The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The circle gathered in the castle courtyard as it was announced that Speaker had returned. Sullen Hoof had seen, via his sensory enhancement charms, that Speaker had dropped harmlessly into the river, so the circle hadn't started thinking that he had died in his pursuit – but they were surprised that Speaker had recovered the deathknight’s corpse.

“Well now we’ll have something to hoist up on a stick and parade around town!” Red said in a morbidly cheerful fashion.
Sunrise probably gave Red a chastising look from under her hood: “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Oh she’s serious” Cash chimed in, adding that it would do wonders for the morale of the ponies in the city to see the one responsible for the plague having been brought to justice.

Sunrise didn’t approve. She also informed Speaker that Rose had departed for Yu-Shan to report the death and supposed resolution of the Chung Do plague, adding that Rose had promised to come visit once the plague had been cured.

“Ok. As for the parade I say go for it. Tell the good ponies of Chung Do that the fiend who spread the plague is now dead and that we’ll have a cure in circulation in a week! – although I’d love to first examine the body first really. I want to know what makes these deathknights tick!” Speaker said, looking at the Ruby and Emerald Mare’s decidedly lifeless and mangled body with absolute contempt.

Despite the consensus on the deathknight autopsy, the first thing that Speaker did was tend to the circle’s injuries. How the deathknight had injured them via her words alone was a mystery to the circle, with Rose, and Shimmer being the only ones who had somehow avoided getting hurt. Cash had suffered strange wounds around his hooves, Red had apparently nearly had a heart attack and Shimmer found Speaker to have lacerations in his mouth and throat. Sunrise had avoided harm by virtue of not having been part of the fight at all, instead having spent the time of the examinations and the subsequent fight keeping the young Shogun out of harms way.

Once the circle had been treated Speaker also spent a few hours fixing up the guards that had seen the deathknight’s gory anima. The ones who had ripped or cut their eyes out had their eyes regenerated, but to Speaker’s great chagrin he found that a few of the guards who had simply frozen in catatonic terror were beyond his current ability to help…

Later, with a heavy heart, Speaker and Shimmer performed an autopsy on the deathknight corpse: Shimmer used a rather grizzly but exceedingly efficient charm that conjured up moonsilver maggots which ‘re-inflated’ the corpse, even hooking together and stiffening in liu of broken bones and collapsed organs, giving the corpse a subtle semblance of life. Speaker found this charm deeply disturbing, although quite handy, and Shimmer noted that it was quite handy if you wanted to make sure that nobody noticed a few dead guards at whatever place you were sneaking in.

Initially Speaker concluded that the deathknight had been in a very strange state of body: Incredibly old wounds mared her form, including several stab wounds around her neck which had been covered up via a mix of makeup, her clothes and what looked like necro-surgery on her quite dead flesh: “Like a mortician preparing a corpse for a final viewing… it’s like she was embalmed while still alive”

“And here I thought she just had a strange choice in perfume” Shimmer joked.

In the end the two exalts agreed that the deathknight had been kept alive via necrotic essence, as her body had been dead or almost so all the time. Speaker wondered if it hurt being like that, while Shimmer mainly took down notes of everything Speaker discovered: “Would it be ok if I send a copy of this to my elders back home? I’m positive that they’d love some intel on the deathknights that roam their seas – plus a recipe for that necro-essence goop you made?”
“You have deathknights in the west?!” Speaker said in surprise, his voice worried.

Shimmer shrugged: “There’s probably deathknight’s all over creation, solars as well if we’re lucky. In the west there’s a nation called Skullstone where the living and dead live… no, co-exist together. Strange place, my elders say to keep away from it, but I understand that they have deathknights like this one too – but I haven’t heard of any of them pulling stunts like this – most I’ve heard is that they act like diplomats and army champions”

Speaker frowned and shook his head, he then began to close up the deathknight corpse and wash it down with essence – making it somewhat presentable, while Shimmer left her essence-maggots in place, to make it easier to prop up the corpse for display.

The next day the city was replete with fanfare, as a small but glorious procession departed from the castle courtyard: Sunrise up in front, magical music and singing appearing around her, with golden phantasms of essence forming up around her in the guise of a whole parade of glowing ponies that sang and danced to the honor of the mighty Solar saviors. Red and Speaker proudly trotted along in the center of this with a long pole held between them, the corpse of the Emerald and Ruby Mare tied to it for all to see and throw stuff at. Cash trotted along the edge of the parade, proudly telling the good news to all who would hear.

Many of the ponies of Chung Do came out on the street, wondering where the choir or marching orchestra was – marveling as they saw Sunrise and the magical singing phantasms conjured by her essence. Following that they were all told that the evil pony that had spread the plague that still ravaged the city had been brought to justice – and better yet that a cure would be distributed in short order.

Between the triumphant fanfares that Sunrise willed into existence, Cash’s loud and supernaturally catchy proclamations and the elation of the citizens to finally have a target to vent their anger and sorrow at, half of what was left of the city was soon trailing the four solars, giving cheers and accolades to their saviors. The spirit of city was lifted in such a way that it was almost palpable. More ponies were coming out of their homes to fetch fresh water, no longer fearing infection and death as much – and those already sick finally had hope, renewing their will to cling on to life.

In the evening the circle met up back in the castle, which turned out to have fixed itself from the damages that the fight had caused, the wood aspected manse apparently having regenerative abilities. Sullen Hoof had prepared a feast – and while the food was lovely then Sullen Hoof seemed strangely unpleased with what he had made. One of the things that Sullen Hoof had made was a very delicious soup based on wine, but Sullen Hoof was not pleased: “It’s still not good enough”

“Oh come on Sully, this stuff is great” Cash said, relishing in the meal.

It turned out that Sullen Hoof had been haunted by the memory of the celestial wine he had sampled at the Jade Kitchen Stadium in Yu-Shan ever since they had left. In his attempt to replicate the sublime flavor of the heavenly wine by refining local wine via his essence, resulting in the soup they were now enjoying– but it just wasn’t the same.

“The wine you used for this, it’s made on grapes right?” Speaker wondered. Sullen Hoof nodded. Speaker pointed out that the celestial wine was made on peaches grown locally in Yu-Shan, plus if he recalled correctly from the first age, then that heaven-made wine was aged for almost half a millennia.

“Peaches? Hm… I’ll have to experiment with that then ” Sullen Hoof said, nodding pensively, then asking Red if there were any peach orchards around Chung Do.

Thinking for a moment, Red sighed: “There is, a few days east, but that’s beyond the blockades. Say, now that we’ve dealt with the deathknight, how do you lot think about doing some blockade raids to open up the city?”

“We need to cure the plague first. If anything then we should ‘raid’ the nearby Spider-Tree forest for those blue mushrooms I need to cook up a new batch of plague medicine – and we’ll need a lot for the whole city” Speaker pointed out.

Shimmer agreed that fixing up the cure first would be a good idea: Striking out at the nobles too early would only bring about an actual siege to the city prematurely. This brought up a different but related problem: If the cure was created and spread ‘too soon’ the nobles might not wait until after winter to attack.

Speaker was quick to explain the problem: “If they attack before winter we won’t have time to rebuild and mount any kind of real defense. Sure, if Red goes off and has a go at the attacking army she might just beat them back – but we need a solution to this that doesn’t require that we have to sit and babysit Chung Do forever. We need a permanent solution”
“So… instead of just beat them back, then kill all the rebel nobles and install some loyal ones, have Cash swear them to fealty?” Red suggested.

While Speaker ideally wanted a less murderous resolution to the situation, then he did agree that this would probably require some ponies dying before peace could return to the Chung lands.

“Speaker, this is the hundred kingdoms – there is no peace here, you know this, you said as much yourself. Once this rebellion is over, no matter the victor, I’m sure that there’ll be some neighboring country or nearby warlord who’ll love to try their luck here thinking the Chung lands weakened by the rebellion and the plague” Cash quickly pointed out, rehashing a point Speaker had made a few days previously.

Sullen Hoof gave Cash a dour look: “Wait, you’re saying that all of this is just a waste of time?”

Cash smiled: “No, I’m saying that we as solars should be playing the long game: Think the conquest or pacification of all of the hundred kingdoms. Think of how many lives and resources that are thrown away every year on petty squabbles and internecine warfare here in the east”

Sullen Hoof had to admit that in that context taking control of the hundred kingdoms made an awful lot of sense. With that kind of power it’d be a lot easier to force through the various social agendas that the circle had in mind. Speaker found this idea appealing as well.

Cash then unveiled his grand plan: First fix up Chung Do and issue a call for immigrants and general amnesty to outlaws to repopulate the city. According to the numbers he’d been getting from the Sijaneese then almost two thirds of Chung Do was dead or dying, so that would be very necessary. The circle’s social charms would ensure that all immigrants would play nice.

Secondly, the army of the rebel nobles shouldn’t be defeated – it should be suborned. With control of that army Chung Do would instantly have a defence force and via Cash and Sunrise’s social charms they could quickly make those soldier ponies quite friendly to the city if need be. Next Speaker would spend the winter using his educational charms on the ponies of Chung Do so that come spring Shimmer could use her cloud to start transporting ponies down to Denansdor, ponies that would have been sufficiently trained via Speaker’s educational charms to operate the first age factories there, then crank out enough first age military hardware to take over the hundred kingdoms.

“I like this plan!” Red explaimed enthusiastically, the promise of such grand conquest sounding quite irresistible to her martial heart.

Waving his head from side to side as he thought of the plan, Speaker ultimately frowned and sighed: “I can’t teach what I don’t know. Making or operating that kind of first age machinery is beyond me… I mean, I remember once having done it all, but I don’t remember how I did it”

“Didn’t you also say that you’d need the most powerful form of countermagic there is to terminate the miasma around Denansdor?” Shimmer noted. Speaker nodded: “True, adamant circle countermagic – and you’re our best sorcerer here, so correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you need a teacher to be initiated into sorcery and for every sorcerous circle ascension?”

Shimmer concurred, the horrible implication of what Speaker had said dawning on the lunar pony: “Gods… does that mean that adamant circle sorcery is lost? I mean, if all solars were wiped out in the usurpation so there’s none left to train others up to that level?”

“Hold on, isn’t sorcery just like using charms? Can’t you just sit down on your rump and meditate and figure that stuff out on your own?” Cash wondered.

While Speaker and Sunrise tried to explain to Cash why he was so very much wrong Shimmer simply sat and despaired, muttering something about how this might explain why someone named Rakshi had gone mad in her quest to learn how to cast adamant circle sorcery…

“…ok, so let me get this straight. We’re not really supposed to work sorcery at all, but we can, but you need a teacher – and not even in the first could anypony agree on who the first sorcerer was? Damn this shit is complicated” Cash moaned.
“Look, the point is that to pull off your plan – which I like, was it possible – then we’d need to find someone who’s actually initiated into the adamant circle of sorcery, and as far as we can see that’s just not possible anymore” Speaker noted.

Shimmer suddenly got a sly look on her face: “Wait, Speaker – back in Yu-Shan, Lytek gave that memory crystal. Maybe he has memory crystals from other solars that shows us to initiate ourselves to the adamant circle ourselves?”

“Shimmer I could kiss you!” Speaker said, smiling gleefully. Cash, seeing that there once again was hope for his plan, first smirked at Speaker and then leapt at Shimmer and kissed her instead, stating: “Speaker, you’re not supposed to just say that when she already likes you, you dummy, you’re supposed to do it”

Shimmer didn’t seem to object, although Speaker did look a bit miffed.

“What about the deathknights and the deathlords?” Sullen Hoof said, reminding the circle that there was more to do that simply regain control and dominance over creation – it had to be saved from those who wished to see it end.
Cash nodded: “True, we’ll have to deal with them as well – but that doesn’t have to change the plan: If we retake Denansdor I’m sure we’ll be able to cook up something sufficient to end the deathlords, or simply find enough weapons and equipment to do so waiting for us in the Denansdor manse vaults”

Ultimately the circle agreed that Cash’s plan, as ambitious and hinging on seemingly impossible or unavailable things as it was, was a worthwhile plan to pursue, even if it’s ambitious time plan would probably have to be moved up a bit.
First up would be the curing the plague.

Speaker led the circle to the Spider Tree forest. It turned out to be quite aptly named, as it didn’t take long before the circle came across a small meadow in the forest where blue mushrooms grew – and where there grew trees in shape of ponies.

“Ok that can’t be natural…” Cash very quickly pointed out.

Sunrise stepped up to one of the pony-trees and brushed a hoof against the smooth bark: “They aren’t. They’re ponies who’ve been killed by Wood Spider venom, it turns you into a tree, so watch your step”

“Sunrise, spiders are just icky, and last I heard they don’t do to ponies – don’t spiders just eat flies and stuff?” Red said, scanning the treeline for motion out of fear of an ambush.

Speaker explained that wood spiders were a kind of predatory wood elementals, as big as a pony: “In the first age it was even theorized that they were the inspiration for the changeling meme that became the timber wolves, since they look so alike, aside from being in the guise of different animals”

Sunrise asked the circle to cut down all the pony-trees – the dead needing to be laid to rest, all the while Speaker and Shimmer collected mushrooms. Red quickly formed a hulking grand daiklaive out of her essence and was about to cut into a pony-tree when a hissing voice from up in the boughs called out in old realm: “Stop! It must not harm the forest!”
Thinking quickly, Sullen Hoof guided Cash’s aim, resulting in a shoe-claw being fired at where the hissing voice had come from. As the claw shot up into the mixed boughs of the treeline around the meadow there was a monstrous shriek, not particularly loud, but decidedly un-pony-like. As Cash and Sullen Hoof pulled back on the chain connecting Cash’s shoe to his launched claw a pony-sized tangle of vines and sticks was yanked out down onto the ground… and aside from the large mess of vines that made up its abdomen it had six branches poking out of its mossy thorax, three on each side of a large head-sized lump of moss that had four knobs of polished wood poking out, probably the thing’s eyes…
As the wood spider struggled to get back on its feet it wailed: “It hurts us! Why does it hurt us!”

“Because you’ve killed a lot of ponies here, that’s why!” Red bellowed, disgusted by the pathetic nature of the elemental.
Cash quickly struck a bargain with the elemental, allowing the spirit to live in exchange for a very large amount of the blue mushrooms that Speaker needed – not that the circle had any effective means of permanently killing the elemental, but after revealing that they were solars Cash found that the spider thought that they could, and chose to capitalize on that fear. The meadow was cleared of pony-trees which were all burnt in a large pyre.

That night Speaker, Shimmer and Sullen Hoof cooked up several large batches of the plague cure that Speaker and Sullen Hoof had previously devised. As a means of distribution the cure was made into a largely tasteless and odorless liquid that Sullen Hoof subsequently incorporated as an ingredient of a large feast, the idea being that the whole city could be cured as part of a grand festive event.

Cash wasn’t sure , so he met with Speaker and the others in Speaker’s laboratory the next day: “Have you guys even tested this cure yet?”

“Are you doubting my abilities as a doctor?” Speaker said, his voice plainly revealing his disdain for such accusations.
Cash smiled. It was a smarmy smile, clearly fake, but at the same time eerily endearing: “Speaker, friend, you’re the one who told me earlier that one of the side effects of this stuff you’re cooking up is constipation. I just figure that if you discreetly test the stuff first, not to see if it works if you’re that sure, then at least to test how people react to the side effects”

“Since when are you so worried about side effects?” Shimmer wondered.

Cash explained that even since arriving in Chung Do and ousting the corrupt officials that had been playing puppeteers with the Shogun, Cash had been the de-facto mayor of the city – keeping things running, hearing complaints and coordinating with the sijaneese and trying to keep looting to a minimum: “It’s not easy, trust me. The ponies in Chung Do, if they aren’t sick from the plague, are worried sick that they’ll get it – and you’d be surprised how easily that makes a city’s economy break down. I’ve also made contact with the many merchants that have been stuck in the city because of the quarantine. Heck I set up a public office on the other side of twin-fountain square where I’ve run the city from so we didn’t have to let commoners run in and out of the castle”

“You’ve run the city, really?” Shimmer inquired, not sure if she was entirely comfortable with how that sounded.
Cash shook his head: “When we arrived there were no judges, magistrates or other officials left to actually run things – they were all dead from the plague. It was those two ‘advisors’ who’d kept our princeling in the dark who’d played king and queen in the absence of anything else. I’ve even been told by Captain Bighoof that when we arrived he was maybe a few days away from declaring martial law simply because it’d be that anyway with no non-military officials and judges left”
“So you’ve truly been a lawgiver? What about while we were away in Yu-Shan or visiting the Bull?” Speaker wondered.

Cash despaired, saying that he has a backlog of things to do the size of Mount Meru he’s working through, more so now that he can see the discrepancies that the Ruby and Emerald Mare had snuck in, but he argued that the trip to Yu-Shan had been a necessary one none the less.

“Alright, Shimmer – stash a pot of the cure in elsewhere, we’ll take it out for testing” Speaker said.

Shimmer and Speaker left the castle shortly later, the sun halfway from mid-day to twilight, looking for a place that had enough still living – and hopefully sick – ponies for them to test the cure.

Walking the streets of Chung Do in the afternoon was a relatively quiet. The only regular noise was the grim bells of the sijaneese morticians as they hauled their carts around, carts loaded with the dead and whatever grave goods they had been given to take along to the next life.

Eventually the Solar and Lunar came across a public house down by the east-side docks. It was full of sailors who’d been barred from entering their ships as their captains had isolated themselves there in an attempt to avoid the plague – a wise choice for the captains, but it did leave the sailor ponies to the mercy of the sailor hostels where up many dozens of sailors slept together on mats in large rooms, making transmission of disease quite easy between them.

Coming across one such public house and sailor hostel, Speaker and Shimmer easily got the publican to let the two into the sleeping hall after showing that they were from the castle – apparently the publican was fairly stringent about letting ponies who weren’t sailors in, to prevent theft.

The sleeping hall had the stench of death hanging heavily over it. With the hostel built into the small hillside down the eastern bank of the brown river, with houses, workshops and small warehouses crammed on top of each other, there wasn’t much room for windows in the sleeping hall. Speaker might have called it a dormitory if it had been furnished with beds or simple cots and whatnot, but this was just a large twenty by thirty yard hall crammed full of about a hundred or so ponies, most of them more dead than alive. The whole place looked more like a dank warehouse stuffed full of sick ponies.

Speaker and Shimmer quickly went about diagnosing the sailors on their bedrolls. Most were filthy, caked in the puss of burst bubo and diarrhea. It was clear that the pony who owned the establishment didn’t care much for her costumers – but then again, sailors would usually just come and go – and why should the owner be exposed to plague victims more than necessary?

In the dim light of a few oil lamps Speaker and Shimmer went among the sailor ponies, trying to rouse them or alternately moving the corpses over to a corner. The pile that grew out of that corner quickly got very big. In the end over sixty corpses had been moved aside, as Shimmer recalled the pot with the cure from elsewhere and began to line the barely still living sailor ponies up. Speaker stood ready with a ladle as the sailors came up to him.

“This is some piss poor soup” the first one, a haggard and tired looking mare, commented, the plague rashes clearly visible around her mouth.

Speaker smiled at the mare: “It’s not soup, we told you that when we woke you up. We’re from the shogun, this is a cure we’re testing”

Many ponies down the line perked up at the mention of a cure, and Speaker quickly gave all the ponies a gulp of the watery broth as the line moved up past him.

“Now, there won’t be any immediate effects – but if you get something to eat and then sleep on this, you should all feel a lot better tomorrow. A side-effect might be some constipation for a day or two, but that’s intentional, to counter the diarrhea you get from the plague. Now come along, one at a time” Speaker explained.

In about half an hour all the still living ponies in the hall had been given a dose of the cure, with the weakest who had been unable to get up being given last as Speaker and Shimmer went around and fed them.

“Shimmer, could you go out and get some food for these ponies? They need it badly and they’re in no condition to get any on their own” Speaker asked, having just drained the last bubo of a miserable looking pony stallion in the last stages of the plague – it wasn’t clear if the cure would be able to save the poor soul, so Speaker was giving the stallion some more direct medical aid.

Nodding, Shimmer quickly left hostel, undoubtedly giving the publican who ran the place a nasty look as she left.
While Shimmer was away Speaker suddenly found more ponies coming into the sleeping hall. The sailor ponies he had first given the cure to, and then told to go out and get something to eat, had told others… and now the rumor of a cure being dispensed had spread.

At first Speaker was more than willing to comply with those who came in wanting a sip of the cure, but as more and more came it quickly became apparent to Speaker that he would run out soon – it might have been a cauldron big enough to fit a pony into that Shimmer had brought via elsewhere, but even that could be drained.

“Please, good ponies – I know you’re all desperate for a cure and I do hope that this one works – but I can’t guarantee that yet. Please, return to your homes and make sure to eat and drink enough fluids – I don’t have any more to give” Speaker implored. The throng of sickly ponies all crying out for a cure did not respond kindly this.

Shimmer returned a short while later to a scene of chaos. Even outside the hostel ponies were fighting each other to get ahead in the line, while some were shouting that others were trying to steal or hoard the cure, some saying there weren’t any more, some decrying that as misdirection and lies from the ones trying to steal the cure – all in all it was chaos, and Shimmer’s charms quickly let her know that Speaker was at the center of the riot inside the hostel. Shimmer had not waited a hundred long years in the west to have her Solar mate taken from her by a mob of panicky ponies. This would not stand.

Inside the sleeping hall Speaker was trying to fend off dozens of very angry and desperate ponies. He had explained multiple times that there was no cure left at the moment – but he had been shoved away from the cauldron which by now had been licked clean by multiple ponies, several still fighting to each other over who got to give it another go. It was a riot: Those who had gotten the cure were assaulted by those who hadn’t, with some trying to flee, but most were trapped in the hall as there was only one door out. Of the sailors who had been too weak to move, many had been trampled or kicked to death by vengeful ponies who missed out on the cure – and yet Speaker chose to not fight back, instead using his defensive shielding charm to remain unhurt and defend the weakest of the sailors, as he didn’t want to make the situation worse.

Then half the wall of the hall that linked it to the public house came crashing down in a shower of shattered wooden planks and splinters, as Shimmer in her beast-pony form came smashing through, her foot-long silver talons already dripping in the kind of dark blood you only get from organs, Shimmer slashing wildly at the ponies nearest Speaker, ribbons of flesh and streaks of blood flying left and right.

In the ensuing panic several oil lamps were knocked over, the fire quickly catching on the deplorably filthy straw mats the sailors had been sleeping on. As Shimmer leapt through the ceiling, Speaker held tightly in her claws, the splintered wood that fell down on the fire only fueled it, as well as trapping dozens of ponies in the inferno.

Speaker couldn’t get a word in edgewise, as Shimmer was holding him with one taloned hand tightly around his waist to the point that he could barely breathe, and with another around his head so he couldn't even open his mouth. He was first let go several minutes later when he realized that he was atop one of castle Chung’s highest towers, where Shimmer had somehow made a nest of white iridescent thread.

Shuffling over to the edge of the nest, Speaker looked down at the docks were the fire had spread to engulf almost all of the buildings there – and it was spreading up towards the eastern half of Chung Do.

Turning to the feral looking lunar beast-pony, Speaker angrily, but also with a great deal of sorrow in his voice, shouted:
“Shimmer! What did you do?! Chung Do is burning!"

Shimmer merely craned her head and reflexively retrieved a very raw leg piece of pork from elsewhere, stuffing it in Speaker’s mouth, before shrieking like an eagle and then crying out: “Eat!”

Spitting out the big chunk of pork that he’d almost gagged on, Speaker once again tried to figure out what Shimmer had been thinking: “What? No, we need to go stop the fire!”

Shimmer didn’t listen, all three of her silvery eyes simply going wide, her expression not as much stern as it was feral. More white iridescent string appeared around her, almost like a spider’s silk, but from invisible spools of essence, which shot down and seized Speaker. With her talons she pried open Speaker’s mouth and with her beak she plucked small bits of raw pork and stuffed it in his mouth, then held his nose shut until he would swallow. Shimmer plucked more food from elsewhere and continued, never giving Speaker a moment to cry for her to stop.

Speaker tried to struggle, but the elder lunar had him tied up with an essence much stronger than his. The force-feeding continued until all the food was gone, despite Speaker vomiting many times during the procedure from gagging on whatever he was being force-fed and from the sheer volume of food being stuffed into his stomach. After that things only got worse: With charms that Speaker had no idea that Shimmer even knew she forced an erection upon the Solar stallion and raped him repeatedly, even as the air around them became full of smoke and the smell of burnt pony flesh and the night grew long.