroma smiled and trotted off. Leaving Artemis to her business. She hovered into the city as she passed a slave collapsed from exhaustion and was viciously beaten by legionnaires. She had to ignore it, everyone had to. She hovered around the city watching the ponies, little colts in child-sized armor training as they sparred with one another as their instructors taught. Artemis hovered towards the cropping land,  fields of crops behind the city wall that gave Gryphondale the, majority of their food. Rain barrels and drainage ducts sat on the end of the farmland. Flooding was a deadly combatant Gryphondale faced every time it rained being a walled city and all. Drainage tunnels funneled rainwater out of the city and unicorns stood ready to cast a shield over the crops. One crop failure and the entire structure could collapse. She walked to the animal pens and found the elderly griffon feeding the brahmin.

"Mom...."

The elderly griffon turned. Her expression was happy but life had not been kind to her. "Artemis..." She uttered and wrapped her in a hug. "Artie how have you been?" She asked sweetly.

The hug concluded and her mother returned to work she still wanted hold a conversation but feared reprisal from the legionnaires. Artemis's mother was a slave. and had been since she was a little girl. She was enslaved with the Legion's rise to power on the east coast. She spent the next six years being married off from officer to officer. Each officer disowning her after she failed to bare children. Until one officer got her pregnant. She laid an egg but when it hatched and out came a girl, Artemis. Her husband didn't want a daughter he wanted a son, a warrior. He threatened to murder baby Artemis by throwing her off a cliff but in the dead of night she set Artemis in a basket and set her out on the drainage duct to leave the city and have a chance at life. Years later Artemis would return to Gryphondale and find her mother. No one seemed to recognize her but some older legionnaires did take second glances, Artemis would find out she resembled her father in many ways. Most prominently the jet black fur of her body, snow white head, and her fiery temper.

"How has it been mom?" Artemis said softly. She knew being a Legion slave wasn't pretty but it always came out in conversations.

"It's tough, really bad." She told her daughter. "But seeing you become so strong and free makes it all okay."

Artemis held her emotions down. "I..I can get you out of here. We can leave together."

Her mother stop her toiling and shrugged hopelessly. "I can't Artemis. I'm sorry. I couldn't survive out there, I've been here to long. It's all I know." She said stoically.

Artemis felt her sadness turn to anger. But it was a silent anger, one she couldn't express. Not here, not now.

"I....I.." Artemis's sentence died.

Her mother gave a smile that almost masked her sadness and put a hand on her shoulder. It felt good, that special feeling of a mother's touch. So gentle and caring but Artemis still felt angry.

"Please dear, don't worry about me. You are my freedom." She smiled so gently Artemis wanted to cry..... or brutally murder the first legionnaire she came across.

"You're going to do something amazing, I can see it now." Her mother said.

Artemis's beak quivered and rose into a small smile. She opened her mouth to say something but suddenly a voice yelled from a watchtower.

"Hey! Stay away from the slaves, unless you're looking for a permanent occupation." He threatened. Artemis turned to unleash her rage but her mother stopped her.

"Just go sweetie. I love you." She said gently.

Her anger subsided at the sight of her mother. Artemis flapped her wings and hovered away.

Artemis left the fields she felt awful leaving her mother. Just like she had so many times before. Even though her mother always told her she loved her Artemis couldn't help but feel like she was a reminder of a bad part of her life. She so closely resembled her father that it was probably like seeing her dead husband. She discovered that her father was a cruel griffon that reveled in the pain he caused others, evil to the core. He abandoned her mother after she was bor-! Artemis fell, she bumped into someone.

"Watch it lady." Bellowed a large griffon with cornflower blue feathers and a white head with his feathers spiked back.

"Why not you?" Artemis retorted.

The griffon scowled and arched his wings. "A woman.... is talking back to me? You'd best beat it before I cut your tongue out."

Artemis's face reddened with fury, she barred her teeth and clenched her talons. She could take him right now. A slash to the throat and he wouldn't survive. But neither would she, she'd be crucified by the morning. Artemis released a loud roar and flew away in a fit of anger. It's surprising she didn't burst into flames. She was so angry at the Legion, for her mother, the injustice, inequality the overkill and violence.

Finally Artemis landed and now her white hot fury had cooled to a deep cold sadness. She sat on the ground, her dead rage turned into tears. She sobbed in the dark of night on a derelict street and a thunderstorm rumbled in the distance. A trio of tears ran down her beak and dripped off. Then she felt someone at her side, she lowered hands and saw Aroma looking up to her.

"Why are you crying?" She asked with a worried expression.

Artemis wiped her tears away and took a breath.

"Just...this place, all it's evils, and we can't do anything to stop it." Artemis confessed.

Aroma looked and gave her a hug.

"Are you sure you don't want to tell me? I'm your friend now and if you're hurting I want to be able to be by you, to cry with you." Aroma told her, she seemed like she didn't find the words she wanted but Artemis got the message, she got it and smiled sadly.

"It's my mom, she's been a slave here for most of her life. She gave me freedom and my mother will die a slave. I can't free her, I can't stand up for what's right, this oppression. It, it isn't right." Artemis admitted and hung her head, tears rising in her eyes.

Aroma lowered her head as well feeling Artemis's pain.

"I'm, I'm sorry Artemis. That's not right. But if this experiment is teaching me anything, it's that no matter what this world throws at you....you can always go to your friends." Aroma said calmingly.

Artemis smiled with a tear in her eye.

"But what do you do when there doesn't seem to be a way out?" Artemis asked masking a sob. Aroma looked to her and smiled.

"That's when I start praying you'll drag me out of the fire." She said hopefully.

Artemis wiped the final tears from her face and gave a small grin that echoed her revived spirits.

"Thanks.....pal." Artemis wrapped Aroma in a big hug. Next Chapter: Chapter 7 - Time to Leave Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 55 Minutes