The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Having been struck by the demon-rapist of Harlotry, Speaker found himself sailing through the air in an arch that didn’t seem to want to let him fall any time soon. Essence sight confirmed that his continued acceleration forward and upwards was quite unnatural… and Nexus was nowhere to be seen. Only Speaker’s geographic knowledge of the east and the hundred kingdoms told him where he was: Somewhere over the mighty Yanaze river, going west at incredible speed. As he tried to spot landmarks to judge his speed he saw the approach of the inland sea in his direction of aerial travel – that would mean that he was going well over six hundred miles in mere… well, he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. It was then that Speaker realized that he had also activated his elemental immunity charm without really thinking about it back during the fight, to counter the demon-pony’s hellfire breath. That charm was now shielding him against wind-speeds that would likely shred mortal ponies – so that was nice too.

Still, going at such a speed… yup, there was Lookshy looming on the horizon. It looked so small from so far up in the sky – only the Deheleshen lighthouse and the skyship aerie reached far enough into the sky for Speaker to definitively identify them… but he only had a few brief minutes to look down at his old home, as the demon-pony’s wrath carried him onwards. It was a strange feeling, especially as his old memories harkened of a time when the city of Lookshy was not called by that name, and where he had been the glorious and beloved lord of that old place.

It occurred to Speaker that at his current speed and trajectory he might slam into Mount Meru at the center of the blessed isle if he wasn’t careful – and he wasn’t really sure if his shield charms could save him from the impact… indeed, a few boring hours later, Speaker had crossed the Inland Sea that separated the Blessed Isle from the rest of Creation, with Speaker passing over the largely still functional first age splendor of the imperial city of Canterlot – but he couldn’t really see anything specific, beyond getting the by now familiar impression of having probably helmed some of the city planning originally done for the place.

A while later later a very large mountain crept up from the horizon. Speaker knew exactly what it was – and he was quite pleased when he could see that he’d be passing just south of it in a couple of hours. Mount Meru, the sacred mountain, the mountain on top of the elemental pole of earth which gave the blessed isle its incredible stability of essence, weather and fertile soil conditions had in the first age been the center of Solar civilization. The grand city of Meru had covered most of the mountain, but all Speaker could see was very tiny bits of ruins as he passed by the titanic peak – the highest point in creation, so high that in the first age Solars could leap from its peak into heaven if they fancied doing so, an act that Speaker recalled endlessly annoyed the gods.

By the time Speaker passed south of mount Meru the sun had set – and by dawn he could see Blessed Isle fade into the horizon to the east, leaving only endless water in his flight path. He also felt really hungry at this point. Sure, he could probably use essence to stave off the feeling of hunger and thirst for a day or two, but Speaker knew from experience back in Lookshy that unicorns who did that for too long would ultimately stop respiring essence until they had a proper meal – and Speaker really didn’t fancy running out of essence in the middle of nowhere – it might interfere with his elemental immunity charm.

It suddenly occurred to Speaker how odd he probably looked: His perfect balance charm allowed him to flip himself around quite effortlessly, so he didn’t tumble around in the air – instead he just hung in the air, waiting for the essence holding him up to dissipate. Because of his elemental immunity charm then his admittedly scorched and raged military uniform didn’t even flutter in the wind, neither did his long braid or beard.

As Speaker passed over the seemingly endless open ocean completely without any noticeable decrease in altitude, Speaker began to worry that he might be heading for the wyld beyond the west. That would be… bad. Sunrise might have been able to survive the trek back, due to her seemingly vast knowledge of shield and protection charms – but Speaker was reasonably sure that his one advanced shielding charm and chaos ward would not be enough to save him, not by a long-shot, if he ended up in the western wyld.

It was a curious thought though: How would the western wyld be? In the east the elemental pole of wood colored the surrounding wyld – making for the seemingly endless Everfree Forest that stretched beyond reality and reason. The barbarian pony tribes that lived near the edge of reality were known to have vegetable or plantlike features and growths, such as manes of vines or leaves, or hooves of wood – basically they weren’t that much different than ponies who lived near wood-aspected demenses. How would western barbarian ponies be? Like Shimmer? Well, she did say she was originally a tribal… but she’d never really talked about how her pre-exalted life had been – of course, she had mentioned that her tribe got wiped out by changelings, so it was likely a touchy subject.

Anywho, the western wyld. It would probably involve variations of the theme ‘water’. Perhaps there would be dry water? The wyld was known to feature strange interpretations of Creations, weird mockeries that demonstrated a very alien or just wrong understanding of how Creation worked. The best example Speaker knew of that was the fabled story of No-Lion, a changeling warlord that had assaulted Lookshy about three hundred years earlier. It wasn’t a pleasant story, for quite a lot of ponies died to No-Lion’s hollow fangs and faceless nightmare legions before Lookshy struck down the monster, but Speaker recalled that No-Lion looked just as its name would suggest: A lion, but not. It had four limbs, like a pony, but strode around on its two hind-legs – like ponies in martial stances – and its body was a hollow structure of blades and jagged teeth, with a face that was like a lion’s, only turned inwards. Speaker had seen murals of the changeling at memorials and read texts on battle strategy against changelings that mentioned No-Lion in detail… So while No-Lion appeared like a warped eastern jungle predator, such as the jaguars, then it stood to reason that western changelings would have aquatic features? Giant fish ponies perhaps? Who knew.

Ultimately Speaker concluded that his worries about reaching the wyld were unfounded – for the sea looked perfectly normal and quite imposing - and his altitude had started to decrease. Speaker could feel the air rushing past him no longer being mostly horizontal in its path – and there was a lot of water down there.

Looking around frantically for an island Speaker quickly found himself with nowhere to aim for, or swim towards. Of course, that first required that he actually survived splashing down. This part didn’t worry him that much: As he decreased in altitude enough to see the foamy tips of the waves underneath, Speaker rearranged himself so he was head first and assumed a diving position. Between his elemental immunity charm and shield charm he hoped he’d be able to survive the landing.

Despite his preparations then Speaker’s impact with the western waves was hard, unforgiving , and excruciatingly cold – if only for a split scond until his elemental immunity charm managed to compensate, at least to the point that it didn’t bother him that much. The real problem was that between the speed he was going – which he’d figured to at least two or three hundred miles an hour, with him having been airborne for almost twenty or so hours – and his diving posture as he pierced the surface of the endless western ocean, meant that Speaker found himself plowing so deeply into the water, that before he could even feel himself begin to slow down from the water resisting and zapping his great speed, then the light from the surface had complete faded into pitch black.

Finally coming to a halt, sinking ever so slowly towards what was possibly an ocean floor several miles beneath him, Speaker took stock of his situation. By his calculations, and his understanding of Creation’s geography – something he’d most recently brushed up on back when he had done his thing at the Great Forks house of knowledge, plus his estimate of his speed, he figured that he was probably somewhere east of the great western archipelago – the long scattering of islands that dotted the western fringe of Creation – and he honestly didn’t fancy swimming that long… mainly because he hadn’t really slept for almost two days at this point, and right now he was gods knew how deep underwater.

Taking a deep breath – something his elemental immunity charm afforded him – Speaker felt himself begin to float up… a wonderfully relaxing feeling, compared to the rather intense mode of travel he’d experienced just earlier.

Surfacing Speaker found himself almost panicking: There truly were no islands in sight – nothing. It was water in every direction, as far as the eye could see: “Fuck…”

Floating on the surface, Speaker took stock of his situation again: His Lookshyan special forces training came to mind, chiefly because he couldn’t think ofanything useful on his own. He needed safe and dry shelter, food, and he needed to re-establish contact with his circle for extraction. There weren’t any islands around, so shelter didn’t seem like much of an option – and Speaker knew full well, as did any unicorn, that when you went to sleep one automatically powered down any charms that you had been fueling – and the prospect of falling asleep and drowning didn’t sound very nice, especially as Speaker keenly remembered the water torture resistance training he’d undergone as part of his special forces training as being anything but fun.

It was strange for Speaker that he was recalling all these memories of hoof camp and subsequent first field force training – but at the same time it made sense. His first age memories were of great feats or grand projects and neat ideas to curious problems, like how to bottle the silence of a cat’s paw so you could pump it into an orichalcum and steel alloy for blades that would cut through the air silently – but none of that seemed very relevant at the moment. Hoof camp training on the other hoof seemed oddly pertinent:

“If you find yourself lost at sea, attempt to float – and either try to wait it out while praying to local water spirits for aid, as they might be able to grant you passage to a safe harbor in exchange for prayer and sacrifices, or if you’re feeling up for it, swim towards the nearest safe harbor until you’re too tired, then start floating” Speaker recalled a unicorn explaining to a group of young colts, a group of recruits that Speaker had been part of oh so many years ago. Of course, that had been followed by the grim fact that finding someone lost at sea like that was very unlikely… unless you found yourself floating among flotsam, in which case you should make a raft.

Speaker didn’t have anything to make a raft from – in fact, all he had stored elsewhere was his old medical bag which he hadn’t used ever since mastering all his neat medical charms, Gift, his Singing staff and a rosined bow to play the staff. Sure, the staff could play up a hut in no time – but it’d need materials – and the nearest rock or perhaps even just sand was probably down at the… bottom.

An idea started to form in Speaker’s head. Under any other circumstances it would have been considered madness – but Speaker was a solar, a solar of the twilight caste no less! Exhaling, Speaker let himself begin to sink.

Only about a dozen yards down into the quite possibly bottomless western ocean did light yield to darkness, forcing Speaker to ignite his anima – shining the golden glow of his soul into the depths. It honestly didn’t help much, seeing that there was nothing for the light to shine on… only the odd curious fish who quickly darted away came to light.

After having sunk some more – it being exceedingly difficult to get any sense of time when the sun wasn’t visible – Speaker found himself hungry. He had seen curious fish pass by him, but hadn’t done anything to them, chiefly because he wasn’t sure what would happen if he spilled blood while in the water: Shimmer had told some rather frightening stories of the great western ‘siaka’ – the western giant sharks, large enough to gobble up ponies in one bite, and they could smell a single drop of blood miles away. It also didn’t help that Speaker figured that he couldn’t really cook a fish underwater, he certainly didn’t want to try considering the dinner guests he might attract.

By the time Speaker reached the bottom he was finding it difficult to stay awake. He had no idea how long he’d been underwater, hours, days? – but he knew that if his elemental immunity charm lapsed for just a second the pressure would squash him like a bug under a very heavy hoof… and of course the bottom was littered with large fish and marine animal skeletons: how lovely and macabre.

Half-swimming half drifting along the bottom of the endless ocean, fighting to stay awake, Speaker suddenly found himself feeling strange currents rush around him – but the light from his anima revealed nothing. A tiny smidge of essence later for his essence sight charm and Speaker saw that he was being circled by water spirits!

Calling out to the spirits proved futile, since Speaker had no means of actually speaking underwater – so how to ask for a dry and safe place to sleep? It was then that Speaker found himself suddenly almost rotating, having bumped into a solid object – probably just another whale bon- nope, that was rock! Yes!

Summoning his singing staff, which felt really weird due to forcing it into the water, Speaker began raising the rock towards the surface. To Speaker’s absolute delight he realized that water carried sound so much better than air that he was able to extend the staff’s power to raise not just a small pillar of rock – but a large enough mesa that he could form a small island at the surface!

Feeling surprisingly energetic all of a sudden, Speaker got a bright idea by which he played the rock to form an enormous bowl, filling the large bowl with sand while still at the bottom of the ocean – then sealing the sand in with a layer of rock. Playing an ancient tune once known as “Earth dragon rising” the enormous cone of stone began to rise out of the depth.
It took forever – or at least felt so, especially since Speaker’s ascent was much slower than his previous descent, but as the sudden new island rose out of the water Speaker cried out with such joy… then he very quickly played himself up a simple shelter and fell asleep on the cold, wet stone.

Waking up a good while later, having no idea what so ever how long he’d slept, Speaker felt his stomach grumble in ways it hadn’t done for quite a long time – not since his special forces training when he’d been forced to go for days without solid food… which made sense, since it was probably a few days since he’d been bucked out of Nexus, out of the east. He also felt like crap, having slept on rough and wet stone, but that was a minor inconvenience to the thoughts that came next…

A terrible thought occurred to Speaker: What about the rest of the circle? He had no idea – and especially Shimmer who’d been left fighting that monster pony! But first food, then worry – right.

Without anything to make a fishing rod out of then it seemed impossible to get any food – and indeed, Speaker didn’t expect there to be many fish around the fish since there weren’t any vegetation or food sources visible at the surface. With essence sight he tried to see the local ebb and flow of essence, to perhaps spot any really large schools of fish as they might give off enough ambient essence to be visible – but that didn’t work either.

Wait a second… sharks! They could smell a single drop of blood miles away, right? Using his medical charms to safely extract a small amount of blood from himself, Speaker began dripping it into the water so the current would take it away. It took very little time before something large and shadowy seemed to prowl under the surface... after that it was just a matter of fetching Gift, which took far too long, and the nail the shark – which worked fine – and then the dead shark sank into the depths.

Great.

Trying again, Speaker this time had a trident wrought of stone ready – first through Gift to hit and kill the shark, then having at it the trident to pull it out of the water – success!

Sullen Hoof would probably have slapped Speaker for making a shark fin soup that tasteless and boring – but when all you had was a shark, sea water and stone… at least it was filling.

Having now both slept and eaten, plus filled himself up on sea water he’d purified with his essence, Speaker took stock of his situation once more. He quickly came to the uncomfortable realization that he couldn’t just sit and worry about the rest of his circle: he had no means do anything for them in his current situation, so instead he turned to his own situation.

Looking at Gift Speaker sighed: Maybe if he’d been able to summon it faster, throw it a few more times, maybe then they could have whittled down the demon pony’s defences? Either way then he found himself increasingly frustrated with constantly having to retrieve his singing staff whenever he wanted to open the hatch in his shelter to get inside or out.
This frustration gave Speaker his first goal: Learn the elsewhere retrieval technique that Red always used to quickly fetch her weapons. She’d spoken many times of teaching it to Speaker, but they had never gotten around to it. Oh well, now he had all the time in the world.

Before starting any charm practice Speaker played open the rock holding the soggy sand – it turned out that there was a slight pressure difference, resulting in a small geyser of sand and sea-water erupting for a brief moment. Now the island was covered in sand, lovely. Acting quickly, Speaker used his essence to gather up the sand and heat it before it washed away – melting it into glass. In a few hours he had made a large and spacious – and very open-looking – house of thick glass, reinforced with stone buttresses and other reinforcements to help withstand the occasional massive tidal wave rolling over the island.

With his glass house built, Speaker began throwing stones – the simplest of thrown projectiles – rehearsing his retrieval charm… the simple exercise, mentally locking on to something he’d chuck, then yanking it back to him with essence. This part was easy, since Red had already taught him that little trick – but she’s also told him what the next step was: To maintain that link, that locked on mote of essence, as you stashed the rock elsewhere… this was very difficult, as maintaining that tether and then yanking it gently to pull something back into physical space was…. Well… really hard.

It ended up taking Speaker a little over five days, but at the end he found that he could store and retrieve even his singing staff instantly and with effortless ease. This breakthrough also marked the end of his first week on the island. Speaker began to genuinely fear that he’d end up with some kind of western island cabin fever…

With that fear in mine, while peering out into the watery horizon, Speaker decided to put a little more effort into being found. With essence he melted down and reshaped the glass of his house and using his singing staff made a tower. The glass came on top, making for a nice little light-house – but the glass had been wrought into lenses, allowing the light Speaker’s anima to reach far longer via concentrated cones. A ball bearing, albeit one of stone and greased with bits of ground up shark fat, allowed the whole little light-house to rotate, albeit it slowly, using ingeniously designed stone wave-generators to power the whole setup. This left Speaker sitting, every night, for as long as he could before falling asleep, with his anima fully flared…

It was about another week into his involuntary island exile that Speaker received a very welcome message: A magical messenger conjured by Shimmer, giving him a grim update of the fight he was so abruptly forced out of – plus it was in Shimmer’s voice:

“Hey Speaker, I know you’ll get this – because I can feel that you’re still alive. After you got bucked really far away the emissary managed to get a blow in that flung the demon pony high into the air, then another blow that sent the monster flying off into the Yanase river. It didn’t look like the stone and brass flesh the monster had let it float, so we haven’t seen it return since. Didn’t get the bounty though, but Sully got the hearthstones and the rewards from the Bodhisattva. I got beat up real bad, that’s why this message is late – had to regenerate a few limbs first after stony had his way with me. Also the immaculates are all up in arms over this. It wasn’t my tattoos that the unicorn at the crime scene saw, it was your cutie mark, but they saw me fighting so I’m now a known target as well. They’re barricading the clinic and have spies keeping tabs on the townhouse. Oh, and after the battle Red came back with Sunrise… she… she needs your help; it’s really bad. You need to find a way to get a message to us so we can come and pick you up. Love you”

Having heard Shimmer’s voice as the first break in the boredom that was the endlessly repetitive wash of waves on his stone island made for, Speaker sighed deeply and smiled. Sure, he knew well enough to get a message to the circle – but first he had to find some civilization with a sorcerer for that. Plus, eating essence-roasted shark, or essence-cooked shark soup, or whatever other bland variation Speaker could think of with his food was getting really old – especially compared to the rich and wondrous flavors that Sullen Hoof usually came up with. At least he was able to siphon off salt from the ocean water when he purified that into drinking water to spice things up with – but still.

It was five more days of solitude before Speaker one night, just as he was nodding off to sleep, saw faint lights on the horizon… hold on, what did that mean? Oh of course, ships!

Flaring his anima to its fullest, enveloping his glass lighthouse in a brilliantly shining golden gear and three pairs of wings as the light of his soul manifest its true form, Speaker could see more lights appearing – and after a while some of the lights started to approach…

The light that approached was from a small ship with triangular sails. Cash or Shimmer would probably have known exactly what kind of ship it was – even with the only source of light being a few lanterns. As the ship came closer it became clear that it was being powered chiefly by a large paddle-wheel in the back of the ship – a paddlewheel that somehow stopped as the ship got close to the island, with several small boats being lowered into the water full of ponies… ponies with spears. Oh well, Speaker had hoped for a peaceful rescue – but he’d accept having to fight his way back to civilization too.

Summoning gift with a blissfully quick motion, it appearing instantly on the side of Speaker’s right forehoof in its inert state, the solar awaited the ponies from the boat – maintaining his anima’s light through conscious effort, but keeping it at a much calmer glow instead of it being fully totemic.

The ponies in the boats seemed surprised as their boats banged up against the rock of the island pillar – but they quickly swarmed the place, their metal barding ringing and jingling clearly in the night. When they finally reached the lighthouse top, via the glass and stone stairwell that led down to the ground level of the island, they found Speaker waiting for them.

At first the ponies in their oddly rusty barding and spears made of – hold on, that was iron! Had they thought that Speaker’s light had been a changeling lure? It certainly looked like it. One soldier took a bold hoof-step forth and poked Speaker with the flat side of his spear-tip. Since neither the iron spear-head nor Speaker burst into rainbow flame, as changelings and their glamour always did when in contact with iron, the ponies cheered and began trying to talk to Speaker, and of course none of them spoke the rivertongue. Great.

With basic gestures as their only means of communications – and indeed, it seemed that not even hoof-gestures were entirely the same between the east and where-ever these ponies were from – Speaker ultimately managed to get a boat-ride back to the ship the iron-barded ponies were from.

Looking at the torchlight that flickered on his rescuers or quite possibly captors as they rowed him back to their ship, Speaker noted that under their iron barding they all wore brightly colored clothing – where they mercenaries? Pirates? Traveling minstrels?

Aboard the ship there was little improvement in communication. Speaker picked up a few words here and there, but he couldn’t be sure that it made sense – something about fire, but that really didn’t make sense.

The ship started its paddlewheel, which made Speaker wonder how that was powered – but there was no wind for the triangular sail spread across the mast to pick up, so if nothing else then it made sense to use something like that – and not that long after did the ship approach what looked like a lot of ships. Had some kind of fleet come across Speaker’s island? Getting closer the lanterns on each ship revealed most of the fleet ships to be broad barges… and good grief were there many: Speaker could see at least three dozen barges just making up the ‘outer’ edge of what looked like far more. What in Celestia’s name was this??

As the ship he was on matched course and heading with the barge-fleet, slowly inching up to one barge that ultimately extended a gangway, Speaker found himself – again through simple gestures and curious looks – ushered onto the barge. There, among other very colorfully dressed ponies, stood a mare with a black mane tied up in many braids, each adorned with beads that gleamed in the flickering lights of the many lanterns around her. Her clothes were even more outlandishly showy than those around her, probably indicating some measure of status and wealth. As Speaker was made to approach, other ponies from the ship stepped ahead and whispered in the mare’s ear. At first she looked disappointed, speaking in a language that Speaker couldn’t recognize, but then she looked up at Speaker and tried addressing him in various languages. First one was the same she had spoken before. Second one sounded even weirder, third one Speaker recognized as northern ice-tongue from his brief visit with the Bull. Not having responded to any of her statements, the mare gave Speaker a quizzical look: “Do you speak the merchant tongue by any chance?”

Sighing with relief, Speaker nodded so his beard jiggled: “Yes I do – finally something I understand”

“Well then, might I then ask you who you are? Around here visiting ponies introduce themselves first, especially unexpected visitors” the mare stated, an infectious smile creeper over her face.

Looking around at the many curious ponies looking at him, Speaker nodded: “I am Bright Machine Speaker, born of Lookshy – but currently… or well, previously living in Nexus”

Having said the word Nexus seemed to trigger something among the ponies around him – with many expressions turning into stern and mistrusting ones.

“You’re not a guild spy, are you?” the mare wondered with a coy smile.

Speaker quickly sensed that the guild wasn’t a popular topic on the barge-fleet, seeing how the faces of the other ponies present soured, so he wasn’t slow to exclaim his disdain for the guild and their economic warfare strategies. This seemed to calm the ponies around him.

“Well then, Bright Machine Speaker, I am Denzik Hala – and this is the Denzik city-ship… now how about a cup of tea and you tell me how you ended up in a lighthouse on an island we’ve never seen before?” the colorfully clothed mare said, gesturing for the ponies around her to return to their jobs and duties.