The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The dinner that Trixie’s servants had prepared were clearly marked by her lordship’s own personal preferences: Baked pinecones from the local forests, apple cider, and some kind of ground up creamy nut spread on dry biscuits. That Sullen Hoof was able to hold his tongue as he nibbled this abomination of cuisine was a testament to the Orichalcum Chef’s resolve, but at the same time Sullen Hoof had promised the rest of the circle that he would only speak up about the food itself if his expert taste-buds detected poison or other things in the food that just should be there… and seeing Trixie lather up the nut spread on the baked pinecones was certainly getting close to that.

While pretending to enjoy the meal – knowing all too well that Sullen Hoof could undoubtedly have made something far more interested with a bowl of mud and moldy rice – Cash politely followed up on the previous concessions that Trixie had agreed to: “So, regarding the dismissal and banishment of the marottes and firmin, when will that be possible?”

The Great and Powerful Trixie looked pensive for a moment, then began: “The Great and po-“ but started over after Red sent her a particularly nasty glare: “I should be able to begin the ritual after dinner”

“Good, the sooner the better. Say, what kind of ritual are we talking about? I’ve seen dozens of marottes and firmin here – the usual demon banishment spell only works on one at a time” Shimmer noted, also pondering if she could subtly shapeshift her jaw and teeth to easier eat the baked pine cones.

Trixie reassured Shimmer that such wouldn’t be necessary: “The terms of their summoning state that they are to stay until such a time that they are not needed. I simply have to order them gathered up and then make the proper announcement”

Shimmer gave Speaker a very worried look – but Sunrise spoke first: “No dismissal spell? No spreading of sands? How do you expect them to return to the demon realm?”

Despite his memories of sorcery being more of a ‘I recall having done this and that’ sort, then Speaker knew enough that sands were an integral part of summoning and peaceful banishment… it had something to do with the demon realm being surrounded by an infinite border of sandy desert as part of the prison nature of the demon realm, so to summon demons or send them back peaceably you needed to cover an area of ground in sand so it stretch beyond the summoners line of sight. It didn’t have to be much, it could just be a patch of sand that stretched around a corner, or a vast swath of desert that stretched beyond the horizon – demons could use both to appear and leave… and Trixie was using none of it.

The unicorn looked unperturbed: “Sand? What? No, I just have to tell them to go home”

“No, that’s not demon banishment works!” Shimmer shouted, her purple dreadlocks bobbing up and down as she reared up and stomped in the ground demonstratively. The mere thought of thusly releasing a swarm of demons into creation horrified Shimmer.

Between with everyone in the circle looking at her in a very “if you keep doing what you’re doing we’ll hurt you” – Cash and Sullen hoof subtly communicated their dismay, while Red and Shimmer were very direct in expressing their dismay.

Looking between Sunrise and Shimmer, Trixie took a series of slow but deep breaths, evaluating her options. She had little love for her demon minions, but they were HER minions – and the only reason she was doing as these other ponies ‘had suggested’ was because… well… they were evidently greater and more powerful than her.

This did not sit well with Trixie – but by her own adminision she was tirred of having tearful mares taking up her time when she was holding court, requesting that their foals be returned to them after those bundles of demon yarn stole them. Why couldn’t they see that those demons were needed to build Trixie a magnificent palace? The locals certainly couldn’t provide such craftsponyship, but still... it would be nice to have less complaints. Perhaps there was a way to keep at least some of them in a more disciplined form, while banishing or sacrificing the rest?

Turning to the assembled pile of wiggling string demons and overgrown infernal hedgehogs, Trixie flared her anima – swirling wind and slight crackles of lightning appearing around her, making for an awe-inspiring display of power: “Demon minions, hear your mistress! The Great and Powerful Trixie tires of the complains she constantly receives of missing pets and kidnapped foals, so… something has to change”

Looking at the circle, Trixie smiled: “These fine ponies will arrange for the banishment ritual – and will pick out those among you who are to be sent back to the dark place from whence you came”

As Trixie trotted over to the circle, Speaker couldn’t help but think wether this was a good idea. She could at least have told the circle if she’d planned on having them do the banishing… but none of them had known that she didn’t really know to banish demons.

Damnit. Even without his first age memories, then Speaker knew that the very few sorcerers in Lookshy schooled in summoning were first taught how to banish demons – just like Shimmer and Sunrise had done back in Sully’s old manse.

Cash sighed, looking at Red and Sunrise: “How quickly can you two do away with all of them?”

Sunrise hadn’t really exhibited any happy or cheerful emotions since… well… she’d brainwashed herself back in Chung Do – and that had been a kind of manic and crazed kind of happy. With what Cash had just said to her and Red, Sunrise smiled… a lot. It was a menacing smile, one of great zeal that yearned to smite demons – especially considering what Trixie had just said about missing pets and foals. The firmin, their minds little more than that of dogs, sensed her righteous fury and became unseasy.

“We could probably do away with them fairly quickly...” Red said confidently.

It was then that Trixie fell over as she was sauntering away from the circle… and then she started wiggling around, as if going through spasms or having a seizure of some kind. Speaker rushed over to her and fired off his medical diagnostic charm – in an instant he knew everything there was to know about Trixie’s body – but… what he learned made him recoil in horror…

Shimmer, sensing Speaker’s distress as he stumbled backwards away, ran up to him: “What’s wrong?”

“Trixie… she’s – that’s not a pony” Speaker said, not knowing what to think.

Raising a hoof to strike down at Trixie, Shimmer’s hoof dissolved into protean moonsilver then reformed as a metallic clawed… thing. With these claws she ripped Trixie’s spar-spangled cloak from the unicorn mare’s body, revealing a strangely pale form underneath. It looked lumpy, wrong, misshapen – not like that of a pony… but a quick glance with essence sight explained it all: “She’s got a perronele on her – it’s choking her!”

Shimmer knew well how to deal with a perronele. She’d fought plenty of realm unicorns outfitted with living demon armor, for such was the nature of the slimy creatures – they would adhere to their master, or those they were ordered to slither up on – and since they would bond seamlessly with their ‘wearers’ flesh, they could be worn underneath regular armor… which made for really tough foes – unless you knew charms that would specifically harm demons and the like…

Slashing with her claws at Trixie’s flanks and ribs, the misshapen form jiggled unnaturally and bled a milky white kind of puss – then about three dozen shrieking mouths formed on Trixie’s body, all hollering at Shimmer to stop like a choir of raspy voices: “Stop or she dies!”

“I don’t have to fiend, you’re going back to malfeas!” Shimmer called out, focusing on the now revealed demon as she willed into function the ancient spell simply known as ‘first circle demon banishment’ – probably because it was less a spell and more an ancient invocation of the primordial surrender oaths. Trixie’s flesh seemed to twist and turn from light blue to murky white, but then the perronele was ejected from the unicorn’s body as the banishment spell took hold of the demon and in a silvery flash. Trixie instantly sucked in a heavy breath of air – her demon armor no longer trying to suffocate her, but as she staggered to her feet, looking at the tangled mass of marrotes who appeared to be weaving themselves together to form tightly wound rolls, while the firmin seemed to be mindlessly making piles of oddly shaped needles.

It was at that moment that Trixie looked back at Speaker, her coat still ruffled and wet from the slime demon that had been covering her, with an absolutely horrified look in her eyes. Then her gut burst open, but not in any ordinary way, as a large beetle with far more legs than were normal leapt out of Trixie. The ‘wound’ it left was unlike anything Speaker had ever seen, and while Shimmer seemed to tangle with the demonic insect, the solar healer despaired as he tried to make sense of it: Trixie’s flesh was not torn, it was simply… open, and there were ‘droplets’ of it on the ground, with even her organs having been ‘parted’, and much of her insides had been muddled together, like how a shallow puddle after a foal had jumped around in it.

The commotion with Trixie and the demons inside and on her had not gone un-noticed, but without any definitive orders to go ahead and banish all the assembled demons Red hesitated – and she held Sunrise back as well, unsure whether the holy mare’s voice would be able to handle that many demons at once before they would overwhelm her and then them. Sure, Red knew that she could hold her own no problem against the bloodhounds and whatnot, but how would use a blade to turn away a magic dance from living silver flames? And did that bug just swim out of the unicorn?

Red longed for the fighting pits of Nexus – life in those were so much simpler, and they came applause as well.

Despite Speaker’s supernatural healing powers then it was clear to him that pretty much everything inside of Trixie’s chest and stomach was blurred together – as if all of her organs and most of her bowels had been dissolved and mixed together. Her face was less tortured now that he’d managed to use his anesthetic charm, but the only way he could see fixing her would be removing all of her organs, then using his charms to regenerate them all – and anesthetic or not, that wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. It would also be troublesome, since it meant removing Trixie’s ability to breathe while doing it all. The only upside that Speaker could think of would be that with his instant treatment metholody charm, then this could all be over quickly.

Cash, having looked back and forth between the demon string bundles, the needle demons and Trixie, wasn’t really sure what to do. Shimmer seemed to have de-legged the demon beetle, and Speaker was gutting the unicorn – Sullen Hoof was nowhere to be seen, probably using stealth charms to sneak away and get an overview of the situation… and what were those marrotes building? They were stringing their legs together into thick rolls, or like logs, and they were building them together. Oh well, Speaker and Shimmer seemed to have their end under control – and Trixie didn’t look gutted anymore: “You lot ok?”

“She’ll live – but I have no idea why her demon armor and stomach bottle bug suddenly tried to kill her. No demon bound properly should be able to suddenly do that” Shimmer noted, Speaker giving her a nod about Trixie’s condition now that he’d basically regrown everything he’d removed, leaving a very ugly looking pile of organ and bowel tissue to spread an expanding puddle around it. Not even flies seemed to want to go near it.

“Trixie, what’s going on?” Speaker asked, the unicorn mare finally having drawn enough breath to speak again.
The horrified look on the dragonblooded Trixie’s face – even before she spoke – told Speaker that something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell what: “They… Fluvio said they didn’t need me anymore”

“Shimmer, does that mean what I think it means?” Speaker tentatively asked, knowing all too well what the answer most likely was – and what the implications of it was…

The lunar wasted no time answering, instead shifting into her beast-pony war-form and taking to the skies. She was quickly interrupted, as the marrotes – who had built themselves into a series of ballistas, fired several of their own as living munitions at her, entangling her.

“Sunrise, sing!” Speaker barely managed to shout before the pain of silver fire eating at his soul wracked him with torment – silver flame demons dancing their dance of extinguishment from somewhere unseen, targeting him. In what few moments of clarity Speaker he could muster, he was able to piece together that this meant that there was something or someone coordinating the demons.

Sunrise quickly inhaled to bring her smiting words to bear, but found her and Red bombarded by the firmin demons who threw shuriken-like sharp flat disks at them with surprising speed and force. Red was able to parry most of them, and the rest didn’t harm Sunrise thanks to her advanced defensive charms, but they were all targeting her head – making concentrating for the verbal smiting charm rather impossible.

Suddenly the marrote balistas collapsed, their draw-strings of extremely taught inter-woven marrote legs snaping as cleavers sailed through the air around them in a tornado of cooking equipment and surprisingly sharp or pointy vegetables, all hardened by the essence of one Orichalcum Chef – who in turn quickly found himself dodging dozens of string-thin but demonically strong legs that were trying to kick him to death.

Shimmer found herself torn as she looked at Speaker, silver flames bursting from his eyes, ears, nostrils and mouth – and then Red and Sunrise. She knew quite well that if Sunrise could get a moment of uninterrupted peace she could smite all these damnable creatures of darkness around them, but she so wanted to help Speaker as well by getting him away from whatever was hurting him.
Ultimately it turned out to be a moot point: The firmin and marrotes suddenly disengaged their targets and slinked away, and the flames that assailed Speaker died down – but in return the ground rumbled, loudly.

The castle courtyard quickly became a very perilously place to be, as the walls began to crumble – and moments later the main keep collapsed as well, revealing that most of the city, built with timbers as opposed to the stone brick castle, was holding up a lot better… but there was also a clamoring of panicking ponies coming from the city.

“What’s happening? Why did the demons retreat?” Red shouted as she turned around, trying to spot whatever the source of the tremors could be, as well as keeping an eye out for demons.

To Speaker the quaking of the ground was a lesser threat compared to the demon issue, and Trixie had yet to explain what this ‘Fluvio’ had meant by not needing her anymore – but before such questions could be asked the answer to both the quakes and the demon retreat reared its head at the center of the city, as a giant demon reared it head… and its crown of broken teeth.

From the crumbled castle walls the circle watched in horror as a stone-skinned demon, with boulders as muscles and dragon-legs beneath its bulk laughed heartedly – with a deep and menacing voice. As it took its first few steps the ground quaked ever so slight, and its head reached just above most of the one-story houses it passed, making the demon far bigger than anything the circle had so far tangled with.

“What is that thing? Trixie, is this something you’ve summoned?” Shimmer angrily shouted, her war-form’s beak clacking together as she rapidly spoke.

The unicorn took one brief look, then hid behind rubble as her voice quivered: “No, never seen it before”

The look on unicorn said it all: She clearly knew that she was way in over her head – and that it was probably her fault somehow… even if it wasn’t entirely apparent how at the moment. When Speaker had a look at the thing he found that he recognized it, for he had known one of the two Solars who had defeated the demon during the primordial war: “That’s Octavian, defining soul of the Ravine of whispers – a second circle demon”

“Can we kill it?” Red wondered.

Speaker shrugged and stated: “You don’t kill a second circle demon, they come back to life a year and a day after falling in battle...” but after seeing Red’s expression change from eagerness to despair, he quickly added that the demon would respawn in the demon realm: “So killing him here will work – yes – but he’s tough as hell, one of the most powerful second circle demons”

“A worthy opponent then” Red cheerfully stated, her grin saying all that needed to be said of her martial intent.

Sunrise was less eager to engage the demon directly, being more worried about how such a thing could have appeared in the first place: “Wait, unicorn’s can’t summon second circle demons – can they?”

“Not even in the realm – you’re right, so how did ugly down there appear?” Shimmer wondered, feeling reasonably apprehensive about fighting such a thing consider what happened the last few times she engaged a big muscly monster… mainly that she usually ended up with a limb missing or being bisected.
“Trixie, how many demons did you summon in total?” Speaker inquired, having observed the city with essence sight and not liking what he was seeing…

The unicorn looked up at the old stallion and shrugged: “I stopped counting. One per day – for about half a year”

Shimmer quickly half-stepped half-flew over to Trixie and began shouting: “One per day? That’s not how you summon an army of demons – you summon that in one sitting. What kind of half-flanked ritual did you use for this?”

Trixie looked up at Shimmer with tears in her eyes. This so wasn’t what she’d wanted – and her belly still hurt a little from having been disemboveled and then ‘fixed’ again – and everything was falling apart – and now the western mare was a monster! It was just too much: “I… I don’t know, I just did what Fluvio told me to do, like, draw some marks in the ground and do some weird chants”

The unicorn floated up a rock shard and traced a few sigils in the ground and recited a bit of what she remembered from the words that her demon-armor/advisor had instructed her in… and Sunrise quickly face-hoofed upon realizing what Trixie had done, for she had been taught in Great Words that what Trixie had done was very much forbidden: “That’s the ritual of spirit beckoning – for summoning unbound demons…”

“But why would they obey her then?” Cash wondered, not seeing how that would make sense at all.

Shimmer shook her head with all three eyes closed: “It’s obvious: So she would summon more demons – and be a front to whatever they were doing in summoning their true master”

“Perhaps, but demons cannot summon other demons – this Octavian demon shouldn’t have been able to appear” Sunrise insisted.
Speaker took a deep breath: “The marrotes and firmin – that’s why they were summoned too. Trixie, they’ve been rebuilding the city, haven’t they?”

“Yes, they said it would be more grand and worthy of their great and power mistress… but they lied” Trixie said in between sobs and sniffles.

Raising an eyebrow at Trixie’s wording, Speaker shook his head: “No, they weren’t lying – they just didn’t mean you. Shimmer, check out the geomancy of the city – it’s all wrong for a terrestrial city, but you know what looks like? A tiny piece of Malfeas”
Shimmer gasped as she peeked over the rubble down at the city with her third eye: “Crap… so that’s how they did it”

Red and Sullen Hoof both expressed confusion over how corrupting local essence flows would allow for a demon lord to appear in creation. Speaker quickly explained that in the first age some Solars, including himself, built several spots around Creation that uniquely identical geomancy: “Because if it matches perfectly then… well… those places literally become the same place – the demons have done the same, making the center of the city into a part of hell, allowing their lord, the master of that bit of hell, to pass through… as well as any number of other demons”

“Well that’s bad” Red glumly said, not enjoying the prospect of fighting an endless tide of demons.

Shimmer laughed as she began to shapeshift her war-form’s feathers into a carapace of essence-hardened bone: “No it’s not – because its real ease to mess up geomancy! We just need to wreck all the things the firmin and puppeteers have built, or enough of it, and Octavian will be sucked back into hell!”

Red and Sullen Hoof both looked at Speaker as if asking whether Shimmer was right. Speaker nodded: “Well she’s sort of right – but I’m not sure if wrecking the city will be enough. Malfeas is a chaotic place, often ruined when the demons fight among each other… so I think the best thing would be to rebuild the city in a different geomantic pattern”

“And how long will it take you to build a few buildings to do that?” Red asked, as if also asking “How long do I need to hold the demons at bay?”

Shaking his head, Speaker sighed deeply and willed forth Gift: “Not an option – too much of the city is built out of wood. Even Shimmer had to summon elementals to bring in stone for the Chung Do reconstruction. Our best bet is getting Sunrise in the middle of them and her singing them into oblivion”

“Then get on, the lunar express is going straight there” Shimmer said, extending a bone-plated wing for the circle as a gang-way for them to get up on her via.

As the rest of the circle crowded up on Shimmer’s back in her huge beast-pony form, Speaker and Red talked tactics. Sullen Hoof insisted that he had a quick way of dealing with the demon lord, while Speaker was more worried about the Saigoth dancers, the demonic silver flames, since they would be able to attack the circle from hidden locations with their dances.

“Deadling… seriously, these demons are fucked up” Red sighed, forming a new shimering grand daiklaive out of her own essence. It floated above the circle and was almost longer than Shimmer was in her war-form.

Cash, having remained fairly quiet during the in-flight tactics discussion, nodded while looking rather thoughtful.

“Just stay out of trouble Cash – I don’t think these demons are willing to stop and chat once we get there” Red mused.

Shimmer hadn’t been kidding when she had said that she planned to fly into the thick of the demon infestation. As she rose from the ruined castle courtyard she dove straight for the demon lord, plowing through several webs of raised marrote legs – but her bone-armor sliced through them with ease.

The circle disembarked and enganged their targets as Shimmer passed them, Cash getting off early as they passed through the outer perimeter of demon leg-string webs, while the rest got closer to the demon lord itself.

As planned Sunrise remained on Shimmer’s back, releasing a righteous aria that trailed an ashen howl on pain from the demons in range of her holy smiting. Shimmer in turn shielded Sunrise from the hail of firmin needles flung at them, while Red and Speaker engaged whatever demons they could spot.

Sullen Hoof had leapt off Shimmer so that he would land very close to the demon lord. Retrieving from elsewhere a hoof-full of small and delicate looking crystal vials, Sullen Hoof tumbled to a halt in front of the grand demon…

It had looked big from up at the castle. Up close it looked grotesque, like a living statue of roughly hewn dirty brown rock, all covered in black oil that kept dripping from its body… it also had a shrunken pony head hanging by its belt, how lovely. To Sullen Hoof it mattered little, for it was about to perish by its own might.

With no fanfare or dramatic gestures the night caste Solar pony emptied the contents of the vials into the air before him, it floating like a slightly opaque sphere of liquid before him. With a furious thought the sphere was jettisoned towards the demon lord as a fine misty spray, covering most of the demon’s stony bulk.

The demon lord smacked its lips, its broad mouth extending far beyond what a normal pony mouth would on a face, making Octavian’s head look oddly tiny compared to its cavernous maw full of sharp white jade teeth: “What is this? An attempt to flavor me?”

With lightning speed the demon reached for Sullen Hoof, who adroitly dodged and leapt up Octavion’s outstretched arm, pots and pans appearing from elsewhere and quickly picking up speed as Sullen Hoof brought forth his tornado of cooking implements – pummeling the demon who only smiled at the seemingly feeble dents made on its stony exterior.

“Foolish pony, I am the living tower! No food can tempt me, for my oil is all I can ever taste!” the demon lord rumbled, Sullen Hoof suddenly finding his hooves slipping – despite his supernatural balance charms being in effect.

With a surprisingly nimble twist the demon shook Sullen Hoof of himself and caught him mid-air, ignoring the cast-iron cookware that spun around the pony, as Octavian brought the solar up to his face: “Did the idiot sorceress send her chef to battle me? Bring your mistress before me, that I may claim this place as my own by right of bloody conquest”

It never struck Sullen Hoof as odd that a demon lord spoke the river tongue, but he wasn’t in much of a position to indulge in intellectual or linguistic pursuits. With a trick of the tail Sullen Hoof briefly dissolved into multiple shadows that each leapt in a different direction, with the real Sullen Hoof appearing up on Octavian’s head. He gave no retort to the demon’s demands, merely dodging and striking over and over as demon lord tried to swat him.

With the demon lord suitably distracted, albeit not eating himself as was planned, Shimmer swooped in from above with Sunrise on her back, having left a trail of smoldering demon husks in their wake from Sunrise’s furious oratorical smiting. Like a golden comet they came around a clock-tower and were almost instantly in range for Sunrise to give Octavian a word or two on holy fire – but as they approached the demon lord, in a brief moment of surprisingly situational awareness spun around a flung an arm in Shimmer’s direction. The lunar and solar were very much out of reach of the demon lord, but that didn’t seem to bother Octavian, as the oil on his arm and stone-clawed fist were propelled further beyond, splattering across the two… and thus Shimmer quickly plummeted from the sky, shrieking like a large bird. Sunrise on the other hoof didn’t speak a word as she fell, probably because she either expected Shimmer right herself and carry her on, or because she had survived worse falls thanks to her shield charms.

Speaker heard Shimmer cry out and saw the lunar and Sunrise plummet. It was a short fall, Shimmer having come in low to buzz Octavian with a verbal barrage from her passenger – but why would Shimmer fall from the sky? He’d never seen that happen before. Moving away from the firmin he was exchanging volleys with, alternately flinging Gift and firmin needle-spears that he’d parried and caught back at the demons, augmented by his spirit/demon slaying charm, Speaker quickly found Shimmer writhing around on the ground in her animal form in the middle of the thatched house she had crashed into…

“What’s wrong Shimmer, speak to me!” Speaker inquired, trying to do a quick diagnosis of the war-formed Lunar – but there seemed to be something interfering with usual instant diagnosis charm.

As he tried to poke and prod Shimmer to get a sense of what was wrong, aside from most of her being covered in black demon oil – which while sticky didn’t seem to adversely affect Speaker at all as he cleared most of the stuff away from Shimmer’s face – he suddenly felt a hoof on his shoulder. Turning, he saw that it was Sunrise… who was trying to mouth something, but not saying a word. It looked almost as if she was drunk, but it quickly became apparent that she was more distressed than intoxicated.

“I… cangt heer” Sunrise finally managed to say, clearly sounding very uncertain as to whether what she wanted to say was what she was actually saying – for by her own testimony, then she had been struck deaf, and Speaker quickly spotted the culprit: Demon oil had splattered on her left ear. This quickly explained why Shimmer hadn’t responded to Speaker at all: Her entire face had been covered in oil… she couldn’t hear him – and perhaps the oil had affected other bits of her as well!

Quickly examining the lunar’s eyes, Speaker saw that they had turned completely black. Blindness. No wonder Shimmer had found herself unable to fly properly... she hadn’t been able to see where she was going anymore!

“Red, can you hear me? We need to end this, now!” Speaker shouted.

With a little bit of quick tactical thinking, Speaker quickly wrote a few words on the ground and pointed Sunrise at them: “Guard Shimmer, your smiting charm works by holy intent, don’t need words, keep going”

Sunrise nodded as Speaker ran off to find Red – he had to, for they were the two only capable warriors left in the circle who could take on Octavian, assuming that Sullen Hoof had managed to soften the demon lord up as planned, because judging from the noise in the demon lord’s direction then Sully hadn’t managed to get the demon lord to eat himself to death. Oh this was bad… with Shimmer out of the picture, and Sunrise looking unsure of how to use her smiting charm without her voice, this wasn’t plan B anymore. Plan C was right out, and plan D wouldn’t work without Shimmer being able to turn into fish.

As he galloped towards the spot where Red was supposed to be thinning out the demons, Speaker couldn’t help but spot the absolutely terrified pony citizens that peered out from their homes with fear in their eyes. Taking a deep breath Speaker steeled himself, knowing full well that all of the ponies in the city were doomed if him and Red didn’t stop Octavian. A stray thought occurred to Speaker: He had never learned the name of the city… he had no idea what the name of the place he was defending was.

“Red, where are you?” Speaker shouted, as Octavian suddenly tumbled through a half-timbered building, the thatch clinging to his oil form as the structure collapsed around him in a plume of dust and horrid shrieks from the ponies that had been hiding inside. It was like the original fight with the Bodhisattva in that village north of Chung Do… also Red was apparently the reason that Octavian had toppled over.

With a battle fury that creation had not seen for over three thousand years, Red had struck at the demon lord with her blade forged of her own golden essence. Sure, the demon lord had parried the blow effortlessly with his giant staff of strangely discolored and most likely demonic iron, but the force of the impact had sent Octavian reeling, despite being many times larger than Red, which had allowed Sullen Hoof to pummel him even more, and at this point the demon lord did look a bit worse for wear thanks to the masterful strikes from the most blessed culinarian: Sullen Hoof had literally been tenderizing the demon lord stone-wrought flesh, making it so much easier for Red to cleave it with her grand daiklaive, which meant that Octavian did have several lacerations which bled more of the black oil that coated his form… black oil that stained the dirt it landed on white.

The fight between Octavian and the two solars might even have been won by the two exalts, had Octavian not already struck his fair share of blows against Sullen Hoof and Red. Speaker could tell that the night caste solar wasn’t using his left fore-leg at all, and while Red was wearing her armor then quite a lot that armor was broken and shattered from repeated blows from the demon lord – and her injuries underneath left a constant trail of blood that made Speaker wonder how Red was even still conscious.

With a final twirl of his mighty staff Octavian struck Red down while mid-leap before Speaker could even think about joining the fight, impacting with such a force that the ground shook once more – and again when Red impacted the ground, her blade of essence exploding in a puff of white and golden sparkles as Red was rendered unconscious… or worse – it wasn’t exactly easy to tell from the dust and debris of the house she had been whacked into.

Speaker rushed to Red’s aid, but before he could get to her they were joined by Sullen Hoof as he was flung into the building – and without even the broken armor that Red had been wearing, then Sullen Hoof was much worse for wear.

Spending far too much essence, Speaker pumped life back into the two ponies – bringing them back from the very brink of death in but a heartbeat – but at the price of leaving his back turned to Octavian, the demon lord, who raised his mighty staff of malfean iron for a final blow to finish all three solars in one blow. This would be Octavian’s greatest victory! Killing three solars in one blow would cement his reputation in Malfeas… and with any luck there would be at least enough remains of their skulls, that they might join the shrunken head of the solar that Octavian already wore around his belt.

Speaker only managed to turn in time to see the towering demon lord begin his strike. The motion was so swift, and with a strength that had conquered the single largest hold within the demon realm – an entire quarter of one of the many shells of malfeas’s twisted and surreal geography, giving Octavian the grand title of “The Quarter Prince” among other demons.

The staff of malfean iron, tempered with acid from the Sea that Marched Against the Flame, flew through the air – leaving mournful gasps from the few air elementals that were in the area – and Speaker wished in that split second that he had made another deal with Lytek to not remove any memories, next time he was to reincarnate… In fact, that should totally be on his to-do list if he ever got the chance. Of course, he wouldn’t, now that Octavian had killed him.

Wait… hold on. He hadn’t been killed yet.

Looking up, Speaker saw the demon lord howling a scream that could not be heard by pony ears, as the demon lord faded from the reality that was Creation. Perplexed, Speaker looked around to find a reason for Octavian’s sudden disappearance…