The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Speaker came to, feeling himself being dragged across somewhat smooth stone. His uniform was in taters, and his head hurt. Looking around in the darkness, Speaker couldn’t see much at all – and his ears were still ringing from… right, he had gotten knocked out – and his forehooves were in chains, so he was also captured. Fun.

While not able to see, then once his ears stopped ringing Speaker was able to make out that someone were dragging him along the ground, pulling in the chain in his forehooves were bound up in. His captors weren’t responding to him trying to talk either – and worst of all, then something magical about his chains prevented him from using any kind of charms what so ever. He couldn’t even light up his caste mark to illuminate his surroundings!

Trying to recall the fight, Speaker noted that it had been far too brief: At first there had only been three abyssal, but those three were not as stupid as the ghosts that team Jade Mole had encountered previously. One of the abyssal had lit off a signal flare, and moments later about two dozen other abyssal showed up in full battle regalia – Speaker had no clue if the rest of his team were alive or not.

Getting up on his hindlegs so he wasn’t dragged along the ground made things a little easier – and the higher vantage point revealed a pale green light at the end of whatever tunnel they were moving through. Closer to the light it became obvious that the beings pulling his chains along were zombies – and not the usual scraggly rotting ones: These things were glistened in the light with embalming fluid, and looked as if the muscles of three ponies had been grafted onto a fourth – no wonder that he couldn’t pull back against the two.

As the three came out of the tunnel, into the light, Speaker found himself in the grand throne room of a Deathlord. Well, he couldn’t be quite sure that it was a Deathlord, but so far Speaker had yet to meet an Abyssal who styled him or herself as a king. Oh and the chains around his forehooves – they looked like a nasty mix of orichalcum and soulsteel – no wonder they were able to prevent him from using charms.

Grand tapestries on rawhide, covered in images of maps and schematics, wrought through artistic branding that looked to have been made while the beasts that the leather was from were still alive, covered the walls – and rows upon rows of ghosts in chains beat drums with their spectral hooves along the walls, making for a rhythmic beat that mixed eerily well with the jingling of their chains. Down the middle was a large table of thick burgundy wood, upon which was a large map was spread out and small ghostly ‘things’ tumbled about, evidently ghosts that had been forcibly reshaped and disfigured into sentient markers representing various military forces and assets – this was here they were coordinating and planning the defense of the whole place!

At the end of the table, which was lined with abyssals and ghostly advicors – all of which looked ready to go in battle – was the throne. Oh what a throne it was: Simple yet elegant, it seemed to be made of a single large bone, somehow sculpted like clay, to seat the grotesque creature that sat upon it.

The creature, evidently half-way through eating some hapless ghost slave – holding the back half of the ectoplasm-oozing remains in a giant cracked hoof, bellowed a maniacal but brief laugh as Speaker came into view: “Finally – the architect brought before us! Bring him here”
The voice the thing was guttural, deep, as if constantly half-choking – and Speaker’s near-supernatural medical knowledge also picked out what sounded like partially lacerated vocal cords. In short this being just sounded wrong.

The two muscle-zombies, their hooves looking tiny compared to their grotesquely oversized limbs – completely covered in muscle grafts, began to pull once more and brought Speaker past the long war-map and the abyssal generals, ghostly advisors and ghost slave servants lining it. They all remained silent, but threw poisonous glares at Speaker the whole time.

At the throne, Speaker shot the Deathlord a nasty glare: “The Barbate Arbiter, I take it”

The ghost, swollen like a over-ripe moldy grey-green tomato – yet with multiple lacerations, through which gore, pus and bits of atrophied organs hung and oozed – gave Speaker a nauseating grin: The front of the Barbate Arbiter’s face was devoid of flesh, and his teeth were short irregular spikes or nails of black iron pounded into where normal teeth might once have been. Where the pale green moldy flesh, devoid of any remnant of a coat, began again around his face were random clumps of unkempt and tattered white hair, both as beard and as mane, though the bloated mass of the rest of his body nearly seemed to swallow his whole head – to the point that there were flabs of torn flesh hanging over empty dark eye-sockets that just seemed to eat light.

Taking this as a confirmation of the Deathlord’s identity, Speaker pondered what in Creation he could do. No charms, including the charms that would call Gift or Homage from elsewhere, and without knowing exactly where this throne room was within the manse… what to do?
The Arbiter leaned down towards Speaker, revealing strange and just wrong rounded nodules of bone sticking out from his spine through his back, reaching out with a forelimb that just… oh gods what was that thing? Through the Arbiter’s right shoulder was a massive black iron spike, and where there should be limb going down on one’s elbow there were just steel bands around a jagged bone-stump, holding the remaining skin tight in place. For an ‘elbow’ there was a floating purple crystal shrouded in necrotic essence, linking to a floating severed hoof which was also just connected to a bit of shattered bone, with bands of steel holding withered flesh tight: “I have such delights planned for…”

A violent tremor shook the entire throne room. Several followed in rapid succession, shaking everything vigorously. The chandeliers with candles that burned with a clear and surprisingly bright green flame shook to the point that wax dripped down on the war map and the tiny shrunken ghost figures down on the map, which had to dodge and roll to avoid the hot wax. The few struck shrieked with tiny shrill voices and rolled around in agony while the generals and ghost advisors laughed, yet shared many a nervous glare – but none dared to flee for cover while in the presence of a Deathlord.

It occurred to Speaker that the tremors were from the bombardment – this meant that the miasma shield was still down. It also meant that he was still in the manse somewhere.

Suddenly two of the mini-ghosts on the map screamed and then popped into black puffs of smoke. The Barbate Arbiter quickly moved his gaze up to the map, floating past Speaker in such a way that it became disgustingly obvious that there was no bottom half of the Deathlord: He was a bloated chest, shoulders, a pair of hooves and a head – nothing else.

“That was the bonestriders at the gate – give me a direct feed!” The Arbiter Bellowed.

With an evidently well-drilled series of moves, one of the ghostly advisors seized a ghost slave who cried out pitifully. One of the abyssals, using a thin and quite deadly looking soulsteel daiklaive, severed the ghost’s head – which was then stuffed into a small lift, which instantly began to move up, the slot in the wall where the lift was closing up as it moved up.

The rest of the ghost was then flayed, and its semi-transparent hide was floated up into the air above the war map: A necromantic spell cast on it displayed what the head saw and vibrated to give off the sound that the head heard.

The ghost-head managed to transmit for roughly one second, its final image being that of a warstrider-sized Shimmer in her beastpony form clawing at the head with moonsilver-scythe-like talons. The building shook once more right after that.

This made Speaker wonder exactly where this throne room was. Underground seemed like an obvious choice – but Sullen Hoof had said that none of the Deathlords build their lairs underground in the underworld, to avoid the effects of being within the labyrinth. But… Deep Rot was built like a giant hole in the ground going all the way down to the deepest points of the labyrinth. Was this throne room insulated somehow?
But that would mean that Shimmer was on the ground in the manse – and that wasn’t part of the battle-plan – she was supposed to screen the skyships that were to go through the hole in the shield and bombard Deep Rot directly. So why was she on the ground?

The generals and the Arbiter spoke in a strange tongue, it sounding like orders were being given. A third of the abyssals picked up their weapons and left through various doors to the side – a few even left via a big hatch in the floor.

“Now that we have dealt with that… I have a whole funhouse of horrors lined up for you – such delights to show you – and you won’t even need eyes to see them” the Barbate Arbiter declared with just barely suppressed jittery sadistic glee, swiveling around to face Speaker.

Taking a step back away from the Deathlord, Speaker looked around desperately. The Deathlord dragged his giant head-sized hooves along the floor, the cracked hooves rasping along the ever so slightly rough stone floor while the Arbiter giggled to himself: “I have waited for so long for this… and now a the hour of my triumph you deliver yourself to me”

“What are you talking about?” Speaker shot back – trying to bide his time, looking for something to help him, though with the magical shackles his options were quite limited.

Scooping Speaker up in one of his cracked hooves, the Arbiter brought the Solar pony up before him. Stroking his beard with his other hoof he went: “Yes… you even got the beard – Your Lunar mate’s work, right?”

To Speaker it was as if the Arbiter was trying to seduce him… or sweet talk him… or perhaps it was to analyze his response to these creepy statements? Either way Speaker could feel the Deathlord’s mental tendrils boring into his mind – it was not a pleasant feeling. The wet feeling by his nose signaled the start of a nosebleed.

The dark pits of the Barbate Arbiter’s empty eye sockets were haunting – like gazing into oblivion. It was difficult to resist – the urge to obey, to concede to… Speaker didn’t even really know what the Deathlord wanted of him, yet he felt the seductive pull to simply acquiesce!

Suddenly a series of violent tremors shook the throne room again – the ghostly servants huddled in the corners and under the grand table, while the ghostly advisors stood almost mindlessly still, stoic to a fault – or perhaps they were under a spell? Either way the walls began to crack, and Speaker felt the the Deathlord’s pull lessen on him.

Slamming a giant hoof the table, the Deathlord brought up another necromantic spell that showed a different view of outside. Speaker smiled as he saw the Skywolf, the giant blue jade-steel skyship in the shape of an enormous orca arc about the place, inside the shattered remains of the miasma dome. About it flittered flying ghosts and other airbone creations lashed together of bone and thin fleshy membranes, but they were being shot out of the sky at a prodigious rate. Other skyships could also be seen, trading shots with bonestriders on the ground firing great sharpened poles tipped with soulsteel like arrows from warstrider-sized bows.

It struck Speaker that the viewpoint that this ghostly vision was coming from was very high up in the air – around the same height as the Skywolf, its thick jade armor plating easily repelling all but the most well-aimed artillery fire from the ground.

Hold on – Heath Rose had said that Deep Rot had a large array built above the central pit. When they had all arrived via skyship there had been nothing above the central pit of Deep Rot… or was there?

While still held tight in a hoof the size of a small pony, Speaker squirmed to look around and observe the great hall he was in via essence sight. Oh yes… the place was part of the manse alright, and all the essence flows passing through conduits in the walls were going up to the ceiling, concentrating above the largest chandelier in the room… a chandelier with a large yellow glowstone that almost looked like a small sun. What delightfully not subtle symbolism.

The Barbate Arbiter was at this point fully engaged in directing the battle, speaking in that dark tongue to the vision projected before him – the flying ghosts and necromantic constructs seemed to obey his commands just by him talking to them in the vision.

With this improvement in defense coordination, Speaker saw how the ghosts and flying construct clustered around the Skywolf’s ‘flippers’ and other joints, hindering its ability to move and dodge artillery fire – that was bad, really bad, and so speaker struggled mightily once more, managing to wiggle a hoof free!

Reaching for Gift, the weapon appeared by his hoof from elsewhere, and with a series of rapid and forceful blows just as the weapon’s blades spun up, did Speaker manage to free himself by cutting at the hoof that held him.

Snarling in pain, the Arbiter threw a furious glare at Speaker – who had already dropped into the martial stance of his Thousand Wounds Gear style, Gift ready to strike.

The Deathlord’s dark gaze hardened, the fetid folds of flesh around his face piling into furious wrinkles – like a pug who’s face had been ripped off: “That weapon – that is mine! Seize it!”

From the shadows a deathknight cloaked in green leapt, the white mask that covered its face somehow staying in place without any visible straps - and the hollow eye holes of the mask betraying the morbid fact that the abyssal’s skull had been cut almost in half, leaving it with grey matter exposed and no lower jaw at all. This was a deathknight in the service the Arbiter, not a loaner from one of the other Deathlords like all the ones at the table.

With a large soulsteel guan dao, the abyssal struck hard at Speaker – who despite parrying the blow with Gift found himself forced to the ground simply by the might of the blow.

“Get me that weapon! It is mine!” the Deathlord howled once more, completely ignoring the battle on display above the table, the ghosts and constructs losing tactical coordination almost instantly as they just hovered in the air, awaiting orders – the Lookshyan gunners on the Skywolf and the other skyships shooting many of them out of the sky effortlessly.

Throwing Gift at his foe, the abyssal twirled its polearm and tangled Gift expertly in the rings on the backside of the guan dao before flinging Gift over to the Deathlord – but Speaker reached out with his essence and recalled Gift before the Barbate Arbiter could grab it. With a frustrated scowl the Arbiter cried out: “Kill him! I’ll have a monstrance ready for his body”

While he didn’t know what a monstrance was – then Speaker had no plans on letting the Arbiter do anything to his body. Being able to move fully, Speaker opted not to stay and fight, but to try to get away: Using his jumping charm to gain some distance, and Gift to harry the abyssal in a way that prevent giving immediate chase without opening one-self up to attack, Speaker leapt high over the Abyssal and the Arbiter, towards the only open door leading out of the war room – the same door he had come in via.

As he arched over the Arbiter, he saw that the Deathlord had begun casting some kind of necromantic spell – probably not a good thing to be around for when it was done – but that was when Gift came zipping back to him, its high-pitched internal essence engine puffing out a faint trail of steam and golden sparkles… which meant that Gift wasn’t messing with the Abyssal.

Looking down at where he was looking to land – the far end of the large table – Speaker saw, much to his own chagrin, that the Abyssal was simply standing there, guan dao simply pointed at him, waiting for Speaker to fall down and skewer himself on the large soulsteel polearm.

The sound was horrible. Having used his balancing charm to making himself spin on his way down, the guan dao cut at Speaker’s shield charm with an absolutely horrible screeching sound – like a thousand iron nails on just as many chalk boards. It was as if the edge of the guan dao was ripping at the very essence of the shield around Speaker with tiny claws and hooks.

The wet feeling in Speaker’s ears and the slight dulling of the noise hinted of bleeding, as he twisted aside from the polearm and stuck the landing thanks again to his balancing charm.

Trying to run past the cloaked deathknight, Speaker quickly found himself tangled in rusty hooked chains that had shot out from the cloak… indeed, the cloak had been ripped away from the chain-shots, exposing the abyssal’s dark scalemail and thick green plate armor underneath, and a green hood, for of course the hood hadn’t been part of the cloak.

…well, with a head so disfigured and hideous, who would want to show that anyway?

Trapped by the chains, Speaker felt the abyssal beginning to ‘reel him in’ – not that it stopped him from using Gift, but that soulsteel scale-mail was more than what Gift could punch through any time soon, and Speaker didn’t have a steady enough footing to throw Gift any better right now.
It was then that – once more – the whole room shook. This time it shook very briefly, for then one of the walls exploded inwards, a thoroughly wrecked bone-strider coming through and falling over on its side amidst the rubble. A stream of noise and sound from the outside coursed in – the sound of battle, of essence canons blasting left and right, and of ghosts and undead things moaning and shrieking.

…and then Shimmer flew in, her warstrider-sized warform effortlessly pushing aside boulders and broken timber-bones. Her three eyes were ablaze with silvery light, and her bone-armor was scorched and cracked in many places, though she didn’t seem to be bleeding at the moment.

“Shimmer!” Speaker cried out – but just as Shimmer turned and was about to launch herself at Speaker and his foe did the Arbiter release his spell at Shimmer… or not – Speaker didn’t recall much about sorcery, but he could recognize a broken and miscast spell well enough to recognize one when he saw one, but then again miscast sorcery was often incredibly dangerous, and the torrent of necrotic essence struck Shimmer like obsidian lightning, dropping the massive Lunar instantly.

Seeing the smoldering Lunar tumble and fall right before him, her bone armor shattered where she had been struck – leaving a massive gaping wound – Speaker found himself at a loss for words… for he knew quite well how tough and powerful Shimmer was when in that form, and to drop her like that…

“You never could protect the mares you use to fight your battles” the abyssal chided Speaker, its voice distinctly male, and unmistakably similar to the Bodhisatva’s old voice: It sounded very much as if it spoke from beyond the grave.

Wait – insult or not, what in heaven’s name was this Abyssal even talking about? Was this some weird attempt at mind-games?

Reeling Speaker in and pressing the Solar up against Shimmer’s body – rubbing him into her bloody wounds – the Abyssal continued: “You always send them to fight your battles for you- This shouldn’t surprise you. First Ruby, now this one – for a healer, you are quite adept at making others die for you”

Ok now that… that, the comment about Ruby… how could this Abyssal have known this? Had Ruby’s ghost been under some kind of surveillance? Was that how team Jade Mole had been found? Still, if this Abyssal wanted to play the insult game…

“Oh sure – how about you throw shade at the realm or the Mouth of peace? They’re the true experts when it comes to getting innocent ponies to march to their death” Speaker replied, taking some measure of solace in the expectation that Shimmer had hopefully pulled the same stunt as when she had been bisected by the Bodhisattva, which would explain why she looked dead but… hopefully… wasn’t.

In retrospect Speaker figured that he should probably have insulted the deathlords instead – with their use of ghost slaves and whatnot – but luckily the Abyssal really seemed to get pissed at the mention of the Mouth of peace, grabbing Speaker hard and throwing him to the floor with an angry roar.

The Barbate Arbiter laughed: “Oh he got you there… haha”

It was a malignant laugh – a cruel laugh, obviously hinting to Speaker that he had struck a nerve with the Abyssal. In that moment, as the Abyssal turned to give his master a… masked look? Speaker managed to twist himself around enough to get a good look of the chains holding him, which allowed him to use his disassembly charm to dissolve them into rusty vapors.

Free once more, Speaker leapt towards the giant hole in the wall. It pained him somewhat to leave Shimmer behind, but for the moment he had way more important things to do – he knew that this is what she would have wanted; Creation needed to be saved first, so no sense in getting captured again!

The Abyssal gave chase, shouting: “You’re not getting away this time! I almost had you before, you’re not getting out of this alive!”

The ‘outside’ of the war room was…. Well it wasn’t. Looking into the hole showed the war room and the coming Abyssal, but everything around that… wasn’t? And yet Speaker stood on that nothing, and it was as firm as the rock that made up the floor in the war room. Oh yes, the war room had been part of a veiled structure floating above – which of course also meant that Speaker couldn’t see the edge of the structure, and this didn’t look like a place that did much in railings.

A skyship zipped by, the marines on it looking rather perplexed the hole in nothing and Speaker standing at its edge – but none of that really had time to matter, as the Abyssal tackled Speaker and they both fell off the structure…

Falling, Speaker pushed the Abyssal away from himself, righting himself via his balance charm.

The Abyssal didn’t take kindly to this, flinging more rusty spine-chains at Speaker in attempts to catch him – but Speaker used Gift to deftly parry the incoming hooks. This only further angered the Abyssal: “You’re not getting away this time! I will be the one who kills you now!”

This struck Speaker as really odd – not just the ravings of a lunatic Abyssal – but… this pony clearly had some of… wait… he had mentioned Ruby as well? Could it be?

“Morning Dew?” Speaker shouted, the sounds coming from nearby Skyships battling flying ghosts and firing at the ground making for a lot of background noise.

For a brief moment the Abyssal seemed to hesitate – and in that moment of opportunity Speaker flung Gift at the Abyssal, striking and shattering the ivory mask that covered the Deathknight’s face. As the mask shards fell away from the onrushing air, the deaknight’s mutilated face, or what was left of it, was revealed.

Truly, it was as if a pony’s head had been placed on a chopping block and only the front third had been chopped off – it was disgusting in so many ways, and wrong in even more ways.

“Seriously, is that you Morning Dew?” Speaker asked again – both out of curiosity, but also… morbid curiosity? How could a unicorn become an Abyssal? Was that even possible?

These thoughts on Morning Dew – it made the changes, disfigurations and amputations done on the Abyssal all the more obvious: His tail, it had been removed… it was a strange pulsing plume of blood spilling from his rear, in a macabre display that now flailed in the wind and rained blood everywhere.

How on earth could a priest agree to be desecrated in such a way?

Distracted and perplexed by these thoughts, Speaker found himself on the defensive. The Abyssal was fighting a lot better than he had any right to, considering that they were both falling at terminal velocity.

Now, one of the problems with falling is that you tend to fall in a single straight line – and unless you can fly, then maneuvering once falling is not very easy. This makes you a very easy target, especially if being attacked by someone with a massive guan dao which has a really long reach – and while Speaker’s shield charms were able to shrug off some of the blows, then the abyssal was merciless, and managed to cut through the essence shield despite that with multiple blows, cutting Speaker over the chest and sides.

With his anesthetic charm then anything short of a fatal would didn’t really phase Speaker – and his bravery charm ensured that he didn’t fear death, or the fact that he was falling, or his foe who was trying to kill him – but still, the Solar was more than cognizant that if he didn’t come up with some kind of solution then he would likely go splat. To make it even worse, then Speaker could also feel that with every forceful caress of the razor edge of the goan do he was drained ever so slightly of his essence…

Throwing Gift, not to hit the abyssal, but to strike himself – to propel him away from his assailant – Speaker looked down at the ground. Soulsteel spires, dark stone obelisks and minor structures of pale wood – nothing that looked very nice to land on.

“Don’t you dare try to run away! It is my turn to gut you like a fish!” the deathknight howled.

Recalling the exact death of Morning Dew, that he was impaled on a stone spike, Speaker frowned: “Dew, you got impaled – not gutted – get your story straight”

“My name is not… that! Not anymore! I am The Certainty of Death and Endless Toil – and I will kill you!” the pony that was not Morning Dew anymore retorted, very angrily.

It occurred to Speaker that Certainty’s short fuse was an odd change from how Morning Dew had acted. This was not the calm, smug and calculating mastermind of a monk who had spent almost a century engineered a coup against the General Staff – a coup that would have worked if not for Speaker and the circle. Had death, or whatever other dark process by which a pony becomes a deathknight, taken his patience away?

Certainty didn’t seem to be in the mood to give Speaker time to ponder this – but as they were both plummeting to their death (or second death?) Speaker increasingly found it prudent to stop doing so, as the ground as getting closer and closer.

“Tell you what – seek me out in your next incarnation, and pray that the next bearer of your dark exaltation is a little less hotheaded. I have other things to do” Speaker noted with no small sense of self-satisfaction, igniting his ruby pinions.

As a large pair of wings of golden fire erupted from Speaker’s the pinions on his shoulders, the Solar’s falls very quickly began to halt. The Deathknight’s fall, not so much.

The things that Certainty shouted at Speaker as he fell out of earshot were not kind, nor were they terribly imaginative – something that for some reason bothered Speaker on some level: He had expected Morning Dew, even in this new degenerate state, to still be as intelligent and well-read as he had been while alive.

What Speaker hadn’t counted on was that the Barbate Arbiter had apparently gotten back in control of the flying necro-drones in the airspace above Deep Rot – and so moments later he was swarmed by disgusting things of brass, bone and sinew that simply latched on to him and weighed him down, piling on to him faster than Gift could cut them to pieces.

Still, even if he couldn’t move that much then his wings also burned the things, keeping them free to flap furiously – this slowed his descent, and between the ablative layer of flesh that were the limpet necro-drones and his own shield charms, then he landed relatively unscathed, suffering only minor cuts and bruises.

Of course, being on the ground inside Deep Rot meant that the legions of undead waiting to be sent out to fight against the Lookshyans were now coming at him… and the limpet drones were still preventing him from flying off, one of them had even barfed on his right-side pinion, fouling up the wing-emitter somehow.

This had of course been expected – with Speaker’s plan at the moment was simply to surrender again to buy himself more time – but what he hadn’t expected was that the ghosts and zombies attacking him were seemingly too dumb to understand a surrender, or maybe it was the noisy they were making?

“No, I said I surrender! The Barbate Arbiter will want me handed over to him” Speaker cried out once more as his undead captors clawed at him and his essence shield.

Mentioning the Deathlord seemed to have a strange effect – the gaggle of pony ghosts trying to rip him to shreds looked terrified, while the zombies that were surrounding everyone suddenly expressed a more sinister glare – they also pointed their spears at Speaker. Lovely.
A split second later, to the right of Speaker, the sound of bones snapping and zombies groaning as they tumbled into each other came out of nowhere – something was ripping through the zombies, and getting closer.

Still pinned, even though the ghosts had halted their attacks, Speaker found it impossible to free himself – but his attempts of twisting out of the grasp of the half-dozen ghosts holding on to him quickly stopped as the ghosts all suddenly… melted? They didn’t melt away from him, but melted around him, turning into shackles around him that groaned and sulked.

Revealed from behind the now chain-transformed ghosts stood the Certainty, though his suit of scale-mail armor was caked in blood and bone-splinters – whatever charms that had prevented his second death when the deathknight had impacted the ground, had clearly not protected the Certainty from actual physical harm, though he didn’t seem to be hindered by half of him having impacted the ground.

With a notably wobbly gait, not that it seemed to hinder him, the Certainty trotted up to Speaker. His ivory mask looked hastily reassembled and stuck together with slime, but that only made him look all the more menacing: “I told you… I will be the one to kill you”

Raising his guan dao to deal a killing blow, Speaker looked around franticly for a way out. Gift was… stuck… in a zombie, great – and Homage? Maybe? But would he even be able to parry such a decisive blow?

It turned out to be a moot point – as suddenly the Barbate Arbiter’s voice boomed out: “Stay your blade! I want his spirit broken before you break his body”

The ghosts and zombies parted as if by magic, abiding by the Deathlord’s unspoken commands. How the Deathlord had come down from his invisible perch so quickly was not something Speaker could tell.

Pulling him up with the blood-chains from his back, the Certainty nodded and brought Speaker with him as they followed the Deathlord’s floating corpus towards the outer wall of Deep Rot.