The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Getting to the outer walls of Deep Rot was not as easy as one might think, especially when hauling around a captive by blood-chains that sprung from your back. The bombardment from the skyships was still ongoing, but from what Speaker could tell then Deep Rot had been stocked with generous amounts of materials for repairs – and tireless undead work crews were throwing themselves fanatically into any breach opened up by the bombardment. The speed at which these repairs were happening was actually quite impressive – were the ghosts and zombies doing the work being controlled remotely, or were they simply trained that well?

This didn’t mean that moving from cover to cover while being bombarded by essence artillery was any less perilous. The Deathlord known as the Barbate Arbiter seemed to feel this as well, to which end he at one point signaled for his Deathknight The Certainty of Death and Endless Toil to halt.

Speaker, hanging upside down, bound by ghost-chains, looked around. There wasn’t much to see: A nearby stockpile of large slabs of mummified flesh and rope-like conduits made of woven sinew, was being distributed to zombie work crews and their ghostly foremen by hideous necromantic constructs with strange limbs that seemed custom made for slab-lifting.

The sudden dimming of the ambient light, as the Barbate Arbiter’s necromancy drew in light and twisted it into something… else… was an unsettling experience, but that paled in comparison to when the Deathlord unleashed the spell, blasting one the skyremes out of existence, and damaging another.

Billowing smoke and raining down debris, the damaged skyreme made a hard turn to avoid crashing inside Deep Rot’s walls, including
launching signal flares to call for assistance. Seeing the green and purple flares explode into colored smoke-clouds raised Speaker’s spirit: It meant that not everyone on the ship was dead from the dark sorcery that had struck it.

As the Barbate Arbiter prepared for a second volley, shaping huge amounts of necrotic essence into something far worse, the Certainty suggested: “Aim for the skywolf – if you destroy their flagship their morale will falter”

The haughty tone, the spite – Speaker was sure that the Certainty only suggested that in order to fuck with Speaker. Would the Deathlord’s attack be enough to penetrate the jadesteel armor of the giant orca-shaped skyreme battleship? What the Certainty had said wasn’t exactly wrong: Much of Lookshy’s morale and sense of superiority rested on them having the demonstratively best weapons, gear, armor and magical devices to use in battle – to be outclassed in terms of sorcery liked that would indeed strike a great blow against Lookshyan morale.

As Speaker watched the Barbate Arbiter shape another bolt of void-fueled death in un-existence he saw the Skywolf come about and make a beeline towards the artillery position, in roughly the same direction as the damaged skyreme – it was clearly trying to get away from whatever was shooting down skyships.

The Certainty stood by quietly and observed his master – well, as quietly as was possible: The damage from his fall was painfully obvious, for his mask had been destroyed in the fall and stuck back together crudely, plus the fact that most of the Certainty’s left side had been completely crushed from impacting the ground was quite easy to spot – and yet… by some dark magic or necromantic charms then such grievous wounds didn’t do to anything – the damaged parts of the Deathknight being held together with a jagged web of purple and dark essence. Hmmm, if that essence could be disrupted…

The Deathlord unleashed his magic, which was difficult to describe for it was like a crack in reality filled with oblivion that spread – speeding up to the enormous blue jadesteel orca that was the Skywolf. To even try to process such a sight of should-not-be was distressingly enervating.

As the void-crack shot towards the Skywolf like lightning a multicolored haze burst from several ports in the skyship. The mist quickly coalesced into a brightly shimmering cloud of blue, white, red, green and black colors all vying to be the color most obvious… Speaker had no clue was this was – for he had never seen Lookshyan spell defenses geared towards shielding against anathema sorcery.

As the un-lightning struck the cloud its function instantly became obvious, for the cloud swallowed the spell and began to darken, followed by heavy rain and thunder… and then the Skywolf shot out of the cloud, leaving the hostile spell behind to run its course as the elemental thundercloud bled the power in the spell off into thunder and rain, though drinking that rain should probably not be attempted.

Speaker cheered, to which the Certainty gave him a powerful and painful shake – the Arbiter also turned to shoot Speaker a furious glare: “What was that?”

“Beats me, but I think it worked” Speaker said, smiling with defiant glee.

His dark eye-pits seemed to… spread? It was if the darkness within them was spilling out like tiny clawed insect legs of darkness trying to grab prey. Whatever the Bodhisattva wanted to do say or do to follow up his question was quickly cut short: The Skywolf’s artillery crews had zero’d in on the trio down on the ground – as evident by things starting to blow up around them via lances of elemental essence.

Using swift but arcane gestures the Deathlord had the slabs of mummified flesh fly up and over the three – each several yards across, which made Speaker both question and despair at whatever source such huge wads of muscle had been drawn from – and under that cover they made it to one of the blockhouses along the wall around Deep Rot, as the Skywolf executed its fighting retreat along with the rest of the skyship fleet.

With the skyreme bombardment over, the Barbate Arbiter and the Certainty took a moment to compose themselves – in the case of the Certainty very literally, as the Barbate Arbiter stripped half a dozen zombies from the blockhouse garrison and used the parts to fix the Certainty. This process took quite a while, though sensing time in the underworld was difficult.

“Did you hope that Skywolf’s fire would consume us all? Foolish – Deep Rot protects me. I cannot be destroyed as long as this manse stands” The Arbiter gloated, his mouth dripping with ectoplasmic slime. In fact, all of the open sores and wounds on the Arbiter’s bloated form had started to leak, as the Deathlord floated further up into the air, revealing the truly grotesque hole underneath him: His bloated corpus was after all in the image of only the front half of pony. So many dangly bits. Ewww.

Suddenly the Deathlord’s form caved in – as if it deflated in an instant – and from the hole underneath shot out a blood-soaked pony, who landed right next to Speaker.

Looking up, the Arbiter in his new pony-sized form, stretched a bit – twisting his head and limbs around just a little too much… it was obvious that this was a dead body, a corpse possessed by a ghost… and yet it looked frightfully familiar: “There we go – fitting through the doors here is much easier this way”

With but a gesture, the Arbiter had clothes form around him. Necrotic essence twisted and broke into cloth spun of gold and alabaster, impossibly beautiful. Speaker recognized it as first age fashion.

“Are you a ghost from the first age? From the primordial war? Or later on?” Speaker wondered. His fearlessness charm made it impossible to panic – and considering how otherwise hopeless his situation looked, then he figured he might as well try to learn something before he was killed.

The Barbate Arbiter looked briefly at the Certainty, then he laughed: “You haven’t figured it out yet? You poor fool….”

“I’ve had my suspicions, but getting reliable information on the origins of the Deathlords is a little tricky. Not even Sully could dig anything up while down here” Speaker mused, not even noticing that he was being flipped right side up or put down on the ground.

New chains of soulsteel wrapped themselves around Speaker – and the Arbiter led the Solar and the Deathknight out to a balcony looking out over the battlefield wasteland beyond the walls. Ok, it wasn’t really a balcony… it was a mishmash of zombies that had tangled themselves together, like army ants forming a bridge, only here they were forming a balcony, complete with nice stone tiles for the floor and neat railings made of legs. As the Barbate Arbiter began casting another spell, the Certainty yanked on Speaker, forcing him to look towards the artillery position:

“Behold as your allies falter – you may have brought down the void-shield, but the walls were never breached, and the End Time Relay will engage as planned” The Certainty gloated, his voice just as ghostly and beyond-the-grave as the Bodhisattva’s had once been.

Looking at the battlefield in the dimming light of the underworld evening, seeing four giant magi-mechanical jadesteel ponies thundering through the sea of zombies to catch the falling skyreme, with the Skywolf zipping past overheard , Speaker shrugged: “To be frank, then I don’t see this as that much of a loss. Most of the plan has worked perfectly so far – artillery position is still there, shield is down, and the ships can do another run”

The Certainty looked… confused and frustrated... as much as a pony with no face or front part of his skull could look surprised – maybe he was just annoyed that Speaker wasn’t wilting from despair: “They have achieved nothing but leaving their dead to join our ranks – the unicorns you arrived here with have already joined our ranks in undeath. We didn’t even have to remove them from their armor”

Having helped suit up the rangers of team Jade Mole Speaker found that line very dubious: “You mean you couldn’t get the armor seals up and just reanimated their corpses, instead of using them to suit up some deathknights? I’ll also go ahead and assume that the wards that they had inside worked in preventing nephracks from possessing their bodies”

The Certainty paused for a moment, which was all Speaker needed to know for him to deduce that he had struck a nerve – but before he could continue taunting the Abyssal he was interrupted by the Arbiter:

“Be quiet – the Solar is baiting you, fool. Now bring him here: I will have my prize” the Arbiter stated with a manner-of-factual schadenfreude in his tone that genuinely disturbed Speaker.

With Gift still stuck in a zombie gods-know-where, Speaker had very few options left. He remained silent as the Arbiter released the spell he had been building: A vortex formed before him, in which zombies threw chunks of soulsteel and a little bit of orichalcum… and then several dozen skeletons marched mindlessly into it.

As the swirl coalesced into a single form, a sarcophagus revealed itself: Etched in spider-like runes and radiating a general feeling of “This should not be”, it made Speaker feel exceedingly happy about his charm which rendered him fearless. A more interesting detail that Speaker noted was that the Arbiter actually looked exhausted, tired even, after having cast this spell – was this sarcophagus that powerful? A single magical torture device or holding cell requiring that much essence? That didn’t bode well.

Without words, ceremony or boasting the Arbiter made a swift gesture: the chains that held Speaker quickly gravitated towards the hideous sarcophagus which opened its dark maw – but Speaker simply spread out his legs, so he couldn’t fit… because that black void from within that thing, it didn’t scare him, but sure as hell didn’t make him want to go in there either. There were things moving about in within the dark, glinting ever so slightly in the waning light.

Dropping Speaker down before the sarcophagus, the Arbiter let out an annoyed grunt: “Certainty, get him in there”

The charm-blocking chains around Speaker’s legs faded away in an instant, and Certainty quickly began to close his distance to Speaker, but the Solar chose not to focus on the Abyssal. Dropping into a martial stance, but facing the sarcophagus, Speaker called from elsewhere his other gyroscopic chakram: Homage.

The burnished gold of the orichalcum shell, etched with infinitely regressing runic patterns, made the chakram gleam from the light of Speaker’s caste mark. Activating the weapon, making the essence beam edge manifest, Speaker smirked briefly as he threw it with all his might into the sarcophagus.

The Barbate Arbiter barely had time to register this sudden development – at first thinking nothing of the disc, but as the beam edge activate the Deathlord recoiled in horror, and barely managed to cry out for Certainty to get the weapon – but it was too late: The chakram activated the sarcophagus. It slammed shut with great force, but not for long.

The Certainty tackled Speaker, pummeling him with furious blows – leaving Speaker a bloody mess as his shield charms were not up – but the damage was done, or being done… inside the sarcophagus.

“No, the monstrance – damn this thing! Open up!” The Arbiter groaned furiously through clenched teeth, pounding fruitlessly on the soulsteel sarcophagus.

It was then that the Sarcophagus began to rumble, parts of it beginning to glow from heat exposure. The Arbiter barely had time to get into cover behind the Certainty before the monstrance’s top half snapped off, Homage having melted the thing in half from within thanks to its beam-edge. As the seals of the sarcophagus broke, a mighty gust of wind rushed towards it, the oblivion inside absorbing everything around it.

Homage instantly zipped over to Speaker, who wasn’t slow to use the weapon to make a few choice swipes at the Certainty to fend him off.
Staggering up on his hooves, Speaker looked out over the wall. There was a very long way down, and he wasn’t in good shape by any stretch of the imagination – so just jumping off wasn’t an option, and time was running out just the same.

The Certainty and the Arbiter weren’t looking pleased – and began to advance on Speaker…

“Ok, I’ve changed my mind… you can kill him now – but at least make it messy” The arbiter commanded bitterly, stepping away while the Certainty advanced to engage Speaker.

Steeling himself, which wasn’t easy when you’re so beat up, Speaker readied Homage and stood ready to take whatever the Certainty was going to do.

The attack didn’t come… instead the image of the Certainty faded in misty shadows and crimson dust, and the next thing Speaker knew the Certainty was biting shadowfangs into his neck, draining him of essence at a prodigious rate.

A few seconds later Speaker was released – and he dropped to the ground with a feeling of spiritual emptiness inside him… completely drained of essence. The clattering sound of metal on stone as Homage hit the ground was what terrified Speaker the most: The Chakram had deactivated.

Drained of spiritual strength, Speaker found himself unable to get up. Maybe the Certainty had drained him of more than just essence? He didn’t feel dissy… but he was hurting… oh bother, had he been drained so much that his anesthetic charm had stopped working? …oww, yes that seemed the case. Even his ears hurt, dulling his hearing.

Hooves gathered around him, some skeletal, some wreathed in tightly wound embalmed flesh, some in soulsteel armor – one pair left bloody prints where it walked, the Barbate Arbiter.

T’was difficult to stay awake. Speaker felt cold for the first time in the underworld, his elemental immunity charm having ceased to work alone with the rest of his charms. He still felt Homage, so the attunement there was still good – that meant that the hearthstone socketed into it should be feeding him new essence from Creation… but he wasn’t feeling it. Was it some fluke of the underworld? The proximity to Deep Rot?
Something was picking him up… that couldn’t be good… then he was dropped again, very abruptly – what the hay? There was a dull sound of many hooves scrambling around him.

It was then, at that dim moment as the cold and alluring grasp of sleep clawed at Speaker’s mind, that he heard it. Oh such heavenly joy… and blinding fucking light good fucking grief that shit stings!

The dark evening sky above Deep Rot, illuminated dimly by the night-time ‘star light’ of the Calendar of Setesh, and the blood-red image of the moon in the underwold, was suddenly split. A searing burst of light had pierced the veil between Creation and the Underworld, opening up a rift through which heavenly music poured, like sweet milk and honey to the ears.

Momentarily invigorated by this sonic bliss, Speaker staggered up, struggling to get a proper footing… oh, he was bleeding… no wonder the stone tiles were slick.

Looking around, Speaker found himself strangely alone on the balcony, though he was closer to the door than he remembered from before the Certainty had drained him. A quick few glances around him revealed that Homage was gone – but again, so was everyone else – and the door leading from the balcony to inside the wall was closed!?

Turning to the heavenly music, Speaker saw that it was coming from a big glowing cloud high above the Lookshyan artillery position. Could it be Sunrise? It seemed to be descending upon the artillery position.

As Speaker’s gaze fell from the heavens the ground, Speaker saw the strangest of things: The ocean of undead that were shying away the cloud… indeed, it seemed that legions of ghosts and zombies were running away… back towards Deep Rot… back towards him… oh bother.
The approaching tide of zombies and ghosts rose, pushed upwards by the many giant necromantic constructs thundering along the ground, pushing everything in front of them, grinding the things that did not move out of the way into paste. The tidal wave rose and seemed poised to crash into the wall of Deep rot…

Drawing what he feared to be his last breath, Speaker weakly steeled himself and prepared to meet his death once… it hadn’t been the first time he’d done it on this day – but there really didn’t seem to be an out this time. Then the tidal-wave of undeath before Speaker exploded into a shower of cold blood, hot shattered bits of armor and bone splinters: A barrage from the Lookshyans had hit its mark.

The wave, now broken, breached just below the balcony. It was a twisted mess of ghosts and zombies mushed together – none of them needed to breathe, so they weren’t suffocating, though the ones at the bottom were most likely getting crushed. On the plus side then the seemingly endless pile of animated corpses and semi-transparent ghosts was close enough to the balcony that Speaker could jump down on them…

With a quiet and quick Prayer to Celestia, Speaker galloped to the edge of the balcony and leap with all his might, aiming for a ‘patch’ of zombie that looked relatively flat and even… a wayward flesh slab maybe? Who knew, who cared.

Maybe it was the hearthstone in Homage, maybe it was just dumb luck, but as he leapt Speaker felt just the tiniest of second wind within, granting him enough essence to push two charms: His balancing charm which made for a safe landing and his jumping charm, which allowed him to jump further on at the same instant.

Leaping from zombie head to zombie head, crushing some, denting some, annoying others, Speaker made good speed over the undead.

Many a ghost shrieked at him, howling obscenities that hadn’t been heard in Creation since the first age, but only a small number had any way of stopping Speaker – and the few in any condition to fight couldn’t keep up, since Speaker wasn’t staying to trade blows.

The music became louder as Speaker got closer to the artillery position – oh such joy it was to listen. Every yard closer another instrument became audible, another celestial cymbal, a divine drum, another choir of angelic voices. Speaker wept as he approached.

Clearing the last of the undead, the rear-most still trying desperately to flee from the music… indeed those closest seemed to be burning with white fire that flickered to the tune of the music… oh yes, this was definitely Sunrise.

In the last half mile to the artillery position Speaker passed many an overrun defensive position. Charred stakes caked in the ashes of what had been zombies, scattered remains of salt lines… and fallen ponies.

The sight of friendly fallen, brothers and sisters in arms, sons and daughters of Lookshy – it took from Speaker his second wind. Ceasing his bounding leaps, Speaker felt his body ache again. Slowly moving from dead to dead, Speaker collected ear-marks from each of them, the tiny metal plate stamped with each soldier’s number, hidden well away under their helmets. The chances that there would be time to collect their bodies was minimal… at least they had all hopefully eaten the thingy from Sully that prevented them from rising as ghosts.

Moving closer to the artillery position he heard a noise – a groan. Quickly homing in on the sound, Speaker found an old legionnaire just barely clinging on to life. Thanks to the wondrous sanitary conditions of the underworld most of the zombie bites on the poor soul had already festered and gone partially necrotic – Speaker could fix him, he knew that, but he needed essence!

“You look like shit sir” the old stallion groaned, as Speaker dragged himself along with the wounded soldier on his back.

“…and you smell like shit” Speaker retorted, having noted the exceedingly pungent stench of the stallion.

Apparently the undead had bombarded the legionary’s position with literal shit bombs, scattering the salt lines and opening up for a war-ghost charge. Made perfect sense really – oh well, Lookshy’s strategoi would have to figure out a defense against that on their own.

At the outermost fortification Speaker dropped off his patient, who was carried off to an infirmary, and then he too dropped to the ground, exhausted in both a physical and spiritual sense.

The hard but familiar feeling of the tough and unforgiving fabric of a Lookshyan stretcher greeted Speaker as he woke up. Oh how many naps and he had taken on stretchers like this back in the days… and while he ached, then it didn’t really hurt that much – it seemed as if most of his wounds had been tended to and were healing… hmm, that would have meant at least an hour of surgery and then a full night’s sleep. The amount of light shining in from outside the tent confirmed this - it looked to be morning.

As he stirred several voices quickly rang out, alerting others that Speaker had woken up. Within moments Speaker found himself surrounded: The Battleaxe, Taimyo Karal Linseed, a couple other officers and… Sunrise!

“Hey Sunrise – good to see you” Speaker said tentatively, not wanting to overexert himself just yet until he knew exactly how much he had recovered.

As it turned out, then Speaker needn’t worry – though he didn’t get any time to figure that out on his own, for an orderly flipped the stretcher and left Speaker in a heap on the ground.

Getting up, Speaker looked around while everyone else tried not to laugh. Spotting the Doctor in charge, Speaker shouted “Hey what’s the big idea?”

“You told me yourself that recovered patients shouldn’t be allowed to take up space” the doctor, an old mare who ‘only’ looked twenty or so years younger than Speaker, said as she turned to face her accuser.

Recognizing the mare as one of the many medical students who had worked and studied under him back when he had served the legion, Speaker smirked: “True, I did teach you everything I knew”

“Not true – if what I’m hearing out you doing is true, then you’ve been holding out on me” the doctor barked, sounding rather displeased – but her smile showed her statement to be friendly banter.

“Enough – Speaker, we need to know what you saw in there” Taimyo Linseed commanded.

In another tent, Speaker, Sunrise, some officers, the Battleaxe and Taimyo Linseed conferred. Speaker detailed that he had confirmed that the veiled structure at least three hundred yards above the central pit of Deep Rot housed the controls of the place, and that it also likely housed the End Time Relay. He also confirmed the presence of the Barbate Arbiter: “…last I saw him he had shapeshifted to look like me, only without the uniform and perpetually drenched in blood, wearing white and golden robes”

With great sorrow Speaker also reported that Shimmer was either dead or captured – and as was the rest of Team Jade Mole, plus he had lost Gift and Homage.

“Can’t you recall them through elsewhere?” Sunrise asked.

Reaching out with his mind, Speaker felt that Gift was being held back. With Homage it actually worked, but that still meant that Autochton’s Gift was in the hooves of the undead. Shaking his head, he noted: “No dice on Gift – but I can still sense it – so I can find my way to it”

“It will likely be used to lure you into a trap – and what was that sarcophagus they tried to get you into? A torture device?” The Battleaxe noted grimly.

A rather unassuming stallion with a brown piped up: “Sounds like they had a monstrance of celestial portion ready for you – that’s for tormenting and converting Solars into Abyssals”

The stallion, with eyes of the five colors of jade, introduced himself as ‘Lee, Bodhisattva of the Third Breath’.

Speaker and Sunrise greeted their old friend kindly, congratulating him on the completion of his quest. Heath Rose, having apparently hidden herself in the shadows, also stepped forth and expressed her appreciation: “Impressive – your solar exaltation tied you back into the loop of fate… very interesting”

The unicorns present found the sudden appearance of two uninvited ponies into the officer tent a little more annoying – but two caste mark flashes later and they were a bit more cooperative, especially once Speaker explained that Lee was the very same Bodhisatva that some of them had met back in Lookshy, only now alive and a Solar.

“Incredible – so your quest to come back to life paid off” The Battleaxe noted, having met the Bodhisattva previous during the planning phase of the campaign into the underworld.

Nodding, Lee stepped up to the planning table: “After a fashion – I was never dead to begin with, just really close it. The real trick was not dying the moment I took my third breath. Any-who, I just got here – what’s Deep Rot’s status?”

Between Speaker’s report on what he had seen of the dread manse’s inner workings and what the various skyship crews had observed then it seemed that very little progress had been made – but at the same time then the miasma shield was still down, so the bombardment into the manse proper was still ongoing, even if it was largely ineffective.

“How long can you keep the bombardment up?” Sunrise asked, looking intently at the illusion Speaker had conjured of Deep Rot.

Taimyo Linseed reported that most of the essence artillery was fueled directly by hearthstones – so they could keep going as long as their lenses didn’t crack, and they plenty of spares of those thanks to Speaker: “The implosion bows and lighting ballistae have enough ammunition for two more days of sustained firing, if you factor in downtime for period repair and maintenance – the issue is more food and morale”

Indeed, a siege with no results was rarely a fun thing to be part of – even more so when in very hostile territory. It was also proving surprisingly difficult to secure the route back to the Mourning Field, as undead raiding parties were almost constantly harrying the fortifications set up along the route. The Battleaxe noted: “We can hold it just fine for the time being – but if the route collapses we likely won’t be informed about that until it’s too late to do anything about it”

The real problem about the exit route collapsing was if enemy forces moved into position to intercept – a couple of ballistae firing bolts fitted with chains tied to something heavy enough could easily root a skyship, plus the hulking necromantic creations that the Deathlords seemed to favor using would probably be able to take such chains and then pull skyships down to the ground…

“That’s not the real issue though – our biggest problem is the lack of the heroism-pills. Pretty much every unit used theirs during this first engagement. Supplies are coming in from Creation, but resupply is first scheduled to come in about four hours – if the undead sally out before that…” the quartermaster noted in a very worried tone.

Linseed nodded: “Ya, even I used mine – those Deathknights… when they reveal their anima… I’ve never seen anything so terrifying”

“Gasing into a soul touched by oblivion isn’t pretty – but I think I can help with that. I can lead your troops. I know a fearlessness charm similar to the one Speaker uses, plus I was originally trained to lead the Barbate Arbiter’s forces so I know how they fight” Lee offered, the unicorns looking just a tad apprehensive about handing over their defenses to a still relatively unknown party.

It took a bit of convincing, but ultimately Lee was given command of the biggest frontline unit in the central outer perimeter, the unit meant to take the biggest brunt of any direct undead counter attacks, to which Lee left to strategize with the officers now under his command.

Sunrise took her turn to explain her reappearance, explaining that thanks to Heath Rose she had assembled a celestial orchestra to amplify her undead-smiting singing, as well to ‘back her up’ as shw would perform the martial arts she had been taught while in Yu-Shan: Silver-tongued Nightengale Style.

Linseed had apparently heard of the style, but never seen it performed with spirits from heaven to provide the tunes for it…

Speaker also noted it would have been real nice if Linseed had brought that Soul-Breaker Orb along to just toss into the manse – it would end all the broken souls slaved to the place, which would probably break the manse quite spectacularly.

“We talked about that before we sallied out – doing so would make it impossible to recover the orb. It is too valuable when there are less costly ways to destroying the manse” The Battleaxe retorted, sounding confident in the ability of her troops.

The new strategy that Linseed and the Battleaxe were thinking up involved placing some skyships halfway between Deep Rot and the fortified position, to spot over the manse walls so they could guide the artillery fire more effectively. Under most circumstances this would work – but Speaker had seen how quickly things got repaired inside Deep Rot’s walls: “They’re probably reinforcing and resupplying the place via underground tunnels”

…but the two Taimyo had taken this into account: They were planning on trying to repeatedly fire on the same targets, to first damage a spot, then take out the repair crews that would swarm the place. They seemed to have accepted that the siege would last more than a few hours. To this end Speaker’s new role would be to sneak in and mark targets using his anima and do on-site sabotage, with the skyships then relaying that target information via messenger spells.

This sounded better, but Speaker still needed several hours to regain his strength and for his to fully respire a new pool of essence. The commanders understood: Most of the unicorns needed time to recharge as well before the next push as they were all depending purely on hearthstones for that, though most of the artillery was continuing the barrage without pause.

Leaving the officer’s tent with Sunrise, Speaker found Lee and Cash outside talking.

“Precious – did he complain when you tossed him out?” Cash asked, sounding quite bemused.

Lee, the Bodhisattva of the third breath, shrugged: “In very unkind terms – but when I showed the few ponies among the peasants who could read how the mayor had been cooking the books on tax collections they shut up him for good”

Seeing Speaker, and apparently also Heath Rose, emerge, Lee turned to properly greet his old friend: “Speaker, good to see you”

A bit of chit chat ensued – introducing Heath Rose to Lee, though with the usual warning that Lee would likely forget her once the Sidereal was out of sight. Sullen Hoof showed up shortly later, with Cash regaling about how Sully had taken down several large necromantic constructs in battle: “The way he struck at their flesh… it rippled – I’ve never seen anything like it”

“I just tenderized them enough for the ground troops to hack them apart” Sullen Hoof humbly noted.

Eyeing up newly ‘re-exalted’ Dawn-caste Solar, Cash put an almost brotherly hoof on Lee’s shoulder: “Say, how would you like to meet some of your old comrades?”

“My old what?” Lee say, brows furrowed with no small amount of worry and apprehension.

Cash smiled incredibly smugly and glanced at Sully: “We took prisoners…”