The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

“Ah, good to see you all together again” the hooded mare said in a strangely satisfied tone, addressing the ponies at the dining table.

Given the circumstances of Sullen Hoof’s recent discovery the circle was not particularly pleased with the sudden appearance of an unannounced guest. Indeed, in a blur of furious motion – as only a solar of the dawn caste could – Red had leapt up from the table at the hooded stranger and drew her blade from elsewhere mid-leap, pinning the hooded mare against the stone brick wall at sword-point.

“Ok, I can see this isn’t going to work out” the hooded mare managed to squeak, her throat pushed upon by the cutting edge of the blade. She closed her eyes and suddenly…

The circle sat that the dining table, with Sullen Hoof gazing at the fireplace. He sighed deeply.

“So, Sully – good to see you survived. Any clue what happened to you?” Cash asked as the rest of the circle began to eat the steamed veggies and rice that had been served to them.

Sullen Hoof looked at Cash. With the heavy burn scars it wasn’t easy to look directly at Sullen Hoof, but Cash seemed to keep a straight face as Sully mournfully replied: “I… I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t even really remember the jailor you told me about. I’m sorry, I failed you all”

“No you didn’t – I think you actually succeeded” Cash said, smiling. Cash suspected that Sully had actually found the Ruby and Emerald Mare, but that he’d been caught by her and had his memories altered while captured.

Shimmer agreed that his theory wasn’t that unlikely given the situation, but wondered why Sully hadn’t tried to escape any sooner. Sullen Hoof said that the few things he remembered from his week of captivity was that he’d been drained of essence all the time, so much that he’d fainted from it almost all the time. Speaker was curious about how the essence had been drained, or how that would have caused Sully to be knocked unconscious, but there hadn’t been any marks or other telltale signs to reveal how this happened on Sully.

Ultimately the circle agreed that the hunt for the Ruby and Emerald Mare continued and that it was simply good to have Sullen Hoof back. This also raised the question of what the next step was.

Speaker said that he wanted to finally spend some proper time looking for a cure to the plague, perhaps with the help of Sully to manufacture the medicine while the rest of the circle looked for the deathknight. Cash said he needed some more clerks to run the city efficiently, for the number of city officials that weren’t sick was falling steadily, him presenting his prisoner-work program again. Red was cautious about using water walkers as city clerks, seeing as how they had already once attempted to run the city more or less, but Cash assured the circle that he could bind them via magic oaths so that they would be severely punished if they tried to exploit whatever power given to them as his underlings. Sunrise wanted to continue preaching to the ponies of the Chung Do, saying that with the food distribution, defeating the water walkers and the recovery of the rice that the circle was becoming very popular in Chung Do, so a lot of ponies were very open to building a temple for Celestia in return, plus she wasn’t much of a detective or a warrior, so flushing out a hiding deathknight wasn’t something she could be that helpful with.

“I can help draw up plans for a temple – but my priority right now is the plague” Speaker noted. Sunrise agreed.

Red said that she’d lead the hunt for the deathknight, Shimmer adding that she’d love to help out with that.

Sullen Hoof as the last pony in the circle to declare his intentions said that he wouldn’t mind helping Speaker, but wasn’t sure about making medicine.

“Can you make tea?” Speaker asked jokingly.

Sullen Hoof gave Speaker a mildly indignant look.

“Then you can make medicine” Speaker said, sounding reassuring in the same way a grandfather might encourage a grandson in some field of endeavor.

As the circle split up after the meal Speaker led Sullen Hoof down to the medical lab. The laboratory itself was located in the castle basement, in what had been a large storage room.

Sullen Hoof marveled at the devices that Speaker had managed to create, with everything from exquisitely delicate glass distillation devices to fine measuring tools – all apparently made by Speaker himself. Speaker on the other hoof was more curious as to Sullen Hoof’s wellbeing and positions, namely his burn scars and his missing magic mask: “How did you get those scars?”

First Sullen Hoof gave Speaker a piercing glare, then he drew a deep breath: “I told you I exalted while working in a kitchen in Nexus, in a cult to the god of fine cuisine. I had just had a culinary epiphany when the doors were battered in, immaculate monks flooding the place and I was shining with a bright golden light while tasting the best sauce I’d ever made. The head pastry chef in the kitchen was a pony named Doughnut Joe… and he threw a put full of boiling oil at me. It’s that simple, hurt like hell too”

“I can fix all that damage if you want” Speaker almost absentmindedly offered while going over some of his equipment.
Sully’s face soured, followed by a very resolute “No”

Speaker was taken aback by his offer being turned down. He couldn’t see why not, but Sully insisted that Speaker had already done so much for him! By having taught him how to read and write Sullen Hoof had finally been able to read cook books, expanding his understanding of the culinary crafts in ways he had never imagined! “So while I thank you for your generous offer, then I cannot accept. I already owe you too much for having opened up a whole new world to me”
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard” Speaker bluntly replied.

Sullen Hoof looked at Speaker with a mix of incredulous confusion and indignity, having just bared his great respect and feeling of debt to Speaker.

“You were there on the cloud when I gave you, Red and Cash a quick lesson how spirits worked. I required noting in return – and I don’t require any now or for past lessons” Speaker said.

Stepping up to Sullen Hoof and carefully examining the burns, Speaker taking his time to appraise how difficult it would be fix to the damages, Speaker finally spoke: “I can fix your face over a few weeks of multiple surgeries and get your mane growing properly again. Shimmer can help grow your mane out quickly as well if you want. I don’t want anything for it, I just want to help you and honestly –turning down the probably best surgeon that currently exists in creation when he wants to help you out for free is just plain stupid”

Sullen Hoof stood silent for a moment, then Speaker noticed tears in Sully’s eyes. Sullen Hoof shook his head: “Stupid… ya I guess so. It’s just… in Nexus giving anything away for free is illegal. It’s hard to stop thinking like that when you’ve lived with it all your life. I just… I guess I don’t have a good reason to refuse you. I’m Sorry”

Speaker smiled: “It’s ok. Now, about your mask? The Ruby and Emerald Mare probably has that… any idea how to get it back? I mean, a magical mask that lets our enemy disguise herself as well as you did – it won’t make it easy to find her”
“I should speak to Sunrise about that. She needs to send a prayer to Shalrina, the goddess of faces and identities. I got the mask from her while I hid and recovered in her shop in Nexus after the cooking cult got busted and I had been chased by immaculate monks. She said that she was the only one who could see through the mask’s illusion at all time, something about her always knowing when it was in use and what face I was wearing. So we just ask her what face the mask-bearer is wearing, get a description, find that pony and get my mask back” Sullen Hoof explained.

Speaker nodded slowly. He hadn’t realized that the mask had been one from the very goddess of faces and identities, although he also wondered why such a powerful celestial god had a shop in Nexus: “Fair enough, but you should run back and find Sunrise about that prayer before we do anything else here. I’ll start setting up for some preliminary experiments on the fountain water”

An hour later Speaker was up to his ears in strange looking essence-fueled medical experiments when Sullen Hoof returned, looking disappointed as he stood in the doorway into the lab. Sullen Hoof explained that him and Sunrise, after praying to Shalrina and in that prayer telling her that Sully had been robbed of the mask, had been visited briefly by a servant spirit of the goddess who noted that the helmet had ‘returned’ to Shalrina. She had detected that a foul essence had attempted to take control of the mask – so it was back in Nexus, waiting for Sullen Hoof to come apologize and retrieve it. This was a mixed blessing to Sullen Hoof, but now they at least knew where the mask was and didn’t have to worry about some other pony using it.

“So… you want to get your face fixed in the mean time?” Speaker inquired.

Sullen Hoof shook his head slowly, but smiled: “I would be very grateful to get my face back, but can it wait until I get the mask back? Shalrina might not give it to me if I have a normal face when I come to collect”

“Very well, now you at least have a proper excuse, now come – I’ll show you what I need help with” Speaker said, ushering Sullen Hoof inside the lab.

Over the next several days Speaker and Sullen Hoof worked hard to find not just a cure to the plague – for it turned out that Speaker could easily cure a single pony at a time simply by the power of his essence and his medical charms – but to make a cure that could be distributed to the whole city one had to work a bit harder. This requirement of distribution required that the cure, in whatever form it ended up in, could keep for at least a few days after being made so it could be distributed; Speaker’s medical charms didn’t allow for the creation of storable medicine – it was powers that had to be used right then and there.

To Speaker’s great joy then Sullen Hoof came up with a brilliant idea after Speaker had explained how diseases themselves were essentially alive and grew inside ponies, leeching essence and nutrients from their bodies, all the while polluting those very same essence flows. Sully’s idea was to make the cure work in the same way that you would tire a dinner guest of a certain kind of food: give them a bad and watered down version of it, so it wouldn’t impress the dinner guest very much. This led to Speaker and Sullen Hoof experimenting in how to ‘water down’ the potency of the plague so that those still healthy could get a weakened version of it that their bodies could thwart easily, thus immunize them to the real plague. One thing they couldn’t agree on was what to name this new strange way of curing a disease. Pre-infection? Dilution-treatment?

“I have to say… this is really impressive. You’ve taken the dead castle alchemist’s stores and made it into a cure for a disease that for a couple month ago I would have sworn there isn’t a cure for” Sullen Hoof said, shaking his head in disbelief. In front of him a big iron cauldron filled with luke-warn brown liquid bubbled, a large wooden spoon enveloped by a golden glow at the end slowly going around in a figure-eight pattern.

Speaker was gazing intently at glass alembic that had a dark grey cloudy fluid inside. Every other second the fluid would bubble and release a dark smoke as the bubbles burst against the inside of the alembic. A pitch black fluid was dripping down into a small cup at the end of the alembic: “Well yes… but we still have to make it stay alive. It was fun experimenting with the first four batches that failed, but this is getting frustrating”

Sullen Hoof walked over to Speaker and looked at the alembic with amazement. The potential for concentrating flavors and distilling alcohol still had him thinking up new dishes and drinks all the time: “Don’t worry. I put in the green jade powder in just like you asked. But say, maybe it’s that we’re trying to manipulate the disease while inside a manse that prevents the spread of disease?”

“No, I tested that myself earlier. The manse prevents spread of disease, but it doesn’t cover the basement and dungeon for that. That’s why it doesn’t smell like pine down here… smell, oh god the cauldron!” Speaker shouted, a rancid smell suddenly spreading through the laboratory.

The two ran over to the cauldron where Sullen Hoof floated the big wooden spoon up from the broth. The previously calm brown liquid was as black as the stuff in the alembic, and the liquid was thick and sticking to the great spoon like tar.

“How? We did this perfectly, watched every step of the process like hawkes” Speaker said with great anguish and bewilderment. Sullen Hoof scratched his head.

At dinner the two presented their problem to the rest of the circle. Cash wasn’t impressed: “So yesterday you two failed six times, and now its four failed batches today? How many dozen times have you two failed at this? Some might take that as a hint that what you’re trying to do won’t work”

“No it should work – and the way the brews fail is really weird. They clot, thicken or turn black – rarely the same thing twice. If this was a problem with what we were doing we’d see the same failure over and over, but each time it’s something different” Speaker lamented.

Sunrise’s ears perked up under her hood: “So it’s not a fault in your procedure. Sabotage?”

“I can’t see any other answer. But I don’t see how…” Speaker lamented. Sullen Hoof agreed that sabotage was the only answer that made sense. However, he had no clue how the Emerald and Ruby Mare was doing it, and she was the only one the circle could think of who’d want to prevent a cure from being made: “I’ve used so much essence sharpening my senses to pierce any illusions she might be hiding behind – if whatever dark charms she’s using to stay out of sight works in any way like mine then I should have seen her”

Cash found the implication that Sullen Hoof could turn invisible quite interesting: “Wait, you can disappear from sight?”

Sullen Hoof nodded once, then winked out of sight, appearing again in the same position he had vanished in a few seconds later: “It’s not difficult – but only works when I stand perfectly still, so it is only good for hiding, not sneaking around in a laboratory and ruining our brews by adding stuff that ruins it”

“Who’s to say that she’s not found a way to do that anyway” Red wondered, arguing that such a limitation would merely be there to be overcome. Sullen Hoof had to agree that this was a possibility…

“But we tried to set up traps for an invisible pony walking around, including salt wards to prevent ghosts coming into the lab. We set up strings of yarn with little bells on them and spread rice-flour on the floor to track movement and hoof-prints… but nothing. I set it all up so only me and Speaker could walk around without setting anything off” Sullen Hoof complained, slamming a hoof into the large wooden dining table. All the porcelain rattled, the sound quickly fading again as the circle mulled over this impossible act of sabotage.

Cash cleared his throat and plainly stated: “While this is disconcerting then I think you two are going at this in the wrong way”
Looking around at table, Cash found all the eyes of the circle locked on him, wordlessly asking for him to explain himself: “Saving Sully was undeniably a good thing, but simply continuing what we all did before the whole water walker incident clearly isn’t working. We need to focus on rooting out and killing this deathknight in our midst if we’re to make any progress here”

“And how exactly would we do that?” Red wondered, her voice betraying her frustration of a foe that could not be seen or fought directly.

Cash was clear that he didn’t know the answer to that question, but said that everything else the circle was doing should be put on hold until the deathknight was taken care of. He also expertly pointed out what the first step should be: “Ok, so we know that she’s hiding from us somehow, which would explain why Red and Shimmer hasn’t found her yet – and that she’s quite good at disguising herself, right? We simply need to find out how she is doing it. Sully, if you’re right then she can’t be using invisibility charms – unless they work differently from yours, which is still an option. Equally, then I would like to go over the traps and whatnot that you and Speaker put up down in the lab, just to see how they work – maybe I can come up with a few ideas there?”

The discussion continued, Shimmer saying that she had set up a kind of ‘web’ through the castle to detect anything empowered by necrotic essence, which had always worked perfectly to detect the elemental essence of unicorns back east when it was attuned to detect that kind of essence instead. It evidently hadn’t worked, but even then it wouldn’t tell her where the deathknight was, but the idea with it was to narrow down exactly where the deathknight was: “…but I’m not getting any response from it. The manse isn’t interfering it, I tested that, but if she can hide from my charms then I’m getting scared of how well she can hide her activities”

Red remained quiet during the brainstorm, nodding to the various suggestions but being unable to come with any of her own. Instead, her face merely soured into a more dour and determined scowl.

The meals long eaten, the circle adjourned for the time being and Speaker, Sullen Hoof and Cash went down to the lab to investigate the warning system they had put up. They returned shortly thereafter to the dining hall, appearing confused as they walked in on Sunrise talking to the young Shogun: “Do not worry your highness, we shall find this dark fiend and put an end to her wicked ways, so please, take heart and rest assured that we will find her”

Turning to see the confused looks on her three circle-mates’ faces, Sunrise inquired into any discoveries. Sullen Hoof explained the strange nature of what they had found: “The strings with bells… had been pulled from the walls several times”
Sunrise couldn’t really see the problem in the statement, but Sully elaborated, saying that this meant that the strings and bells had been tripped several times – the only problem was that Speaker and Sullen Hoof had both been present constantly while the strings and bells had been up, and they had taken them down before leaving the lab.

“So they could only have been yanked from the walls while you had been there, but you didn’t see or hear it?” the young shogun said with bewilderment, his young mind baffled at how something like that could have worked.

Suddenly Sunrise slammed a hoof into the stone-tiled floor: “So that’s how she’s doing it!”

Cash, Speaker, Sullen Hoof and the young shogun were all curious as to Sunrise’s revelation, but instead she called for Red and Shimmer and the others to meet her in the courtyard as quickly as possible.

A few minutes later in the courtyard Sunrise gave Shimmer strict instructions to summon a cloud only big enough and powerful enough to support the six of them – one that would fail and disintegrate should more weight be added. Shimmer complied and the circle got up on the very tiny cloud, Sunrise then instructing Shimmer to take them far from the castle as quickly as possible.

A few miles away from the castle, high up in the lowest of the clouds in the sky, Sunrise told Shimmer to stop.

“Ok, now please tell us what you know” Speaker insisted.

Sunrise drew a deep breath and bid the circle remember their exit from Sullen Hoof’s old ruined manse down south: “When we left we were spotted by on the roof of the manse, but I used a charm to make them not perceive us – altering the way they remembered what they were seeing”

Waiting for the circle to see her logic, the faces of all the ponies present quickly switched to shock, horror and despair. Cash was quick to ask how one could fight a charm like that, but Sunrise had little aid to offer in that department: “I only know that the compulsions I can give can be resisted if the target becomes aware of what they’re being compelled to do”
“So it’s a bit like the hypnotic tongue technique?” Cash wondered.

Sunrise shook her head: “No, it works differently: the memory-reweaving discipline doesn’t compel you to do anything like you can with hypnosis. It outright changes how you perceive the world and remember it. I used it sparingly in Great Forks, but to great effect, when warding off the last of my would-be kidnapers after I exalted – putting the idea in their heads that I was no longer desirable for their pleasure cults. It completely overwrote any idea they had that I was beautiful or attractive, as they justified the new notion to themselves”

“Ok, but then what have we been cursed with here?” Red said, looking a little confused as to what exactly she was under the influence of.

Cash arched his back for a moment and peered up into the cloud they were in. It wasn’t possible to see for more than a few feet since they were inside the cloud. “It’s obvious. We’ve been charmed to not notice or remember the deathknight or any of her actions, which is why Sullen Hoof can’t remember who or how he was captured. It’s quite ingenious really now that you think about it. Speaker, Sully, you two didn’t hear or see her walking around your lab because of this. Hmm… I do wonder what else we haven’t noticed her doing”

Sullen Hoof was quick to point out that his capture had gone unnoticed until Cash and Speaker stumbled across him, so that had perhaps also been part of the compulsion – but Speaker pointed out that this had only happened because no pony in Chung Do or the circle had known what Sullen Hoof really looked like, so the prison guards hadn’t known to free him.

“But we could see the jailor – and if Cash is sure that it was the deathknight in disguise…” Sullen Hoof rebutted, fishing for some kind of justification to why he hadn’t been found sooner.

Sunrise pointed out that Sullen Hoof had answered his own question: “The deathknight was in disguise. We’re probably only compelled to ignore her when she’s in the appearance she was in when she first put the idea in our heads”

“Excellent! Now that we know that we can fight the compulsion, right?” Red hopefully asked, looking eager to dish out some violent justice and revenge for having her head messed with.

Cash shook his head: “Sorry Red – but this is a well thought out of charm we’re under. We’d need to know exactly what we’re not meant to notice before we can try to counter the effect… and that’s not possible when we can’t see her”

“We can ask the other ponies in the castle help us! They must still see her” Red suggested, but Cash pointed out that if this was the deathknight that had started the plague then she had been in Chung Do for over six months now, long before the circle showed up – so there probably wasn’t a pony left in the city that wasn’t under her spell.

“Damnit!” Red shouted, stomping on the cloud so hard that her hoof plunged through it. She recovered quickly from the half-stumble, but the sudden shock of almost falling from the sky, the quick reaction to counter it and the impotent fury over the situation wasn’t doing much for her mood.

The question now was what to do? It was clear that the deathknight was sabotaging all attempts at creating a cure – and couldn’t really be stopped. Adding to the situation was the uncomfortable truth that the season of fire was coming to an end: Calibation was in a few days – and after those five days of starless and moonless skies the season of air would come… winter, and come the spring thaw the rebel nobles would undoubtedly invade. The uncomfortable truth of their dire situation weighed heavily on the circle as they each thought of a way to remedy the calamity.

“If we can’t attack her directly, then let’s attack her allies! The Bodhisattva told us that those foal-soul-spikes were being made and delivered somewhere west of Chung Do in the swamps. If we can’t find this deathknight here, we might be able to flush her out by attacking her allies” Red suggested eagerly.

The rest of the circle was quick to agree that a change in strategy wasn’t a bad idea – and taking the offensive for once sounded a lot more appealing than waiting around for a foe you couldn’t detect to attack you.

“Hold on – do we go back to the castle first? If the Emerald and Ruby Mare is down there waiting for us, she might warn her friends that we’re coming” Shimmer wondered.

Red wanted to raid the castle armory for equipment, and Cash wanted to wrap up some paperwork, but Speaker and Sunrise both advised against it. Speaker said that he could make whatever gear they needed on the fly, and Sunrise was adamant that they really shouldn’t return to Chung Do at all until they had found a way to purge their minds.

Red wasn’t sure about not returning to Chung Do until then – but the circle agreed that the choice of whether to return or not was one that could wait until after they had attacked the deathknight’s allies to the west.

Shimmer flew the cloud to the west at a brisk pace, quickly covering hundreds of miles and nearing the edge of Chung territory. The swamplands that made up the borders to the neighboring territories were difficult to travel through, so sending large armies through them to invade was next to impossible, making the swamps a natural border. The only road through the swamp to the west was the western trade road which linked the Chung lands to the rest of the hundred kingdoms to the west, and it was guarded by a toll station that could easily send a runner to Chung Do to warn of incoming invasions.
It was on this road that the circle spotted a sijaneese corpse caravan.

The large guild wagons full of dead plague victims from Chung Do had evidently been allowed to pass through the road blocks, but now they stood still on the road for some unknown reason.

As the cloud descended the circle realized that the caravan had stopped for a good reason: The giant furry yeddim that had pulled the great multi-storied wagons full of corpses was dead… its hulking corpse collapsed in the middle of the road. It was then that the wind shifted and the circle on the circle found itself barraged by an unbearable stench of rot and death…

“Oh fuck my nose – I didn’t know that corpse caravans smelled this bad” Red exclaimed, desperately trying to cover her nose somehow.

Cash vomited off the side of the cloud, while Speaker noted that corpse caravan’s usually didn’t smell – they were warded in such a way that their cargo didn’t rot before they reached Sijan.

Landing the cloud, Shimmer quickly noticed that the ground was strangely darkened. Picking up a lump of dirt and licking it, then quickly spiting and swearing she shouted: “It’s just like the guild caravan we came with - this whole thing has been struck by the same rot spell – look –the yeddim!”

At close range it was clear that the yeddim was in a very advanced stage of decay. However, unlike the guild caravan that the circle had traveled with, then there were no corpses of caravan guardsponies strewn around the place… instead Speaker found strange tracks in the ground, which had been darkened by an eerily even cover of blood at some point in the recent past. Also the wagons, their timber frames rotten to the point that touching them almost made them collapse, were empty… and there were a lot of hoof prints leading away from them.

“I think we can all agree that the sijaneese wouldn’t give up their cargo without a fight… but honestly… it looks like all the sijanese ponies were killed and then they and their cargo were raised from the dead” Speaker said, noting liking his own frightful conclusion one bit.

Red withdrew her armor and blade from elsewhere: “At least now we have an excuse to go investigating the swamp. Lets follow the hoof prints and see where the dead went and make sure they stay dead this time”

The circle followed the tracks of hundreds of hoof prints into the swamp. It wasn’t that difficult to track such a large number of ponies moving through the swamp, for while the muddy waters might make it almost impossible to follow a single pony in the swamp, then hundreds of shambling dead kicked up enough mud and knocked over enough small plants and bushes that one simply had to follow that instead.

What the circle found was… disconcerting, to say the least.

After having slogged through the swamp for a few hours, during which Shimmer had flown overhead in her seagull form to scout ahead, Shimmer returned and told of a strange and worrisome sight. She led the circle slightly to the east, to the edge of the swamp, where the ground quickly began to dry up.

“Don’t step out of the puddles! This is some kind of freaky shadowland – I’ve ever seen anything like it before” Shimmer warned, perched on Speaker’s right shoulder still in her seagull form.

Sullen Hoof smiled at her warning but carelessly stepped into blackened dirt beyond the wet swamp puddles, following behind Sunrise, but he quickly regretted doing so: “My hooves!”

Sullen Hoof leapt back into the swampy puddles, landing in an awkward angle and falling to his side in a splash all the while waving his front hooves around as if they were on fire. Speaker rushed to Sullen Hoof to see what was wrong, to his horror discovering that Sully’s hooves looked pale and falling apart, as if they were the hooves of a two hundred year old mummified pony – like some of the old embalmed unicorn bodies kept on display in Lookshy’s museum of ancient heroes.
“Told you…” Shimmer said, adding that she’d gotten the same when she had landed in the blackened dirt.

While Speaker used his healing charms on Sullen Hoof’s hooves, Cash and Red wondered why Sunrise could walk around out in the blackened dirt without her hooves withering.

“I am too holy for this land to touch me” Sunrise said resolutely, looking further afield.

Cash and Red looked at each and shrugged. Cash then wondered why the ground was so black: “It’s not the same shade as the old bloodsoaked dirt at the caravan…”

Floating a patch of dirt up next to him, Sullen Hoof – all the while Speaker worked on his hooves – gave the dirt a close look, then carefully he licked it ever so slightly: “Its ash… and it looks like the dirt itself is harmless once you take it out of the ground, seeing as my tongue didn’t wither”

“This isn’t right. Shadowlands cause living things to fall into the underworld if you stay overnight – and very few things can grow in it – but I’ve never seen a shadowland that withers flesh and bone like this” Shimmer said in bewilderment, flying out to Sunrise.

Having done all he could – wrapping Sullen Hoof’s hooves in tight bandages so nothing else could fall off and cleaning the wound thoroughly so the hooves could heal over time – Speaker looked in at the shadowland. The swamp petered out at the edge of a hill, so their view was blocked by the crest of the hill: “Shimmer, what’s up ahead?”

Shimmer flew up into the sky, but suddenly a dark beam of necrotic essence hurtled like lightning from beyond the crest of the hill and struck Shimmer in her seagul form with a powerful and loud concussive blast – the bird being blasted back into to the ground not far from the circle, a nasty sizzling sound coming from the little form as it began to wither…

“Shimmer!” Speaker cried out, galloping into the shadowland, insulating his hooves with a little bit of essence without even thinking about it. He quickly picked up Shimmer’s unconscious bird form – which proved very difficult as she began to shift back into pony form the moment Speaker’s floating glow touched her.

Straining to keep Shimmer from touching the ground, Speaker quickly moved her back into the swampy puddles, putting her down on her good side while he checked the side she’s been withered on… and Cash threw up again at the sight of the damage revealed.

Shimmer’s entire left side had been withered to dust. Probably nothing that she couldn’t regenerate once she came to, but she was unconscious so that wasn’t an option right then and there. Instead Speaker cleaned the dirt and ash away from her crumbling ribs, the skin on her entire left side, from most of her face, her left shoulder to her left flank all having been withered away into dusty flakes that peeled off if you even looked at them.

To Speaker’s elation he quickly concluded that while the damage was gruesome to behold, then it wasn’t actually life threatening in any way. After hitting Shimmer with his painkiller charm she came to fair quickly and she was really pissed at having been hit so suddenly without having been able to dodge. To the amazement of the rest of the circle she regenerated the withered skin and ribs in seconds: “Damn that hurt… that thing is going down!”

“So… did you see something before you were hit?” Cash wondered, looking fairly hesitant at the prospect of stepping over the ridge to be the target of some unseen foe.

Shimmer nodded and began to shift into her monsterpony form, her hooves turning into clawed hands with long silvery talons, her face growing a beak and her forehead opening up to a third eye as chitinous feather-scales covered her body: “A manse – big crystal on top, that’s what shot me – but that won’t be a problem again”