The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Leaving the castle was easy enough. Convincing Cash to leave the castle: less easy. Cash was so enamored with the castle that he wanted to stay – and it took a good right-hoof blow from Red to bring Cash back into reality. Speaker equally estimated that the bracelets had spent about four hours of power, and so he urged everypony to hurry back to the manse so they could get down to business.

However, upon exiting into the castle courtyard the circle came across a strange sight: Dozens of pony-sized automatons were scavenging the destroyed guardians. Red quickly scattered them with easeand directed Speaker to salvage one of the guardian automaton giant blades. With the aid of Shimmer in her Shimmer-saurus form, as well as Red using a strength-increasing charm and Cash landing a well-aimed buck enhanced with essence, the circle managed to wrest free one such blade. It was a gigantic steel blade, evidently made with an alloy of white and black jade mixed with steel to give it a deceptively mundane appearance along with nearly indestructible features. Shimmer and Speaker managed to fashion a simple handle, although Speaker still felt it took too long.

With a new and ridiculously oversized blade for Red, which weighed accordingly, the circle quickly made their way to the city manse.

The white jade dragon seal worked as intended. Touching it to the locking mechanism on one of the four giant gates of the cube-shaped manse caused the massive bronze doors to fade into elsewhere.

“Tread lightly. These grounds haven’t been disturbed since the fall of the shogunate” Speaker quietly.

Looking around at the dusty interior Sunrise Glow shook her head: “Considering how few ponies were recorded to get out of Denansdor I’m surprised we have not yet run into ghosts”

“It’s the miasma… it scares off everything. There aren’t even insects here. It’s creeping me out – probably affects ghosts too” Shimmer looking around at the ground floor of the manse.

A lone cargo-lifter automaton, similar to the dozens ordered to sit in the square around the manse earlier, stood motionless on the floor of the manse. The floor itself was an impossibly detailed and ornate stained glass floor mural of blooming lights, and aside from the automaton, it was empty. In the middle of the room, at the center of floor mural was a large circular black granite platform twenty yards in diameter. This would be the device that would lift ponies up and down the manse, from the deepest vaults to the temple up in the onion-shaped dome on top of the cube structure.

The circle quickly rushed inside, Sully and Cash quickly spotting the crate that was stuck in the grotesquely extended mouth of the automaton lifter pony. The wooden crate crumbled to dust the moment Cash touched it, revealing the content as it clattered to the ground. It was jade bracelets of some kind. The rest of the circle quickly gathered around as Shimmer quickly identified the devices: “There is at least twenty jade hearthstone bracers here”

Looking around at the circle Sunrise dryly noted that they would only need six for all of them, while Speaker put on a green pair and began attuning to them so he could put his tomb-manse hearthstone into its socket. Cash didn’t see the problem: “We’ll sell the rest in Nexus, make a fortune! Let’s bag it and dive into the vaults; I want to see the treasury!”

Sunrise walked over on the black granite platform. The moment she put a hoof on it the rough surface reacted and like rings on water the stone became smooth as if polished to a mirror shine. This also revealed a circular pattern around the edge of the platform with a series of first age glyphs in old realm set at regular intervals around the platform marked out a strange pattern. Knowing how to Speak and read old realm on account of having been taught to read ancient scripture as a foal while part of various cults, Sunrise Glow quickly found that one simply had to touch the right glyph with your hoof and the platform would go up or down to the desired level of the manse.

As the rest of the circle gathered on the platform Sunrise stepped on a glyph, and the platform began to rise at a brisk pace, accelerating quite quickly – but at the same time its passengers didn’t appear to feel it. Speaker figured that there were inertial dampeners built into the stone disk, maybe underneath it.

Cash thought that Sunrise had pressed the wrong glyph, since they were going up – but Sunrise insisted on checkout out the hearthstone chamber first, since Speaker had previously mentioned that it would be up in the dome.

As the platform rose up to fill a perfectly sized hole in the ceiling of the ground floor of the manse, it quickly merged to become part pof the floor of the temple level of the manse. The immaculate iconography was everywhere, and it was clear that the unicorns had done a thorough job of removing, covering or otherwise modifying everything that had looked as if meant for the worship of Celestia or other obvious anathema idols.

Sunrise quickly made for the altar, ignoring the scattered bones of several hundred pony skeletons that were strewn around the place, mainly around the seating areas for the worshiper. It was clear that there had been a lot of ponies who had taken refuge in the manse when disaster had struck. Speaker could only shudder as his vivid imagination brought him horrific images of ponies maddened by the then new miasma tore each other apart as they lost their minds.

“It’s not here” Sunrise exclaimed calmly, sounding very disappointed none the less. She was standing next to a bowl behind the altar. The essence flows of the manse were incredibly strong here, to the point that one could taste dirt and stone in one’s mouth just by standing near the bowl. This would certainly be where the manse’s hearthstone would form. That it wasn’t there meant that it was somewhere else… and there was no real way of telling where that was.

It was clear why Sunrise Glow had sought the hearthstone. Like the hearthstone Speaker had from his tomb manse, then the one from this manse would undoubtedly yield very powerful magical effects on whatever pony who carried it in a proper receptacle, such as the hearthstone bracers found downstairs.

“Once we retake Denansdor, I want this temple rebuilt to Celestia – and it must be our top priority” Sunrise said solemnly. Red merely nodded and told her to hold her horses, stating that they had to take over the place first.

Before they left for the vault levels Sunrise had one last suggestion for what to do in the temple: She suggested that they all attune to the manse, so they could benefit from the latent essence while there. Shimmer was quick to point out a problem with this plan: “A place as powerful as this – even with its previous owner undoubtedly dead so there’s nothing to prevent us from doing it – but it will take hours attune to essence flows as powerful as these, hours that could be spent down in the vaults”

Sullen Hoof, Red, Cash and Shimmer all wanted to go exploring down below. Speaker and Sunrise were the only ones who thought it would be a good idea to attune to the manse. The circle thus split up, leaving Sunrise and Speaker to perform the quite easy but very time consuming meditative rite that made one’s essence one with that of the manse one was in, while everypony else descended down into the depths of the manse.

As they left, Speaker told them to stick together no matter what: “The vaults extend for miles out under the city in some places. If you get lost and your bracelet runs out… none of us want to see that happen, plus between the lot of you only Cash can appraise, Shimmer will know enough ancient lore to identify whatever you find and Sully can open locked crates”
Five hours later Sunrise and Speaker both breathed a heavy sigh of relief and elation as they suddenly felt incredibly aware of their surroundings within the manse.

“Well, glad to see this wasn’t a waste – that’s good” Speaker said, looking around as he felt the essence flows of the manse around him.

Sunrise wasn’t sure what the Lookshyan stallion meant. Speaker explained that their attempt to attune would have failed if the hearthstone was outside of the manse: “So with any luck we might find it down in the vaults – if memory serves right then it would usually be the governor of Denansdor who held it…”

That said Speaker and Sunrise summoned the platform, which came up with Shimmer and Sullen Hoof. They had left Cash and Red down at the treasury, busting down doors to reveal the riches held inside. The rest of the circle joined them, finding Red and Cash absolutely decked out in golden jewel-encrusted jewelry. The stone vaults’ dim lighting from glowing crystals didn’t emit enough light to make all the gold and silver shine, but there was enough to illuminate the ocean of wealth stored in the treasury.

“What do mean we can’t take this with us!?” Cash said, sounding equally confused and skeptical.
The issue was that Cash, for obvious reasons, wanted the whole hoard out of the manse. Speaker, Sunrise, Shimmer and even Sullen Hoof could see how that would simply be too much wealth for any one pony – or group of ponies – realistically spend unless Cash was planning on buying a seat on the ruling council of the Guild, or maybe purchase an entire kingdom. Plus, while Shimmer could store items far larger than one might expect in elsewhere, then a hoard of riches large enough to fill a lake was still beyond her abilities.

Ultimately Cash managed to find a satisfying compromise. Shimmer folded a stack of jade talents, mostly white jade talents but also some of other colors, into elsewhere, giving the circle a portable fortune large enough to buy an army – in cash.
Gawking at the stack while Shimmer trotted around it, the edges of the talents slowly fading away, Cash marveled. A talent was a sixty-eight pound slab of solid material, jade in this case, although silver talents supposedly also existed. Fact was that talents were usually just values seen in banking ledgers. Not that many actual solid talents of jade or silver were known to exist, and the realm held most of the jade talents in the imperial treasury, while the guild pushed their own silver based currency instead to make them less dependent on the realm’s treasury. To this end a stack of ten talents of jade, four white, two blue, two green, and a single red and black one was a fortune to be reckoned with.

A single talent could be carved out into a little over a thousand jade obols, the coins of the realms – for the unicorns. A single jade obol could buy a house, or pay for a good suit of steel barding. The guild’s silver currency was worth a bit less less, but was far easier to produce since it didn’t involve any magical materials, making it the defacto currency for most non-realm controlled lands, meaning most of the east, the scavenger lands and the north – but it was still used all over creation, wherever guild merchants went.

“You know Cash, you may say that those slabs were each sixty-eight pounds, but they felt more like six-hundred” Red commented, stretching out after having hauled and pushed the talents into place.
Cash sighed: “Come on – don’t you know that magic materials are crazy heavy unless you put essence into them?! They weigh sixty-eight pounds when you do that. Without, they weigh… I don’t know, but I once saw a unicorn punish a slave who was carrying a hunk of green jade on his back, by retracting his essence from it. Poor thing just collapsed and broke both hind legs from the sudden increase in weight”

When Shimmer was done Speaker wondered why they hadn’t gone any deeper into the vaults, seeing as the treasury levels were some of the first levels encountered when going down.
“To be honest – we saw the piles of loot, didn’t figure we needed to look much further” Sullen Hoof noted, his saddle bags filled to their breaking point with gemstones and golden trinkets.

The circle proceeded further down the vaults. Most of what the circle found on the various storage levels were half-finished artifacts or piles of arcane components. While a lot of the materials were probably very valuable, then the jade taken from the treasury was both worth more and easier spend – that was at least Cash’s argument: “Why bother trying to sell a half-finished gadget when I can just show up with my own money?”

While Cash’s argument to leave the ‘work in progress’ storage levels alone was sound enough, then Speaker noted that it would be on one of those levels that CHEM would be housed. With that in mind the circle searched each level – although with Speaker’s description of the crystal pillar that was CHEM they didn’t bother looking into nearly as many boxes or crates. Speaker did snatch a sack full of frozen lightning, plus a few other things, saying that he could use them later to reforge the makeshift blade Red had made into a proper grand daiklaive.

It was fifteen levels later that Sullen Hoof came across a strange room in the vaults which had a crystal pillar set in the middle of a statue garden. The room was large and somewhat odd, considering that everything around the room was storage facilities filled with crates and broken down cargo-lifter automatons: It had an arched ceiling with intricate glowing lines of runes going around in circles, going down the walls and on the floor – all leading to the crystal pillar. Calling the rest of the circle to the room, Speaker confirmed that this was without a doubt CHEM.

“I thought it would be hard to find” Red said, noting that something so critical to the control of the city’s guardian automatons should be better defended.

Looking carefully at the other statues in the room, all of marble and appearing as ponies that looked stoically to the sky, Shimmer said: “These statues… they’re automatons – even the winged one. I can hear the essence engines inside them”
Speaker glanced at the statues. The winged one was of a pegasus pony; there was no doubt about it. It was the first of pegasi Speaker had seen outside of his own first age memories to hint of the existence of them. Where had they gone?
“Did ponies really once have wings?” Sullen Hoof wondered, looking at the pegasus statue.

Turning back to the crystal pillar, Speaker sighed: “Sort of – the solars created the pegasus ponies in the first age as highly mobile shock troops for the primordial war. Heck, a good number of pegasi even exalted as solars, lunars or sidereals. At their peak they accounted for a third of all ponies”

With that settled, or at least everypony’s immediate curiosity about the missing pegasi, the focus returned to the crystal pillar. Nearing it, Speaker accidentally triggered a defensive mechanism: A shell of orichalcum appeared around it, snapping shut and nearly clipping off Speaker’s right hoof. The stallion managed to pull his hoof back enough that he only lost a chunk of hoof and not enough it to make it bleed. A quick wave of the white jade seal that opened the manse up near the shell got it to retract, allowing Speaker to bring up the interface.

Touching the crystal with a hoof caused it to glow, the light forming into swirling patterns of glyphs similar to the ones on the floor, walls and ceiling of the room. It took almost no time for Speaker to figure out the state of CHEM and its primary orders: “Ok, so the good news is that it hasn’t really been altered that much – it hasn’t been ordered to kill solars or lunars on sight, probably because of all the first age tools and iconography still in use around Denansdor and the factory cathedrals. The bad news is that it is waiting for a dragonblooded unicorn with the seal here, to claim command of it…”

Looking at Speaker’s furrowed brows, Shimmer could easily tell that there was more than just that. An inquisitive nod and a raised eyebrow was all she needed to get Speaker to add the final caveat: “You can’t just alter a small part of CHEM – it needs a total rewrite of all code if you want to change anything… and that’ll take time”

“How long?” Red asked. Speaker said it would be maybe half a day… maybe less, depending on how quickly he could get new code to work. It didn’t help that it had to be written in old realm glyphs either, or that screwing up might cause the guardians up in the city to malfunction if they started getting mixed commands from a lobotomized CHEM.

“Half a day, won’t need more than that – but considering the circumstances, that’s not really a good use of our time” Speaker pointed out.

“If we can find the source of the miasma and turn it off we’ll have far more time – plus then we could order the guardians to ward off intruders” Sunrise Glow noted. The rest of the circle had to admit that the two goals seemed unavoidably linked in that sense.

With that in mind, Sunrise suggested that the quickly look through the rest of the vault – mainly to locate the source of the miasma, so they could do a proper evaluation of their options. Speaker agreed.

Back at the lift platform, the circle descended deeper into the manse’s vaults. Shimmer, having counted the runes on the edge of the platform marking different floors, counted a total of forty levels. This meant that they had covered almost half at this point.

Past the twentieth level the vault layout changed. Previously the platform had come through a hole in the ceiling and come to a half at floor level, with each level consisting of a single vast cavernous room, with smaller rooms along the edge of the main room, such as the one with the CHEM in it. The new layouts of the lower vault levels all centered on the theme of broad hallways carved into the underground stone with fifty yards to the ceiling, with several rooms along their length, each with a door of rock that appeared to be ‘reabsorbed’ by the walls, floor or ceiling when a glyph-etched button on the wall next to the door was pressed.

The halls were also patrolled by guardian automatons – and a friendly but unmistakable warning sign on each level at the elevator docking point explained, in no uncertain terms in old realm, that unscheduled removal of vault contents would be met with lethal force. The circle quickly learned why: it was on these levels that finished artifacts were stored. If what Cash had experienced at the sight of the Denansdor governor’s office could be called a giggle-fit, then the whole circle had an episode once they realized how many wonders were stashed on these levels. Sure, it was clear that the unicorns had taken most of all the fun or immediately valuable things, judging from the empty crates the circle occasionally found – but there was a little of everything to found… the only problem was the guardians never let the circle look at anything unattended, following them constantly with five guardians on every level. It was clear that CHEM didn’t mind the circle looking around, but it was also more than ready to stop them if they tried to take anything.

Red became increasingly vocal about wanting to destroy the automaton watchdogs, and Cash despaired at the gadgetry they were forced to leave alone, like the ship with a black jade keel which, according to the label on the crate, could sail through dirt and rock as easily as it could water – that the ship could also fold up into something the size of a small crate only made it all the more awesome.

“Come now – if we can get control of CHEM, this will all be ours – don’t worry” Sullen Hoof was quick to remind the two, while looking hungrily at a beautiful sword of red jadesteel that gleamed with a fiery hue.

Shimmer, who was just as impressed as the others with the amount of first age relics and wonders in the vault, also pointed out how useful these artifacts would be: “If it’s ok with the rest of you, then the lunars would be most friendly and forthcoming if you choose chose to share this – I mean, this would allow all lunars to return to creation and be armed well enough to ward off any wyld hunt”

The circle debated the potential use of the artifacts and each pony took note of favorite artifacts and called dips every now and then, as they ventured deeper down.

Drunk on the wonders they had so far identified, like the ship of jade that could fold up into a small package and also sail through soil and rock as easily as it could water, or a cloak of jade feathers that Speaker was certain could unfold into actual wings to allow flight, the sight that met the circle at the bottom floor of the vaults came as a tremendous shock.

As with the previous nineteen floors, it too was of vast hallways lined with doors, some open, some closed, that led into large storage rooms. However, the hallways and rooms were full of cannibalized artifacts tossed into great piles. What shocked Speaker the most was that most of the artifacts that appeared to have been taken apart were of orichalcum and moonsilver – the materials that the immaculate philosophy deemed heretical.

“So this is how the unicorns kept Denansdor going… by ripping apart anything that looked solar and putting every non-anathema part to use in their own jade artifacts” Speaker said angrily, holding up a steel rod with scratched up orichalcum bands, as well as empty sockets where gemstones or other arcane components had been removed. It was impossible to see what the device had once been, but it was clear that it, along with almost everything else on this floor, had been gutted.
“I’ll give them points for initiative – taking apart some of these things must have been difficult, but if it was spare parts they were looking I guess it wasn’t that bad a source” Cash noted, getting an angry glare from Speaker.

Walking these halls was if walking through a mock graveyard of the first age. The guardian automatons that paced the halls trudged through piles of broken magical machinery and discarded bits of orichalcum as well as puddles of moonsilver, making for a constant noise as they stomped on piles or pushed aside large hulks.

The circle quickly trotted through the halls, checking behind each closed door to see if there was anything of use still in one piece. The circle didn’t suspect anything when they opened yet another nondescript door… but then all hell broke loose.
The doors opened automatically once a pony brushed a hoof against the gem set in the glyphed wall switch next to the door, and couldn’t be made to close until it had opened completely. It was a split second after beginning to open this one door everypony’s mind-ward bracelet started emitting a high pitched bleeping noise, as well as turning bright red from its usual semi-transparent clear crystal and gem material.

Speaker barely had time to recognize it as the bracelet letting its wearer know that a highly potent source of mind-warping emissions were nearby… but then the door was open, and everypony’s bracelet fizzled and all the gemstones in them turned mat black as they almost instantly ran out of power due to over exposure.

Speaker felt a sudden wave of unspecifiable dread wash over him. His vision momentarily blurred, and sounds became faint as his mind failed him for a split second.

It was the feeling of being shook hard that woke Speaker up, and there was the noise of heavy breathing.

“Thank Celestia you’re awake – do you know what is going on?” Sunrise Glow’s voice sounded. Speaker tried to orient himself. He was on the ground and the endless feeling of dread was still there. It was like a constant screaming in his head, bidding him to flee, to run, to get away: It was pure terror… and with that he knew what is was.

This didn’t make shaking off the constant flow of terror in his mind any easier to shake off – but with a deep breath and a very conscious choice of not following his oh so tempting instinct to running away, Speaker stood up and looked around.
Sunrise Glow appeared oddly unaffected. Even now with the difficult choice to ignore the feeling of dread already made, Speaker still found himself twitching a little, but Sunrise appeared perfectly steady.

“Come on – I need your help to get the others out of here, and Shimmer keeps trying to bite me” Sunrise said, looking over at Shimmer.

The lunar pony was rolling around on the ground, frothing at the mouth, snarling and flailing her hooves around. It didn’t look good.

Sullen hoof and Cash didn’t look much better: Cash had curled up in a fetal position and wasn’t moving at all – Speaker couldn’t even really tell if he was breathing. Sullen Hoof was digging himself into a pile of scrap with no regard for his bleeding hooves as he dug into serated edges and orichalcum spikes alike. It was the madness of the empty city that the ponies of the Node had warned of.

It was like a bad flashback to some of the chaos at the battle of Mishaka Speaker had been a field doctor in. Solders crying for their mothers, trying to scoop their guts back in after having their bellies slices open, or soldiers dragging the front half of a dead comrade back to the field hospital and just shaking the remains of that old friend as Speaker would try to explain over and over why he couldn’t do anything…

A swift slap over his muzzle brought Speaker back to reality. Right. Triage – Sullen needs to be stopped, Cash needs to be carried away and Shimmer...

Quickly trotting over to Shimmer while telling Sunrise to start hauling Cash back to the platform, Speaker grabbed Shimmer by her hears, like an animal trainer disciplining a dog that wasn’t obeying commands, and held her head so he could look straight into her eyes: “Snap. Out of it”

A few tense moments later Shimmer stopped struggling and got up. Speaker didn’t ask why she had momentarily gone feral, instead acting like a responsible doctor and ordering her to grab Sullen and get him back to the platform.

It was then that Speaker noticed that Red wasn’t anywhere to be seen. This was bad – but with everything else under control, and Sullen now wrapped up in Shimmer who was in the form of an octopus, Speaker breathed a sigh of relief, steeled his mind to further resist the relentless torrent of terror that was in the air and took stock of the situation.

A quick glance inside the room that had just opened confirmed his suspicion. Those crystal spheres, the soulsteel web that encased the spheres… Speaker knew for certain what the source of the miasma was – but this also meant that he knew very well that none of them had the power to turn it off, as that require a countermagic spell of far greater power than even Shimmer could muster: One needed adamant circle countermagic, a spell of the first circle, one that only solars with their purest essence could ascend to. The unicorn bones next to it, still clad in imperishable silks similar to Sullen Hoof’s chef garb, were probably that of Denansdor’s last ruler… having activated a first age doomsday device in hope of saving the city. Speaker had to admit, in some sense it had sort of worked.

Getting Cash’s curled up form up on his back, Speaker and the rest of the circle – sans Red – quickly made their way back to the platform. Approaching it the circle heard sounds of hoofs beating furiously against stone. It was Red, gripped with the terror, trying to work the platform’s glyph controls without any luck: She couldn’t read old realm, and so couldn’t find the right glyph to active the large stone platform.

Unloading Cash and helping Shimmer hold down Sullen Hoof, Speaker watched as Sunrise Glow roused the platform and send it speeding to the ground floor, with Red clinging to the platform in absolute terror.

In the minutes it took going up, the three still sane ponies of the circle briefly discussed what was going on. Speaker quickly explained that the device had originally been made as lure: “Remember that I told you about the dam that could not feel or be felt? The one used to trap and ultimate slay the river of all torment back during the primordial war? This was the lure. It generates unfettered terror. Only adamant countermagic can turn it off”

Shimmer, no longer in the form of a squid, although her limbs were still wrapped around the bleeding Sullen Hoof to keep him from doing anything stupid in his maddened state, sighed as she realized that this meant that none of them could end the miasma – at least anytime soon: “Curse the thing to malfeas – why would the unicorns ever activate something like that?”

“It’s complicated. We don’t have time for details right now, but emotions normally need… well… a reference. You stub your hoof on rock, which hurts and you remember that. That memory can form the basis of an emotion of sadness. This thing did the impossible: it makes ‘blank’ emotion, of terror. It was something never felt before, so the river of all torment found the allure irresistible. Later we found it worked great against changelings too, because without an emotional reference they couldn’t feed off that energy, so some of these were built into first age wyld defences. The unicorns that took over here probably just read about the device as a changeling repellant and didn’t know about how ponies too would be driven mad by… Shimmer are you ok” Speaker said, suddenly looking very worried over at Shimmer.

Shimmer had begun frothing at the mouth again, shaking and jerking. It was with only a split second to spare that Speaker managed to wrestle down Sullen Hoof as he quickly got out of Shimmer’s grip while she was in her bestial state of mind. Sullen Hoof appeared to want to leap off the platform, despite how quickly it was moving up and the fact that doing so would mean an eighty yard fall – a fatal fall for any more pony, and in his currently crazed state of mind Speaker couldn’t tell if Sullen would be able to use charms to cushion his fall.

A few moments later Shimmer snapped out of it and explained herself, seeing how Sunrise and Speaker were looking at her. “It’s a lunar mental defense charm – it reduces my mind to that of a beast. I have to fight not to run off or do anything ‘animal’ like” She said, giving Speaker a suggestive look: “but it also prevents any mind control from working, including the terror aura that your bait device makes… speaking of which, Sunrise, why aren’t you curled up on the ground as well?”

Sunrise Glow shrugged as if her not being crazy or paralyzed in terror wasn’t impressive: “Like you said – mental defense charms. When you know the proper mental spirit-maintaining maneuvers, then to seize the mind of a solar is as futile as for a waking pony to try to seize a dream in his hooves”

“How poetic” Shimmer said, sounding a little bit too sarcastic for Speaker’s like. Sunrise didn’t seem to care.

Looking up at the ceiling of the vault level they were in, the hole where the platform would go through was getting bigger and bigger as they neared it. The only thing that was visible from the hole in the ceiling was the spec of light in the distance of the sun on the surface, and seemingly impossibly tall walls of the above vault levels, looming in the dry air. Sunrise drew her hood a bit further over her head, obscuring her face even more than usual: “Exalting in Great Forks showed me a lot of things, such as how selfish and vain gods truly are, and how willing to use their powers on mortal pony minds they are. My first reaction was to teach myself charms to defend my mind. I can list you over a dozen gods in Great Forks who would love to rope in a solar and use any of us as a trophy, toy, spokespony or anything else they could think of. No, no will beside my own ever control me – I have even taught myself a little meditation trick that makes the mind rigid in the face of mind control, should my own defenses ever falter. You won’t ever be in doubt if I’m suddenly…”

Sunrise’s speech was interrupted as Shimmer once again started frothing at the mouth and snarling for a moment. Speaker noticed that the amount of time the lunar had to go mentally feral was getting shorter. That seemed to indicate that they were getting away from the concentrated effect of the… oh what was the name of that device, right: “It’s called the horrorfex by the way”

Appearing somewhat displeased by both Shimmer and Speaker interrupting her speech, Sunrise continued once she had a moment of silence: “None of you will ever be in doubt if I’m under mind control – and if you want Speaker, I can teach this technique to you as well, although you will have to learn some basic meditation techniques first – I assume that with your educational charm you can do that yourself much faster than I could teach you myself”

There was a loud rush of air as the platform came up to a ceiling port and shot up from the floor of the next level.
“Why thank you, I’ll keep that in mind” Speaker said, trotting over to comfort Shimmer.

As Speaker gently brushed some of Shimmer’s dreadlocked mane away from her face, she suddenly jerked her head away: “Oh don’t bother – and please don’t get too close. My beast-mind regression charm only works if I can make the animal me focus on something other than the fear… and honestly that’s you.” Looking over at Sunrise, Shimmer forced a smile: “I don’t think Sunrise would like it if part of my staying sane here led to me trying to fuck you in view of everypony else, plus Cash might get ideas – if he wasn’t curled up like that”

With that said Speaker hauled Sullen Hoof over to the opposite side of the platform and once again made the hard choice to ignore the terror himself. It was not an easy choice. It felt as if having to voluntarily step into the blade of an unseen foe trying to murder your mind with silent screams of thought pain. Plus, remembering part of the ‘tests’ done in the first age following the primordial war to see what the horrorfex could be used for, Speaker knew that eventually his mind would faulter – for no pony could resist the horrorfex indefinitely without the aid of charms like Shimmer and Sunrise. He knew that only bad things would happen if his will should fail him before they got away.

After a ride up that felt as it had taken far too long, the platform finally came to a rest at ground level. Red instantly ran into the square surrounding the manse and desperately called for the others to come quickly – and for Shimmer to conjure a cloud to fly them away.

“I… the charm I’m using to stay sane, I can’t use that as well as sorcery – going feral for a moment doesn’t work with concentrating for sorcery” Shimmer admitted, not appearing too pleased of this herself.

Red took this news very badly. Unlike the others she hadn’t so much gone mad from the terror, as she had embraced it: She was genuinely scared for no reason what so ever – powerfully so – and wanted to get away from the city, get away from the miasma. Looking at the terrified mare made it all the more difficult for Speaker to stay put himself, but they needed a solution.

“Speaker, in the first age – there had to be experiments going on here that might affect the mind – how would you ‘fix’ someone who’d gone mad like Sullen or catatonic like Cash back then?” Sunrise asked, sounding calm and collected as always – to the point of sounding indifferent.

Thinking for a moment, Speaker tried to recall anything like this ever happening while he had been in Denansdor: “Hmm… oh of course! The most harmonious temple of serpentine reconvalescence! This way!”

Speaker ran off down the square towards one of the larger roads through the city. The rest of the circle followed suit as well as they now could – Red appearing understandably very conflicted about why they weren’t just getting away right now the same way they got in – but ultimately the mare managed to suck up the courage to fight the terror long enough to catch up with the rest.

Leading the circle to a grand structure with two large green jade statues of intertwined serpents out in front, Speaker quickly led the circle inside. Sunrise and Shimmer quickly recognized the place as a healing house – although the amount of pony bones and skeletons that were scattered around its halls and in its rooms were quite disconcerting.

It didn’t take Speaker long to find what he was looking for: The mind shroud refuge – a room specially insulated against all psychic and mental emanations, in case ponies were psychically sensing something that was upsetting them. It had originally been made to treat failed experiments in mind reading charms and sorcery, but Speaker figured that it should keep out the horrorfex’s miasma as well.

As the heavy metal door etched with runes that glowed with a calming blue light closed, the pressure on Speaker’s mind eased. Red also calmed down, and Shimmer breathed a sigh of relief. Slapping Sullen Hoof around eventually got him to stop trying to dig into every surface he got near to burry himself, and Speaker, using an obscene amount of essence channelled through a hoofful of solar medical charms, restored the night caste solar’s mind to its proper state over the course of an hour or so. Shimmer had to admit that seeing such a miracle of mind healing was impressive: “Ridding ponies of madness induced by changelings usually takes monts or years – if it’s possible at all…”

Cash eventually woke up as well, remembering nothing but being trapped in a horrible nightmare, followed by him crying quite a lot. Speaker found it strange to see a pony such as Cash, usually so confident and sure in himself, crying, but having felt the miasma himself it was understandable.

With everypony calmed down the circle decided to spend the rest of the day and the night in the dark but thankfully safe room. There were no sources of light beyond the slightly mesmerizing sight of blue glowing runes and glyphs that covered the door and door frame, probably to seal the place from all thought and thought reactive essence flows, plus the circle’s own glowing caste marks.

The next morning, with everyone well rested – although still harried from the previous day’s sudden turn of events, and weary of going out into the miasma again, Speaker told the circle that there was one other thing he wanted to do before leaving Denansdor…