The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The strange and disgusting creature that was Soelot landed on the barge with a dull thud, tumbling to a halt next to Speaker. The storm goddess looked far more pathetic now than intimidating.

“Yield, or I will cut you into pieces and feed you to the sharks” Speaker sternly demanded.

The goddess looked up, her two eyes blinking out of unison – indeed they weren’t even the same size or color, or looking exactly in the same direction: “Please… have mercy…”

“If I had an eclipse caste Solar here I would have you bound to never stray from your official duties, condemning you to an eternity of work in order for you to redeem yourself – but I don’t have that… and considering how many times you’ve tried to roast me so far, then I honestly do not trust you to honor your word without that” Speaker sneered. He had seen realm unicorns behave just like this: when powerless and without the ability to posture and stomp around they were all so pathetic… but they would horn you in the back the moment they had the opportunity, no doubt about it, and Speaker knew that it would probably be a while before he’d return to this place to check up on the goddess’s behavior.

Soelot, seeing the writing on the wall – and knowing full well that it actually required willing worship for a god to regenerate from having been physically slain, something she couldn’t really boast of – offered Speaker untold bounties, all the money and jade he could want… for it was all she had left to offer.

Unimpressed with the goddess’ promises of wealth, but seeing how the ponies around him looked quite eager for it – indeed, it seemed that quite a few were mouthing “take the offer” to him – but Speaker had no need for watery wealth, for he knew he had far more waiting for him in Nexus.

“Soelot, here’s what’s going to happen: You’re going to give the Denzik one dozen air and one dozen water elementals to service them in any way they see fit for one hundred years – and they will message me if you recall them after I leave, also if they hear any stories of you extorting tribute from others following this. These terms are not up for negotiation” Speaker said, his caste mark shining demonstratively.

The goddess writhed about on the deck of the barge, like a foal told to give up her bag of candy: “No… not my servants, I need them for my storms”

“Then you will have to make smaller storms – I doubt that the ponies who have to weather them will complain” Speaker said, finding it difficult to keep up his tough façade – it was just so tempting to try to sit down and talk to Soelot, to work out the true reasons for her behavior and come up with a better solution.

Soelot staggered up, her hooves making nasty squelching noises as she gingerly padded about. Her half-bloated form made Speaker wonder if her condition was due to the goddess over-indulging in something, which raised a curious question: Could gods become fat? Either way Soelot gave Speaker an ugly glare then called for two dozen elementals, then again turned to Speaker: “Who do I give command of them? You?”

“Denzik Hala, to begin with – make sure your instruct them to obey both her and her chain of command. I’m sure she can give more detailed instructions” Speaker said, gesturing towards the illustriously dressed, albeit quite soaked, mare peeking out from a half-opened hatch on the barge deck.

“So be it” Soelot said, gesturing for her elementals to stay and do as told while she jetted off into her storm cloud on a trail of hot steam, the cloud pulling away from the Denzik very quickly, although it began to thunder and rain quite loudly the moment it had cleared away from the Denzik.

The celebration held in Speaker’s honor was apparently the biggest festivity that had graced the city-ship in a very long time. Speaker didn’t complain, especially since Ever-Ember was able to inform him that among the adherents of the immaculate faith on the ship their attitude towards anathema had taken a big shift from “hostile” to a more neutral “maybe they’re not so bad?” This pleased Speaker to no end, although there were also a number of merchants who maintained that Speaker had been foolish not to take the offer of wealth from the goddess – but Denzik Hala was quick to silence such critics, explaining that the service of two dozen elementals for a hundred years would mean that the Denzik could travel much faster and much safer: “…so we’ll waste less time in transit, allowing us to visit more ports and do even more business”
The festivities lasted well into the wee hours of the next day, at which points shouts of alarm rang out across the Denzik – something in the sky had been spotted, and many feared that it was something that Soelot had sent to destroy the Denzik.

At Denzik Hala’s request, Speaker stepped forth to defend the Denzik – but the Solar had a fairly good idea about what the flying thing in the sky was… and indeed, after a short while it became apparent that it was a flying Yeddim. Speaker called for Ever-Ember. The unicorn almost refused to believe what his eyes showed him – although he cheerfully honored his side of the bet, doubling the amount of silver that Speaker had earned while on the Denzik in a heartbeat.

Cash Charmer hadn’t even managed to land the yeddim when Shimmer dove from the howdah, tackling Speaker with a power hug and showering him with kisses: “I was so worried!”

Denzik Hala and the rest of the ponies on the city ship, or at least those on the surrounding barges, watched with great curiosity as Speaker greeted his old friends with heartfelt hugs. As Speaker introduced his circle, sans Red and Sunrise, he noted that Nah was laden with not just chests, but entire barrels full of silver and jade…

“Cash, how much money did you bring?” Speaker quietly asked, sounding just slightly concerned.

Cash threw Speaker the most pleased grin ever: “All of it”

“All of it?” Speaker inquired, sounding a lot more worried all of a sudden.

Cash charmer leaned over towards Speaker, his eyes as big as saucers, slowly saying: “All of the money…”

It turned out that Cash, upon hearing of Speaker’s predicament and location, had sold off pretty much everything he’d accumulated in the month or so the circle had been in Nexus – even Sullen Hoof and Shimmer had replaced everything they had stored elsewhere with chests and sacks of money… at Cash’s request.

Apparently then the Denzik was a slightly bigger deal – business-wise – than Speaker had figured, especially for someone doing business in Nexus. Since it couldn’t make port in the hundred kingdoms without upsetting the realm, but at the same time effectively functioning as the maritime equivalent of the guild in terms of large scale mercantile operations in the west, then there was a huge unsatisfied demand for the things they dealt with in the hundred kingdoms. Cash was absolutely certain that for every silver dinnar and jade bit he would spend at the Denzik buying exotic western tribal art, realm pottery, and all kinds of other things that just weren’t normally available in the east, he could at least triple his investments once it was sold off in Nexus. Denzik Hala seemed convinced that Cash’s estimates were off: “Are you kidding? Realm china sells for at least ten times it purchase value in the east if you buy it directly from realm potters”

Cash soon disappeared along with a throng of the most colorfully and wealthily dressed merchants, including Denzik Hala.
Shimmer and Sullen Hoof, after they had ‘unloaded’ all the wealth they had transported via elsewhere, finally greeted properly Speaker under slightly more private conditions, in his cabin.

“Oh Speaker, I was… I thought you were gone forever when that monster hit you” Shimmer said as tears of joy trickled down her face, all the while snuggling up next to Speaker.

Sullen Hoof on the other hoof was more calm and collected, but none the less expressed that he had just arrived at the battle after having stashed the hearthstones when he saw Speaker get bucked out of the city: “I tried to track in from the rooftops, using sight enhancing charms… but you moved so fast… and you honestly looked dead”

“Ya, my leg was in a real bad shape when I came to – but my elemental immunity charm protected me from the wind. Took me almost two days to land in the water between Wavecrest and An-Teng…” Speaker said, retelling the story of how he fought drowsiness and hunger while walking along the western ocean floor.

Shimmer was quite impressed with Speaker’s resourcefulness: “Raising an island from the ocean… hmm… I’m surprised you didn’t run into an sea-ponies while down there. Maybe you just missed one of their enclaves”

“Sea-ponies?” Sullen Hoof inquired, never having heard of such a thing.

Nodding, Speaker hmmmm’d for a moment: “Do they still exist? I thought they were wiped out along with the Pegasus ponies after the usurpation”

“No, they were ordered to the western ocean floor – they’ve been there in complete darkness, with annoyingly specific orders to only reconnect to the surface world when a solar comes and tells them to. My elders are certain that they have kept mining black jade from the ocean floor ever since the usurpation… if that’s true they should have more jade than the realm waiting for us to use” Shimmer regaled, but also adding that the few encounters she had experienced with the sea-ponies had been very hostile ones… they really didn’t want anything but Solars to come near them.

“Hey, sea-ponies, what are they?” Sullen Hoof again asked, looking intently at Speaker through his golden helmet-mask.

Speaker explained that the sea-ponies were created during the first age, similarly to how the Pegasus ponies had been created – only these were ponies who’s bottom halves were like that of fish or dolphins, and their lungs allowed for breathing underwater. They had fought the more aquatic primordials and their ilk, like the Sea that Marched Against The Flame, or The Herald of Liquid Breath Who Speaks Poison, led by water aspected unicorn officers and celestial exalted generals.
“So… the army we’ve been looking for to take Denansdor…” Sullen Hoof wondered.

Speaker shook his head: “No, I like how you think – but we need an army that can trot on land. Sea-ponies don’t have the legs to walk on land…”

“Fair enough – either way it’s great to have you back, I thought I had lost you, sensei” Sullen Hoof said, his true expression hidden by his mask.

“Sensei? Oh come on, you’re as much a master as me – just in different fields” Speaker said, humbled by Sullen Hoof’s words.

A few days later Cash assembled the circle, Nah having been loaded to the brim with his purchases from the various Denzik merchants – he had a few extra crates he needed Shimmer to stash elsewhere, but beyond that he was ready to leave.

Denzik Hala was not sad to see Speaker leave – apparently the Denzik’s current course would have it in An-Teng waters, a realm Satrapi, in a few weeks, so being rid of anathema passangers would be good for business – but it was clear that the entire population of the Denzik had gotten a far kinder view of Solar anathema while Speaker had stayed with them.

Speaker said his goodbyes and promised to return in a year’s time to check on Seolot. Ever-Ember also showed up with a chest full of scrolls, eager to travel. The circle was a bit surprised to see that they had another passenger, but accepted Speaker’s explanation.

As Cash made Nah fly them back towards Nexus Speaker filled them in on what he had done with the storm mother, all the while Ever-Ember quickly concluded that travel by air was not something his stomach agreed to. This also conveniently enough rendered the unicorn indisposed for most of the trip, allowing the rest of the circle to speak freely.

Cash had already been told the story of Speaker and the Storm mother, and both Shimmer and Sully had figured that something big had happened the day before they had arrived – but besting a storm mother? That was apparently a big deal, especially for Shimmer: “Do you have any idea how trouble you’ll be in if you ever show yourself here in the west again – at least if the local gods find out?”

“Well I dealt with one of them, so I think I can take anything else they throw at me – no god has the right to exact tolls from peaceful ponies simply passing through their territory” Speaker calmly and confidently stated.

Smiling at Speakers statement, Shimmer noted that she liked how confident Speaker seemed to have become from this whole ordeal. Speaker insisted that he hadn’t changed, but in his mind he had to concede that he had been far less disturbed by the notion of striking down a defeated god…

“Hey don’t fret – I know that feeling well. Sometimes you meet ponies and spirits who are just beyond parlay. They only respond to actual shows of strength, not just the threat of it” Sullen Hoof said, adding that such ponies were actually annoyingly common to see in Nexus.

Sighing, Speaker simply stated that he still found it regrettable that things so often had to come down to who was willing kill the other pony first: “It just shouldn’t be like that… Creation has enough space, food and resources for all ponies and spirits to live in peace”

“I know…” Shimmer comforted.

Changing the subject, Speaker asked why Red and Sunrise hadn’t come along. The circle was oddly quiet about this… it was first when he asked again that Cash simply said “It would be better if Red told you when we get back, she’s keeping watch over Sunrise”

Speaker didn’t like the sound of that one bit.

Five days of evading realm patrol fleets, finding small islands and other places to rest Nah for the night, and lots and lots of flying later the circle crossed the shores of the scavenger lands, leaving the inland sea in favor of following the Yanaze river for a couple of hours, ultimately arriving in Nexus by nightfall, with Cash dropping off the circle first and then returning a bit later after having set Ever-Ember off in Great-Forks – with the promise that he’d be back for Ever-Ember in a week or so to return the unicorn scholar to the Denzik.

As they trotted the brief distance from the caravansary just outside of Nexus to the city gates the circle filled Speaker in on what had happened since the fight. Apparently Speaker’s face and cutie mark had been spread across the city on warning posters, alerting anyone who could read (which weren’t that many in Nexus outside of its merchant elite, but most ponies recognized a poster warning of dangerous anathema) that Speaker was indeed a dangerous and demon-dealing anathema. He was even being blamed for having corrupted the stone sculptor who thus became be the demon rapist of Harlotry – although there was no proof of this the circle assured Speaker. Beyond that Shimmer reported that there had been several attacks on the clinic following the smear campaign, leaving it a bit of a mess: “…and I have no doubt that it’ll look like hell when we check on it, having been away for over a week and all”

“Great… anything else?” Speaker asked sarcastically, already remembering quite well why he disliked Nexus so much.
Cash sighed: “Two things: There’s a price on your head, courtesy of the immaculates – combined with the warning posters they’ve put up all over the city you should be prepared to fend off attacks, often”

“I’ve already helped you on that front – I’ve spoken to most of the gangs and mercenaries around where we live and where you work, made it clear that it’s not in their best interested to hunt for you” Sullen Hoof noted, making Speaker wonder just how Sullen Hoof ‘made it clear’, but choosing not to ask.

“And secondly, the Council of Entities has requested that we appear before them – we have twenty-four hours now that we’re all back in Nexus… so you have to fix Sunrise real quick” Cash noted, only catching himself on having hinted of Sunrise’s condition after the words had slipped his mouth.

Shimmer and Sullen Hoof gave Cash mean glares – Speaker only became more worried.

At the townhouse, which bore many dozens of marks from posters having been plastered all over the façade – and having had posters from all over the façade removed again, Speaker was finally reunited with Red and Sunrise… or, he met Red, for Sunrise didn’t really seem to be talking.

The warrior pony didn’t give Speaker much in the way of a warm welcome back – she seemed worried, as if her frown had been permanently etched onto her forehead.

“Ok, the others wouldn’t say what happened to Sunrise – talk to me” Speaker implored, as Red opened the door to Sunrise’s room.

The inside of Sunrise’s room was… oh boy. The room smelled like month old bloody murder – the floor and lower parts of the walls looked the parts too, with enough dried bloodstains to make even the hardiest god of soap wish for oblivion. Beyond that the floor was strewn with clumps of bloodied fabric and hair… and in the corner sat Sunrise, shivering, staring into nothingness – the crusts around her eyes seemed to indicate that she wasn’t even blinking. Her mane appeared to have, once again, been roughly sheared if not torn off, and the usual off-white cloak she wore in a shredded and bloodied mess around her. The spiked flail next to her seemed to explain the cloak and the bloodstains… Sunrise had been flagellating herself.

Backing out and closing the door to the room, Speaker turned to Red with a very stern face – his professionalism as a healer masking his absolute horror: “Explain”

Red said that a few weeks before Speaker got bucked to the west she had last seen Sunrise trying to reassemble the local Cult of the Illuminated. It hadn’t been easy, as the local immaculates had picked up on her activities very quickly, trying to stop her at every turn by buying off city officials to deny her permits – or by intimidating former cult members into rejecting her. This had apparently come to head when Red much later found Sunrise in the Harlotry, where she had spent nearly all the money that Cash had given her – a fortune large enough to comfortably raise and equip an army – on prostitutes, drugs and orgies that the ponies in Harlotry were still talking about to this day: “They’re calling it the biggest fuckfest since the unicorn Cynis Pearl-heart held his cutesenara in the Harlotry more than two hundred years ago…”

Speaker’s frown began rivaling the one adorning Red’s forehead: “And this lasted… how long?”

“Days, at least. I had to drag her back here, kicking and screaming. She coated from tail to snout in… hell, I think she a Harlotry bath” Red despaired, sinking to the floor as she regaled the quite sticky situation that she had originally found Sunrise in.

It didn’t take that big a leap of imagination to figure out what a Harlotry bath was – well, there were a few options, but none of them were particularly savory. The real mystery was what had driven Sunrise to such acts of debauchery…

“And she secluded herself after that?” the Solar healer wondered, stroking his beard again to seem more professional than frightened at the prospect of having to actually try to ‘fix’ his friend…

Red shrugged and looked at Speaker with bloodshot eyes: “She didn’t say much… but after I got her home she screamed for a good day or so, just… non-stop screaming. No idea how she managed to breathe during all that – and I don’t know where she got that fucked up whip either, but up until about a week ago she was going at it with that thing, on herself, almost constantly… even at night”

Speaker didn’t try to pretend that he could relate to how it must have been to have been kept awake with worries and the sound of Sunrise flagellating herself bloody: “Fair enough – you go rest. I’ll take it from here…”

It took the rest of the day with careful observation, and some help from Sullen Hoof and Cash in collecting an accurate retelling of what had exactly transpired in the Harlotry, before Speaker dared make any kind of diagnosis. The conclusion he came to wasn’t a pretty one – but if nothing else it made some semblance of sense…

At dinner, with everyone sans Sunrise present, Speaker presented his findings: “Ok, so we all know that Sunrise has always forgone worldly pleasures in favor of spiritual enlightenment, right? Back in Chung Do she went overboard with that, but here… I think it finally got to her. Sully, you had an interesting theory on that, why don’t you tell it?”

“Ok, so, Sunrise bases her lifestyle and the restrictions she’s put on herself on the idea that doing so is the only way to get and maintain spiritual purity… right? Makes sense by most accounts. A happy life and whatnot – but from what I heard, she’d tracked down a couple of former illuminate cultists to a shrine of Burning Feather, the god of intoxicants. I couldn’t get much out of the opium-heads who saw the confrontation, but I think Sunrise was shocked to see the cultists being able to maintain their spiritual connection while also being stoned out of their minds” Sullen Hoof explained, his orichalcum helmet-mask hiding Sully’s confusion on the matter.

Nodding, Speaker added that it was probably a mix of that experience, and the general stress from all the counter-efforts that the immaculates had been running against her, which got to her – necessitating a need to unwind quite fiercely: “…and we are nothing if not exalted, so the scale of her debauchery really shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise. Like Cash said, then the locals are comparing what she did to something a realm unicorn did a few centuries ago”

“Right, but how will you fix her?” Shimmer wondered, not particularly curious about the nitty-gritty details of what Sunrise had actually done – chiefly because it reminded her of her own past full-moon escapades.

For his actual medical diagnosis Speaker said that it seemed that Sunrise had been in seclusion and performed her self-flagelation chiefly as a means to ‘regain control’ of her own body and to detox herself from all the drugs she’d taken. The fact that she hadn’t eaten for weeks – and remained alive – was likely due to charms. Beyond that the primary medical challenge was chiefly a psychological one: “We simply need to make her accept what happened and somehow make her move on in life – she can’t be stuck focusing on that one event”

“Oh there was more than one event – I’ve the rosters of rent-colts assembled for her, she took them on in shifts!” Cash humorously quipped.

The rest of the circle didn’t seem amused.

“Cash, I need you to talk her out of this fugue – I can probably quell madness, not pent up lust and frustration, that’s your area” Speaker implored, having ignored Cash’s previous utterance.

“And you think she’ll let me even come near her?” the merchant stallion said, sounding very much as if Sunrise had already more than once rejected speaking to him.

Smiling, Speaker said that he had that part figured out – with the help of Shimmer: “You just need to drink a little bit of her blood… come on”

Cash was less than enthusiastic about the execution of Speaker’s scheme to fix Sunrise up mentally – but ultimately it resulted in a pony who looked and sounded like Speaker walking into Sunrise’s room… while the real Speaker waited downstairs.

While waiting Speaker tried to busy himself. Looking up at the ceiling under Sunrise’s room it was clear some of the blood had seeped through ever so slightly – it’d be bothersome if nothing else to clean that up. Then the shouting up in the room began, followed by muffled crying. Things were being thrown around, followed by more shouting. This continued for what felt like far too long, but ultimately the rest of the circle couldn’t hear what was being said – meaning that neither of the ponies were shouting anymore, which was probably good.

The sound of hooves coming down the stairs to the tea lounge where the circle was waiting signaled that Cash was – if nothing else – done. The second pair of hooves on the stairs indicated that Cash had been successful, eliciting a collective sigh of relief.

With not that long left from the Council of Entities’s deadline to meet with them, the circle worked quickly to clean up their zenith caste Solar. Shimmer used her charms to make Sunrise’s mane grow out again, while Cash quickly sent a runner to buy a new cloak for the young mare. Speaker and Sully helmed the clean-up, Speaker patching up Sunrise’s wounds while Sully cooked up the most powerful soap he had ever made…

With only three hours until they stood to become wanted for questioning by the Council of Entities, a dubious honor that would mean that the Emissary itself would come after them, the circle assembled before the Council Tower – the highest and most awe-inspiring first age tower in Nexus. It stood at the top of Sentinel Hell, its seamless cream stone façade with its writhing floral murals looking quite alive.

The inside of the Council Tower was no less magnificent. The walls were replete with water murals, the source of the water most likely being some form of first age artifice higher up in the building. The first dozen floors was all office space, the heart of the city’s administration – despite there being plenty of other council offices elsewhere in the city.

To Speaker the sight of a still working first age office building was quite amazing. He doubted that he had been the architect behind it – too many floral motifs – but it was quite wonderful none the less. The central floating platform, akin to the cargo platform in the Denansdor manse, which zoomed up with the circle towards the highest levels, the supposedly infamous Council chambers, seemed to run on by simple automated pattern: Going from top floor to bottom floor and then back again, stopping on each floor for about ten seconds – meaning that each stop was brief and full of occasionally frantic commotion as meek officeworker-ponies tried to make sure that they got off on the right floor.

The rest of the circle seemed… less enthused.

Cash looked oddly worried. Speaker guessed that Cash had probably heard too many tall tales of what the Council did and didn’t do. Sullen Hoof looked similarly apprehensive, while Shimmer seemed somewhat neutral about the whole deal: She had voiced her opinioned of the council’s allowing of the exploitation of the ponies that worked in Nexus, of how she didn’t like the fact that if you got fired you could technically be enslaved on the spot since citizenship was a very ephemeral thing in Nexus, awarded automatically but only to those gainfully employed or otherwise doing profitable business… and by Council civility no citizen of Nexus could be enslaved.

Of course, at the same time she was undeniably impressed that mere mortal ponies could establish such a powerful financial entity without supernatural aid.

Sunrise looked like she should probably have stayed at home in bed - or have been left at a restaurant

Only Red, with her mercenary spirit, appeared to look happy about meeting the council – and seeing that they had at least another fifteen minutes of going up before they reached the floor with the council chamber Speaker inquired why she looked so pleased.

“Well, you got Sunrise talking again… that’s already amazing, but the real reason I’m happy is that the council probably wants to talk to us about my exploits” Red beamed.

Speaker reminded Red that it was technically Cash who talked Sunrise into rejoining civilization, but beyond that he hadn’t really heard much of Red’s exploits: “What exactly have you been doing?”

“Oh you haven’t heard? When we got here I poked around the fighting rings in the Bastion district, looking for some action. The old champion had up and disappeared – real shady sounding, so all the dojos were competing in the fighting arenas for who would produce the next champ, plus a lot of the mercenary companies were offering up challengers, as well as the walk-ins like me” Red happily said.

Nodding, Speaker recalled that a few of the ponies he’d healed at the clinic had said something about getting their injuries in the Bastion district arenas: “Maybe some of your handywork?”

“Who knows – but I doubt it. Once I joined the fray I was quickly moved up to the Magic League, with the blooded and unicorn ponies” Red explained, noting that her official story was that she was a god-blooded pony in order to explain why her martial techniques left glowing vapor trails or gave her shining hooves.

To hear that Red had managed to never once spend enough essence to actually flare her anima or even reveal her caste mark thoroughly impressed Speaker. Red followed up by saying that after she had beaten the Iron Brotherhood’s prime contender, leaving that unicorn with a broken horn, she had started getting a lot offers – a lot of bookies and gambling houses that wanted her to either taking dives, or start winning in some very specific ways, which resulted in at least half a dozen attempted ambushes when she rejected them.

“I’m going to assume that since you’re whole and alive that you survived these ambushes?” Speaker joked, trying to see if he could spot any hidden injuries on Red under her casual clothes – but they were too baggy to reveal anything.

Craning her neck and smiling in a very pleased fashion, Red noted that not only did she handle herself quite well – she also made the ambushes stop shortly after they began: “Word spread fairly quickly after I wrapped the ponies from the third ambush around the ones from the fourth and left them in the middle of the street, outside the Bloodhoof arena – of course, then I started getting offers to become muscle for various even shadier jokers… plus offers from half a dozen mercenary outfits who wanted to hire me as champion”

Speaker was about to ask what Red had said to the mercenary outfit offers, even if the answer was a given, when the floating platform came to a halt at the highest level of the Council Tower – the level of the Council chamber.