The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Under the cover of Sunrise’s cloud, Speaker saw the first volley of ball lightning and bolts of volatile essence sail through the air and in over Deep Rot’s walls. He knew that this was just the initial volleys, meant to soften up the defenders and disrupt them while the skyships moved into place.

The mighty Sky Wolf, the blue jade orca-shaped flagship of Lookshy’s sky-fleet, led the charge, its own essence cannons raining elemental destruction down on the structures insides of Deep Rot, followed by half a dozen more artillery skyremes, and a dozen smaller escort vessels likely geared to repel flying attackers and screen or scout for necromantic sorcery.

The counterattack quickly picked up, black lightning shooting up from the walls of Deep Rot. Most of the skyship hulls already had plenty of singed streaks from such hits, and half a dozen ships hadn’t been able to join the battle due to being too damaged from last round, with repair crews back at the artillery position working franticly to get the ships sky-worthy again.

Speaker couldn’t see it, but between the Sky Wolf and the other artillery ships then the skyships were mainly shooting at the enemy anti-air weapons: It was easy enough to spot where a lightning ballista was shooting from, a regular spear-chucking ballista less so, but Lookshy made good telescopes for spotting ground positions.

This time around the defenders of Deep Rot also seemed to have come up with a few new tricks: A thick black fog rose within Deep Rot, covering everything inside the walls in a midnight black haze. This undoubtedly complicated any attempts at spotting ground targets for the main artillery… but then, that wasn’t the plan, mainly because the weapons on the skyships simply weren’t powerful enough to do that much damage on a hardened target such a fortified manse, but there was another reason as well.

The Sky Wolf and the Artillery Ships were all a diversion: They quickly began to relay information back to the main artillery, guiding their volleys upwards… towards an unseen target some hundred yards up, based on Speaker’s information.

When the first volley landed a partial hit on the flying control center of Deep Rot the entire manse shook, as did the ground around it for miles. With a little adjustment to the targeting, the next couple of volleys hit a lot better… and moments later the veil that hid the command center from sight fell, revealing a grotesque structure with a really big antenna array of sorts on top of it.

Heath Rose quickly identified part of the array to be in the shape of the greater sign of Saturn, the Mare of Endings: “That… is probably not a good thing”

“That would be the End Time Relay” Speaker noted coldly, sounding ever so intent on seeing that array destroyed.

With the relay seat of control and the relay revealed, the defenders of Deep Rot seemed to switch strategy. From a distance, what looked like tiny ants began spilling out from the floating control center, zombies creating a husk of writhing, undulating, ablative flesh for the artillery to destroy, instead of damaging the manse itself. This just proved that the thing truly was a vulnerable target.

Several gates in Deep Rot’s walls also flung open, a massive counter-attack spilling out – it seemed that the defenders really didn’t want the bombardment to continue.

Four signal horns rang out, the sign that Sunrise was to move her cloud up and advance on Deep Rot’s walls. Team Jade Mole followed under the cover of the cloud.

The undead hordes spilling out of the manse seemed to take care to stay out of effective range of Sunrise’s singing, giving the cloud a half-mile wide berth at the very minimum, as they circled around to assault the artillery position. Speaker took a deep breath and hoped that Lee was ready for them.

The dim roar of battle rose behind Speaker as the fighting between Lee’s forces and the undead began – but at the same time a sizable detachment had moved into position before Sunrise’s cloud… and it wasn’t making any effort to get out of the way.

“Speaker, the troops in our way… they don’t sound undead” Heath Rose noted in a decidedly worried tone.

It took Speaker a moment to recall that the usual Sidereal essence-sight charm worked more like essence-hearing – but then Sullen Hoof appeared and reported: “They’re living ponies, well armed and armored – with red armbands…”

“Oh heavens – the Thornguard” Heath Rose blurted out. She quickly explained that these were elite of Thorn’s living army, trained by Abyssals... and were probably led by one too: “Those ponies… they’re volunteer mortals”.

Moments later Sullen Hoof confirmed that a pony clad in what looked like freshly flayed hides, who wielded a dirty great soulsteel axe, was leading the unit of Thornguard troops.

The thought of living ponies voluntarily serving a Deathlord sickened and enraged Speaker: “How far are they?”

“A bit under one and a half mile – its open terrain, but they’re heavily armored, so they’re not going anywhere soon. They’re expecting us to come to them and their archers” Sullen Hoof said, giving Speaker curious looks…

Looking at Heath Rose and Sullen Hoof, then throwing a quick glance around to see if he could tell where the invisible rangers were hiding – which he couldn’t, Speaker’s look sharpened as settled his gaze in the direction of Deep Rot and the waiting Thornguard: “Sully and Rose, you’re on the Deathknight – there’s probably more than one, a whole circle if we’re unlucky. I’ll do a fly-over now and soften up the troops with Homage. Ideally it’ll reduce them to appoint where the Abyssals will be fighting alone”

Everyone nodded, and Speaker galloped out from under the cloud and willed his ruby pinions to ignite. With a roar of flame Speaker was skyward, wings of fire beating hard.

Giving Sunrise a quick wave before spinning around and facing Deep Rot, Speaker got a very nice view of the battle so far: Lee’s forces had engaged the undead – and judging from the blazing golden anima down in the midst of tiny moving things on the ground, then Lee was doing just fine. The Thornguard ahead was divided up into a main force with two small infantry blocks on either side – clearly ready to move up and encircle anyone approaching. Behind them were three sizable units of archers, though Speaker couldn’t see what quality bows they were using.

Thinking for a moment, Speaker recalled that back when Thorns had been a Realm tributary their archers had been generally rather poorly equipped – issued only basic wooden bows, not the superior composite bows that most of the Nexus mercenaries liked to use. Lookshy’s bows of course much better, based on… well… Speaker’s own first age designs come to think of it, the pulley and multi-drawstring design he had thought up so long ago, still being the absolute best kind of bow short of magical artifact powerbows.

Still, the enemy archers were by far the greatest threat – not to Speaker – but to Sunrise and her orchestra. Their cloud was too far from the ground for even spears to reach, at a height of roughly fifty or so yards, but volleys of arrows could still reach them – and those musical spirits and godlings didn’t look particularly well armored.

Bringing Homage to bear, Speaker dove towards the archers and threw Homage with a mighty charge of essence – commanding it to keep attacking the blocks of archers until they were no more. Homage zipped down silently, leaving behind a pulsing trail of light from its energy blade, a light that quickly subsided when it disappeared among the mortals down on the ground.

Moments later a return volley of arrows came up towards Speaker, whistling through the air. Being arrows fired by mere mortals they had no chance of hurting Speaker, such was the strength of his shield charm – and thus Speaker hovered above archers and simply waited for the carnage below to subside.

It didn’t take long for the thornguard infantry to start moving – clearly their commander realized that if they did nothing Speaker might start attacking them as well: They shuffled around, setting up a shield wall around the panicking archers. That their commander didn’t seem to do anything to even try to save the archers sickened Speaker.

After the first ten minutes of waiting, Speaker found it surprisingly disappointing that he wasn’t getting any return fire. The archery volleys had long stopped – and judging from how the archers down below were falling left and right, then Homage was doing its job just fine.

Suddenly a messenger spell appeared before Speaker in the form of a glowing scroll. As Speaker touched it to unfold the scroll the whole thing erupted into a puff of cloud – or rather, a hollow cloud, inside of which the scroll unfolded allowing Speaker to read it without any prying eyes down on the grounds being able to see it.

It was new orders: “Stay airborne – flare your anima twice in rapid succession if you see anything coming our way. We’ll be there in ten. Heath Rose”

Halfway through waiting for the cloud to reach his position the archers finally broke, scattering back towards the walls of Deep Rot. Looking towards the walls, Speaker had to wonder why the anti-air artillery there wasn’t shooting at him. Maybe he was too small a target for them to aim at?

With the archers gone the Thornguard infantry began moving towards the cloud at a clearly-essence fueled gallop – which made Speaker wonder what kind of strategy the commander for the troops had in mind to take on the cloud…

This question quickly had its answer revealed: As the two sides closed, the ground rose before the Thornguard! Great slabs of rocks and dried flesh came out of the ground, under the Thornguard, carried by giant clawed skeletal limbs just like the ones that had grabbed the Wondervolts earlier!

It was a bit chaotic, with dozens of Thornguard falling to their death as the slabs rose out of the ground underneath their hooves to carry them up – but in mere moments a thousand or so Thornguard were moving up to disembark on Sunrise’s cloud!

A single booming war-cry pierced the sky, exploding the first several ranks of Thornguard in showers of blood and links of chainmail, staining the front of the cloud red. Speaker quickly concluded that Sunrise really hadn’t been kidding about her song-based martial arts…

The rangers appeared down on the ground, dropping their magical veils as they began to demolish the giant bone limbs holding the enemy forces up. Hundreds of Thornguard fell to their death screaming as the bone limbs began to topple, but their screams were drowned out by the glorious battle music from atop the cloud.

The Deathknight leading the Thornguard quickly found herself tangled up by Sully in a web of sticky… warm and liquid but quickly cooling caramel? Heavy Soulsteel armor became a prison as armor-joints clogged and locked up. In anger the Abyssal flared her anima, but the cloud around her melted away in seconds, leaving her to drop to the ground looking rather… not happy.

Sullen Hoof somehow caught up with the Deathknight on her way down, exploiting the still largely immobilized state of being of his foe to deliver a finishing blow.

Speaker joined the fight himself, flying under the slabs of stone or flesh and pushing… trying to tilt the slabs – no need to topple the bone limbs holding them up if the passangers had already fallen off. This worked well for the first three slabs, but then the limbs seemed to tighten their grips – but that just revealed cracks in the remaining stone slabs that Speaker was able to get Homage to widen, breaking the slabs and letting the troops on them fall to their death.

The whole battle was over in about thirty minutes, with minimal casualties among the orchestra – though many of them were quite visible shaken by the experience… not so much from seeing mortals fight and die, but more for seeing the fury and might of Solars unleashed around them – apparently that was a lot more scary to some of them.

Approaching the wall Speaker was called down by the rangers. They had received a message from Skywolf command that the battlements before them had been salt-bombed, though Speaker still needed to scout ahead for anti-air in range of the cloud. Once over the wall Speaker was to give the rangers ‘the package’ – though the rangers didn’t seem entirely sure what this package was… and then Speaker was to find something worthwhile to sabotage so the manse would blow up.

“Why weren’t we told about this package?” One of the rangers asked, the voice-talisman on the ranger’s magical armor making the ranger’s voice both clear as day to hear but oddly quiet – an odd magical feature, but it probably had its uses.

Speaker nodded, realizing that the Taimyos had kept the Soul-Breaker Orb decoy ploy a secret – made sense: the decoy would be worthless if the Deathlords somehow learned that it was fake, so the fewer who knew of it the better: “Need to know basis, you don’t need to know yet. It will become obvious when I give it to you – now get up on the cloud!”

The air elementals producing and controlling the cloud spirited the rangers up to the front of the cloud, though keeping them hidden within the swirling mass of cloud.

That there hadn’t been any proper counterattack or attempt to disrupt or destroy the cloud worried Speaker. Heath Rose and Sully agreed, plus only having sent a single Deathknight out to fight them? It didn’t make sense… the manse’s defenses had been far better coordinated and controlled in the previous battle.

It turned out that the counter-move to the cloud came just as the cloud had moved half-way over the battlements: Several lightning ballistae popped out of piles of broken zombie corpses, having been hidden there – and as they opened fire on the cloud four Deathknights leapt up into the cloud from a hiding place within the battlements, attacking and killing several air elementals before erupting onto the top of the cloud where everyone else was!

Sullen Hoof and Heath Rose quickly leapt into action, Sully engaging one while Heath Rose struck at the essence of another… somehow jumping into that Deathknight, who looked rather confused at first, as did the other Deathknights, none of them really sure of what had just happened.

When the Deathknight with Heath Rose inside began to stab himself to death with his own bone-clawed hooves… well, Sully, Sunrise and Speaker all remembered Heath Rose’s essence-possession technique from the manse with the bonestriders back in Chung Do.

Speaker flew out to engage the lighting ballistae, throwing Homage to cut off the critical guidance spikes that allowed the ballista to target their magical lightning… without those the things couldn’t discharge, making them blow up rather spectacularly.

Now, flying around inside the several mile wide perimeter of Deep Rot was not without its dangers – there were a lot more ghosts flying about inside the manse, and while individually they weren’t much of a threat then Speaker still had to make sure that he wasn’t grabbed and dragged down to the ground by them. No need to repeat that adventure.

It didn’t help that much that the skyships were still bombarding the manse from up above – random explosions around you made it difficult to listen for incoming flying ghosts, not that they made that much noise to begin with – and some of those things had surprisingly sharp claws and teeth, enough to even given Speaker a few minor wounds through his essence shields.

Flying back to the cloud, Speaker contemplated whether he should waste essence on healing his injuries, or just hit himself with his anesthetic charm and keep going – healing would spend a lot more essence… but would also leave him in a less vulnerable state.

This train of thought was derailed as he got to the cloud – it had shrunk considerably, and Heath Rose, Sully and Sunrise were talking with the rangers and tending to their own wounds.

“One more hit like this and the cloud is out – the few air elementals left can only maintain this much” Sunrise lamented. The orchestra of spirits was huddled together quite tightly, few of them having enough room to play their instruments.

The rangers suggested that Sunrise and the cloud retreat out of Deep Rot, and wait outside the walls – to cover provide transport for their eventual retreat. Heath Rose liked this idea: “As nice as being kept clear of undead in here would be… it’s probably the best idea”
“Sully, go with Sunrise – keep her safe” Speaker ordered.

The Orichalcum chef looked as if about to object, but stayed his tongue and joined Sunrise on her cloud.

As the cloud floated away Speaker recalled the fake Soul-Breaker Orb from elsewhere, and gently floated it over to the rangers: “This is the package – find a good central spot to hide it, set the timer and then get the hell out”

“Wait, they brought two?” one of the rangers blurted out before getting punched, hard, by one of the other rangers.

It instantly dawned on Speaker what this meant… and how dangerous that really was – though he was also a bit curious as to how exactly the unicorns were hiding such a large device on them?

“Very well – I’ll take this to the central control station of this place. Go into the pit and set it somewhere there. Message us when with how much time we have to get out” Speaker half-ordered, half-suggested, unsure of exactly what kind of orders the rangers had gotten on how to use their Soul-Breaker Orb.

The rangers silently nodded and headed off – they all knew how dangerous their mission was. Speaker mainly hoped that when they deployed the orb that they wouldn’t just set it off instantly…

With the rangers gone – and very much out of sight, as their magical veils had been re-engaged – Speaker and Heath Rose looked upwards, towards the no longer veiled control station of the manse… it was covered in ashen scorch-marks from all the artillery hits, and the jiggling, writhing mass of zombies crawling on it to cover any breaches – and with every direct hit from the essence artillery a rail of tiny bits of zombie drizzled into the giant pit in the middle of the manse.

“Heath Rose – can you fly up there with me?” Speaker wondered, certain that the Sidereal had some means of flying ready – be it conjuring a flying cloud through sorcery or maybe pulling out an air elemental to ride on from her ear….

The green-eyed Sidereal with the dark-brown coat smiled and drew out a living butterfly from within her cloak. Putting it on the ground before her, the mare made a few strange gestures and then… well… she broke reality a bit.

Speaker looked on with no small amount of confusion as Heath Rose somehow ‘straddled’ the dainty little butterfly and began to ‘ride’ it up into the sky... It was first when she called out for him to keep up that Speaker ignited his ruby pinions with golden essence, letting him soar into the sky on wings of fire.

It took a bit of debating with himself on whether he should even ask how Heath Rose was doing that – ultimately he bothered not to: It was probably some kind of Sidereal reality twisting.

Approaching the command station from below turned out to be rather perilous: There were still parts of its underside where the veil worked – with invisible bladed soulsteel spikes everywhere, possibly antenna or something for sending signals back and forth between the control station and the ten thousand enslaved ghost-minds down in the manse.

With a few scratches and torn clothes the two found their way into the manse, and by the light of their animas the two exalts began raising hell: Floating his dummy Soul-Breaker Orb behind him, Speaker quickly managing to attract all kinds of fun attention inside the control station. Heath Rose fiddled around with fate so that the orb would read as truly being made of the magical materials, which ensured that the horde of ghosts and half a dozen Abyssals who looked very much caught off guard, all believed that the fake orb was very real and very dangerous.

Leading their pursuers on a merry chase through the manse, Heath Rose using some kind of Sidereal Secrets/Journeys-based charm to constantly find the right route out, even if it was through hidden doors or secret passages, the two worked diligently to pick off their pursuers one by one: Deathknights that tried to dodge or parry the incoming disk of hot death being thrown at them. Homage was thrown back at the ghosts and Abyssals repeatedly, cutting up ghosts left and right or stumbling anyone trying to dodge.

It also turned out that Heath Rose had no small amount of nasty things she could toss behind her while the two galloped around, leaving dozens of clouds of 8-Scream devil powder hanging in the air behind them, or hoof-fulls of one-inch adamant-encased blue jade icosahedrons… they turned to be quite aptly named lightning boxes, for when their pursuers stumbled into them they unleashed their lightning charges to a spectacularly lethal effect.

In between throwing Homeage backwards, so it would bounce off the walls to attack his pursuers from an odd angle, Speaker managed to ask: “Exactly how many things do you have in your pockets for this?”

While it was difficult to shrug when galloping, Heath Rose did manage a strained one: “To be honest I don’t know – my secretary packed this, I just told him I had prophesized that I would be chased at some point”

Speaker shook his head as they rounded a corner, Heath Rose quickly gesturing for the two to stop: “Hold up – I tossed a love bomb, I need to see this go off”

As they waited for a few tense seconds, Heath Rose peeking back around the corner, Speaker took a deep breath and took stop of the situation: Above him, glowing with golden light, hovered his fake Soul-Breaker Orb, it looking undamaged. The walls and ceiling were naked hewn rock, roughly polished to a dull and grey mat finish. The only difference for the floor was the multitude of stains on it, from the various drippings that zombies and other undead things had left behind in their passing.

Suddenly a bright pink light erupted from behind the corner, and Heath Rose looked… surprised, in a positive way, but not in a way she had expected: “Oh…”

“What is it?” Speaker said, curious to look around the corner.

With a friendly but firm hoof to his chest Heath Rose stopped Speaker: “You don’t want to look. That wasn’t the good kind of love bomb – I had hoped it was something that would overwhelm the ghosts with passionate love... it wasn’t”

Speaker furrowed his brows in a mix of incredulity and disbelief: “Exactly what are we talking about?”

“Love, the kind you clean up with a mob and bucket – suffice to say that the ghosts and Deathknights chasing us have all been prevented from giving pursuit” Heath Rose stated in a very manner-of-fact like tone, sounding quite uncomfortable with the topic.

Unable to withhold his laughter, Speaker shocked Heath Rose with his lack of disgust as he peeked around the corner: “Oh that’s nothing… let me tell you about this thing Sunrise once did back in Nexus – what was it they called it? A Harlotry Hot-Tub? Hose-down? Something like that…”

The two sauntered off, having eluded pursuit. Sure, there was the odd patrolling ghost that they had to put down, but between their magical martial arts and the magical weapons they wielded – Homage and Heath Rose being able to change the essence of her hooves into blades or claws or starmetal – then no ghost was able to stand before them.

Certain that word of them having a Soul-Breaker Orb had spread in the manse, based chiefly on the fact that most of the patrols they now ran into seemed to recognize them as the “Orb-bearers”, the two decided that the best thing to do would be to hide the orb somewhere to make it look like they had deployed it and set the timer: They both agreed that there are few things more convincing than seeing someone running away from having planting a soul-shredding bomb.

Having apparently stolen the fate of the real Soul-Breaker Orb and adding that to the dummy orb, Heath Rose made the thing produce a very unmistakable ticking noise – Even Speaker found it difficult to tell that the thing wasn’t real now that fate supported it being the real deal. Even the gimbaled rings within the device swung around just fine, making the illusion damn near perfect.

Using his deconstruction charm, Speaker hid the device inside the wall of a rather unassuming passage. Repairing the hole was an effortless exercise in repair-charm use, which led the two exalts to discuss what to do next…

“I say we find some strong essence relays and destroy them – the more we cripple the manse before the orb goes off, the better” Speaker suggested.

Heath Rose, more certain that the orb would be plenty to up-end the manse, suggested a different target: “Why not try to find Shimmer and see if she’s still alive? I would have gotten a message from Lytek if her exaltation had arrived at his office”

Without even a second thought Speaker dismissed the idea: “She knew what she was getting herself into – and while her loss is regrettable, then we need to focus on destroying this place”

The Sidereal took a pensive half-step back. This was the kind of cold and calculating, charm-spun singular focus that she had been told so many dreadful stories about – so many warnings about: Solars that had used charms on themselves to hone their minds into maniacal weapons, unable to give time or compassion to the fallen, lost or captured…

Of course, she had also been briefed by Cash on exactly what to say to convince Speaker otherwise, to which end Hearth Rose threw Speaker a dismissive frown: “You do realize that it would take almost a century to bring Shimmer up to her current level of skill? Think of how much more she can help Creation as she is now, compared to how much time you’ll have to waste training her, or having other Lunars train her, if you let her die?”

It honestly frightened Heath Rose that she had to present Last Shimmer in such a way – as an asset for Speaker, and not as a friend or lover – still, judging from how Speaker’s expression turned into a slow nod then it seemed to have worked.

“Can you track her?” Speaker asked in a cold tone that made Heath Rose pray that Cash Charmer could undo whatever exactly it was he had done to Speaker once this was all over.

Pulling out a bamboo scroll covered in glowing ink – an enchanted map that had apparently charted the route they had taken within the structure – Heath Rose pondered the hallways charted so far: “Well, we never went into any of them rooms we passed. Let me do a divination”
Finding a remote alcove, Speaker stood watch while Heath Rose attempted to chart the weave of fate, despite it being frail and faint in the underworld, seeking the silver strand that was Shimmer’s. She quickly gave up: “Too much essence is being thrown around here – there’s too much interference. Tracking things via fate works best when there’s no supernatural activity, plus the underworld is so far removed from the normal weave of fate…”

“Fair enough. Do you think this place would have its dungeon in the command structure, or down around the pit somewhere?” Speaker thought out loud.

Heath Rose pondered the question for a moment: “Well, we never got any kind of message that he was holding her hostage… but you said she had burst in through the wall in the throne room, right? Was she too big to move out of there last you saw her?”

The look of happy surprise on Speaker’s face said it all: “Oh she was in her warform alright, the big version of it. Unless they moved her out of the hole she had come in by… so we just have to track the essence flows here to find the throne room!”

Between essence sight and essence hearing, the two quickly began to track the various grim conduits of soulsteel and pulsating flesh, neatly stitched together.