Landing in the castle courtyard Speaker instantly began to wake Red and Cash up from their unconscious and half-droned state the moment Shimmer released him from her ten inch talons. While doing so Shimmer took off again, shapeshifting into a small songbird with a broken leg and chirped: “I’ll track the rice wagons!”

Speaker looked up at Shimmer while shaking Red: “No you don’t, look for Sunrise! If that gang gets their hooves on her she’s in big trouble!”

Flying down and landing on Speaker’s left shoulder, Shimmer wondered if it wasn’t a better idea to keep track of the rice. Speaker disagreed and pleaded to Shimmer: “Sunrise can’t fight and I doubt the gang will give her pause to use her social charms on them. If they catch her they’ll kill her or worse – find her, please”

Shimmer knew what Speaker meant. A young adolescent mare caught by a gang of wanted criminals that her friends had just tried to kill? Shimmer could easily imagine that if caught then Sunrise would most likely be gang raped first, then killed – or be left in front of the castle again by nightfall in an even worse state. Of course, what is one pony – even if a solar – against all the ponies of a city like Chung Do? Solars reincarnate, but cities just fell. Still, Speaker’s request was all but impossible for Shimmer to deny as her lunar bond to his solar exaltation gave her an overpowering urge to please and protect Speaker; and right now Speaker seemed to fear more for his friend than the city.

After Shimmer had flown off the young shogun Chung Onyx came down into the courtyard. Seeing his seemingly lifeless older sister that he had barely known for a week or two lying on the cobblestone did not sit well with the young colt.

Thinking back to his service in Lookshy as an army medic and surgeon, Speaker had on many occasions been forced to deal with the irate family members of injured ponies. This had been everything from innumerable variations of mothers, sisters, brothers, foals and other forms of close family that simply could or would not stop crying and would cling to their injured relative, making actually saving the patient’s life difficult, to angry officers or furious noble house matriarchs verbally abusing a patient for daring to be injured while there was a need for them on the battlefield or in their family business. Chung Onyx’s reaction to seeing Speaker draw water out of Red’s airways appeared to be a mix of both type of reactions.
Intermittently beating on Red’s armor with impotent anger and frustration, only to stop to cry or sob uncontrollably, Onyx wasn’t in any state to listen to calming voices. Speaker emphasized with the young colt’s pain, but at the same time his professionalism bid him to somehow ‘remove’ Onyx so treatment could continue. If only Sunrise had been here…

“How could you! You have to stay and help! I can’t do this on my own big sister” Onyx cried while Speaker contemplated his options. He had very little time to clear Cash and Red’s airways otherwise they would simply up and die, no matter how tough Red was or how handsome and wellspoken Cash was.

Ultimately a powerful right hoof to the jaw did the trick, knocking Onyx out in one blow – and a flash of essence and a medical diagnostic charm ensured that the young shogun wasn’t hurt in any serious way.

With Onyx out of the way Red and Cash were quickly restored to breathing condition, with Red being at least mildly understanding as to why Speaker had knocked out her little brother.

While Red had recovered from her near-drowning with no detectable injuries then Cash had not been so lucky. Speaker figured it was the prolonged lack of air, while Red was sure that it was a blow to the head from a water walker – either way Cash appeared to have suffered some mild brain damage. Ok maybe not mild…

Later as the sun drew to its zenith, inside castle Chung in Cash’s quarters while watching Cash thrash around weakly, leather restraints holding him to his bed, Red despaired. Cash couldn’t speak, only make out garbled sounds as if trying to speak with half an onion in your mouth, nor could he control his limbs: “You sure there’s even anything left inside of him?”
“Yes I am, and he’ll recover soon enough – my healing charms has seen to that, but it might be as much as five or six days before it kicks in. In Lookshy soldiers and officers who ended up like this, usually after fighting changelings, would be sent to special homes outside o Lookshy where they would be looked after. I remember seeing loud-mouthed grunts having their mouths and noses, sometimes their entire faces, removed by changeling magic… even if you got to them in time to carve a hole in their neck or where their face was so they could breathe there often wasn’t much to do for them… I feel the same here. We’ve failed Chung Do” Speaker noted, the disappointment he felt in himself for pushing so much to rush ahead with an attack on the water walkers resounding in his voice.

While Speaker sounded as if he had lost all hope Red refused to give up, for her faith in her home was too strong: “Now hold on. There’s no one here blaming you for water walker trickery. So what if we rushed in, we had to or else we’d have lost the rice without even trying to stop it. Shimmer’s off tracking the rice wagons right? …so the three of us will head after them in the morning. Sunrise and Cash’s sacrifice will not be in vain”

“It’s a moot point. The ponies in the city will realize that their food is gone soon enough… there’ll be chaos in the streets” Speaker said, sighing deeply while gazing out a window over the city. It wasn’t hard to imagine it going up in flames on account of this, especially as nine out of ten buildings were built of wood.

Red suddenly bit down and yanked hard on Speaker’s mane-braid. Speaker yelped and turned around: “Hey, what gives?”
What Speaker got was a hoof-slap across the face from an angry Red: “You need to drop that attitude right now. I need you to think up a solution, not brood over the problem. I know the castle has food stores, what if we use that?”

Trotting over to Cash’s desk and flipping through some of the paperwork he had lying there, Speaker floated up a scroll that seemed to be an inventory assessment that Cash had been making: “According to this… maybe if we ration the castle’s food supply and have Shimmer fly out to hunt every day as well… hmm…”

“Well?” Red inquired, relieved that Speaker finally started thinking again instead of moping around.

Speaker wasn’t sure, for it depended a lot on how well the food could be distributed – plus the city would have to be told that the rice was gone, but without rioting, and with both Sunrise and Cash not available to do break the news that part of the plan seemed impossible.

“Just give me a number – how many days or weeks do we have to get the rice back?” Red implored.

“A week maybe? You’ll have to go talk to Onyx and get him to release the food and set up the distribution, maybe get the captain in on it as well to guard against looters” Speaker said, watching Red run off before he was even done talking. When the warrior mare was out of sight Speaker began gingerly rubbing his sore scalp and face – dawn caste’s really hurt...

It wasn’t long before Shimmer returned – and she wasn’t alone, for she was carrying a pony in her claws. Spotting her come flying into the courtyard in her monsterpony form from the window in Cash’s quarters, Speaker ran down to the courtyard to see who it was.

His hopes that it was Sunrise Glow were quickly dashed when Speaker got to the courtyard door. He could hear the shouting and commotion outside… it was a mare, not Shimmer, shouting and cursing in ways that would make even a Nexus sailor blush.

Entering into the courtyard Speaker quickly spotted why Shimmer had brought this pony in as he got close: Aside from her worn rough linen clothing, the mare had a bright blue head-band on. Shimmer had captured a water walker.

“I found her trying to torch the empty rice granaries, probably so the ponies who didn’t know the rice was stolen would think it was just burnt to ash” Shimmer noted, her ’voice’ while in her monsterpony form reverberating inside all the ponies around her’s heads.

The water walker mare was less appreciative of her apprehension, spouting a non-stop stream of colorful language, mostly about Shimmer being a monster, how she was going to kill every pony in the castle because of this – and in what brutal and gory ways she’d kill them all, although all spoken through the blurry lens of a mare who probably didn’t have much of an education and thus not much variation in her vocabulary.

Having grown tired of the foul-mouthed water walker long ago, Shimmer looked at Speaker with relief: “You get to play with her now – I’ve had more than enough”

Speaker looked with some confusion as Shimmer leapt into the air flew off towards the eastern side of the city again, but then she shouted: “I’ll keep looking for Sunrise – they can’t have taken her far”

Red appeared in the courtyard moments later, to the sight of guardsponies restraining the water walker while Speaker looked at the captured mare in an inquisitive fashion.

“Was that Shimmer? Oh she caught a water walker, sweet!” Red said, speaking her mind out loud as she approached.
Speaker nodded and kept his gaze fixed on the by now gagged and squirming water walker mare: “Did Onyx agree to the rationing?”

Red said that it had taken some convincing, but the castle staff was already hauling up bags of rice and other things from the cellar. It was clear from how Red described her talking to her little brother that she wasn’t happy with the situation, but now there was a punching bag to take some of that anger and frustration out on, wasn’t there?

“I won’t let you torture our prisoner Red” Speaker said dourly, shaking his head sternly so his long mustache swayed from side to side.

Red didn’t seem to get Speaker’s message, stepping up to the prisoner and grabbing the brown-coated water walker mare’s dark mane and yanking it back, exposing the mare’s throat to Red: “Speaker, for all we know they’ve killed Sunrise. I want t- no, I need to do this. I’m gonna go all first age on her… spread her out over twin-fountain square like a thin red smear…”

The simmering rage in Red’s voice was unmistakable. Still, Speaker had other plans: “No you won’t. We need answers right now – and if I can get her to tell us where all the other water walkers are hiding, maybe also where the rice is stashed, then you’ll have hundreds of ponies to righteously punish – but killing defenseless prisoners? Not on my watch”

“Oh sure, and she’ll just tell us, wont you?” Red said, slipping the prisoner’s gag down to let the mare speak.

What the water walker started saying didn’t exactly convince Red that the prisoner would cooperate, although she did mentally take note of some of the new flavorful cursewords. Mudsucking scumlicker? Nice.

Speaker gestured for the guardsponies to haul the prisoner down into the castle dungeons and followed after them. Red was still upset, although now she merely suggested that she come along to help yank the mare’s teeth out or whatever Speaker had intended to get the mare to speak as she trailed after Speaker.

“If we take out her teeth she won’t be able to speak properly. Besides, that kind of torture doesn’t work. With regular torture your victim just ends up telling you anything you want to hear, just to make you stop – I’ve seen that a lot in Lookshy. No, what I will do is something that I will do alone and I can guarantee you….” Speaker said, turning around to face Red in front of the reinforced door down to the dungeon: “She will not feel pain, but she will cooperate when I’m done with her”

Red took a few steps back, her face showing no small level of concern. It had been the way that Speaker had the part about not feeling pain, the almost cheerfully malign expression that for a brief moment had flashed across Speaker’s face.
“Don’t do anything stupid alright?” Red said as Speaker stepped down into the dungeon.

Speaker turned his head and sighed: “She will not feel pain, for as I said that kind of torture is barbaric. Nothing I will do cannot be undone, for that will be the bargaining chip I will use to get the information we need, assuming she knows. I will not force her to speak via pain, I will negotiate for the information in exchange for medical services”

Red didn’t like how Speaker was so calm about talking of… medical services. The few torturers she had met in her life as mercenary had either been monsters who liked to hurt other ponies or weird quiet types who never asked questions before pulling at least one hoof off their victims first… and Speaker was beginning to sound like the second sort. Of course, with how he’d healed Shimmer Red knew that Speaker could work miracles when it came to healing… but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the details.

The last Red saw of Speaker was his tail just as the door shut behind him. Not long after the three guardsponies that had hauled the water walker in came out quietly with worried expressions behind their helmets, speaking with hushed voices to each other: “Medical torture? That’s new”

Red returned to the castle courtyard, pacing the battlements on the wall as she looked for Shimmer. The vents and barred windows down to the dungeon were in earshot, but there weren’t any screams or shouting. The only kind of interrogation she knew of involved a lot of both, but hey, maybe Speaker knew some weird Lookshyan or first age interrogation techniques?

Shimmer returned several hours later with no new prisoners or ponies this time. It was late and the sun had gone down, leaving the castle courtyard illuminated by torches and braziers full of burning coals. Red filled Shimmer in on the plan regarding the food, now in full swing, as servant ponies were almost done bringing food out to a distribution point set up on the twin-fountain square under the cover of darkness.

“Ok, sounds like a plan – but we still need to spread the word through the whole city so the ponies know where to go for food” Shimmer noted.

Red agreed that this was still an issue, but there weren’t enough healthy criers or heralds left to spread the news the usual way – and the few that were left didn’t seem keen on going in diseased neighborhoods.

Shimmer suddenly perked up, turned away from Red and shouted: “Hey Speaker! Learn anything?”

Red turned and saw that Speaker had emerged from the dungeons, casting long shadows from the lanterns at the thick reinforced dungeon door. His fore-hooves were completely covered in blood and left bloody hoof-prints on the cobblestone, while his face and the front part of his uniform were partially stained in blood as well.

Shimmer leapt from the battlements down to Speaker, a jump that would have killed most mortal ponies – it being a seven yard drop, at which point Speaker quickly gestured for Shimmer to withhold her exuberance.

“I know where Sunrise is and I know where the rice is” Speaker said in a slow, deliberate and somber tone, looking down into the ground. He did not sound happy at all.

Shimmer put a hoof on Speaker’s shoulder and gave him a cheerful smile: “That’s great… but why the glum look?”

Speaker sighed and shook his head slowly: “Just trying to remind myself that we’re the good ponies, right?”

“What are you talking about?” Shimmer said, sounding noticeably more apprehensive.

Speaker looked up at Shimmer. There were tears in his eyes shining in the dim torchlight: “Don’t ask. Just fly over to the river under the great bridge and have a sniff down in the water. Milda… the prisoner said that they tossed Sunrise into the river with rocks tied around her hooves and neck – find her, now! The rice is being sent to a granary near the village of Pebblehoof, we’ll go after that once you’re back with Sunrise”

Shimmer nodded fervently and launched herself up into the air, turning into her seagull form and flying off. Red came down from the battlements later, Speaker briefing her on the information he had obtained.

“And how do you know she told you the truth?” Red said, her concern over the truthfulness of the information clear for all to see.

Speaker shrugged apologetically: “Milda, that’s her name by the way, wants it to be true. When I was done with her she had very little motivation to lie, but quite a lot to tell me the truth”

“Is that so…” Red said cautiously, still not entirely interested in getting the exact details of Speaker’s interrogation techniques: “But why did they steal the rice then?”

This Speaker knew the answer to: According to Milda then someone had contacted Paddle Splash a few months ago, after the water walkers had taken over the city’s food supply. The original plan had simply been to profiteer from the monopoly, but the plan changed after this stranger had approached Paddle Splash. It had taken time, with Cash’s appearance having forced Paddle Splash to further speed up the execution of the plan to avoid failure – but apparently some rich pony was willing to pay a fortune for all the city’s rice.

“Who would do something like that? Whoever this buyer is she’d know that it would mean the doom of Chung Do” Red exclaimed.

Speaker didn’t have a clue as to who the buyer might be, but noted that it could just as well be one of the rebel nobles, as it could be a scrupulous guild factor who’d then try to sell the rice back to Chung Do for an even higher price: “The hundred kingdoms – got to love how things work here” Speaker said sarcastically.

The two solars walked up to the battlements on the wall and gazed out at the great bridge. In the darkness of the night it wasn’t possible to see Shimmer, but suddenly there was a great golden light in the river under the bridge – and moments later Shimmer, in her monsterpony form, burst through the water with a brilliantly glowing Sunrise Glow in her claws.

It looked like a tiny sun was being flown over the city in the claws of a giant bird which landed in the castle courtyard. Speaker and Red rushed down to the two. Sunrise was soaked and still had thick robes tightly bound around her legs, with rocks in burlap sacks tied to the ropes, but seemed surprisingly ok beyond that…

“You’re alright! That’s amazing!” Red shouted, tears in her eyes.

Sunrise wasn’t having any of it, acting as if nothing had happened: “Oh quiet you, this is no time to lose your composure. Speaker, Shimmer said that you’d learnt where the rice was?”

“Yes… but how did you survive being chucked in the river? You don’t have any elemental immunity charms like I do” Speaker wondered, amazed that the adolescent mare wasn’t hurt in any noticeable way at all.

Sunrise plainly stated that she had simply held her breath to begin with, then found a sunken ship down on the river-bottom that still had some air-pockets left. Then she had simply crawled into one such air-pocket and put herself into a meditative trance, only breathing once an hour to converse air. Her plan had been to let her ropes soak and become loose, so she could slip them off and resurface.

Shimmer added that she’d tracked Sunrise’s scent underwater to the shipwreck, then knocked on the shipwreck after which Sunrise had flared her anima to make finding her much easier.

“Wait, if you could walk around on the bottom of the river, why not just walk up from the river?” Red wondered.

Sunrise tried to lift a hoof, but the heavy pony-head-sized rocks didn’t allow for much room to move: “Going upwards was not an option, and the river is surprisingly deep under the bridge – there were quite a few wrecks down there”

Shimmer nodded, stating that it was at least a hundred and twenty fathoms. This had also meant that even if Sunrise had flared her anime while on the bottom the rest of the circle wouldn’t have been able to see it on the surface.

“Alright – then we can go after the rice now!” Red exclaimed, stomping triumphantly on the ground.

“No we can’t – we need to plan and scout ahead” Sunrise said like an angry mother reproving a foal, killing Red’s buzz very effectively.

This time Speaker was a lot more inclined to agree with Sunrise to err on the side of caution. Shimmer could fly out and find the granary, then scout it out and report back. In the meantime Speaker wanted to spend some time figuring out how he could help fight against the elementals that the water walkers controlled, for there was no sense in charging in only to have Red almost drown again. Speaker equally figured that neither Cash nor Sunrise should come along for that raid, as Cash couldn’t defend himself well enough and Sunrise seemed to already be aware that she couldn’t talk the water walkers down.

Red reluctantly agreed that some more planning might be a sound idea, especially now since the castle food supplies should last for the rest of the week. With that subject brought up Speaker quickly noted that Sunrise would do well to help the food distribution if Shimmer flew her around town so Sunrise could use her speaking charms to inform the city of the food distribution set up in twin-fountain square: “And you’re right – we need to teach Cash some defensive charms or how to toughen up if he’s to be any help”

After removing the ropes from Sunrise that held the rocks to her she and Shimmer left to spread the news.
Speaker retired for the evening – he needed to wash off… badly.

Red too felt that it had been a long day, but morbid curiosity bid her to take a peek into the dungeon first. It was pitch black, so Red willed her caste mark to light up.

What she saw had the stout dawn caste vomiting in seconds: Strapped to a stone table, surrounded by barrels full of bloody-red water, was what was left of this ‘Milda’ pony, the water walker that Shimmer had brought in.

To say that the state of the mare was terrible was an injustice, but it certainly clarified what those guardsponies had meant by ‘medical torture’: The mare was lying on her back on the table, with leather straps over her throat and midriff keeping her place, with Speaker having removed… nearly everything else. The mare had no legs, no tail and large patches of her skin had been removed as well. There were but exposed patches of moist flesh, severed sinew and unattached muscle glistening in the dim light of Red’s caste mark.

It was curious that she did not bleed in any way, indeed Red saw that deliberate care had been taken to connect severed veins and to staunch any and all bleeding, if the pile of bloody rags on the floor was any indication. It was when Red saw what was in the barrels that she vomited, for in the salty water were the limbs, pieces of skin, the one eyeball, nose, and a lot of other smaller pieces of flesh…

It was right after vomiting that Red noticed that Milda was actually moving a little. Milda’s chest moved ever so slightly as the mutilated pony breathed. With her one tearful eye she gazed at Red what was most likely meant to be a panicked expression – but it was hard to tell, for so much of her face was missing. For a moment it looked to Red as if the mare was trying to speak, as she slowly opened her mouth to reveal a full set of teeth in surprisingly good condition, but she closed her mouth again quickly as if the exertion of simply opening her mouth was too much. A sick thought reared itself in the dawn caste mare’s head: Had Speaker done dental work on Milda just to spite Red?

Red quickly left the dungeon, telling herself over and over both that this mare was a vicious criminal and that Speaker had promised that he could undo everything he had done to the mare… she was a vicious criminal and the damage could be undo, yes, a vicious criminal and the damage could be undone.

She now understood why Speaker had questioned whether they were still the good ponies in this conflict.

Red did not sleep well that night, dreaming of herself falling apart over and over again – with Speaker in the form of a terrible bloated corpse with a white ragged mane and beard haphazardly piecing her together again, only for the cycle to repeat, all the while hearing Speaker’s voice saying the same thing over and over: “We have work to do the best for the greatest number of ponies“

Author's Note

Solar healing charms are 100% nightmare fuel if used right. Remember: Milda was probably awake but couldn't feel a thing as Speaker took her apart...