The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

His body reeling with the dubious blessing of Resplendent Buttflow, the titular ‘Giver of Gifts’ and ‘Lord of the Opening’ – who also happened to be god of diarrhea – Speaker ran through the halls of the palace of Celestial Stability, the very heart of the Bureau of Heaven in Yu-Shan. The seamless ivory walls, marbled with the most exquisite of magical materials, bore no signs or maps to give directions – and indeed, the seemingly endless halls had no signs of a toilet either.

His brows furrowed and his face grim, Speaker took a deep breath and girded as well as clenched his loins for the furious smiting they were no doubt about to suffer – and he looked at the four doors within reach, for he felt his flanks failing him…
One door was oddly plain, considering where Speaker was, of flat planks of wood lashed together with what looked like black string. The second was of dark rock, polished to a mirror shine. The third was of a weird metallic crystal, while the fourth looked… promising? It was a 'door' made of leaves, hanging down in the doorway in a thin but thick layer via dangling vines.

Speaker moved through the leaf-door with much trepidation. He didn’t want celestial law enforcers coming after him for having desecrated some random god’s office – but right now the blessing of the Lord of the Opening was bidding his opening to open and, well… give of its gifts.

Sneaking into the office as best he could, with his breath held and his hooves gently touching the surface of the oddly dark office, Speaker entered, looking around for any signs of activity. The room was fairly small, hardly a few yards across with carpeting of real grass and a tree-trunk set in the middle – weird, but not inconceivable for whatever strange god might work there. Speaker found a corner furthest from the door where he released the floodgates.

Shimmer couldn’t see what was going on, being in the form of a flea in Speaker's left ear, but she felt Speaker tremble and heard his cries of pain. Ancient slave songs of misery and toil, the mournful weeping of widows and orphans of war, the impotent fury of yozis locked away within their king turned inside out – none of it could match the soul-wracking horror that Speaker felt as the bounty and generosity of Resplendent Buttflow worked its way out of his rear with a most heavenly fury. Also it quickly started to smell badly as Speaker deposited five times his own weight in viscous fecal matter.

Reeling from the roughly ten minutes of rectal torture, Speaker weakly staggered towards the door of leaves. He had endured torture-resistance training as part of being in the Lookshyan special forces, the first field force, but this? This was divine torture, beyond that of vengeful unicorn drillmasters. It was then, to Speaker’s horror, that the darkened room lit up, revealing that the tree-trunk in the middle of the room extended up into a green bough that held a desk, a chair, blue glowing fruit and a god that appeared to be a pony made of burlap and gardening tools instead of hooves and eyes – a visage that mortal ponies could easily use to frighten foals into fits of terror.

In his weakened state Speaker didn’t have the strength to panic, only to look up and await the smiting he was about to receive – for he had left the entire grassy floor of the office a mess without equal.

“Wonderful! It was about time. I put in for manure for my floor six years ago!” the scarecrow-looking god exclaimed cheerfully.

Speaker, up to his fetlocks in shit and feeling utterly rectum-ravaged, looked up in tired and pained confusion.

The scarecrow-god gave Speaker a second look: “Hold on, you don’t look like you’re from the Fecal Requisition Department?”

It turned out that the god was the god of garden implements, specifically celestial garden implements. This chiefly meant supplying the various gods of landscaping that maintained the grounds around the untold hundreds of thousands of celestial estates with properly crafted gardening tools with the proper blessings – and apparently it had been a while since the supply division had bothered to send up ‘refreshments’ to this god’s office: “So truly my little mortal, I must thank you for your generosity. Tell you what, take this writ of requisition. Just write or sketch whatever gardening tool you need and call my name while holding it. The tool you desire shall appear before you in no time at all”

Speaker looked at the scroll of woven green jade floating before him. It was first when Shimmer ‘yelled’ at him in his ear to grab it that he did and bowed just a little too deeply, getting shit on his nose, then leaving post haste.

Out in the hallway Speaker cleansed himself with essence, as well as disinfecting himself and applying his anesthetic charm to himself – for his rear truly did hurt from having deposited five times Speaker’s bodyweight of resplendent buttflow - hopefully the supernatural healing conferred by exaltation would stem the bleeding soon enough.

Finding his way back to where the diarrhea god’s directions guided him, Speaker quickly found his way to Lytek’s office – or rather, the outer entrance to Lytek’s office.

As with the rest of the offices there wasn’t much in the way of signs indicating who’s office it was, but it was the thirty-second door down the hall with the amber lighting, as the shit god had said… so Speaker gave it a go.

Knocking on the door yielded nothing. Slowly opening the door and stepping inside resulted in Speaker finding himself grabbed by no less than seven limbs of various shapes, colors and lengths of claws – some golden, some of varying shades of jade, a few looking like ordinary but huge talons.

Inside the room of naked ivory walls Speaker suddenly found himself he found there to be a very large number of guards… a lot more than what Speaker recalled Lytek having in the first age. There were three celestial lions, each standing almost four yards tall and nearly as wide, two lesser elemental dragons – their mile-long scaled bodies coiling upwards into the seemingly infinitely tall room. There were also a number of other lesser martial spirits, the common thread for all of them was the very suspicious eyes they each gave Speaker.

One of the elemental dragons, earth-aspected if its white stony scales of jade were any indications, growled at Speaker and rumbled: “What is your purpose here pony?”

“I have a meeting with Lytek?” Speaker meekly answered. Faced with a fully sized lesser elemental dragon Speaker really didn’t want to say or do anything that could anger the thing.

The dragon snorted a cloud of thick gray dust at Speaker. When the cloud of dust had settled the dragon appeared before Speaker in a pony-sized form, still clearly draconic, but now standing on two legs with two arms and pony-sized head – instead of having a head the size of three dozen ponies. It held what looked like a guest list: “Name?”

“Bright Machine Speaker” Speaker said, sighing in relief.

The entire mob of guardian spirits and lesser gods roared – in an instant Speaker found himself pinned against the wall. The pony-sized dragon sneered: “There’s no pony by that name on the list! Now give us a good reason not to rip off your ears and stuff ‘em up our nose”

Speaker thought furiously. What else could Heath Rose had signed him up as for the meeting with Lytek? If it was a question of security it must have been as something that opposing sidereals couldn’t duplicate to avoid any of them sneaking into Lytek’s office in Speaker’s stead… oh of course!

Flashing his caste mark, Speaker quickly felt the guard’s release him. The pony-sized dragon quickly apologized: “Oh, but why didn’t you say you are the solar we're been waiting for?”

The guards all shuffled around briefly, making a passage to a small door at the other end of the guard room – a door which supposedly led to Lytek’s actual office.

Speaker happily trotted towards the door, when he was suddenly grabbed by another guardian spirit – one that appeared to be made up of an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of bladed metal. Using two of its blades as pincers in a blur of speed it snatched Shimmer out of Speaker’s ear: “Is this one with you?”

Nodding quickly, the blade-spirit stuffed the lunar-flea back into Speaker’s ear - inadvertently trimming Speaker's ear-hair in the process.

“Rose warned you…” Speaker said as he opened the door. Shimmer didn’t answer, but Speaker could hear her groan.
Inside the office Speaker couldn’t help but smile. This was truly the office he remembered from the first age: Cluttered, full of tomes and books – each detailing the various charms that the various exalts had come up with. Behind a worn desk of stone stood a being of pure light. It wasn’t blinding to look at, but it was impossible to see any distinct features of the being – for it was Lytek, god made of Autochton, the right hoof of power and god of exaltation! Had Speaker been able to see any actual details he’d be aware that Lytek was wearing robes of light made in very stylish, if not exceedingly antiquated, first age fashion.

Lytek instantly leapt at Speaker: “Bright Machine Speaker! Well I never… I thought the meeting was just another infiltration attempt. I hope my guards weren’t too rough”

Speaker smiled and shook his head: “Nothing I couldn’t survive old friend”

Shimmer marveled as the solar and the god regaled about the first age. Speaker thanked Lytek profusely for having fulfilled some kind of promise – something that seemed to have something to with Speaker’s ability to recall nearly everything he had experienced in the first age.

Lytek in return was extremely touchy-feely with Speaker, poking, proding and examining the solar like a carpenter inspecting a wagon for a yearly service check – with little care to intimacy or personal limits. In most other parts of heaven, perhaps not counting the headquarters for the Bureau of Destiny’s Serenity division, or the heavenly Baths of Venus, the spa of the gods, such rampant fondling would warrant arrest and censure, but to Lytek the exalted were but carriers of his work – the celestial exaltations – and it was his charge to inspect them whenever possible to ensure proper function. It didn’t hurt that Speaker and Lytek had clearly been friends in the first age, their shared friendship with Autochton having granted them a shared interest a bit beyond what many solars had toyed around with at that time.

While the two brosephs talked Shimmer mainly napped, as the two waxed nostalgic over Autochton and their merry times together – both in battle and in more peaceful situations. Apparently Autochton made some really good steam-based tea. It was just as Shimmer was about to doze off as Lytek suddenly changed the subject: “Right, but Speaker – listen, of all the solars I know, you I trust the most, ok?”

Speaker nodded, not sure what Lytek was getting at.

Lytek sighed. The bright silhouette of the god dimmed slightly for a moment, revealing that Lytek did have the form of a pony – and had a really massive beard – before the glow intensified again, making it impossible to see any exact details of the god: “I… hold on, you’ll have to leave your lunar outside for this”

Surprised that Lytek had detected her, Shimmer jumped out of Speaker’s ear and landed on the ground in the form of her usual pony self: “Hi, Last Shimmer, great to meet a friend of Speaker”

“Friend? Oh yes - but you’ll have to leave now. Here, go have fun with this” Lytek said, a small blue metallic crystal floating out from one of many cupboards in office. Shimmer grabbed the crystal in her mouth, turning wide-eyed and stupefied as she touched it – Lytek floating her out into the guard room: “Just let her sit in a corner until Speaker comes out”

Back in the office Lytek turned to Speaker, something that wasn’t easy to tell due to Lytek’s glowing nature: “Ok, Speaker, there is something I have to discuss with you”

All ears, Speaker sat and listened as Lytek quizzed the solar on some of his “Divine Apparatae of Periapt Surgery”, the tools with which he ‘polishes’ the exaltations of solars, lunars and sidereals before sending them back into creation for reincarnation, removing unnecessary memories and whatnot from the exaltations so only the important things are carried over – things like the memory of death, or other random day-to-day memories of no importance imprinted on the exaltation shards. Speaker nodded that he knew them well, despite the irony that these devices had specifically not been used on his exaltation before his current incarnation – at Speaker’s own request back in the first age.

“Right, well… the auraclast is missing” Lytek finally said, sounding decidedly uncomfortable with even speaking the fact out loud.

Had Speaker not been thoroughly vented of bowel content thanks to Resplendent Buttflow’s blessing, Speaker would have shit himself at the sound of this dire news. The auraclast was one of Lytek’s strange tools of soul and essence manipulation, specifically one that would crush and annihilate the soul that an exaltation was attached to – used during the primordial war to recover the exaltation shards of exalts who’s souls had been twisted and destroyed beyond salvation, but not destroyed enough to release the shard, for such was the terrible nature of primordial battle.

“Any celestial exalt struck by it will be instantly killed – I can’t begin to tell you how perplexed I am at the theft of this device, for its wards and locks even kept curious solars away in the first age, but the news of these here deathlords in the underworld… I’ve heard that they aim to end all of creation, and the auraclast is probably one of the best weapons they could wish for to hold off the exalted host while they work towards this” Lytek lamented.

Speaker inquired who Lytek had told this, to which Lytek simply shook his head: “There are no gods or ponies in heaven I trust with this information. If this became known I would be subject to endless censure, and the sidereals who oppose your return will have even more reason to try to put me under guard again”

“Hold on – again?” Speaker said, not being aware of any prior altercations between Lytek and the sidereals.

Lytek told the terrible tale of how, thousands of years ago, sidereals had captured him and held him prisoner while Solar shards had poured into his cabinets, then transferred the shards into a container of jade and malfean porcelain: “You might have heard of this event? It’s commonly referred to as the Usurpation”

Had any other god, pony, demon or other being told Speaker of such a preposterous tale Speaker would have called them liars – and poor ones at that – but hearing it from Lytek… Speaker trembled. He couldn't tell if Lytek was being sarcastic or just his usual inquisitive self, but the implications of his statement were just immense! Had there been sidereals behind the usurpation? Speaker clearly remembered being chased by legions of dragonblooded unicorns, hiding in fear… but sidereals? Lytek presented Speaker with a memory crystal of the few memories that the first age Speaker had requested be removed for his next incarnation… the memories were of a very specific fight, between Speaker and a sidereal. The sidereal had used its strange martial arts to somehow ‘wound’ Speaker’s soul with a disease that would slowly kill him, something that Speaker couldn’t heal… at least not without access to a medical laboratory that had been destroyed already.
“Why?” was all Speaker could muster.

Lytek couldn’t give him an answer. He had theories, but said that for definitive answers he’d have to speak with the sidereals: “The gold faction, the sidereals who’re in support of your return – you can trust them. Ask their leader, Ayesha Ura, she’ll be able to explain the past properly to you”

“This is a lot to take in… but it explains a few things. But you can count on me to keep an eye out for your auraclast – me and my circle, we’re currently hunting a deathknight in the hundred kingdoms. She's being directed by a deathlord called the Barbate Arbiter. Considering what this deathlord has ordered its other deathknights to do, then it has all sorts of crimes to answer for – that’ll be our approach to explore the underworld and take on this monster. We’ll find your auraclast, even if we have to ask the other deathlords for it” Speaker said, speaking frankly and confidently to his friend.

Lytek smiled – not that Speaker could really tell – but it was the sort of smile that showed that Lytek hadn’t told Speaker everything, for the missing auraclast wasn’t the only problem, but Speaker only saw a glowing god, not a concerned smile.

Speaker bowed to Lytek: “If there’s nothing else then I would bid my goodbyes. I’m sure my circle is looking for me”

Hesitating for a moment, then moving to speak – but then choosing not to, Lytek hovered from a moment as he thought of what to say in passing: “Seek out The Raven King in the Violet Bier of Sorrows, he’ll help you against the deathlords”

Speaker nodded and thanked his old friend for the meeting then entered into the guard room where Shimmer trying – and failing – at getting chatty with the guardian spirits.

Shimmer instantly perked up and followed Speaker out as he emerged, not missing a moment before she started inquiring about Lytek had talked to Speaker in private about: “Deathlords. Lytek gave us a lead to another god who should be willing to help us”

“That’s awesome!” Shimmer said as she bounced along Speaker.

It turned out that finding their way out of the ivory office complex’s basement was a lot easier and faster than finding a specific office within the place. In no time at all did the solar an lunar emerge back into the lobby of the vast structure.

Waiting for them was the rest of the circle, along with a very new and strange sight: Sunrise was smiling underneath the hood of her hood. Cash told the story of their adventures in bureaucracy while Rose led the circle outside to a new dragon boat:

“Oh it was glorious! I’ve never seen Sunrise so fired up before. The gods at the agency whined and moaned that they were overburdened, but I pointed out that in the first age they would have been processing several orders of magnitude more prayers daily all ponies back then worshiped Celestia. Sunrise accepted no excuses. The gods threatened with reporting us to the lions, but I dug out a hoof-full of Sunrise’s prayers to Celestia made after she exalted… un-processed and unanswered prayers! Do you know what the punishment those gods could face would be if they were caught not answering a solar’s prayer to Celestia?”

Cash retrieved a gilded scroll tube, un-corked it, and showed Speaker Sunrise’s original prayers. The agency now just had copies – but the prayers apparently simply appeared in the agency’s many in-boxes, dated, with the name of the pony who prayer and with the content of the prayer – so now the circle had all the blackmail material they needed to keep the agency running.

“…and they didn’t report you for blackmail, theft of official celestial paperwork and threats, why?” Shimmer wondered.

Sunrise cleared her throat, loudly: “Because for those puny and decidedly unworthy gods to report us, solars, for kicking their flanks and forcing them to do their jobs would require going straight to Celestia… to tell her that they weren’t doing their job in the first place”

“I’m finding it hard to believe that they just obeyed you like that, even with the blackmail and little recourse to take – they could just process Sunrise’s prayers couldn’t they?” Speaker inquired, not entirely convinced of Sunrise and Cash’s story.

Cash smiled. In fact, he grinned – menacingly so – then chuckled ever so slightly: “My dear Speaker, of course that wasn’t all we did. I wrangled up their department’s official charter and magically swore all the gods and spirits working in the agency to actually uphold it, making them promise to do their job. They weren’t all happy about it, but Rose here was more than willing to accept their resignations and deal out… what did you call it again?”

“Terminal Sanction. Fun little charm: It’s what sidereals use to mine gods for starmetal as a means of execution” Rose noted.
Cash gleefully suppressed a giggle at Speaker: “Turns out that resigning from your job in heaven is… not really an option – and abandoning your duties punished, severely”

“I guess that explains the god’s original motivation for rebelling against the primordials – because what you’re describing sounds a lot like slavery” Speaker said, looking if not concerned, then a bit worried.

Having actually seen the agency and the state it was in, Cash didn’t share Speaker’s worries: “You didn’t see how they had neglected their work. Some of the prayer-handlers hadn’t worked on their in-box for centuries – and of course works piles up when you do that. Look, that department was big enough to handle all the prayers that came in to Celestia at the peak of the first age and it’s never been downsized. If they just catch up on their backlog of work they’ll have it easy and I can assure you that I made them aware of this, so it’s not all bad”

Nodding, Speaker looked up at the sky of Yu-Shan now that the circle had exited the Hall of Celestial Stability. The sky was still dark and starlit, but now it had a huge moon shining a clear light down on Yu-Shan.

“Hmm, Luna is ahead in the games. That’s been a while” Rose absentmindedly commented.

Looking around at the quay as other dragon boats zoomed by almost faster than it was possible for pony eyes to perceive, Sullen Hoof wondered where their boat was. Rose looked concerned: “”This isn’t right, the boats are usually always on time”
“Maybe it’s the festival?” Speaker idly suggested.

Rose nodded: “True, that’s actually fairly likely. Hey, did you get to your meeting with Lytek by the way?”

“I did, it was very nice to see an old friend – although I also ran into this weird god on the way, Resplendent Buttflow – that was less pleasant…” Speaker said, his face showing the mix of experiences as he recalled both the good and the very bad parts of his little adventure.

It came to Speaker as a bit of a surprise as Rose began to laugh: “Oh you didn’t? Ouch, well… at least you’re still walking, that’s more than most of the ponies who meet him can boast”

Rose explained that the god of diarrhea, like so many other gods, had his personality shaped by the concept they governed – and diarrhea by its nature was a fairly ‘giving’ condition to be afflicted with. It was also a condition that liked to spread itself around: “Still, it does make the poor thing a social pariah. Nobody invites him to parties, so he’s deluded himself into thinking that he receives love-letters from secret admirers”

“That’s just sad” Speaker said, now feeling pity for the self-deluded god.

The sidereal mare shrugged: “That’s Yu-Shan. Not all gods can have popular domains”

Around the quay were exceedingly comfortable benches, and due to the somewhat unpredictable lighting conditions of heaven there were also plenty of street lambs built in the form of tall plants that each held powerfully luminous flowers. As the circle settled down to wait Cash inspected the form that Speaker had been given by the god of gardening tools. He was very impressed: “Wow… this thing is amazing. You could ask for anything with this, as long as it’s in the shape of a hoe or some other gardening thing… a solid diamond rake?”

Suddenly an ill and powerful wind suddenly blew through the area, Cash dropping the woven green jade requisition form and scrambling to pick it up again.

“What’s going on?” Shimmer said, perking up and sniffing at the air with deep nasal breaths.

Not sure if there was any cause for alarm with Heath Rose as their guardian, Speaker hesitated to acknowledge his lunar mate’s gut reaction. Moments later all the light-flowers around the quay fell over, their stalks having been cut in half by unseen forces.

Rose, Red and Sullen Hoof all three came to the same conclusion in an instead, shouting in unintended unison: “Ambush!”
Speaker began to tug at Gift in elsewhere with his mind – but only Rose, Red and Sullen Hoof were able to arm themselves in an instant, along with Shimmer who leapt into the air and shifted into her beastpony form with a fierce howl. Red also rattled about a little as her trademark suit of bright scarlet lamellar armor appeared from elsewhere, circling about her as each piece quickly adhered to her body, the barding reassembling itself around the warrior mare as guided by her martial essence.

“Quiet, we don’t need to be cited for disturbing the peace!” Rose called out, not shouting, but speaking in raised voice.
Looking at Rose in disbelief as multiple odd-looking gods and spirits materialized around the circle, Speaker despaired: “Is she serious?”

“Of course! Even if you’re fighting for your life you’re not allowed to inconvenience the other gods here, heaven forbid someone might spill their tea…” Cash noted as he reared up, brining his shoe-claws to bear.

The gods and spirits that had appeared all looked... wrong. Some had clearly defined forms, such as a body of cinnabar stone, or a vaporous body of purple smoke, but nearly all of them had deformities of some kind: Parts of their bodies would sag unnaturally, look concave, or even appear to drip as if they were bleeding the very their body was made of. Speaker had absolutely no idea what they – for they looked so misshapen and downright wrong, for to his knowledge there was only one god of deformities in heaven, and she actually looked deceptively normal, at least back in the first age.

“I am Heath Rose, Chosen of Secrets – these ponies are under my protection! If you aggress I will perform terminal sanction on you – mommy needs a new pair of starmetal hoof socks!” Rose sternly stated, her caste mark glowing brightly with its green glyph of Jupiter, her trying to glare menacingly at all of the spirits present.

The spirits didn’t seem all that frightened – indeed, on closer inspection they didn’t all seem that intelligent, many of them having expressions more akin to predators than sage gods.

“Don’t attack any of them – if we deal the first blow they’ll be perfectly justified at tearing us apart, just defend yourselves” Rose shouted.

Speaker inwardly cursed that he couldn’t’ retrieve Gift any quicker. He really needed to learn how to do whatever it was Sullen Hoof did to pull those cleavers out of elsewhere so quickly.

Suddenly a hurricane force wind blew from one of the gods, knocking Cash, Sullen Hoof and Sunrise over while Red stood firm as her armor gave her enough weight, Speaker had his elemental immunity charm and Red just… wasn’t there – and then the wind stopped just as quickly as it had begun, with Rose appearing where an elemental looking spirit had stood moments earlier, holding what looked like a shiny new starmetal and blue jade coin, something Speaker later figured out to be a windslave disk – a device that lightened the weight of anything it was attached to.

“I told you, terminal sanction – now off with you or I’ll turn in the rest of you to the supply division as trinkets as well!” Rose called out, sounding noticeably agitated.

The other gods and spirits didn’t react well to this, leaping, flying, flowing or otherwise launching themselves at the circle and Rose in a seemingly blind fury. Speaker tried to defend himself as best he could, his spirit cutting technique working just fine when used bare-hoofed, while Shimmer and Rose equally tore spirits and gods apart left and right in a gory mess of glowing divine ichors and other quasi-ethereal bodily fluids. In moments the quay was awash in a rainbow of different shades of blood, while Red, Sully and Cash all tried to defend themselves to the best of their efforts – lacking the charms needed to inflict serious harm to the bodies of these rabid gods.

It didn’t take long for the first dozen of godlings to fall to the circle, Rose cutting through them with strangely sharpened hooves and a coat that suddenly had a distinctly golden shine to it that warded off all blows that struck it, while Shimmer bit and slashed with her great beak and talons, all of them glowing eerily in the moonlight. Gift finally appeared for Speaker to use, but as he was about to throw it a swarm of new foes spilled out of the dark alleyways between the towering palatial structures that surrounded the quay. The circle and Rose might have held their own against the first dozen assailants, but against hundreds? In the few seconds before the fighting began anew the circle considered their options:

“What are they? Where are they coming from?” Red shouted, understandably confused about why so many gods would suddenly attack them.

Rose face was clenched in bitterness and starting to show signs of exertion as her breath was already ragged: “Those bastards! They’re gods without purveys. When the great contagion wiped out nine tenths of creation a lot of gods were out of jobs. For a god to lose what they were meant to manage or govern… its very dangerous for them: they might go mad or go feral – like these ones. They’re usually held in uninhabited parts of Yu-Shan, ancient refugee camps – but someone’s herded a whole block worth in our direction. Those bronze bastards must really want us dead!”

“We need to get out here!” Cash called out, defending himself to the best of his ability against the spirits snapping at his haunches. By mortal pony standards Cash’s fighting was far beyond what any pony could ever expect to achieve, but against ‘homeless’ gods of war of countries that no longer existed he was finding his silks, which were already dirty with ash, putrid blood stains, and war ghost echoplasma and glowing spirit blood, increasingly torn – along with himself suffering painful lacerations from the blade-limbs of whatever mad god of war was currently trying to make him into a trophy.

It was Sullen Hoof who called out for the others to follow him in a fighting retreat, as he had apparently picked the lock of a service entrance to an exceedingly classy office building. The circle quickly barricaded the door as they got in, but there wasn’t much room and the door – despite being made of some kind of odd fragrant metal, clearly wouldn’t hold for long.

“What’s the plan Sully?!” Red shouted, holding up against the surprisingly flimsy door as the horde of mad gods outside clawed, bit and blasted away at it.

Sullen Hoof appeared to be looking for something, very intently so. Shimmer, who had been force to return to her usual pony form to enter through the door, tried to look around as well in the kitchen they appeared to be barricaded in – but she didn’t really know what she was looking for… but suddenly Sullen Hoof cried out: “Yes! Everyone, get in here – we’ll be safe here!”
Holding a hatch open to something that looked deceptively much like an oven, Sullen Hoof gestured frantically for the circle and Rose to get in. At first there was some hesitation, for while hiding in the ovens of the kitchen might just work back in creation… then in heaven that probably wouldn’t work, especially not when trying to hide from gods.

“It’s a portal, not an oven! Now get in!” Sullen Hoof insisted, Red groaning as a pair of red hot claws pierced through the door, through her armor and into her left shoulder.

Rose instantly leapt into the oven, to which Sully slammed the hatch shut. There was a flash of light, and Sullen Hoof pulled the hatch open: Rose was gone.

“Wha-?” Cash almost managed to say, as his own fear of the ravenous gods outside moved him inside the oven along side Sunrise without him even being fully aware of it.

Speaker and sunrise followed next, then rose, then Sully and Red as the last.

After the flash Speaker and Shimmer found themselves quickly being pulled out by a small stocky spirit who looked exceedingly pissed: “More? Damn you ponies! The ambrosia delivery system is not for personal transport!”
Outside the oven and down on the ground, Speaker got up to see the rest of the circle around him, with Red and Sullen Hoof climbing out of the ‘oven’ as well.

“That was brilliant! I didn’t know that the ambrosia network could transport living ponies” Rose said, sounding exceedingly relieved and very pleasantly surprised.

Sullen Hoof shrugged as he brushed himself off and reached into elsewhere for his celestial chef’s uniform: “Speaker, correct me if I am wrong, but a lot of primordials enjoyed live meals?”

Speaker nodded absentmindedly as he looked around. The circle was in a giant kitchen that bustled with activity and tantalizing odors. Several dozen other spirits in uniforms oddly similar to Sullen Hoof’s stood around them, some working, and some looking at the circle.

The circle collectively thanked Sullen Hoof for coming up with an escape plan, while Rose fumed that such crude means of assassination had been employed against them. The discussion didn’t last long as the proprietor, owner and lord god of the establishment that the circle had intruded into burst into the kitchen, demanding to know what the holdup was on the dish washing was.

Looking at the circle, Sullen Hoof cracked his neck left to right – producing a few ungodly pops and snaps – he then approached the otherwise exceedingly well dressed and quite dashing god.

“Robed in Splendor, I am Sullen Hoof – we met earlier in Nexus…”