The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Taking a peek down the hole in the roof, Sullen Hoof quickly noted that he could no longer see tables down on the ground level. Indeed, he couldn’t see the ground level at all…

“Then what can you see – come on, give us something useful” Cash bemoaned.

Sullen Hoof shot Cash a dirty look: “Teeth. Lots of teeth. I think someone parked a monster with an open mouth under the hole... it looks hungry”

“Wouldn’t we have heard something growling down there if that was the case?” Cash quipped.

Sullen Hoof trotted over to the pile of ashen flesh slabs and hauled one back to the hole, then tossed it in. There was a moment of silence, then from the hole sounded a very quick snap – not entirely unbefitting that of a giant maw closing shut very quickly… then chewing... then swallowing... and then crapping out the remains onto a stone floor.

“Ok, so… now what? We can’t go down into that – we’ll be eaten” Cash said, looking very much like he was ready to go back to Chung Do.

Sunrise walked up the hole, peeking down. In the darkness normal eyesight revealed nothing to her, but none the less she drew a deep breath and sang a single high pitched note. From the pit erupted flashes of white, yellow and golden light, as the circle could hear that Sunrise’s strange musical assault was smiting any number of dark things down in the manse. It was a howling geyser fueled by the burning flesh of the monster in the dark... it slowly dying down.

Sullen Hoof quickly peeked down again once nothing more was spurting out the hole in the roof: “Awesome! The maw is gone and the ground is clear under the hole – Speaker, can you make a rope or something out of the building materials here?”

Looking around at the slabs of bone and flesh, Speaker frowned. It wasn’t exactly idea materials to make rope – but the flesh slabs could probably be made into something. Red called out that she’d found a barrel full of brass spikes among the construction equipment. With the spikes Speaker instantly began to use his essence to melt the spikes down to fashion a long pole that he extended down into the manse, but it turned out that there wasn’t enough metal for that. To supplement the brass Speaker used Gift to cut some of the bone slabs into long rods that he built into the brass pole. It took a surprisingly short amount of time, especially considering that Speaker didn’t have any forge or smelting equipment, instead using only his essence to work the materials. Sullen Hoof was particularly intrigued, to which Speaker simply pointed out: “A good solar craftspony needs no tools beyond his own essence”

The pole was lowered down into the manse until it rested on the floor, after which Sullen Hoof and Speaker had a look to check for ghosts or anything else that might be waiting for them at the end of the pole. They saw nothing, so they all quickly slid down, with Red and Shimmer coming down last.

Finally inside the manse, the circle quickly surveyed their surroundings – which turned out to be a lot more difficult and daunting than one might have expected. Sunrise flared her anima to the point that she appeared wreathed in golden flames of pure sunlight – yet the light from her anima barely extended more than half a dozen yards around her before simply terminating in an almost palpable darkness.

Of what very little the circle could see was indeed a very large table made of a single huge slab of stone – and that was all they could see. Speaker identified the stone as something not native to the Chung lands – for it was dark like flint, but had a weird texture: “I’m not even sure this is native to creation…”

It was then that Red shouted: “Look, the hole!” and pointed upwards. The hole in the ceiling was being covered… now their only source of light was that of their own souls.

“Everyone flare up – we have to find who’s controlling this manse, but stay in sight ok?” Speaker said. Shimmer and Red gave him apologetic looks as neither had the power left in them to do so, so Speaker told them to stay with Sunrise.
Peering into the darkness Sullen Hoof shook his head: “Can’t see a thing. I think this place eats light...”
“Moot point. Sunrise, give them a serenade. A requiem to send them all to lethe!” Speaker said, like an officer ordering archers to fire a volley.

Sunrise drew in breath but what came out as she was about to speak was a brief shout as dark fleshy tentacles, just like the ones that had taken the fearless killer’s body, suddenly yanked Sunrise into the darkness and away from the circle…
Her surprisingly calm shouting and insistent “Put me down you fiend or feel my wrath!” ended very quickly with the sound of a splash, followed by a loud thump and several brief metal on metal striking sounds – then there was silence.
“I want to go home” Cash said meekly.

Ignoring the impulse to agree with him, Speaker brought Gift to bear and reared up into a martial stance – ready to cut any more tentacles he might spot… then his vision began to fail and he began hearing things.

Turning to look at the rest of the circle, it was clear that they too were suffering the same strange effect. It was as if white noise tainted everyone’s hearing and eye-sight, followed by a high pitched gravelly voice suddenly speaking as if from all around the circle. The voice spoke slowly, as if the speaker savored every second it could hear itself: “Now now… why leave? I have such sights to show you… and you won’t even need eyes to see them”

Taking a step backwards to brace himself, Speaker felt his hind-hooves become wet. Quickly glancing down he could barely make out that the floor was now awash in a thin layer of blood: “Everyone, stay alert!”

For a few moments nothing happened – but the static continued. From the darkness a faint outline of a pony slowly emerged and Speaker focused as much essence as he could to guide Gift to striking it as he launched it –in desperation not even thinking whether it was the source of the static poisoning his senses or not.

Gift emitted a quick puff of steam as it revved and zipped off, leaving a golden vapor trail behind it. There was a sound of grinding metal on metal, Gift stringing something, a split second later Gift returning to Speaker – but the faint silhouette of the figure remained still.

The menacing voice spoke again, this time just as high pitched but slightly less gravelly – as it sounded positively delighted: “Oh, still some fight left in you – that’ll make this fun!”

The static intensified to the point that Speaker couldn’t see his own hooves or hear his own voice as he shouted for Sullen Hoof to come help him.

It was then that he saw – just barely – that the silhouette had moved closer, just barely revealing that it was a pony wearing black hoof-length robes and a pale mask of skin cut to make a bloody smile over its head that was nearing him – but he hadn’t seen the figure move, it had just appeared there when he had looked up…

The cognitive dissonance between something appearing out of nowhere, the almost complete loss of his ability to sense his surroundings and the overpowering fear for his own life made Speaker throw Gift again as hard as he could, pouring as much essence into guiding the device as possible.

Gift flew true and impacted the figure head on – and a split second later two cleavers dug into the pony as well… then the static spiked for a moment and suddenly the pony was gone – but the static returned. Gift zipped back, covered in some kind of thick black pitch or tar…

The mirthful and menacing voice returned, the auditory static momentarily decreasing just enough that the voice could be heard as it laughed: “Oh this is too much fun. I should do this more often”

“Reveal yourself you monster!” Speaker shouted, desperately turning to face whatever hints of movement the visual static fooled him into seeing.

Turning again Speaker was startled to the point that he screamed as suddenly the dark masked pony was right in front of him. The visual static increased to the point that now Speaker was truly blind, seeing only a mess of white and black undulating specks in his field of vision. Slashing with Gift, Speaker felt as Gift cut into the pony – but it didn’t feel right... Gift bogged down halfway through the cut, stuck in the tar-like goo that the pony was full of – and Speaker’s medical experience very quickly pointed out to him that the pony body he was attacking was far too limp to be anything but dead. This was a ruse, a trap!

Yanking hard to free Gift while willing the primordial device to retract its stuck blades, Speaker fell over backwards into the blood-covered stone floor – which somehow lessened the visual and auditory static for a moment: “Don’t attack it Sully, it’s a dummy! It’s a corpse!”

Speaker got up and looked around now that he could see again, quickly spotting the black tentacles that seemed to hold the corpse dummy in front of him. Some quick estimates on where the puppeteer could be later and Gift flew off into the darkness…

Suddenly the visual and auditory static faded completely – instead the circle heard an anguished and high pitched howl of pain just as Gift zipped back to Speaker, its blades covered in proper blood for once – even if it was a bit too dark… and cold.

“You weren’t supposed to do that! Why didn’t you attack the corpse!?” the voice screamed, no longer sounding gravelly at all – just high pitched and somewhat nasal.

The corpse puppet dropped to the ground with a wet splash onto the blood-covered floor and Sullen Hoof was over on it in an instant, tugging at his cleavers which he quickly threw at the same spot that Speaker had aimed Gift as soon as they were out. There was a clatter of metal on stone as they struck nothing, but it was clear that Speaker had managed to wound the dark lord of the manse.

With the static gone Cash also got into the fight, firing his shoe-claws into the darkness – but instead of retracting them when he didn’t hit anything he left them out and began to swing them around so the claws or the chains they were attacked to would hit any pony skulking around in the darkness.

Looking at Sullen Hoof Speaker realized that Sully was using a charm to enhance his hearing, so he could track the foul corpse-puppeteer in the darkness, since Sullen Hoof was pulling out all kinds of kitchen tools – from big wooden spoons, various knives and rolling pins out of elsewhere and then flinging them into the darkness – and quite often they did not return a clattering of wood or iron hitting a stone floor, but instead the sound of such things hitting a pony… occasionally even eliciting a yelp of pain.

Cash quickly joined in on this, firing his claws in the same rough direction as Sullen Hoof was chucking things.

Speaker chose to hold back, not throwing Gift blindly into the darkness – instead using the points where he could hear Sullen Hoof hit the target and how much they were apart to judge the puppeteer's speed, then leading the target by just the right amount, dropping back into the proper form, revving Gift with essence, and throwing it with all his might. Sure, he couldn't hear the puppeteer's movements in the dark, but he could track the more audible sounds of impact.

A shrill howl went out through the manse as Speaker could hear the puppeteer fall over and shamble up again. This was followed by a wet and slick sound of flesh and meat being chucked around, a ripping sound, some grunts and then nothing. A thought struck Speaker: Why wasn’t this puppeteer giving off any sounds of hoof beats against the stone floor? Only Sullen Hoof, with his sensory enhancement charms, could track this unseen foe.

Having tracked the puppeteer halfway around the periphery of the inside of the evidently hollow manse Sullen Hoof suddenly professed that he was out of things to throw.

“But you can still track him, right?” Speaker called out, peering intently into the darkness – not wanting to lose track of the puppeteer.

Sullen Hoof said that of course he could still hear the puppeteer – to which Speaker cut him off and said “Then throw me!”
Giving Speaker a bit of an odd look, which was understandable seeing as Sullen Hoof was almost half a head taller than Sullen Hoof and twice as muscular, but Speaker simply nodded fervently. Sullen Hoof shrugged and said “Alright, hold on!” as he ran up to Speaker while powering up a charm that made white lightning crackle all around him. Straining for a brief moment to lift the twilight caste solar up in his forehooves, Sullen Hoof spun around with Speaker and launched Speaker in all his glowing glory at where Sully could hear the puppeteer was at the moment…

Speaker flew through the air, surprised at the sudden strength that Sullen Hoof had been able to muster to lift Speaker up into the air and then throw him with such force. As he flew through the air Speaker positioned himself so he would land properly no matter if he hit the ground or the puppeteer first, a feat made easy by his balancing charm.

Flaring his anima mid-flight, Speaker shined golden light into the darkness – and sure enough: Sullen Hoof’s charm-enhanced hearing had heard right, as Speaker came to a good tumbled landing, getting up quickly to see the puppeteer moving away from him with an eerily silent gallop.

Running after the puppeteer proved easy enough, as Speaker found himself gaining on his quarry quickly - evidently the puppeteer wasn't that physically fit. The puppeteer looked exactly like the corpse dummy used to distract Speaker and the others, and the hunt ended at the main gate of the manse that began to open as the puppeteer neared it.

Just as the door had opened enough for the puppeteer to slip through, which the puppeteer quickly did, the door began to close. Speaker shouted angrily and threw Gift with all his might – but hit the soulsteel gate instead, Gift simply bouncing off it in a shower of sparks and returning to Speaker’s right hoof.

The thick soulsteel gate was now too closed for Speaker to follow the puppeteer and wouldn’t budge, but then the gate suddenly stopped closing… and became surprisingly light and easy to move. Throwing the door open Speaker found the puppeteer lying on the ground next to a pony wearing a green hooded robe. The puppeteer was wearing dark robes and a disgusting mask of pale sickly skin cut to feature no eyes but a disturbingly large and bloody grin.

“Whoever you are, thank you” Speaker said, catching his breath, stepping into the dim light outside.

The hooded mare standing over the puppeteer nodded and threw back her hood: “No problem, it was my pleasure”
Drawing the flesh-mask back from the puppeteer’s head, Speaker’s face soured in disgust. The pony that was the puppeteer had no face – just like the killer the circle had fought up on the manse. One could see straight into grey matter, as well as the edge of the puppeteer’s skull and pale skin as it ended so abruptly. Sighing at the disgusting and thoroughly unnatural sight, Speaker thought out loud: “Do all Deathknights get their faces removed?”

“Beats me – the few I’ve heard of supposedly look quite normal” the hooded mare state, peeking down at the puppeteer while furiously taking notes on a scroll with an elegant silver brush that floated with a green glow.

Seeing the green glow, Speaker took a step back – then noticed that the mare had no horn. There was only one possibility: “Sidereal!”

“Oh you remember me?” the mare said, smiling as she floated the brush and scroll into a pocket of her robes that seemed far too small to fit such things – but they went in quite easily.

Speaker looked at the sidereal with guarded caution, not sure whether he should gird himself for combat or relax his stance: “No… should I?”

The mare sighed and asked for Speaker to gather the rest of his circle, assuring him that she was there to help – and that she would stand guard over the deathknight in the meanwhile.

Like the two times before Speaker thought furiously about the implications of the sidereals existing as he called out for the others, and like before he couldn't remember ever having met the hooded mystery mare. The rest of the circle emerged shortly from the manse. Like before there was the usual confusion about who the strange dark-brown coated mare with the very green eyes was – but this time Shimmer didn’t have the strength to enrage herself over the revelation over the existence of the sidereals, and Red didn’t have the power to do much of anything either, so the sidereal was actually able to introduce herself fully:

“My name is Heath Rose, or just Rose, chosen of the mare of secrets. Yes this means that you all have a lot of questions to ask – but before that I have to know, do you lot have full control of this manse?” the sidereal asked, her voice young and strong, yet tempered with a strange hint of wisdom that only Cash picked up on.

Poking the unconscious deathknight with a hoof, Sullen Hoof shook his head: “No, this joker seemed to be in control of the manse’s internal defences – we killed the other deathknight”

“Really? What’s in there then? What does the manse do?” Rose inquired, peering into the darkness beyond the manse’s soulsteel gates with hungry eyes.

The circle couldn’t tell Rose, only inform her of the magical shroud of darkness that permeated the insides of the manse. Sullen Hoof was quick to point out the obvious: “If we want to be able to search the place we’ll have to get faceless wonder here to deactivate those internal defences – they mess with your sight and hearing”

Shimmer groaned. It was clear that she was furious at the appearance of the sidereal – just like before – but Rose was quick to exploit the wait until the deathknight awoke, explaining her plight. She first made it very clear that this wasn’t the first time she had explained herself under strange circumstances, in fact it was apparently very normal for her to have 'multiple first encounters' with ponies she met, and it was common for tempers to flare at such repeat encounters due to confusion.
Rose also subtly hinted of a begrudging acceptance of this most certainly not be the last encounter of this nature that she would have to face.

“It all relates to the usurpation. We feared that the millions of unicorns would turn on heaven after we saw what they did to the solars. We tipped off the lunars that they were being tracked via astrological divinations, which wouldn't work on ponies hiding in the wyld and then we hid ourselves, using special sidereal astrology… a little too well unfortunately. We broke a few stars to hide in their shadows, but it went too far – now no pony in creation can remember us after we’re out of sight - even you lot” Rose explained.

Looking at an angry but also spiritually tired looking Shimmer, Rose nodded: “I know what you’re going to say, you’ve said it twice before – but again, none of you would remember us. I’m fairly sure that sidereals meet lunars a lot more often than you think. And again, knowing what you’re going to say, the only reason that your elders remember us is that personal memories of us made before we broke the constellation of the mask didn’t go away, otherwise we’d have forgotten ourselves too”
Shimmer looked immensely disappointed.

Rose took a deep breath and shrugged in silent apology.

“So… what do you want with us?” Cash wondered.

Rose smiled. It was the sort of trained smile one might see a diplomat or courtier display with frightening ease – although Speaker didn’t pick up on this, but Cash certainly did: “To be honest? Heaven is in trouble, sort of. Like with the lunars we had to make do without the solars, which meant a lot of dirty deals and bribery of various gods, just to keep things workings. Now you’re back and some sidereals don’t like that, they want to keep supporting the realm to hold things together – I’m with a faction of sidereals who’re in opposition to that policy: We want to welcome the solars and offer them our council and assistance”

Cash leaned over to Speaker and whispered: “You have your truth-telling charm, right?”

Speaker inwardly cursed himself for not having that up verify the sidereal’s claims: “I do now”

Rose continued: “Basically I have standing orders to bring any solars I find to my superiors – once I’ve verified that you’re not hostile”

“What about ugly?” Sullen Hoof said, shoving the puppeteer hard enough to flip the unconscious no-faced pony over.
Speaker was about to suggest that they wait around for the freak to wake up and then interrogate him about the manse first, then decide on his fate, when Speaker noticed that there was something very strange about the pony’s legs as the puppeteer flipped over: “Hold on…”

Lifting up in the puppeteer’s robe’s Speaker revealed a sight arguably more grotesque than the puppeteer’s lack of face: The deathknight had no legs – but while the Bodhisattva had ghostly limbs of dark shadow, then this deathknight had for each limb three or four pale fleshy tentacles grafted to his body, each covered in a tar-like black and thick oil. The puppeteer’s long and thick black robes had completely obscured this fact, but Sullen Hoof quickly added that this explained why the puppeteer hadn’t made any hoof beats while inside the manse.

“Why would he do something like that to himself?” Cash wondered.

Shrugging, Red reminded the circle that the Bodhisattva had been tricked into doing so – so perhaps this deathknight hadn’t been in his right mind either when it had been done?

The deathknight groaned, then spoke in a strained but high pitched and nasal voice: “You labor under the illusion that I had legs when I was given my second breath”

Aware that the deathknight had awoken, Sullen Hoof quickly brought his cleavers to bare, but the deathknight was quick to acquiesce to his capture, displaying a remarkably well-read vocabulary.

Despite her heavily injured leg, Red somehow managed to pull the puppeteer up and shook him about a bit: “Name, rank and what the hell are you doing here in this gods-forsaken place!”

It was in no small ways disturbing to see the faceless pony rattle about like a ragdoll under Red’s forceful grasp, for with no face it was difficult to gauge how the deathknight was reacting to being shook about.

“I’m the Unhaloved Coveter of Limbs Great and Small… please don’t hurt me” the high-pitched voiced deathknight meekly stated, the creepy and confident tone he had used back when fighting circle completely gone.

Sullen Hoof stepped up to the missing face of the Coveter: “That depends on how unharmed Sunrise is – what did you do with her? Is she still alife!?”

“Who?” the Coveter said, sounding as if he spoke in equal parts jest and ignorance. Red flipped the Coveter upside down and shook him some more, bashing his head into the ground a few times. This didn't have much of a result for some odd reason, although again the inability to see facial expressions on the deathknight made it nearly impossible to see if he was in pain.

With a control of his cleaver unmatched by any but the most expert of master chefs Sullen Hoof led his cleaver over one of the Coveter’s tentacles, filleting one side of it down to the bone in a single swift stroke. The Coveter twisted to look up at his dangling tentacles and groaned, not in pain, but whined: “Do you mind? Those things take time to put together properly”
“Just tell us what you did to her and where you put her!” Sullen Hoof angrily shouted, floating his cleavers to the Coveter’s face.

It was impossible to read the Coveter’s non-existent face, but the threat of additional damage to his limbs, along with having a cleaver poked into his exposed brain, made the Coveter ever so slightly more cooperative. The Coveter deactivated the internal shroud of darkness inside the manse, revealing everything inside…

The circle, Rose and Coveter ventured inside the manse where the Coveter showed where he had ‘stored’ Sunrise.

Sunrise had been dunked in a large barrel of fetid blood – and the lid had been nailed shut. The Coveter was a bit surprised when Sunrise was let out and she merely requested that Speaker clean her robes.

“Oh she’s held her breath for longer than that” Cash laughed.

It turned out that the Coveter had been operating a very large necro-surgical workshop. Speaker found the idea of crafting things out of the dead to be disgusting – specifically since it involved all those dead Chung ponies who’d been reanimated to walk straight to the shadowland to the manse – but he couldn’t deny that the creation’s weren’t at the very least impressive… but also very disgusting and clearly abominations that should be destroyed at once:

The Coveter proudly revealed his creations: Giant warstriders wrought of flesh, bone, sinew and brass spikes. Thosuands of pony corpses, flayed, gutted, drawn, quartered, disassembled and then stitched together anew into what looked like giant flesh golems shaped like ponies, but six times the size of normal ponies: “I was commissioned to produce fifty of these bonestriders, but sadly someone compromised my fuel rod production so most of these are inoperable…”

The circle had a fairly good idea about how that had happened, but they didn't tell.

Guiding his captors near one of the grotesque bonestriders, the Coveter explained some of the intricacies of his creations: “Normally a pony would mount up in a control harness inside a fuselage inside a warstrider, but with ablative flesh armor a hatch wasn’t an option. So I came up with a simple solution for material pilots… most of these are meant to operated by war ghost”

The Coveter floated a long wooden pole up from the floor which he used to poke the inside of the mouth of the bonestrider. A long flesh-carpet made to look a bit like a pale and ragged tongue flopped down to the ground with a brief but wet splat.
“You see, all you have to do is step up on the tongue…” the Coveter barely managed to say, his high pitched voice barely hiding the glee he held inside, before the tongue suddenly wrapped around the Coveter and yanked the deathknight into the rotten maw of the bonestrider – swallowing the deathknight whole.

“Did he mean to do that?” Cash wondered, looking queasy.

Speaker nodded slowly, sighing: “He probably did – but I think he forgot something to, unless these bonestriders are fundamentally different from regular metal warstrider power-armor: They take a hooffull of minutes to power up, even if you can suit up faster than that”

Sullen Hoof laughed: “Well then, lets unwrap him before he can activate it”

“Don’t bother” Rose said, launching herself at the warstrider. Mid-air Rose performed a set of strange katas which culminated in her twisting midair as a long strip of paper flew out around her, glowing with old realm glyphs. Just before impacting the bonestrider Rose disappeared, dissolving into shining strands of essence that slammed into the bonestrider… which then reared up and began to rip its own head off in a gory shower of stinking blood, torn sinew and the odd brass rod or spike that clattered to the ground.

The circle leapt back to avoid getting hit as the bonestrider tore itself apart. When it had removed its head and right fore-limb at shoulder its remaining forelimb began to hammer on the shell of armored ribs that comprised the bonestrider’s pilot fuselage. After a few moments the bonestrider quivered and literally shat out of the Coveter, the deathknight falling clumsily down to the ground along with a lot of blood and guts that didn’t seem to be his own.

“What the shit!?” the Coveter shouted, looking up at the bonestrider. A second later the bonestrider shuddered and collapsed, dropping to the ground in a limp pile of flesh and bone-struts, with Rose materializing next to it in a triumphant pose.

The Coveter wasn’t allowed to ask too many questions before Sullen Hoof leapt in and tied up the deathknight, using a technique not unlike that of sewing together a stuffed bird when he stitched together the Coveter’s flesh-tentacles, after wrapping up the deathknight’s mutilated head tightly in a broad strip of the Coveter’s own robes which seemed to muffle his voice quite well - despite not really having a mouth to begin with.

“How did you do that? You possessed the bonestrider!?” Red wondered out loud, sounding completely at a loss of how such a feat was done.

Rose made with a hop, skip and a jump as she daintily maneuvered out of the piles of gore and flesh from the collapsed bonestrider, landing in front of Red so close that their noses touched: “Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style, God ways – always fun”

Hobbling backwards, Red looked at Speaker with just as much confusion as before: “Speaker, translate!?”
“It’s a sidereal martial art – way above what we can do right now” Speaker said, looking at the destruction before him with rapt awe.

The question now that the Coveter had proved to be a less than cooperative prisoner became the same as before when the Coveter had been unconscious: What now? Rose had explained of her desire to take the circle to her superiors, but now that the purpose of the manse had been revealed, at least partially, then it also had to be dealt with. Rose had a simple suggestion: “There are a lot of sidereal’s who’re quite keen on learning more about deathknights – We can give them the Coveter and let them study this manse to learn its secrets, because this place is freaky… there’s no essence flows in the area powerful enough to support it, and yet it works”

“Oh hell no – this fucker is coming back to Chung Do for public execution, and I’m going to wreck this place once my leg is good again” Red resolutely stated, not wanting such a blight to exit in the Chung lands.

“Let’s talk that over once you meet my elders – in Yu-Shan” Rose said with a smile on her face.