With renewed hopes and what could turn out to be an ace up their sleeves, the circle began a game of cat and mouse: They needed to find a ghost powerful enough to materialize so they could force it to do so, in order to reveal Typhon’s trickery to the nobles.

The timid ghost of the servant they had originally caught bemoaned that none of the servants that Typhon had talked Daimyo Crane Lotus into killing for zombie conversion were powerful enough – but there was another ghost… a cruel taskmaster than Typhon had seemingly brought with him from thorns:

“He… it… it’s hideous, and laughs when it beats you. He patrols the hallways and makes sure that we’re on our posts” the servant ghost said, tears in her eyes.

Speaker relayed the information to the circle, all the Cash noted that this ghost mare sounded awfully melodramatic…

“That’s because ghosts are nothing but emotions – emotions strong enough to keep them tethered to creation” Sunrise glumly noted.

Cash nodded, trying to think how he might exploit that bit of information if he was to meet other ghosts in the future.
Seeking out Typhon’s ghostly taskmaster proved remarkably easy: The ghost wasn’t exactly trying to hide, for mortal eyes could not see it – but Sunrise and Speaker both knew charms to let them see immaterial spirits.

Trapping the taskmaster was slightly more difficult, as it involved talking the ghost servant into playing bait – but Cash masterfully played on her still strong loyalty to her former mortal masters: “Don’t you want your lord to know that he has been deceived? What greater show of allegiance is there than to aid him from beyond the grave?”

Thus the ghost servant lingered in the courtyard while Shimmer used lunar charms most tricky to conceal Speaker in plain sight, Cash and Red distracting the guards with inquiries about Typhon’s morning ‘training regiment’ and finally Sunrise walking the halls of the castle so the taskmaster would spot her and see that no ghostly spy wasn’t following her…

Moments later the taskmaster emerged into the courtyard, and Speaker instantly understood why the ghost mare feared it: It was the ghost of a stallion, but its translucent flesh was pulled back, taught against its ethereal bones – making for a horrid and very permanent grin. Similarly its ghost-flesh was pulled so very tightly away from its hooves and what few other bits that were visible, the rest of it being covered in a garb of blue-grey cloth that seemed to flutter in a breeze that wasn’t there. This was an old ghost… the kind of ghost that the priests back in Lookshy routinely went to exorcise: a specter, a ghost that had abandoned sanity and given itself to death…

Speaker steeled himself as he charged the cruel-looking ghost. He knew that Red was far more competent at the kind of martial moves that could lock joints and immobilize another pony – his own Thousand Wounds Gear style was more oriented around ranged combat meant to kill quickly and efficiently.

Lunging from behind, Speaker tumbled around with the ghost for a brief moment. Like the ghost of the servant mare, this one hadn’t really expected to be attacked – but it did know how to fight… and every mother in creations tells their foals of hungry ghosts and malevolent specters that hunt and devour the living, especially naughty foals who don’t finish their steamed veggies, or foolish ponies who walked alone in the dark at night.

The ghost flailed its limbs around like a feral beast, its eyes glowing with a baleful light so strong that it shined through the back of its head, allowing Speaker to see it – then the ghost’s maw extended and peeled back, swallowing its face and head before its eyes popped out of its taught ghost-flesh through tears that oozed dusty blood, its entire body having turned inside out and flipped the other way to face Speaker…

Speaker hurried to deliver a series of swift blows to knock the ghost out: “Give up, you’re not getting away!”

The ghost didn’t answer, instead its mouth opened again revealing far too many rows of iridescent spiky teeth – they looked more like iron spikes hammered into a toothless jaw than actual teeth – and even Speaker’s defensive charm couldn’t hold back all of the force of the ghost’s powerful bite, although it prevent the ghostly pony from biting his left shoulder off, so while it drew blood then it didn’t manage to severely injure the Solar.

Trading blows back and forth, Speaker quickly realized that this ghost was either far too tough to beat or too insane to surrender, so he opted for plan B: Sunrise was meant to return to the courtyard, but she wasn’t there yet… luckily Speaker’s Thousand Wounds Gear style included a unique technique well suited to hold a captive, so Speaker heaved and fortified his grip with essence as he flipped the specter over and up into the air… where it remained, locked in a holding grip of essence force, positioned like skeet for anyone to shoot at, even if Speaker and Sunrise were the only ones who could see the ghost.
Sunrise arrived moments later as Speaker kept bucking the ghost back into the air each time it floated down low enough for him to hit. The plan was for Sunrise to use her ability to burn unholy things with her voice to make the ghost surrender… but even after she had prayed to the point that the ghost was replete in blue and white cinders, its taught flesh flaking off like hideous translucent snowflakes.

It was first when Cash joined the fray, so to say, giving the ghost an odd ultimatum – especially considering that Cash couldn’t hear or see the ghost – but it was enough that the ghost could hear and see Cash…

“We know you get and give orders, so you’re sane enough to understand us. Surrender now or I will speak apathy and indifference to you, and I will use charms to imprint these feelings and ideas into you above all other – do you understand what that will do to you? If you want to continue existing, you will surrender to us, now” Cash calmly said, Speaking to the ghost’s need for intense passions in order for it to keep existing, lest it fade in reincarnation.

Typhon’s taskmaster calmed down very quickly after hearing such a potent threat– and Speaker let it float down to the ground.
“I will not betray my master!” the ghost screeched, it voice like rusty iron nails on a chalk board. Being able to hear this horrid sound, Speaker’s ears bled as he relayed the ghost’s words, while also tending to injuries from the fight with the ghost.

“Oh we do not want you to betray your master – we want you to glorify his work before the nobles here! Let all know that Typhon and you have ensured their doom now, to tell them that death has stalked them for months without them ever knowing – and then you can tell them that they are about to die…” Cash said, speaking in an eerily slick tone, as if a murderer taunting a victim while twisting a knife – but only with words, even if they felt just as sharp.
Speaker told the circle how the ghost smiled with a most unsettling grin and nodded slowly.

As they walked back into the castle, Red commented to Sullen Hoof that she couldn’t believe that the specter had bought that load of crap.

“Speaker said that specters are ghosts that have given themselves to death, but they still work like ghosts: Great passions guide their minds, not reason – so Cash appealed to this obvious passion for death and suffering…” Sunrise coldly stated, sound calm and yet displeased at not having been allowed to finish her smiting of this undead abomination. That Cash had used so much essence that he had briefly glowed like a gilded campfire in order to make his suggestions get through to the ghost. That such charms had made his words supernaturally powerful hadn’t hurt either.

Red nodded, somewhat sure that she had understood what had happened: “So… some ghosts aren’t that bright, but they’re all very emotional?”

It took no small amount of sweet talking, a little bribery, and some subtle threats, but the circle managed to gather the nobles for one last meeting – on the pretence of discussing rules of engagement for the supposedly inevitable siege of Chung Do.

It was the same meeting room, the nobles all sat in the same places, on the same grand chairs, with the same servants and advisor ponies by their sides, and some of them looked bemused – others, including Soaring Blade, looked very not amused.

“My good ponies, I would like to make one final appeal to you all – to your honor and oath of fealty you have all sworn to the throne in Chung Do” Cash began, but he barely managed to speak a word more before all the Daimyo Fu, Tung Ting, and Crane all angrily shouted at Cash to not speak of foolish pursuits, that him and his fellowship clearly was too weak for the present nobles to ever broker peace with, and that Chung Onyx was a foolish foal that had to die for his transgressions. Soaring Blade remained silent, but looked very displeased.

It was a very much different tone than before, the Daimyos trying to out-shout each other – their eyes alive with hate and scorn.

It was painfully clear that Typhon had done… something – ponies didn’t just start shouting like that when they had previous been at least courteous about their disdain. Cash’s charms for detecting subtle social cues told him that the Daimyos had been triggered by the mention of honor and fealty to the young shogun – his previous main talking points during the earlier talks. Part of Cash found this quite creative: Make ponies hate what you speak of… even if did make his work so much more difficult – of course, he didn’t just have to talk about that. Typhon sat to the left of Daimyo Crane Lotus, looking exceedingly pleased.

“Right, my mistake your lordships – of course you are all mighty, for you all rule your territories absolutely, with all of your servants perfectly servile, commanding their loyalty absolutely – which, I have been told, is why some of you have enjoyed Typhon’s gift of zombie servants, as they are truly loyal and obedient” Cash monologued, trying to appeal to each lord’s sense of personal power and control over their domains.

Making a gesture that Cash had agreed with the ghost taskmaster in advance, the eclipse caste pony signaled for the taskmaster to make his entry ready: “But truly, you have all been fooled – especially you Daimyo Crane Lotus, for while you have been given zombie servants, then Typhon has pulled the wool over your eyes and spied on you most egregiously… all part of our master plan to doom you all”

Crane Lotus huffed and puffed, as if swelling with indignity. This was understandable, as even Speaker was surprised that the Daimyo didn’t just call for the guards-ponies stationed at the door to go cut Cash’s tongue out… but that didn’t happen, for instead a ghastly sight appeared right on the heavy wooden table.

The look on Typhon’s face was absolutely priceless as his undead taskmaster gleefully boasted of how the Daimyo’s had been had – thinking that it was time for the big reveal before their slaughter. The look on the Daimyos, their servants and advisors on the other hoof were more terrified – except Soaring Blade and his retinue.

“…and now, the trap is sprung and your doom is cealed!” the undead taskmaster finally screeched and cackled, its taught skin cracking and bleeding as the ghost smiled sadistically, with eyes that glowed with bloody shades of red.

Many of the Daimyo’s servants and advisors scrambled to flee the room, but before the ghost could leap to attack anyone Sunrise got her way as Cash subtly gestured for her to smite the beast with a hymn to Celestia most glorious.

It was strangely amusing to see some of the Daimyos attempt to chime in on the chorus, even if they really couldn’t sing, thinking it would burn the monstrous ghost faster as it tumbled off the table enveloped in bright blue flames of holy might – it end up a twitching pile of sticky ashes by the time Sunrise was done. Typhon was nowhere to be seen.

Even while still under the influence of Typhon’s strange charms to be quite hostile at the mention of the young shogun, the Daimyos and their servants and advisors all cheered on as the ghost’s ashes where demonstratively stomped on by Sunrise – this also marked a change in attitude from the Daimyos, as Cash again appealed to their own sense of sovereignty, now that it had been revealed that Typhon had been spying on them and using that information to manipulate them… plus now they thought that Typhon had planned on killing them.

To Speaker it was strange – the Daimyos would still react with outrage at the slightest mention of the young shogun – but they were otherwise smiling like foals in a candyshop around the circle.

This ultimately led to the topic of what to do with Typhon: “So, honorable lords, with your leave we would go and find Typhon and interrogate him as to his true motives here… and then kill him – would that be permissible?”

Daimyo Crane Lotus nodded fervently, the rest of the noble ponies agreeing as well – although they couldn’t entirely agree on who’s torturer should have the honor of prying all this information out of Typhon…

The circle left the nobles to figure out that particular detail – right now the hunt was on – but before the circle could even leave the meeting room Shimmer came in and blocked their path: “I have something you need to see before going after Typhon”

What Shimmer had, which she had ‘hidden’ as a dead flea in her coat, was… the corpse of Typhon. As it changed back into the form of Typhon everyone stepped back.

The circle and the nobles quickly gathered around her, cheering and congratulating her – but with a swift gesture she motioned for silence, a silence that became all the greater as she yanked the wig off the corpse, revealing fine stitches on a shaved scalp: “This isn’t Typhon…”

It turned out that while Shimmer had been spying on Typhon she had witnessed him preparing for a possible assassination attempt from the circle, as revenge for the humiliating duel – and this fake Typhon corpse would have been used to frame the assassin for Typhon’s murder, while the real Typhon would have escaped: “No doubt he’d have returned later, saying that his lord had truly granted him immortality or some other bullshit”

While Shimmer’s social grace in the face of nobles might leave something to be wanted, then her revelation still showed just how callously Typhon and his ilk treated the dead. The three Daimyos Fu were enraged that Typhon would even treat a corpse like that, more so when Shimmer showed other stitches in the corpse, revealing that the Typhon fake had been made of several corpses… and yet they didn’t mind the zombie servants?

“Hold on, won’t he know that his escape plan is missing?” Red quickly wondered.

Shimmer smiled gleefully: “Lunar tricks… he’ll see something where this thing was - and he’ll think is the real deal”

With that cryptic message the circle quickly rushed to Typhon’s quarters, the Daimyos and two dozen ponies-at-arms right behind them.

Outside of Typhon’s quarters stood two gaunt ponies in black leather barding reinforced with steel plates. They had black rings under their gaunt sunken eyes and their manes appeared matted and the color fading from them, telltale signs of living in a shadowland – for doing so would slowly drain both the life and color away from anything living: Not enough to kill you, but enough to mark a pony for life.

The two guards would at first not let any of the throng of ponies in, but Red made very swift work of them, while Cash shoved the door open and burst in – finding two zombie servants pulling at a pony dummy made of melons lashed together with iridescent white strands, trying to pose it in a chair.

“You know, Shimmer, I had expected it to actually look like Typhon…” Cash noted, sounding somewhat disappointed.

Shimmer shrugged, pointing out that since she’d told Cash and everyone else of the illusion they were very unlikely to fall for it.

Red snorted angrily: “Who cares, I want to find Typhon!”

Aside from the two zombies and the melon puppet – which quickly fell apart as Shimmer no longer felt the need to maintain the illusion or the essence strands that held the melons together – there was nothing else in the room. There was some tasteful furniture, fit for foreign dignitaries and visiting nobles, just like in the other guest quarters the circle had been in – but there was no Typhon…

Shimmer stomped a hoof firmly into the stone tiled floor. Around her hoof the tiles cracked ever so slightly, but she paid no heed this, as she suddenly turned and lunged at a corner! Tumbling into what was at first an unseen foe, Typhon quickly appeared as he was knocked aside – his veil of invisibility shattered.

“Sunrise! Burn him with your brightness!” Speaker shouted, remembering all too well Typhon’s invulnerability to blades and blows alike – but Sunrise said nothing, looking oddly distraught and yet remaining motionless.

Despite Shimmer holding him tightly, appearing quite unaffected – even if he was more or less immobilized in a quadruple leg-lock, Shimmer’s limbs having coiled around Typhon’s as if they were powerful snakes or squid tentacles – Typhon merely laughed: “You think local weakling ghosts were the only minions I had here? I have a full talon of war-ghosts following me everywhere, hiding in the walls and floors!”

Looking at Sunrise with his spirit-detecting glance, Speaker saw how war-ghosts were holding Sunrise’s mouth closed from inside her own body. Their hooves, carved into ghastly claws, couldn’t harm her, but they held her quite well. Speaker leapt at the war-ghosts, trying to free Sunrise.

Cash figured that Typhon had some kind of ghosts interfering with Sunrise, and demonstratively told the nobles present how this display showed Typhon’s true colors: “Ghostly warriors hiding in your walls and floors? That doesn’t sound like a friendly emissary on a polite visit, that sounds more like an enemy agent waiting for you to bludgeon your forces on Chung Do’s walls, so that he can give the signal to have everyone here killed!”

The nobles expressed their outrage in various colorful euphemisms, few polite enough to be committed to writing.
Red, feeling annoying powerless against the ghosts – and knowing full well that she could do nothing against Typhon – fumed, and silently promised herself to learn Speaker’s spirit seeing and fighting charm as soon as this was over.

“Now, will you let me go? Or do I have to call in the rest of my retinue? I can have everyone here dead in a second” Typhon gleefully proclaimed, even as Shimmer tried to tighten her grip in vain – for Typhon’s bones were as the hardest of jade, and his skin like impermeable stone.

Flipping around and flining Typhon with all her might, augmenting her strength with both charms and by shapeshifting the might of both bulls and greater monsters into her limbs, Shimmer threw Typhon straight through the castle wall – leaving a very large hole as the part of the stone brick wall above the hole collapsed as well. In a flash Shimmer leapt through the hole, shifting in her monster-pony form as she flew down into the courtyard after Typhon: “Red, I need you help here!”

The nobles were… of mixed feelings at the sight of this – some of Crane Lotus’s advisor’s seemed to be thinking more of the cost of repairing the castle wall, while many others were horrified at the sight of Shimmer shapeshifting… but Cash quickly spoke calming words, explaining quickly and supernaturally eloquently how Shimmer was blessed by Luna with powers of beasts and the changing ways of the moon.

Red leapt down to the courtyard as well, landing with a heaven-sent elegance, while also hitting the ground running – quickly catching Typhon once more in an iron grip like a dragon coiled around helpless prey: “Ok Shimmer, what’s the idea here?”
Shimmer landed in front of Red and Typhon, brushing dust and stone chips off her feathers – then staring intently at Typhon with all three of her eyes glowing with baleful moonlight: “Tell me Typhon, did you master anticipate your coming up against only assassins – or also lunars?”

“Your claws can’t do anything to me! But while at it, I don’t your filthy claws touching me at all” Typhon laughed, his head and neck held at a strained angle as Red was trying to snap his neck to no avail.

Shimmer smiled, her beak demonstrating a strange ability to subtle change its shape to mimic the expressions of a mouth: “Oh please, you don’t know anything. Don’t you know why the immaculates call lunars monsters that bring the wyld with them, mutating all they touch…”

Even as her left eye popped like a grape and bled due to having defied Typhon’s command augmented by a killing word technique, Shimmer raised a grim talon that turned silvery and fluid, as it extended to twice its normal length: “Feel the generous gifts of the moon”

Striking Typhon with her magical talon on his face – the claw doing no physical harm, it even looking like a pointed silvery banana having smeared on the stallion - Typhon’s skin rippled as he began to scream in a most horrible and gurgling way. Red released her grip as she stumbled backwards, feeling Typhon… change… and her not wanting any of what he’d gotten on her.

Typhon, resplendent in his fine garbs, and invincible to blades and blows alike, dropped to the ground and thrashed around, feebly touching his face as skin began to liquefy slowly, his tongue falling around and splattering on the ground like a rotten tomato, his eyes becoming like milk and running down his face, and his teeth denaturing into something akin to semi-fluid white tree-sap… it was a nightmarish sight to behold, Red galloping away from the scene as quickly as she could.

From the hole in the castle wall into Typhon’s quarters the rest of the circle and the nobles looked on – hearing only Typhon’s horrid gurgling screams as the deathknight’s voice slowly gave way to a bubbly kind of pitiful howls.

“What is she doing down there…” Cash wondered out loud, smiling as the nobles beside him lost their lunch.

Sullen Hoof, with charms enhancing both his sight and hearing, shook his head in disgust: “You really don’t want to know…”
Speaker wasn’t sure what to make of Sullen Hoof’s reaction… but suggested that they go down into the courtyard to survey the damages. Sullen Hoof didn’t look pleased at the suggestion, but Cash eagerly led the way.

When the circle reunited in the courtyard, along with the nobles and their entourages, Shimmer had returned to pony form – but Typhon… well he wasn’t really much of a pony anymore.

What had once been a beautiful but terrible stallion who could no doubt have seduced any pony he wanted with but a coy glance and a suggestive shake of his supple flanks, was now an eerie reminder that immaculate propaganda sometimes had a hint of truth to it: Typhon’s body had been partially melted, his limbs no more than wiggly nubs, his head a featureless sphere with a mouth-hole but nothing that looked like a jaw, or teeth, or a tongue… just a hole to breathe through – there weren’t even anything left of a functioning throat, so Typhon could only make breathing noises, which he did quite frantically. What had once been a lush coat was now bare and sagging skin, with a few bruises and minor open sores where Typhon had thrashed around at the coble-stone beneath him. He looked more like a half-finished mannequin puppet that hadn’t been fully assembled than a pony.

“Good grief Shimmer…” Speaker slowly spoke, horrified at the sight before him.

Shimmer beamed with pride: “He won’t be doing much of anything for the time being…”

Flipping Typhon over, revealing what had once been a handsome and rugged chest, showed a strange device of jade grafted to Typhon’s chest set with a glittering smooth black ovoid stone – like a piece of fancy body jewelry.

“Well I be… A gem of adamant skin, the seventh legion would love to get one of these” Speaker idly mused, carefully removing the earth-aspected hearthstone out of Typhon’s skin-mount hearthstone amulet.

Looking at the black gemstone Cash frowned. It wasn’t cut in a particularly pretty fashion, so its market value based purely on aesthetics was quite low – you could polish black sandstone to look quite similar: “So what does it do?”

“This is how Typhon was invulnerable. A gem of adamant skin is a very powerful hearthstone that hardens your skin and bones so neither can be broken – still, the force of impacts and blows should have hurt him, but it’s always easier to tough out blunt trauma as opposed to a knife-wound” Speaker noted, retrieving the un-shaping gun from elsewhere and socketing the hearthstone into the gun.

Seeing what Speaker was doing with the gem, Red protested: “Hold on, can’t we use that gem? I wouldn’t mind being invulnerable to blades”

“You would have to find the manse that this thing comes from – and that’s probably deep in Thorns territory – for now our best move would be to keep the stone to deprive Typhon’s master of it. You would have to severely damage a manse to break its connection to a hearthstone, which is quite dangerous for powerful manses, then repair it again to make it form a new stone – so this is by far the best thing we can do right now, plus we are so taking the skinmount amulet as well” Speaker explained, surgically removing the implant – well, yanking it off the sagging skin.

Beyond the hearthstone and mount then Shimmer had recovered Typhon’s ear-rings back when her horrible wyld-mutation-inducing charm had turned Typhon’s ears into tiny ashen nubs – they turned out to be quite interesting: Speaker identified them as a paired Infinite Resplendence Amulet, artifacts often worn in the first age… but these skull-shaped ear-rings were wrought of soulsteel, a material hardly even understood in the first age.

Cash was less impressed with the history of the magical doodad’s history and more with its function – it had kept Typhon’s clothed quite nicely… and he was certain that others might pay well for such functionality.

“Hold on, things like these always had extra features beyond clothing – and these are made of soulsteel… so I’m sure it’s not nice ones” Speaker noted.

Weary of testing the ear-rings, especially considering what the circle had experienced with the Bodhisattva’s cursed blade, Shimmer suggested that they simply keep them for safe storage – perhaps to break them down later to make something more benign and useful.

This left the circle and the nobles with the question of what to do with the husk of a pony that was Typhon.

The nobles, while previously outraged at the revelation of Typhon having both spied on them and hidden a force of… uhm… where did the war ghosts go? Sunrise noted that when Shimmer had chucked Typhon through the wall the ghostly grip on her mouth had disappeared…

Looking around at the ground – since Typhon had said that his war ghost body guards hid in floors - Speaker and Sunrise both saw many pale and weary translucent eyes peering up at them… but beyond that the ghosts did nothing.

“Rise war ghosts of Thorns, attend your master!” Cash commanded – Sunrise noting that the ghosts actually obeyed. The glowing caste mark on Cash’s forehead hinted of how much essence he had spent to make that command palatable to the ghosts.

The way ghost, souls of warrior ponies bound to Typhonn, slowly floated up from the ground.
“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Sunrise wondered to Speaker.

Considering the situation, Speaker slowly nodded as he came up with what he figured was a plausible answer: “Well, Typhon said they usually hide right? And since he wouldn’t want them found he’s probably bound them with orders not to attack anything unless he tells them… and now he can’t talk anymore”

Servants were sent to the castle kitchens for salt, so that the war ghosts could be trapped a circle of salt – something that ghosts for some reason simply could not pass. With the war ghosts taken care of, the question again was Typhon. The noble didn’t want to ‘keep’ him – fearing reprisals from Thorns. The circle didn’t mind this at all: “We know someone who would love to take him into custody” Red said, looking towards the heavens.

“Excellent – with this you have all regained your honor in the eyes of me and my court. This will make you worthy foes when we meet on the battlefield for the siege of Chung Do” Daimyo Crane Lotus proudly proclaimed.

Cash sighed and rolled his eyes: “Your lordship, please – you have seen our might demonstrated here before you. No army of mortal ponies can withstand our wrath unleashed”

“Pish posh – Typhon left plenty of silver and jade in my coffers, and even if we don’t get the siege he promised to supply we’ll find a way to batter down the gates of Chung Do – it’s been done before” the Daimyo smugly noted, feeling extraordinarily high and mighty, now that thanks to Typhon’s treachery he owed no favors to Thorns anymore, while his coffers were still full.

Cash looked at the rest of the circle, flashing them a toothy grin before turning to face the Daimyo: “Tell me oh lord of lords, did Typhon ever specify what kind of siege he would supply?”

The Daimyo shrugged in his voluminous robes: “Siege is siege, I’m guessing Xuanfeng and heavy Sijiao catapults, wheeled towers, ladders?”

Shaking his head while keeping his smile up, Cash took a deep breath: “Oh that wasn’t what Typhon had in store for you… you see, when we arrived in Chung Do we learned many things: For one the sijaneese corpse caravans traveling west to Sijan were being raided and looted of corpses… now, that’s grotesque enough, but think about it: What does Sijan do if someone raids their funerary caravans?

“I… they… they suspend services” The Daimyo hesitantly said, many of his advisors looking quite worried as they clearly understood the implications of such an event.

Cash craned his neck backwards and gestured towards Speaker: “If not for our highly skilled apothecary here finding a cure for the otherwise incurable illness Chung Do would have become a shadowland once the Sijanese stopped coming – but beyond that, we tracked the corpses being stolen – for they had been reanimated to move on their own to a foul necromancer’s lair…”

The nobles and their retinue looked quite uncomfortable, some even queasy.

“They were building perverse warstriders out of the corpses… now, most of you reacted quite harshly to Typhon’s stitched together corpse double… how would you and your generals feel about fighting alongside giant flesh-things lashed together with the blood and sinew of Chung Do’s own dead?” Cash triumphantly declared, using his Recorder of Everlasting Glories to display haunting images of the bonestriders built in the Coveter’s necro-surgical workshop manse.

Shimmer quickly picked up on the bigger picture that could have unfolded, had Typhon’s plan gone ahead: “If you had marched your army into Chung Do it would have walked into a trap of tens of thousands of ghosts and zombies, feeding the underworld with thousands of new souls – all in all helping Thorns cement a new colony in the hundred kingdoms…”

The nobles quickly exchanged hurried whispers with their advisors and generals - it looked like they found Shimmer’s scenario frighteningly possible, given what they had learned over the last hour.

“Don’t forget that we know this because we found the place where these things were made and put a stop to it – something that Typhon no doubt knew – so you stand to gain no extra siege at all now” Red noted.

The nobles again grumbled and whispered among themselves, with many of the Daimyo looking predictably disparaged.
“Now, we’ve seen your army – inexperienced peasant ponies levied as troops that you’ve been since last summer… and you’ve seen or at least hear d of our ability to have the gods themselves halt that army. So, please tell us again how you think you can take Chung Do, with no siege, with your entire army busy shitting itself half to death as we speak” Cash inquired sarcastically.

With the prospect of a siege with no siege equipment beyond what simple ladders their army might be able to make themselves, the nobles quickly despaired, or at least they began to – they were again angry that Cash had withheld this information about Typhon’s promised siege engines – but Cash pointed out that he hadn’t known the exact nature of Typhon’s promised military aid until the good Daimyo had revealed it, plus Typhon could have claimed that it was all carefully fabricated lies if he hadn’t been both silenced as well as revealed to dabble in grotesque corpse manufacture.

“We still have one advantage for the coming battle of Chung Do. Try not to make too much of a mess” Daimyo Crane Lotus callously noted, not so subtly gesturing for his ponies-at-arms to take position and take out the ‘enemy’ leadership.

Cash sighed deeply: “Oh come on… Red, you heard him, try not to make a mess”

Red complied – and a split second later seven spears had been cut in half, along with Daimyo Crane Lotus.

As the top half of a very surprised looking Daimyo slid off the bottom half, blood spraying everywhere, the combined entourages of the nobles erupted in shrieks of terror and panic – what other ponies-at-arms in reach looked understandably hesitant.

With Crane Lotus so effortlessly dispatched with one of Red’s essence-shaped blades – blades that all the nobles had been thinking were naught but illusions and tricks of light and essence – the nobles suddenly became a lot more cooperative… even if unwillingly so.

Author's Note

And thus, after... 25 chapters... the Chung Do saga is complete. What next? We'll see in the next chapter!

I had considered ending the story more or less here - and making a sequel for the next stuff... but screw that: My story, my grand muddy no-apparent-overarching-plot clusterfuck!