Over the following week the circle discerned the grim state of Chung Do. Cash Charmer seemed to revel in playing city administrator – although he took care to ensure that the young Shogun had a say and a hoof in on everything he did, something that Chung Onyx seemed to enjoy greatly. Red teamed up with the aging captain Bighoof of the castle guard, who turned out to be the last living senior officer in the city. This had been why the western city gate had been without guards: With the blockade that the rebellious nobles had set up, then no pony could get out of Chung alive, so monitoring in and outgoing traffic had become less of a priority.

In the shogun’s study the circle met to discuss their findings. There was nothing but bad news:

Cash had the somewhat predictable bit of news that the two elders had somehow escaped custody, apparently having left Chung Do to join up with the rebel nobles: “They will undoubtedly tell of our arrival – although they don’t really know that we’re all exalted, as well as how to be best exploit our weak defenses. They’ve also galloped off with a chest full of what little money that was left in the treasury. We’re bankrupt”

Red understandably found this a little hard to believe: “How can two ponies empty an entire treasury?”

It turned out that the ledgers and castle purchase records that Cash had gone over showed that the treasury had been all but emptied to pay for the medical relief caravan from Great Forks: “If any of the remaining guards ask for pay we’ll have to get creative… and I think you’ll agree Red, that unpaid soldiers aren’t happy soldiers”

Red nodded, knowing as a former mercenary how great an affront it was to miss a payday or to get stiffed by a client. Sure, the castle guards weren’t mercs, but with both plague and a siege looming it really wouldn’t do if the few dozen remaining guards left their stations and went to care for their families, leaving the city to fall to looting or honorless usurpers.

With that said Red made a detailed account of the state of the city’s defenses and guard forces. Before the plague, under normal circumstances, the other nobles would send tribute in the form of troops to the shogun’s command – so with them in open rebellion all of their forces had been withdrawn. Normally this should leave Chung Do with three thousand guardsponies, five hundred of which would be stationed in the castle, the rest in barracks built into five blockhouses that were part of the city walls. Right now that number was down to three hundred total and dropping due to the plague, so it was very difficult to just keep the peace in the streets.

Sullen Hoof agreed, reporting that he’d discovered a rather nasty situation in the docks along the river. Previously there had apparently been five gangs operating in Chung Do. One had operated in the western part of town in the warehouse district, the remaining four having fought over control of the docks, with two gangs on either side – one usually controlling the north end and the other the south end of each side. They had all dealt in the usual protection rackets on shops, docking ships and warehouses, with the city guard keeping them from getting too out of hoof. The problem was that one of the dockland gangs, the Water Walkers, had apparently recently managed to take control of the entire city’s underworld, wiping out the other gangs. Sullen Hoof had no idea how they had done this: “…but honestly, then that isn’t the worst of it!”

None in the circle liked how Sullen Hoof, still disguised as a humble servant pony with a shaven mane and a cheap grey shirt, said that: “The Water Walkers have taken control of the warehouse district. The western city wall blockhouses are empty and the gang has raided them for weapons. With weapons and the warehouses they’ve taken control of the city’s rice supply. That’s the city’s food supply. I know the castle has its own stores, so we won’t starve, but the Water Walkers have already begun selling the rice to the townsponies for a grossly marked up price. A lot of ponies who aren’t sick but who can’t afford the rice have been forced to prostitute themselves to the gang members in exchange for food… it’s sickening”

“In a siege the food supply is always the first thing to go and the most important thing to keep under control” Speaker chimed in, being very familiar with that particular stratagem from his service in Lookshy.

“This isn’t just about the siege Speaker, its exploitation! I won’t stand for this! If it’s ok with the rest of you then I’ll just sneak in and kill the gang’s leaders in their sleep tonight” Sullen Hoof said, his face remarkably grim – even more so considering that his expressions were usually obscured by his orichalcum mask.

“I would advise against that” Cash Charmer quickly noted. Sullen Hoof shot him a dirty look that wordlessly demanded an explanation.

Cash Charmer cleared his throat and quickly swept back his lush golden-blond mane with a well hooficured hoof: “Don’t you think that this gang knows that they’ve made themselves a target for the city guard? I’ll bet silver that their leaders have given their goons orders to ruin the rice and sneak out of town if they’re attacked. This doesn’t mean that I don’t support getting back at them for this, but we’ll have to secure the rice first”

“It’s late summer. Shouldn’t the rice harvest be coming in now anyway?” Shimmer asked.

Cash Charmer shook his head: “Between the plague wiping out the closest farms and the blockade then Chung Do is cut off from any proper food supply”

“So if the nobles wait another four or five months for the plague to die down completely the city will starve to death if the plague doesn’t get it” Red said with a bitter tone, her eyes crying out of vengeance.

“Well, if we can end the plague it’ll be a lot easier to marshal what resources we have left for a defence, what’s the situation on that Speaker?” Cash said, looking hopefully at the Lookshyan pony.

Speaker sighed deeply. The circle braced itself for bad news. Looking first at Shimmer, who’d helped him during the week to get a read on the situation, then at the rest of the circle, Speaker took a deep breath and spoke: “I can fix this”

The whole circle breathed a sigh of relief, but then Speaker added: “…but I can’t do it as well I know I could once”

Speaker explained: He had the memories of legendary medical techniques from the first age – but he didn’t have the power or knowledge of how to replicate them: “In the first age I’d simply weave together the essence of a given sickness in a region and form into a sentient spirit, then give it a buck in the head and tell it to remove itself and its ilk from the area, curing all ponies in but a few hours…”

While such an amazing feat would indeed have been nice, Sullen Hoof inquired if Speaker simply couldn’t start going from house to house, curing ponies as he went along: “That should be easy enough for you, right?”

Sighing again, Speaker looked at Sullen Hoof: “Sure. For each sick pony in Chung Do I could give of my essence and see that every pony I treat is guaranteed to recover – but I’d only be able to treat a few dozen a day like that. What of the other thousands of ponies in the city? Imagine the riots in streets when it becomes known that a healer is in town, but he can only cure a few ponies a day”

Sullen Hoof’s ears slumped down, signaling his disappointment.

“I need to come up with an actual cure that can be distributed to the whole city. My medical charms with help with this, no doubt, but until I have something that can help all the ponies here, then I cannot help any” Speaker said, sounding very much as if he wasn’t happy with this course of action either.

Cash Charmer shrugged: “Ok, but I imagine that you are able to make such a cure, right my friend?”

Speaker shot Cash a look with old tired eyes: “You do remember that I’ve told you that the usual ‘cure’ for plague is just quarantine and waiting it out? It is, outside of ludicrously expensive and rare alchemical potions or magical charms, impossible to cure”

“So? That just means that it’ll be difficult. You’re a solar Speaker, you’re supposed to be able to do the impossible on a regular basis” Cash said, sounding oddly inspirational.

Speaker slowly began to nod. Cash put a reassuring hoof up on Speaker’s right shoulder: “I have faith in that you’ll fix this. The lives of thousands of ponies depend on this, but like you said then this should be a cakewalk if you just draw on your first age memories”

Speaker’s nodding was now more steady and resolute.

“Alright. Anything else that needs to be covered? Sunrise, what’ve you been up to?” Cash asked, looking at the young not-quite-mare covered in white robes.

Sunrise somberly stated that she had been walking the streets and surveying the Sijaneese corpse collectors. She didn’t like them, saying that she’d rather see her own ability to instantly cremate the dead used instead of the rotting bodies being stacked in sijaneese owned guild wagons which would go west to Sijan for burial.

“It’s not just that I’m from Great Forks – I know that it’s the only place in creation that doesn’t send its dead to Sijan for burial, but walking around the morticians… there was something that just felt wrong while being around them. They’re so pale” Sunrise explained.

Cash Charmer nodded: “Oh that? That’s because a lot of them are ghostblooded. I’ve talked to their pony in charge, a mare by the name of Shadowmoor, there’s nothing to worry about there. I’m just happy they’re here to take the dead away. No pony wants a shadowland forming here”

Sunrise gave Cash a look that couldn’t be seen on account of her hood, although the tilting of her head revealed her confusion: “Ghostblooded?”

“That’s when the ghost of a stallion, when materialized, ruts with a mare… I guess that the Sijaneese really do take ‘servicing the dead’ seriously…” Speaker said, sounding a bit disturbed by the implications, although he was a bit surprised that Sunrise didn’t know of ghostblooded when compared to how common godblooded were in Great Forks, them being the mortal offspring of spirits or gods sleeping with ponies.

With that creepy detail out of the way, Sunrise Glow added that she’d mainly spent her time learning what gods were worshiped in Chung Do. The goddess of the brown river that flowed through the city was the deity mainly worshiped, but there were also a few shrines to the local gods of farmlands and agriculture. She had also noted a shrine to the immaculate earth dragon Pasiap in the northern end of the warehouse district, dedicated to worshipping the immaculate dragon in its aspect as dragon of craftsponies.

Sunrise Glow plainly stated that she would endeavor to see all of Chung Do worship Celestia above all other gods. Compared to the more critical issues of the plague, the city’s food supply and the rebellious nobles this didn’t seem very important, but Sunrise Glow spoke well in pointing out that she reasoned that the ponies of Chung Do needed something to comfort themselves with in these times of tumult, so she considered her charge to be crowd control while the rest of the circle handled the more tangible challenges.

With the circle now familiar with the lay of the land the question was what to do next. Cash said that he would approach the Water Walkers and try to negotiate for the rice, to secure the city’s food supply. Speaker noted that even if the current food supply was taken back the city would starve come winter since the current rice harvest was going to waste out in the patties – or just being confiscated by the rebellious daimyos surrounding the city as soon as it was harvested.

Red said that she’d start probing the roadblocks and whatever other siege camps set up around the roads leading into the city to deal with that. She was also curious to see if there were more ponies at arms camped near the city, or if they were all camped at Chung Ko which was five days to the south-east of Chung Do. Speaker said that he’d like Sullen Hoof’s help in making medicine, something Sullen Hoof wasn’t entirely sure if he could be of much use with, but Speaker insisted.

The circle was about to adjourn from their meeting when Captain Bighoof entered the study. With him the old stallion had a messenger scroll, a message from the northern villages. It was dated to have been sent a couple of weeks ago, and the news it carried was dire: Something was stealing young foals in the night and leaving them to be found in the morning impaled on dark rods in the middle of the villages.

“…and why hasn’t this been resolved already?” Speaker wondered.

The captain looked embarrassed and averted his eyes in quiet shame. Red spoke up: “The lands due north of Chung Do are governed directly by the shogun as part of his personal hold. They’re cut off by the blockade just like everything else, so sending troops wouldn’t have been possible – but, hey – how did that message come through?”

The captain said that it had been delivered by a lone pony from the northern villages who’d snuck around the blockade – and left the same way, although whether the pony had made it back in one piece was unknown.

“How do we prioritize this? We can’t just ignore a foal-killer running rampant” Sullen Hoof said urgently.

Shimmer perked up: “If we’re just looking for a single killer then I can track whoever it is by scent. We can fly up there now, find the creep and be back here by nightfall. If we’re here to earn goodwill then resolving this quickly will only work to our favor”

The whole circle quickly agreed to this. The captain was a bit more curious about this ‘flying’ deal – to which Shimmer explained her sorcerous powers.

“A sorceress? So both Red and you have enlightened essence?” The captain said in awe.

Looking around at the circle quickly to establish eye contact, Red said: “Castemarks”, prompting the whole circle activate their caste marks – each pony willing the mark of their exaltation to glow on their brow. Red smiled: “We’re all exalted”

Leaving the dumbfounded captain in the study the circle quickly moved to the castle courtyard where Shimmer did her cloud thing. To the amazement of the foal Shogun looking on from his balcony on the keep, or the few dozen guards ponies on the castle walls, the circle flew off and quickly headed north.

Zooming north of Chung Do the blockades around the city became quite obvious. Red had Sullen Hoof use his vision enhancing charms to spot the number of soldier ponies at each roadblock, with Speaker taking notes. There were roughly a dozen ponies at each blockade, with no larger camps in the areas the circle flew over.

An hour or so of high speed cloud travel and the circle spotted the first of the ‘northern villages’. Red explained that the name was quite apt: Geographically (A big word that Speaker was a little surprised that Red knew…) the northern villages were located in the most northern area of the Chung lands. The holds that the daimyos managed were to the east and south-east of Chung Do. Adding to that, the Chung lands were located at the northern fringe of the hundred kingdoms. This was part of the key to Chung Do’s wealth of trade, for further to the northeast, beyond a few hundred miles of largely unsettled wilderness and occasionally contested border territory were the endless forests where ponies lived up in the trees, as well as other strange places were exotic crafts were made which could sell for a lot down in Nexus.

The positive thing of the northern villages being so remote compared to everything else was that the rebel daimyos didn’t appear to have bothered sending troops up to the villages. Of course, that might also have prevented this murderer from running around and staking foals in village squares…

Shimmer landed the cloud outside the first village they got to. It was made up of two dozen simple wooden huts with thatched roofs, with most of the land around the huts having been tilled into nice and orderly rice paddies and a few fields of grain.

The villagers appeared cautious but at the same time amazed at the group of ponies that came down from the skies – but when Cash and Red approached they were met with pitchforks and angry stomps on the ground: These villagers didn’t seem friendly to strangers, which was quite understandable considering what was going on.

Red introduced herself as the long-lost older sister to the now Shogun, while Cash elaborated that they had been empowered by the shogun as magistrates to enforce the law and seek out the culprit who’s been killing foals. To show proof of his claims Cash presented a scroll a lot of writing on it, with the shogun’s seal.

It turned out that none of the villagers could read – but one of the elders recognized the shogun’s seal, so the pitchforks were put back in the haystacks. The village elder who’d recognized the seal seemed willing to talk to the circle, one Granny Plumtree: “You’re too late magistrates… the monster that stalked us and took our foals finished here weeks ago. All that is left of his work is the rods with the dead foals in the square as a cruel reminder of our loss”

The elder led the circle into the village square where they were met with an absolutely gruesome sight: Ten jagged three yard long rods of a strange metal that had no shine or luster, but instead seemed eerily alive… with tiny tortured pony faces pressing out against the surface of the metal from within, only to fade back into the metal.

On these rods were impaled the remains of several young foals – most in very advanced states of decay, the ‘freshest’ of the foal corpses still having most of its skin on, with only its eyes having shriveled up into dry little raisins, and maggots were wiggling in the foal’s nostrils and mouth. The oldest of the corpses had sunk to the ground, its flesh having rotted to the point that it had simply fallen apart into two parts – one half that had fallen to the ground having been removed for burial, the other half, which appeared to be the back half, was still clinging to the jagged rod via some bones and sinew caught on the spikes jutting out of the rod.

There were the remains of seventeen foals distributed on the ten rods. It had been all the foals of the village, an entire generation killed and put on display.

A question that quickly arose was why had the dead foals not been removed from the rods for proper burial. The elder seemed ashamed and reluctant to answer – but Cash quickly picked up on the elder’s reluctance and figured that there was a good reason for it.

Speaker was way ahead of them, having an uncomfortably good idea of what the rods were made of – which would explain the whole macabre setup – but the implications, if his theory was true… oh that would be so very bad. Cash was about to ask Speaker when he noticed that Speaker appeared to already know the answer.

Speaker stepped up the rods and briefly touched one of the less blood-covered rods, to which he quickly pulled back his hoof – as if having touched hot coals: “They can’t get the dead foals down because touching the rods is… I guess with foals, yes… yes that would be bad. These things are made of soulsteel. It has captured the souls of the foals, and any pony touching the rod will briefly feel the tortured cries of the souls of the dead foals resonating in their minds”

The rest of the circle looked at Speaker and the gory rods with dead foal corpses in a mix of disgust and disbelief. The elder seemed happy to finally learn something about the mysterious horror-rods, but at the same time one had to wonder how Speaker knew about a material so grotesque.

Shimmer trotted up and braced herself, the briefly swiped at a rod with a hoof. She fell over backwards with a loud shocked gasp and landed on her rump. Speaker helped her up: “I told you – bad touch”

Getting the foals down to be buried wasn’t key to finding the monster who had killed the foals, but the circle agreed that this would be a very nice start – plus, there was a very real chance that there were similar gruesome scenes to be found in the other villages.

After Sullen Hoof and Cash Charmer also had to admit defeat in trying to touch the rods Shimmer got the bright idea to change into the form of a humming bird – for such could hover – then use another shapeshifting knack to grow the humming bird form to the size of a pony… but it turned out that it very difficult to flap your wings that close to the soulsteel rods without touching them ever so slightly, which resulted in Shimmer crashing into the ground after a psychic horror-induced wing-spasm.

With seemingly no way to reclaiming the remains of the dead foals Sunrise Glow finally walked up to the rods. From under her hooded cloaked she peeked up at the rotting remains of the foals, then made a series of swift motions that Speaker would later identify as essence-fueled body hardening techniques. At first when she touched a rod the others could see a shiver run down the length of the young adolescent pony, and Shimmer picked up a barely audibly whisper of Sunrise resolutely saying “No” without jerking back her hoof.

Sunrise Glow then proceeded to climb up the rods, hooking her hooves into the spikes that jutted out of the rods – but because of her body hardening techniques no blood was ever drawn. Still, her robe was ripped in many places but ultimately the little pony made it up and got the first foal corpse free, calmly calling for someone to catch the remains as she dropped them down.

Several climbs later left Sunrise Glow’s hooves caked in gore and rotting blood and her robes in tatters, but she would accept no cheers or thanks from the villagers, asking only that Speaker fix her robes and find a way to actually remove the rods…

Speaker was, along with the villagers and the rest of the circle, amazed at how Sunrise had withstood the mental barrage that was constant contact with the soulsteel rods. The constant onslaught of the wails of the tortured souls of pony foals who had died it the utmost agony… Speaker had no words as he washed essence over Sunrise Glow’s robes and reformed the strands of fibers to restore the cloth.

Ultimately the circle did agree that Sunrise had a very good point with getting rid of the rod as well as getting the corpses down – they were nasty reminders of this killer’s work, and Speaker seemed equally curious and worried as to who would have made them…

“Ok, honestly, what’s so special about the stuff anyway? Soulsteel? I’ve never heard of it – and I’ve heard of a lot of steel, from haslanti feathersteel, Nexus crap steel to Lookshyan jadesteel” Red said, looking at the dark rods. A few tosses of buckets full of water had cleaned them up to a certain extent, so they didn’t smell like rot anymore, but they still looked like spikes of pure misery, the grass around them having withered from prolonged exposure.

Speaker stood motionless next to the rods, slowly recalling his Singing Staff from elsewhere: “In the first age, after the primordial war, when the dead primordials had formed the underworld to ‘exist’ in… the solars explored this strange new dark mirror of creation. A strange cold ore found in some places there, when alloyed with the ghosts that inhabited the underworld… you literally beat these ghosts into the ore to make the soulsteel, not as a smelting process, but as an act of domination and violence… It is a cruel material, and it drains the soul of anything that dies in contact with it…”

The next moment Speaker stood with the white jade singing staff in his mouth. He looked at it unsure if he could use it properly – despite the last few weeks of him having used his educational charm to learn basic musical skills… which led to him realizing that he needed a rosined bow. Shimmer quickly fetched a fresh inch thick tree branch, which Speaker made break apart using his essence into the perfect shape of a musical bow. Shimmer volunteered a dozen of her tail-hairs and then somehow coaxed a nearby pine tree to weeping a spoonful of resin to rosin the bow with. It all only took a few minutes.
Speaker sat down in front of the rods with the singing staff in one hoof and the bow in the other. Cash and Red had bought a cart from the villagers and parked it next to the rods. The idea appeared to be to use the singing staff to manipulate the ground around the rods to move the rods up onto the cart – mainly because the circle had no clue how deep the rods went. This was their only options seeing as Sunrise wasn’t strong enough to pull the rods up, and none of the others could touch them for more than a brief moment.

The first few cautious tones that came from the staff were calm and seemed to make the earth and grass ripple. Shimmer and Cash held their breath, the others unaware of the singing staff’s power to move earth and stone.

Speaker’s challenge at this point was remembering what melody would make the earth eject foreign objects. His first attempt accidentally made dozens of hoof sized rocks shoot up into the air around him, forcing all the ponies around him to leap for cover.

After a few more tries the ground heaved as Speaker played the right tune, ejecting the rods out of the ground. For a tense moment they balanced, but quick thinking from Sullen Hoof saw each of the ten rods hit with a myriad of kitchen tools that the solar apparently had stashed in elsewhere, making them fall onto the cart with an almighty crash as the axel on the cart broke from the monstrous weight of the rods. Speaker sighed and said that he should have warned the circle about that: “Soulsteel is a magical material, just like jade, so it weighs deceptively much…”

Despite the cart’s axel being broken – something shimmer tried to fix while Speaker examined the rods – the question was now what to do with these dark rods. Being of a magical material they were nearly indestructible, something Red discovered quickly after trying to cut one of the rods in half, at the expense of her still reasonably new blade breaking in half at the point of impact. Speaker fixed the blade with a whiff of essence and told her not to do that again, to which Red told him to simply make her a better blade: “In time Red, but not right now”

Since they had several other villages to check out, there clearly wasn’t much left to investigate in this one with the killer having apparently moved on weeks ago and all the evidence taken into custody, Shimmer suggested that she spirit the rods away into elsewhere for safekeeping for the time being: “I know places where we can hide them permanently if we just want them out of the way – but right now we have to catch whoever did this”

The rest of the circle agreed and then turned to Speaker, eager to hear of what he’d learned of the rods and the killer.
There wasn’t much that Speaker could tell. The villagers, many of which had approached the circle while they got the foal remains down in order to get theirs, so they could bury their children, had told of what little they knew of the killer to Speaker: They all told of a dark horror which made them faint the moment they saw it, and could find them no matter where they had hidden, even if they had left the village and hidden in the forest with their foals. The killer left no hoofprints on the ground and the rods had simply appeared overnight the day before the killings had started. The whole thing had stopped when all blankflank foals in the village had been skewered on the spikes. Sunrise Glow wanted to stay behind and console the grieving parents, but she understood that she was now key to retrieving any remains on any other similar spiky rods in the other villages – and the villagers confirmed that similar events had taken place in the other villages.

“Are we too late?” Red felt that she had to ask, considering that the original message to the shogun’s court had been sent weeks ago. It wasn’t a comfortable question to ask none of the ponies in the circle wanted to guess at the answer to the question. Sullen Hoof optimistically said that if they could find a village that still had foals left they might be able to catch the killer in the act.

With Shimmer having stored the rods in elsewhere she conjured another cloud – and the circle landed in another village less than half an hour later. It was the same grim scene. Grieving mares, a village square with an obscenely gory display of blood, death and pain with no foals alive. This time the circle was quick and deliberate in what they did – and the moment Sunrise Glow had gotten the remains down she immediately rounded up the parents of the dead foals and spoke essence-fueled words of condolence and hope to them. Before Speaker and the rest of the circle had done away with the soulsteel rods Sunrise Glow had done the impossible: The mothers and fathers of the dead foals were smiling again. Sure, the memories of their dead foals still hurt the ponies greatly, but somehow Shimmer had somehow given them hope for the future.

Before they left Sunrise Glow talked Speaker into giving all of the mares a quick medical examination to see if there was anything preventing them from having additional foals, as part of her counseling to the grieving parents had apparently been guarantees that they could have new foals to love twice as much instead – Speaker blew away a few simple infections with waves of curative essence, Shimmer then conjured another cloud.

This time while flying Sullen Hoof and his vision charms were put to scouting, to spot a village with empty rods – because there had been one or two foals impaled on all the rods of the two previous villages, so an empty rod probably meant that the killer’s monstrous work wasn’t done yet.

The fourth village that the circle flew over had empty rods. At this village the circle was greeted with even greater hostility and suspicion than at the previous two combined – Red had to protect the circle from a few thrown stones and angry farmhooves who clearly needed something to vent their rage and sorrow on.

Having beaten down their ‘welcome party’ Cash introduced the circle as shogun-mandated magistrates. It turned out that the document he’d been showing was one he’d snatched from the castle, a real magistratial empowerment document that Cash had somehow gotten the Shogun to sign and give his seal to during the previous week.

In the village square the circle quickly sprung to action. Between the ten soulsteel rods there were eight dead foals skewered, and a hoof-full of them were clearly very fresh. Indeed, a curious side effect of the bad touch effect of the soulsteel that Speaker had noticed, was that flies and other scavenger insects and animals were very slow to pick at the foals, slowing the rate of decay ever so slightly, or at least the rate at which the foal corpses deteriorated, as most of them were in advanced stages of rot anyway.

Sunrise Glow retrieved the remains and consoled the parents, while the rest of the circle spoke to the other ponies in the village.

The ponies in the village told the same story: The spikes had appeared a week and a half ago, the killings starting the next night. Any pony who glimpsed the monster would faint and wake up after the grim deed was done – and the killer left no hoof-tracks. Shimmer even confirmed that there were no non-local scents aside from those of the circle present, which was most mysterious.

The ponies of the village were eager to catch the killer and exact their furious vengeance on the mysterious murderer, so they let the circle do whatever they wanted in preparation to stop these killings.

Speaker noted that the fainting effect the killer seemed to hide behind was probably quite simple – against unenlightened mortal ponies you didn’t actually need that much power to influence their minds and bodies, so he reasoned that the circle should be immune to the effect. This alone should give them a nice tactical advantage for the ambush they were planning.
Shimmer and Sunrise herded all the remaining foals of the village into a single hut, along with their parents. This way they would sure that the killer would only go towards a single location for an ambush. Sullen Hoof found a good hiding spot on the roof, crafting himself a masterful disguise to appear as a barely noticeable lump of straw in the thatch. Speaker and Shimmer disguised themselves among the parents along with a ‘foal’ in the shape of a well-crafted foal-sized doll that the two of them put together – which also resulted in the two having spend most of the rest of the day making similar toy dolls for the other foals in the village.

Red spent her time trying to talk the adult ponies of the village out of joining in on the ambush – if Speaker was right about the faint-on-sight spell that the killer was using then they would only be in the way, of course, convincing the pitch-fork and torch wielding would-be mob of angry villagers not to also join in on the ambush… wasn’t really working. In the end Red talked them into patrolling in and around the village when night fell, as an early warning system.

Unlike the rest of the circle Cash Charmer was bored to tears. There was nothing of value in the village for him to work with – and most of this year’s rice harvest from the village had been taken by the rebel daimyos’ forces. Sunrise Glow spent her time reassuring the village ponies and spreading the good word of Celestia, although for the ambush she vehemently pointed out that she was not a warrior, and thus chose to stay out of that fight.

According to the ponies in the village the monster came after the sun set – to which Speaker had to resist elaborating that its proper name was the Daystar Dirigible and that it didn’t ‘set’ but simply sailed into the wyld in the west to circle creation and appear in the morning in the east, but this fact still gave the circle a time table for their ambush.

Shimmer had infused the foal-doll that Speaker had expertly made with some kind of lunar trickery which made it look very much alive, and she had positioned herself closest to door of the hut so her ‘foal’ would hopefully be snatched when the monster came.

When the daylight faded and the darkness crept across the land a fog spread from the rice paddies. What happened next took barely any time at all.

The first sign came when Sullen Hoof discretely pulled the string which rattled the small clay cup with sand, signaling that something was approaching. Whatever it was didn’t even try for subtlety, as it just moved at a steady walking pace towards the village in the twilight. The village ponies that were patrolling outside the huts with torches and pitchforks converged on the shadow - but they all fell to the ground with their farming tools and torches besides them, a scant few managing to emit horrified shrieks or shouts before passing out.

It ripped the door off the hut, revealing a dozen foals with their parents all huddled as far from the door as possible – the smell of urine and tears everywhere, along with a sudden influx of a cold and dry smell of blood. All the foals and their parents passed out instantly.

Speaker and Shimmer both felt a great temptation to give in to the shock and surprise, barely managing to get themselves to protest properly as the beast snatched their foal-doll with a semi-transparent shadowy tentacle, but they kept their composure and Shimmer gave a nice shout of “No, my baby!”

The monster took no heed of this and continued dragging the doll out into the darkness. There was the sound of two great sniffs then there was a ripping sound and suddenly a leg from the doll flew back into the hut, quickly followed by a loud growl and the shadow tentacle returning, seeking proper prey.

Shimmer leapt at the tentacle, shapeshifting into the form of a unicorn foal. How she’d acquired that form was not a question Speaker wished to ask, but the monster seemed satisfied as she instantly began to squirm and cry quite convincingly, calling out for a mother that Speaker knew that Shimmer had lost over a century ago to soul-eating changelings…

This was the cue for the ambush to be sprung. Speaker reached out with a roof and Gift sprang to life from under a pile of straw, buzzing with essence fueled vigor. Red came charging out from another hut, and Sullen Hoof threw small clay jugs of burning oil and rags on the ground around the killer to both light the fiend up and to let the others see what was happening.
What the circle saw was not meant for the eyes of ponies.

Limps of semi-transparent shadow, with a head of the same substance but shaped like some grotesque mix of pony, bat and wolf with bright red orbs as eyes and long pitch black fangs. All four legs of this shadow-pony monster were equally semi-transparent, with one leg currently extended as a freakish tentacle shadow – now with a very real Shimmer in the form of a foal in its grasp. The monster pony’s flank bore no cutie mark, indeed its entire hindquarter and rear legs were as much shadow as its forelimbs and head, with a tail of blood that didn’t drip and its chest clad in black armor made of a dark metal which did not reflect the light of the fire around it… soulsteel.

The monster pony gave off a surprised grunt at the sudden bright light, but beyond that it didn’t react – simply turning around and moving towards the soulsteel rods with Shimmer held firmly.

The whole circle had stopped in their tracks when they had seen this horror. It wasn’t entirely clear whether it was a pony or not… Ghosts didn’t usually wear armor like that, and changelings would never use a material which would rob them of souls to feed on. This was something entirely different and far worse.

The moment Shimmer was outside of the hut and at minimum safe distance from the hut with the foals she instantly shifted into the form of a giant tyrant lizard. The monster pony’s shadow tentacle limb had no chance of holding on to such a giant beast – and with the element of surprise from her split-second transformation Shimmer leaned down to bite the monster in half.

She succeeded in the first part of her plan – biting the monster pony – but with armor wrought of tortured souls and ore of the underworld she could not harm the monster. Instead it retaliated by freeing itself from her maw violently, dislocating her jaw in the process.

Howling it pain Shimmer stumbled backwards, in her giant tyrant lizard form nearly trampling a hut with ponies sleeping inside…

Of course, the noise woke most of the village up fairly quickly, at least those not already fainted – but the moment any of the villager ponies looked out at the shadowy horror they too would faint.

Red charged in next, her blade swirling above her with a bright trail as her essence set it alight with her righteous fury – its cutting edge blazing cherry red from intense heat. The monster responded in a somewhat unexpected way: It reared up into a fighting stance and between its forehooves it formed out of darkness a blade the length of three ponies and as wide one in an instant, parrying Red’s blow effortlessly.

Sullen Hoof tries with a sneak attack, but the fiend parried everything with its giant blade as if it had eyes in the back of its head – of course, with a semi-transparent head and seemingly solid eyes maybe it really could see all the way around?
Speaker ran out of the hut only to see the monster pony returning once again for a proper foal, its face a nightmare in its own right – but with Gift he held fast and lunged at the beast with a series of precise and deadly swiped augmented by his essence and focused with his knowledge and skill of his unique martial arts style.

Where Gift didn’t simply bounce off the soulsteel armor it plowed through the shadow flesh as if it wasn’t there – indeed the shadow flesh reforming instantly.

The monster pony batted Speaker aside with the very large flat of his even bigger blade, it easily the size of the hoof-blades of the Denansdor automaton guardians. Speaker found himself flying several yards through the air before hitting the ground, luckily with little but a few scratches.

Cash had held back so far, trying to aim his shoes of distant claws for a good shot – and now he finally took his chance, aiming for the beast’s one solid feature: its eyes. Unfortunately Cash had absolutely no schooling in the art of archery so he failed to take into account the slight breeze or to aim a little above his target when shooting a heavy solid steel projectile, so the claw instead plowed through the monster pony’s mouth, with the monster pony biting down on the thin but indestructible chain that connected the launched claw to the shoe, the monster then yanking Cash forward, swimging him around and then letting him fly off into the roof of another hut where he landed with a loud crash. The monster chuckled with a disturbing guttural voice in a slow and simple dialect of riverspeak: “Ha ha! Flying pony crash!”

Shimmer, having managed to yank her jaw back into its socket and tough out the immense pain of that, charged again, but this time the beast reacted much faster. It roared, and a visage of blood and ground organ tissue formed around it like an anima of death and horror. Speaker found himself recoiling in terror. Even Sullen Hoof who’d been about to jam a large and very sharp kitchen knife through a perceived chink in the monster’s armor found himself tumbling backwards and shuffling along the ground to distance himself from this horror beyond sanity.

Red seemed to be the only pony able to face the monster at this point, flaring her anima equally to its greatest extent, the light of her soul revealing itself as a golden bagua on the ground around her, with golden images of various weapons appearing above each bagua symbol. Charging at the monster with her still red-hot edged blade, Red tried to engage the monster – but at this point, to Speakers absolute horror, the monster made its counterattack to Shimmer’s charge.

With one fell flash of its giant blade Shimmer was cut in half – as a tyrant lizard – her giant bisected form spilling gallons of blood everywhere as a shadow limb extended up and grabbed the upper half… swinging it around and smashing it into Red who was struck perfectly, getting knocked out instantly from the immense bulk she was struck with at such speed.

Speaker couldn’t make himself do anything out abject horror, the monster simply dropping the top half of Shimmer which, along with her bottom half, slowly shrank back into normal pony pieces… but leaving behind a huge puddle of blood mixed with bone chips and the odd bit of tyrant lizard organ tissue.

It was when Shimmer, now in a very much bisected pony form, made one final pained and bloodied cough with lungs that could no longer breathe due to having had their bottom parts cut off – along with the rest of her – that Speaker leapt to her side, cradling her head as he cried deeply. This was wrong. It wasn’t…. this shouldn’t end like this. Shimmer had held out for so long. This was just wrong.

Speaker didn’t notice as the monster retrieved a foal and walked past him as if he and Shimmer wasn’t even there, dragging an unconscious foal behind him. Sullen Hoof tried to stop the monster, but with a swing of the giant sword he received a deep cut that nearly liberated his left shoulder and forelimb from his body, it merely hanging on by a few frayed strands of sinew and flesh…

Speaker didn’t look up as Sullen Hoof howled in pain from his injuries, or as the foal the monster had taken just barely managed to regain consciousness for a few terrifying moments as it was rammed down on the spike, the poor thing only managing a weak gasping wail that ended far too quickly before it died, the soulsteel rod claiming its soul.
The monster left quietly – and indeed, it had left no hoofprints.

As Red came to an hour to so later, bruised and aching, she found Sullen Hoof nearly dead from bloodloss, Cash unconscious and bleeding heavily from having been skewered in his left leg by a shattered wooden beam from having crashed into a hut and finally a largely uninjured Speaker cradling the lifeless top half of Shimmer’s body as he sat in a large pool of blood.

Author's Note

What a lovely sendoff right before christmas. Enjoy :)