The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

As the circle and Lee trotted to the stockade where the prisoners were being held they discussed the strategies of the Deathlords:

“They sent out the zombies and skeletons in swarms – and individually they’re lousy fighters, but they’re amazing shock troops. They just throw themselves at you, try to pin you down in groups and then rip into you once you’re down” Cash noted, sounding oddly non-plus’d about such a strategy.

“Did they get to you?” Speaker wondered, looking at Cash to check for wounds – but there was nothing but minor cuts and scrapes to see.
Cash snorted: “No, it’s the waste. These things, the zombies, the skeletons… you’ve seen it yourself – you said that these things are really good laborers. They’ll lift anything that isn’t so heavy that it’ll break their limb and they’ll work until they rot or are ground to dust – using them as shock troops is a waste. We could rebuild Creation to its First Age glory with that kind of labor-force”

Lee found Cash’s indignation hilarious: “You should have a chat with the Silver Prince – he’d love a Solar with your attitude”
Being compared to a Deathlord wasn’t exactly flattering, but at this point they had arrived at the stockade…

“Do you really think that your redemption will convince any of them to betray their Deathlord masters?” Sunrise inquired with some apprehension .

Lee shrugged, peering into the stockade with its many pony-sized steel cages: The Deathknights captured were being held with those essence-binding shackles, but even then many of them were struggling and thrashing about: “Celestial exaltation is granted to those who show potential for greatness… and not even Celestia herself can forcibly exalt anyone – the black exaltation are given personally by the Deathlords to those they simply think will be useful… not all of them have the potential to be great, only to be killers, or tools”

“That didn’t answer the question” Sullen Hoof said, tapping the ground impatiently.

Lee turned from the stockade while Cash negotiated the circle’s entry: “Even if we talk them into redeeming themselves then very few of them will likely be able to keep that solar essence… they’ll simply die as mortals as the purified exaltation leaves them”

“What if that happened to you?” Speaker wondered.

Looking towards the blood-red moon of the underworld: “Then I would have died happily as a mortal, safe in the knowledge that my soul was not damned to eternal torment”

“If nothing else then that gives us a bargaining chip with them” Cash quickly stated, gesturing for the circle to enter – the guards having opened up for them.

From the battle the seventh legion had captured eight Deathknights with the help of Cash and Sully, at the cost dozens of unicorns and hundreds of mortals. The guards in the stockade did not look happy to be watching over creatures that had killed so many of their own…
“Chosen of the abyss – hear me!” Lee roared, as only a chosen of Dawn could.

Leaping up on a crate, Lee spun around to address all of the captive Deathknights: “You may think you do not know me – but trust me, you have all heard my title. I was once the Bodhisattva of Resurgent Misery and Lost Causes”

Hearing that title caused most of the Deathknights to at least perk up and turn an ear towards Lee – though Cash and Sully noted that the Deathknights who still ignored him were the ones with whole bodies, the ones that hadn’t undergone the face-removing ritual.

“I spoke with kind souls in Stygia, and consulted the very god of exaltation in Yu-Shan. I quested to each of the five elemental poles and I even summoned an untouched primordial and gained a new body… it was not easy, but if you dare to chose for yourselves, and reject the fear through which the Deathlords bind you, then you too can be free and have a shot at becoming a Solar” Lee orated, putting forward a bold case to his former comrades in arms.

The quiet that followed Lee’s speech hinted of much silent deliberation. Speaker recalled well how the then Bodhisattva had told of the eternal punishment that awaited dead Abyssals: Their tainted souls would circle oblivion, forever to be tormented by the Neverborn for having failed them. Such a dreadful punishment to keep the Deathknights in line… but at the same time then the then Bodhisattva had known that failing his quest before it ended would likely have resulted in just as bad a punishment.

Suddenly a dense fog arose around the steel cages. Quickly looking around to see where it came from, Speaker saw that it was a legion sorcerer casting it. The unicorn, a mare in red First field force robes, approached the circle: “The fog is sound-proof. We use this to let prisoners think in peace without influencing one another – I can still see and hear through it… we already have two calling out that they’re willing to talk”

Lee and the unicorn entered the fog, leaving the circle behind.

“Are you hungry? You haven’t had anything to eat since you woke up” Sullen Hoof asked Speaker casually, sounding a bit bored.
Speaker nodded and was about to say something to the effect of “Yes, I could use a bite” but a messenger came running from the officer tent calling for the circle. Sullen Hoof said he’d meet the circle there with something to eat.
Back at the officer tent it seemed that the Taimyo had cooked up a new strategy and needed to fill the circle in on their roles:

“Phase one will be the skyships approaching overhead, through the hole in the shield dome, and help the artillery target their volleys. Once the artillery has found something good to pummel, and done so enough to cause essence flow disruptions in the manse, we enter phase two” The battleaxe explained, gesturing forcefully over a newly made map of the battlefield.

Listening intently, the circle awaited instructions on where and when they were to be deployed as Taimyo Linseed explained phase two: “Once the manse has been damaged the transport ships loaded with salt will dump their cargo over the manse, locking down the ghosts commanding the zombie and skeleton repair crews. This should disrupt the repairs and their internal communications, since they seem to be relying on ghost messengers, and allow for Team Jade Mole to deploy directly from Sunrise’s cloud down onto one of the damaged parts of the manse and do some proper irrevocable damage”

Speaker nodded, as Cash spoke up: “Sounds reasonable – but about me, Sully and Sunrise?”

Linseed threw Sully a quick glance, as the orichalcum-helmeted pony handed Speaker a sandwich: “Speaker, Sullen Hoof and Heath Rose is now on team Jade Mole, since the debriefings from the rest of the team indicates that the Barbate Arbiter’s forces have orders to capture
Speaker – so he will need more backup. Cash Charmer, you will join up with Lee and work your demoralizing charms on enemy officers like before to taunt them into duels and then capture”

Finally, Sunrise was instructed to move her cloud of music and undead-smiting along over team Jade Mole, to give them cover and space to move. Once team Jade Mole was inside the walls Sunrise was to move her cloud up to keep the skyships clear of ghostly fliers.

“Sounds good – what’s the plan when all this goes tits up?” Cash noted with veiled snark.
The two Taimyo and their half dozen advisors all shot Cash dirty looks, but Cash kept up his expectant gaze.

"We know that the enemy possesses sorcery that can shoot skyships – but now we know to look for it. That kind of sorcery would take time to shape out of essence, and build-ups like that can be detected and disrupted” the Battleaxe stated firmly, sounding confident and defiant in her faith in her troops.

Speaker gestured that he had something to say. Linseed nodded at him. “I can already tell you where to fire the artillery: The veiled central controls of the manse, hovering above the pit”

The two Taimyo quickly agreed that targeting such a location would be perfect. Speaker then added: “I also think it would be wise to add a layer of subterfuge here. If you can get me some gold, quartz, and dark iron I can make a mock Soul-breaker Orb – if we bring that into the manse it might trick some of the forces lent to the Barbate Arbiter to flee – I already hinted to the Deathlord that we had one brought here, so it shouldn’t be a difficult sell”

Everyone agreed that this was a great idea – but the quartermaster quickly pointed out that the only crystal anything they had spares of were crystal lenses for the essence cannon. Speaker figured he could tarnish a clear lens and mould it into shape – but the dark iron and gold… to mimick the soulsteel and orichalcum components, well… there was plenty of steel which could be tarnished and darkened, but gold?

“I believe I can get you some gold from my backup singers – though we’ll have to replace it once we’re done” Sunrise said calmly, her eyes distant as she thought of every spirit and godling in her ensemble.

With everyone satisfied Taimyo Linseed stated that operations were scheduled to begin once the skyship with supplies arrived from Creation in a few hours.

Speaker and the Quartermaster quickly galloped off to the makeshift smithies set up to maintain the weapons of the many legionaires. Sunrise arrived shortly thereafter with a spirit that sported a lush golden mane… who didn’t look all too happy, though with a face like a bird carved in stone that wasn’t easy to tell.

With the dummy Soul-Breaker Orb ready and hidden elsewhere, and Sullen Hoof having ensured that everyone was well-fed, it became a waiting game for the supply skyship.

Quickly bored of waiting, Sullen Hoof scaled the tallest watch-tower, one wrought of locally sourced pale ghost-wood, to act as look-out, though the unicorns up in the tower weren’t all that keen on the company.

The shadows building over Deep Rot were quite worrying, and the circle worried about what was happening to Shimmer – for as Speaker reported, then she was likely playing dead and hibernating after having been grievously wounded… if wasn’t just dead.

That Speaker wasn’t any more worried for Shimmer was what Cash and Sunrise found more troubling though. Out of earshot of Speaker Cash explained that the heightened care and commitment for Creation’s survival that he had put into Speaker earlier might be overshadowing Speaker’s love for his Lunar mate.

“The way he’s talking to the troops over in the infirmary… he’s sounding very ‘greater good at the expense of the individual’ and I don’t think that’s very good” Sunrise noted, recalling quite clearly how her foalhood had been marred by selfish cult leaders who cared little for the wellbeing of their members and more for the prestige and image of their cults.

“I think I can reframe Shimmer’s relationship and use to him enough to make him care for the time being. Cash, can you undo what you did once this is over?” Sunrise noted, the frown on her brow clearly signaling her dismay.

Cash paused and contemplated the exact ideas he had put into Speaker, then he finally nodded: “If I can catch him when he’s tired – he’ll likely resist it if I approach him while well rested. Either way we can sort this out once the battle is over”

The circle split up and tended to their own business, awaiting the supply ship.

About an hour before the scheduled arrival of the supply ship Sullen Hoof cried out from the watch tower: “Incoming from the north-east, half a mile up but dropping. I see smoke!”

It took another minute or so for the skyship to get close enough for everyone else to see: The supply skyship was being harried by flying ghosts, and it was smoking… and losing altitude.

From the signal flags the ship was flying the unicorn lookouts were able to inform everyone else that the skyship had already used all three emergency wind-bottles – magical pots half the size of a grown pony, coated with blue jade paint on the inside and corked with a big chunk of white jade, they had contained strong winds to be used for emergency propulsion. Other signal flags told of wounded on board and damage to the ship’s controls, which explained why the thing was losing altitude.

Warstriders were scrambled to intercept and catch the ship – skyships weren’t structurally sound enough to survive impacting the ground – but as they thundered out to intercept the ground erupted before them: The undead had been digging tunnels under the north-eastern approach to the artillery position, and now they were collapsing the tunnels!

It didn’t take many moments for news of this to spread throughout the camp. Morale took a big hit – everyone knew what was on those ships…

Speaker and the circle quickly found themselves summoned to the officers tent. Sunrise was ordered to round up her orchestra and put on an impromptu morale-boosting show, while Sullen Hoof was ordered back on the watch tower to look for sallies and sneak attacks from Deep Rot or the exposed underground tunnels. Cash was ordered to the stockades to help Lee converting more prisoners and Speaker was told to report to the makeshift warstrider hangar.

At the warstrider hangar – or oversized tent really - Speaker could hear Sunrise’s music starting up: It was an inspiring military hymn, though it was a tad awkward due to the celestial instrumentation. Inside the hangar Speaker saw a rare sight: Two of the wondervolt warstriders were being readied.

“You, warstrider repair-pony, something came lose in the crystal essence relays during transport here – make it happen!” A very stressed-sounding and looking Karal Warm-Steel shouted, the head of the Wondervolts, as she poked her head out of the pilot-hole in the back of her warstrider .

Speaker nodded and instantly leapt up to her, clearing the fifteen foot tall warstrider with each by means of his jumping charm: “Very well – and is the voice amplifier still working?”

Warm-Steel sighed, running greasy hooves through her already stained and matted fiery orange mane: “Yes, but the dust here in the underworld is really messing with our wing joints…”

Without a world Speaker wormed his way into the armored pilot-core of the warstrider. It was a beautiful kaleidoscope of spinning gems and pulsating mandalas of colored sand suspended in essence matrixes, each displaying some kind of information to the warstrider’s pilot about the thing’s state of being. It was clear that whoever had designed the thing had expressed a great love of jewelry.

Fixing the bits of scratched crystals that channeled essence from the pilot to the rest of the warstrider was easy enough – convincing Warm-Steel and the sorcerer-engineers normally maintaining the warstrider to pour a bucket of oil down to him was a little more difficult, but it did result in the wing joints of that particular warstrider not squeaking nearly as much anymore. It also resulted in Speaker’s uniform looking like a royal mess.

As the winged warstriders took off, their blue jade-stell armor and inner skeleton negating their otherwise massive weight, it occurred to Speaker that there simply wasn’t a word in riverspeak for pegasus pony – despite the wondervolt warstriders obviously having been built to look like pegasi. The only language he knew that had a word for that lost race of pony was old realm… so these unicorns didn’t even know what their flying warstriders were meant to look like.

The five wondervolts zipped up to the supply ship, firing their hoof-mounted lightning-ballistae at the ghosts swarming the place. Immaterial or not, the lightning tore through the ghosts and sent many of them falling to the ground like ashen rags that howled in pain and impotent fury. Once the ghosts were cleared up the flying warstriders helped keep the ‘sinking’ skyship afloat, guiding it towards the artillery position for a soft landing.

It was then that giant skeletal arms with long rusty iron claws shot up from the field of collapsed ground, swiping at the fliers – it didn’t take many moments for two of the warstriders to get grabbed.

“Cash! Someone get a messenger to Cash Charmer – tell him to get out there with me to bring these things down!” Speaker shouted, setting off in a gallop towards the broken field.

As he leapt from ashen dirt mound to ashen dirt mound, avoiding the pits and cracks in the ground that led into the darkness beneath, Speaker took stock at the battlefield before him. The damaged skyship, if the ghosts could damage it why not just bring it down? Was this meant as a trap to lure out the wondervolts and take them out? And now zombies and warghosts were spilling out of the broken tunnels to intercept him, wonderful.

Leaping around most of the enemy forces, and trying to dodge and parry most of their archers – an easy feat, considering how poorly a zombie aimed, and war ghost archers were too enraged and hotheaded to fire in anything resembling a formation… basically Speaker might as well be dodging the scattered arrows of a talon of drunk pony recruits. War ghosts and zombies worked a lot better in close combat.

At the root of one of the giant skeletal limbs that had sprouted from the ground, one holding and crushing a warstrider, Speaker took a deep breath and struck the giant bone once with a firm hoof. This was not a blow meant to destroy – but to explore, to diagnose, to examine: Between his crafting charms, his medical charms and his memories of grand first age sorcery the Solar quickly discerned the necromantic nature of the bones – they were conjured, not real, and pulsed from within with thick flows of essence to power the crushing might of the claws up above.

Bringing Homage to bear, Speaker powered up its singular blade of hot essence and thrust the disk at the bone. The impact was blunt and didn’t do anything to begin with, but after a few seconds the bone blackened and turned to ash around the energy blade – and so the disk slowly but surely made its way into the giant bone.

Once inside Speaker sealed the hole with his repair charm – five seconds later the wrist of the giant clawed hand holding a warstrider burst in a shower of bone splinters and dark fumes as Homage had cooked the essence inside, the wondervolt flying off with furious flaps of its blue jade wings.

Cash Charmer caught up with Speaker moments later, the two making short work of the remaining bone-tower-claws. Cash simply smashed the things at the base with his hoof of the day-star style, clearing the way for the wondervolts and the supply skyship, while Speaker did his thing with Homage.

As they returned to the camp they were met with cheers – but also concerned looks from Sully and Sunrise. The two quickly caught on the worries of their friends, to which Speaker put them at ease at least for himself: “I know we burnt through a lot of essence out there, but with my hearthstones I’ll be topped off before the courage-nuts are fully distributed”

Nodding, Sunrise gave Cash an inquisitive look: “What about you? Do you have a means to recover your essence before the next battle?”
“Oh come on – of course I’ve got something up my sleeve…” Cash said with a smarmy smile.

It turned out that before they had left Cash had used the thing he’s best at – money – to buy week’s worth of worship at a surprisingly large number of monasteries, villages and other places, paying ponies to not pray for him… but pray to him.

Heath Rose found it in very poor taste to simply pay ponies to pray to you, but she couldn’t deny that for what it was being used for then it served a very good purposes: “Still, this is going to ruffle all kinds of feathers back on the Blessed Isle – a Solar gaining mass worship is just the kind of thing that could light a fire under the Wyld Hunt again, even with what you lot did to Peleps Pureblood”

“Shouldn’t matter – when we’re done here Lookshy will consider us a vital asset. No Wyld Hunt will be able to approach Sunhill without getting turned away by the Seventh Legion” Speaker noted confidently.

Giving Speaker a judging look for a moment, Heath Rose ultimately nodded slowly: “Just don’t get upset when Lookshy starts demanding things of you – they won’t prioritize letting you perform medical miracles nearly as high as having you around to fix their broken toys.”
Turning to the rest of the circle, but also giving Speaker a glance, Heath Rose continued: “Now, speaking of priorities, what will yours be for the coming battle?”

While the orders from the Taimyos dictated the deployment of the circle, then Heath Rose was more curious about exactly what the individual members of the circle were going to do in practice.

Sullen Hoof and Cash Charmer explained their rather effective strategy on how to double-team large swaths of ghosts and zombies: Cash would use his charms to talk the ghost officers into ordering their zombies into a dormant state so they wouldn’t interfere while they were to duel – it was some kind of torpor meant to allow for necro-surgeons to perform maintenance – and after that Sullen Hoof would zip in and quickly kill the ghost as it and Cash was about to square off, leaving up to half a thousand zombies just standing idly by. For larger formations of ghosts Cash could only distract them - but that was all Sully needed to quickly leap around them and leave a thick line of salt in place, walling them in.

“That explains a lot of the zombies and ghost that Sunrise managed to burn off when she first appeared… makes me wonder if they’ll even send any more of those out” Heath Rose noted.

Sunrise, as commanded by the Taimyo, had simply planned to use her heavenly back-up choir and orchestra to open up a path for Speaker and the other sappers that were going to move in and destroy the manse: “I’m sure they’ll try to attack the cloud, either during our approach or when we are in place to give our grand performance, so aside from singing I think my role will mainly be of a defensive nature”

Heath Rose added that for Sunrise’s grand performance then part of their preparations in Yu-Shan had involved getting Taru Han, the Lady of Souls, goddess of herding the souls of the deal into lethe for reincarnation, to write a song for Sunrise to sing: “Since Deep Rot works through enslaved ghosts linked in a hivemind, this song should free most of them and spirit them off to the next life – if it doesn’t break Deep Rot outright, then it should certainly make for a good distraction”

Lee nodded, but looked uncertain: “Distraction, yes – but I doubt it’ll destroy the place. The Barbate Arbiter is well known for building in failsafes and other backups into his designs – plus I don’t think those souls can leave even if they want to. The other Deathlords mock him for wasting resources on making sure that his creations don’t fall apart nearly as easily, but considering how well Deep Rot has been holding out against our attacks so far… this won’t be easy”

“What about you Heath Rose? Where can we find you when this gets underway?” Sullen Hoof wondered.

The Sidereal said that she’d tag along Speaker into the manse: “My heavenly martial arts have given me great insight into how essence works – I can help disrupt and destroy Deep Rot’s essence flows, plus I think I’m the only one here who can defend against necromancy”

“Oh that’ll be nice – I’ve been told that the greatest losses the Lookshyans took in the last battle was from abyssals who managed to cast spells at them. Unicorn sorcery can’t defend against necromancy at all, their essence is too weak” Lee said, having apparently been briefed on some of the after-action reports already, or just snuck a look at them.

Sullen Hoof agreed: “Yes – the worst was some kind of white sphere they would conjure up and throw at massed troops. Striped the flesh from their bones by its pale light, no matter what kind of armor they wore – only unicorns were able to resist, but then they would be outnumbered and swarmed by skeletons”

Speaker noted that he’d experienced that spell back when he and Shimmer had captured the dead leader of the ponatees. Heath Rose had also read reports of such a spell, noting that the best defense against sorcery like that was to distract them while they shape the spell and subdue them quickly.

The circle spoke a bit more on tactics and what worked best against what, with Cash sneaking more than one subtle charm-enhanced hint at Speaker that it might be a really good idea to also try to rescue Shimmer – she had cheated death once, so there was no reason why she hadn’t done so again and was simply await retrieval.

It was then that the horns sounded and troops everywhere scrambled to ready themselves, put their armor repair kits or whet stones away and helm the defenses.

Lee, Sully and Cash left to join up at the forward defenses. Sunrise called for her orchestra and backup singers to assemble. Speaker followed Heath Rose to the staging area for the new and improved Team Jade Mole.

The unicorn rangers of the team were at first surprised to see Speaker alive – they had apparently bugged out fast after Speaker had been caught, as their previous orders had been to disengage and get out if that happened. Speaker was just as surprise to see them alive – but such was the tricks that battle could play on you.

This time around the rangers’ orders were of a roughly similar nature to last time, but as the ranking ranger, a gruff looking water aspected unicorn mare with a perpetually wet mane who sounded like she washed down her breakfast with a good helping of gravel, noted: “We didn’t know that they would target you that intensely – now we do, and we’ve geared up accordingly for it”

By the same note, the team had scavenger up some very nice and not that blood-stained jade armor for Speaker to wear – its old owner having died in the previous battle – but Speaker declined: “My own shield charms are just as good, and they don’t work with armor”

The unicorn mare didn’t look entirely convinced, but as Speaker and Heath Rose very quickly demonstrated using one of the ranger’s spears then it took considerable might and effort to even scratch Speaker, let alone actually hurt him.

Equally, to Speaker’s surprise then the rangers all treated Heath Rose like an old friend and peer – probably some Sidereal charm at work – but it meant that Heath Rose was in turn offered the jade armor, she too turned down, noting that her martial arts didn’t mesh well with armor getting in the way.

“Does anyone want some bloody jade armor?” the mare exclaimed, annoyed that her otherwise well-planned and well intentioned generosity was going to waste.

There were no takers – the other rangers had far more advanced magical armor on already. Speaker suggested they offer it to Lee – he could probably use it. Thus, a pair of messengers hauled the armor off the front lines.

Moving into position under Sunrise’s cloud, the team discussed tactics and strategy: The rangers wanted to remain invisible and use that to pick off anything that got too close to Speaker. Speaker and his chakram would be ranged duty, picking off anything attacking them from afar, while Heath Rose would support where needed since the rangers didn’t really know what she could do – but she assured that she’d be helpful.

The final horn rang out, signaling the restart of the main bombardment. Runed crystals hummed to life as hearthstones set in them flooded the things with essence from Creation, essence that moments later was shunted through gemstone lenses and projected out towards Deep Rot at frightening speeds. The Jade rivets, bronze tubes and steel struts that held it all together groaned, as the mighty concussive forces pushed and pulled in the several dozen artillery pieces. This was more than enough firepower to reduce a city and its walls to dust – as was standard battle protocol for Lookshy: Always employ superior force.