The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The Palace of Oathes Eternal was surprisingly easy to find: All the circle had to do was tell their aerial rickshaw to take them to it. Getting inside turned out to be slightly more difficult – as Heath Rose had warned the circle to under no circumstances reveal that they were solars trying to gain entry, because that would set off alarms across Yu-Shan.

Thus, the circle settled down for the night in a supposedly small and trashy heavenly hotel. The toilets were merely solid gold, not solid diamond – oh the horror. Shimmer and Sullen Hoof cased the palace while the rest of the circle slept, and in the morning they compared notes.

Shimmer had concluded that the few shapes of spirits she could shift into would suffice to pass herself off as a lowly messenger spirit, which should be enough to get her inside the palace. Sullen Hoof had similarly played around with his disguise charms, masking his very essence as that of a fairly high ranking god, which should automatically give him the authority to stride by the celestial lions that guarded the palace gates.

With this information the circle cooked up a plan where Shimmer and Sully would approach the palace together, Sully claiming to have received a rather insulting message from the palace regarding him having supposedly broken some ancient oath and now facing some flavor of punishment – unless Sully came over to bribe the gods that worked in the palace archive. From what Cash and Sunrise had gathered from other heavenly sources they had prayed to and consulted then that kind of might-be scandal would be a perfect diversion for Cash to sneak into the archives.

Of course, Cash would need to get past the celestial lions to begin with. Shimmer had a simple plan for that: “I can shapeshift you into a flea and hide you on me or Sully – then you jump off and shake off the shift when you get into the archive”

“Yes, but the guardian spirits at Lytek’s office spotted you doing that, hiding in my mane as a flea, in a heartbeat” Speaker pointed out.

Cash gestured for Speaker that his worries were unfounded: “Lytek’s security was insane compared to what we’re dealing with here. They have four celestial lions covering fifty miles of front steps and entrances. I doubt we’ll get caught”

“It’ll only be suspicious if you only have one flea like that… add a few more and it’ll look like some kind of strange collection” Sullen Hoof suggested, looking at Sunrise and Speaker.

Thus, the whole circle donned disguises: Sullen Hoof and Shimmer as spirits, the rest being turned into fleas by Shimmer and dotted around her air-elemental hair.
Approaching the three-hundred steps of stairs that made up the front of the Palace of Oathes Eternal, the two exalts looked very spirit-like. Shimmer was floated just above the golden cobble, while Sullen Hoof’s disguise charm worked illusions into his appearance, giving him a slightly semi-transparent appearance, along with several orbiting lights floating around him and his now purple glowing robes.

Stomping up the stairs quite demonstratively, Sullen Hoof barely even drew a single look from the celestial lions, and even less attention was given to the quite meek looking air elemental that was following behind him at a respectful distance.

Throwing open the doors to the palace, Sullen Hoof shouted: “Who here said I dun goofed?”

Even as fleas, Sunrise, Speaker and Cash found Sullen Hoof’s subsequent chewing of scenery and hammy acting quite amusing, as he paraded around as if he owned the place – shouting down clerks and administrative spirits, none of which could seem to find the source of the forged message that Sullen Hoof and Cash had cooked up, which looked quite official and legit, because it was it traced off an official missive Sully had briefly stolen from a messenger spirit earlier last night.

The fake message Sullen Hoof claimed to have received had been written in such a way that it linked him to an oath he, as a god, had supposedly sworn to Cash’s previous incarnation – and thus Sully demanded access to the records to see exactly what he had done wrong, because he was certain he had made no such promise.
In a mortal setting this ruse would likely not have worked, but in Yu-Shan most gods and spirits instinctively sense the potency and power of other gods and spirits around them, using that sense to indicate if a god is more powerful and thus automatically higher ranking than them. With Sully’s disguise charms he felt to them as if he was someone they weren’t even allowed to look at directly – and so his request, while technically not legal to abide to, was obviously carried out.

Shimmer, in the form of a lowly air elemental messenger, was in turn dragged along by Sullen Hoof so that Sully could show the foolish messenger just how wrong it was – because if there was one thing that Yu-Shan seemed to have in endless amounts it was petty gods, so such behavior was not considered strange or suspicious at all.

As the false god and the false spirit was led out of the main lobby, through a vast heavenly cubicle farm where spirits monitored various ‘active’ oaths for breaches, they ultimately found themselves in a massive vault-like hall of indestructible jade-steel and orichalcum that seemed to stretch into infinity. From left to right the archive proper of Solar Eclipse Caste oathes went as far as the eye could see, with rows upon rows of shelves, the only sources of light being several skylights in the ceiling that seemed miles away.

The trembling and absolutely miserable little spirit that had drawn the short straw and been chosen to lead the angry high ranking god that was Sully, along with Sully’s whipping-spirit, quickly flittered among the seemingly endless stacks of scrolls, displaying a supernatural ability to navigate the otherwise poorly labeled and arcanely indexed oath scrolls racks.

After about an hour of searching the three found themselves at the mile-long shelves that contained all the oaths that Cash’s exaltation was linked to. Most were caked in dust to the point that they seemed impossible to dig out – while at the very end of the shelves a few hundred fresh scrolls gleamed, the sheets of indestructible gold they were written on having yet to lose their luster to the millennia of dust.

The clerk spirit which had led them to the shelves moved aside so that Sully could look for the scrolls marked with his name. Of course, there were none for the divine name and title Sullen Hoof had given was false. Also, the clerk spirit shouldn’t be there to see the circle appear and rifle through the scrolls… for it would no doubt call for help and raise all kinds of less than fun alarms.

The solution came from Cash, who whispered to Shimmer that she should suggest that the clerk spirit fetch the Sully-god refreshments on the double – that would buy them time.

“You, feeble little excuse of a godling, fetch my master refreshments! Now!” Shimmer barked, her air-elemental form lending her voice the power of a gale wind – which blew quite a few scrolls around, though she did have the sense to shout away from the shelves with Cash’s oaths.

The tiny spirit, upon extracting itself from a toppled shelf and despairing at the new mess which it would no doubt be forced to clean up later, whined: “But I’m supposed to leave anyone alone in here… its regulation”

Sullen Hoof slowly put down the scroll who’s magical seal he was examining – each seal named those the oath concerned – and slowly turned to face the miserable spirit with a face so twisted in fury that it seemed almost comical: “You dare...” he began menacingly.

The spirit ran off at great speed, leaving a trail of dust in its wake.

“Ok, we’re clear – everyone out!” Shimmer declared, revoking the shapeshifting effects on Sunrise, Cash and Speaker. As the three solars tumbled out of Shimmer’s cloud hair, the search for Cash’s oaths to Lilith began in earnest, and it was a daunting task indeed: Several thousand years of exalted living had left so many oaths to check that it would likely take a group of mortal ponies all of their lives to perform such a task.

With Speaker and Sully’s investigative charms they were done in less than a minute – the otherwise nondescript scrolls and their golden seals suddenly appearing glaringly obvious to them, even at great distance.

“Ok, this is a big pile… and they’re indestructible, so… now what?” Sullen Hoof mused, looking at the pile of scrolls they had amazed. The pile was the size of a large house, containing thousands upon thousands of scrolls.

Shimmer looked around at the circle: “Any ideas to destroy them?”

Speaker had a poke at the scrolls, but their magic seals only allowed Cash or the spirits working at the archive to open them – and that didn’t do much either, for the ink on the golden sheets seemed tamper-proof as well: “I think I’ll need more time than we have here to destroy these…”

“Don’t forget that Heath Rose said that the guards here will known instantly when a scroll is removed from the palace…” Cash added, shaking his head as he put away the scroll Speaker had tried to open. It contained an oath where Lilith had promised never to detail some random and apparently meaningless little mistake his past incarnation had made while trying to cook at some point. It certainly made Cash question how his previous incarnation had used his power to sanctify oaths.

Shimmer sighed: “Ok, I have a charm that can open a hole to a small den I have elsewhere – we can throw all the scrolls in there. I can open access to that den anywhere, so we just have to get out when that’s done, but it’ll probably trigger the alarm the moment the first scroll is tossed through, so we need to be quick”
“That just means that we have to prepare the scroll insertion properly – say, how big can you make that opening?” Speaker wondered, calling forth his singing staff and striking it against the marble floor.

About half a minute and some lively music later, a large funnel of marble had been raised out of the ground, and everyone was filling all of Cash’s oath scrolls into it – not just the ones connected to Lilith, but all the oath scrolls aside from the new pones from his current incarnation… and Speaker could barely expanding the length of the funnel fast enough to keep up with the large volume of scrolls the rest of the circle was filling it with.

At the bottom of the funnel was a three yard wide opening – currently plugged with more marble. The plan was thus quite simple: Once all the scrolls, or as many possible, were in the funnel, Shimmer would open her elsewhere-den portal as well as conjure up a flying cloud. Once the cloud was up Speaker would remove the funnel plug and get on the cloud with everyone else, and then they would make their escape through one of the skylights which were miles above on the ceiling. The den portal would remain open as long as possible, for Shimmer would be able to feel when nothing more was passing through it.

This plan worked out well – to begin with. It apparently took the clerk spirit quite a while to fetch suitable refreshments worthy of a high ranking god, so the circle managed to get almost all of Cash’s old oaths into the by then almost mile high funnel. Of course, this meant that it would take quite a while for all the scrolls to funnel through into Shimmer’s elsewhere den – still, Lilith’s scrolls were at the bottom, so they would go through in the first second, which they did.

In that same instant wailing claxons began sounding throughout the vast archive, and celestial lions came crashing in through the walls and doors demanding to know what was going on. Of course, this had been expected, so the funnel – despite its size –had been camouflaged as a giant vertical stone scroll. Sure, it was a silly, but Cash had reasoned that the celestial lions guarding the outside had likely never been inside the archive before… thus it wasn’t until the spirits who actually worked there were let that the obvious was pointed out: That the giant stone scroll in the middle of the archive wasn’t supposed to be there… of course, a giant stone wasn’t a missing golden scroll – and Speaker had played the construction of the giant stone scroll in such a way that it would muffle most of the rattle and noise of millions of scrolls falling into a hole into elsewhere.

Maybe it was because the celestial lions simply didn’t know how the archive worked, or because the clerk spirits there didn’t have powers that allowed them to actually sense the locations of the scrolls, but Shimmer concluded a few hours later that her den felt VERY full… and that no more scrolls were entering into it.

“You know, for all of Heath Rose’s warnings about that place, then this wasn’t that difficult…” Cash mused, as Shimmer flew the cloud towards forty-third celestial Yu-Shan gate, the gate that Hran-Tzu had suggested the circle use to get near Shining Reef.

Speaker shrugged: “Four solars with essence purity not far from the levels we had back during the primordial war, and an elder lunar? Honestly, I’m not surprised – though I’m sure if the bronze faction expected a raid on the archive they would have greatly increased the number of spirits guarding the place”

“Yes, but even that has certain limits: There were no spirits or gods guarding the archive itself, think about that for a moment. Any guardian spirits in there could have tried to peek into the scrolls to find out things about the people by magic oaths… it would be a prime source of blackmail material, since you could probably greatly embarrass a lot of gods up here by exposing what they had magically promised to do at various points in time – or exploit things they promised to do or not to do” Cash noted, suddenly realizing that unless they actually found a way to destroy the stolen scrolls, they would likely still be considered a great threat by heaven…
Despite the speed of Shimmer’s magic cloud, then its speed simply wasn’t enough to reach the forty-third heavenly gate before nightfall . Considering the lack of an actual terrestrial-style day and night cycle, this was mainly decided to be when the circle started to get sleepy, because if Shimmer fell asleep the cloud would disappear and that would be bad for both obvious reasons, and because crashing down into some random god’s palatial estate would likely be punished severely.

At Sunrise’s urging the circle opted not to sleep until out of Yu-Shan, since at this point the bronze faction was likely all up in arms over the archive heist, so getting out of their immediate jurisdiction sounded like a really good idea.

One aeriral rickshaw later the circle stood in front of the forty-third heavenly gate, the gate that Hran-Tzu had suggested the circle use to get near Shining Reef, the sunken city where the ponatees lived.

Entering through the gate left the circle suddenly bathed in darkness – as it truly was the dead of night in Creation. They were also inside…something. Since there weren’t any stars or clouds when looking up, this was fair obvious, they the question was then where were they? There was a distant sound of pounding surf, as well as the quiet sound of hooves on stone from various directions around them, which echoed mildly revealing that they were in some system of hallways.

Shimmer quickly used a charm that gave her the layout of her surroundings, to which she concluded: “We’re in some kind of palace…”

It was then that a pony with a spear and some kind of exotic feathered head-dress came around a corner. The wad of highly luminescent coral stuck to the spear worked quite nicely as a torch and completely revealed the circle to the pony who started shouting in a language that only Shimmer seemed to understand – and then it turned and ran, shouting some more.

“Ok, we need to get out of here, right now” Shimmer said, looking around for an exit as she broke into a gallop down the opposite direction of where the pony with the spear had run.

The rest of the circle quickly followed suit, with Speaker shouting as she galloped: “What is this place?”

“We’re in the palace of the Feathered One, the ruler of the Wavecrest island nation. That puts us in Seacrest, their capital, in the palace – and we really don’t need this kind of attention” Shimmer said urgently as they moved at speed.

Galloping through the hallways of the palace of the Feathered One, Shimmer added that Wavecrest was a realm tributary – so even if they didn’t have any intention of sticking around or making trouble, then they might find themselves on the receiving end of whatever realm legion that happened to be stationed in and around Seacrest: Four to five thousand armed realm legionaires and their scores of unicorn officers didn’t sound like something the circle wanted to fight right at this moment.
After passing a row of wooden masks – crude tribal relics by any standard of civilized eastern pony culture – Sullen Hoof’s whispering voice appeared from the shadows around the circle: “Why in heaven would the realm want to control a place like this? The spears the guards have are tipped with flint! Stone! There’s no silver or valuables here! Why would they even bother wasting a legion on a place like this?”

Sullen Hoof’s voice heavily implied that he had already gone ahead and searched most of the palace. Shimmer smirked in the flickering light of a nearby glowy coral torch: “Wavecrest is the single biggest landmass in the west. It’s the biggest agriculture producer around – controlling the food means controlling most of the west, outside of the small independent tribes that just fish and forage to get by”

Cash got the picture: “Makes sense – any settlement that grows too big to feed itself will need to trade with Wavecrest, and if the realm plays gatekeeper to that…”

Bucking open a gate to a sandy cobblestone-covered courtyard, the circle held off the palace guards as Shimmer conjured a cloud. As they flew off into the sky two unicorns arrived on the scene, blasting at the cloud with lightning and gouts of high pressure water – and while they did hit the cloud, then striking a cloud with water and lightning was about the most harmless thing one could do. Of course, to the ponies on the cloud dodging gouts of waters that might knock them off the cloud, or similarly not convulsing so much from the lightning that one fell off, was slightly more difficult – and in the case of the lightning, painful, though Speaker ensured that none of the injuries the circle sustained were permanent.

As Shimmer’s magic cloud quickly accelerated, moving out of range of the unicorns on the ground, the circle observed a large and actively volcanic mountain approaching. Even in the dead of night the angry red glare from its caldera made it very obvious that this volcano meant business.

“That’s odd… I don’t remember there being any volcanos in the west, not even the south-west” Speaker mused.

Shimmer noted that the volcanos of Wavecrest had been there since the shattering of Saigoth, the old continent that used to cover most of the west, the one that the Solars had raised from the ocean during the first age: “When the great contagion came there were so few ponies left here that most of the west just sank into the wyld. The stories my elders told me… they still frighten me - so many ponies were lost in those days”

“Does that explain why they’re tossing ponies into the volcano we’re flying over?” Sullen Hoof asked as he peered over the edge of the cloud.

Speaker was horrified as Shimmer simply shrugged and explained that the volcanoes were very unstable, so their gods required almost daily live sacrifice to keep the island from ripping itself apart. It was usually criminals sentenced to death by the Feathered One’s judges who got tossed on – indeed, it was the only criminal punishment for locals on Wavecrest: “It keeps the tribals that live under the Feathered One’s rule very peaceful – for western tribals”

“Barbaric” Speaker mused despairingly as he watched the faint speck that was a tiny pony down on the volcano be tossed into the caldera. The cloud was far too high up for the poor soul’s screams to be heard.

The cloud flew mostly south, from what little Speaker could tell. Cash seemed far more certain that they were going slightly west as well – this troubled Speaker, for they were getting dangerously close to the parts of Creation where one would usually stop drawing a map and instead merely write “bordermarshes”.

This fact became painfully obvious as they flew over a floating island seemingly wrought of gigantic pearls and eerily colorful flowers. It was hypnotizing to look at – and both Cash and Sully had to be slapped rather hard to break them from their entranced stupor. Shimmer explained as they passed from the place that it was a place of changeling power, held by the Pearl Court: “I don’t know who’s their ruler right now – changeling’s swap rulers quite often. Infighting is in their nature”

As the sun set and the moon rose, Shimmer began looking for a place to land for the night. Of the few scattered islands they occasionally came across none were deemed safe by Shimmer. Changelings apparently loved to simply craft island illusions as means to trap lost sailors and fisherponies. Flying her cloud close to one such island and letting Speaker throw Gift at it revealed an enormous gaping map quickly snapping shut around the whole island, revealing its lure-based nature… though the massive changeling monster didn’t enjoy it when Gift ripped and sawed its way out again – but none in the circle cared.

“Is it like that all over the west?” Sunrise asked. Shrugging, Shimmer noted that even the most primitive tribal ponies knew not to sail out to fish alone, and always bring iron harpoons with them. The waters around Wavecrest, The Neck and Coral were all patrolled against changelings, pirates and Lintha.

“There’s still Lintha around?” Speaker blurted out, sounding surprised.

In her somewhat sleepy state Shimmer merely shrugged: “Haven’t they always?”

Sullen Hoof, having no clue what so ever what the two were talking about shot Speaker an inquisitive look. Shimmer responded: “Half-demon half-pony pirates. Nasty cannibal things” Speaker added that they were originally made by the primordial Kimbery as her version of ponies. The Solars tried wiping them out in the first age, but they were good swimmers and hide in the deep if threatened enough – though the idea that the Lintha was now ‘only’ half-demon half-pony creatures… that was a bit unsettling to him.

Cash was about to point out the similarity between the Lintha’s primordial connection and the ponatees they were seeking, with their supposed connection to a dead primordial, when Shimmer called out for everyone’s attention, especially Sullen Hoof’s: “Ok, we’re touching down for the night”

Shimmer’s choice of nighttime accommodations turned out to be the floating and somewhat bloated carcass of some giant sea monster. Cash quickly set about trying to poke around for anything of value in it, despite Shimmer assuring Cash that what little that was worth selling from the husk had already been eaten by scavengers…
Sullen Hoof managed to carve away most of the rotting flesh on the surface of the husk to make things bearable and even made some weird but surprisingly soft ‘cushions’ out of things he didn’t want to get into details with, while Shimmer almost lazily threw a net of her essence-spun webbing out and hauled up a feast of fish that the circle dined on.

The next morning Cash made Shimmer swear to never make the circle sleep on a floating rotting husk of a sea-monster ever again, because the smell – even with Sully having carved away most of the rotting bits – made Cash’s nose feel as if it was falling off…

“Nah, that’s probably more because we’re in a bordermarsh right now – you’re probably just mutating a bit” Shimmer joked.

Cash didn’t appear amused, and Speaker could see with his essence sight that Cash quickly put on his shaping-defence charm, since that chiefly warded one against unwanted mutations.

It was late afternoon when Shimmer’s cloud reached the surface remains of the City of the Shining Reefs. It wasn’t much that could be seen from above the waves: A few towers and what might once have been a first age dock.

“Ok… so, how are we going to do this? I’m a little new to the idea of kidnapping heads of state” Cash mused, looking at the pounding surf against the first age ruins beneath them.

Shimmer looked pensive as Speaker waxed nostalgic over how the place had worked in the first age: The ponatees predated the primordial war, but in the first age it had been a Solar Deliberative trade hub for the south-west… though there really wasn’t much left of that now: “…and it looks like the sidereals and dragonblooded had their fun picking the place over”

“I don’t know – from what I’ve been told this place has been left pretty much alone since the great contagion – not even Leviathan’s beastponies do much with them” Shimmer said, which seemed to disappoint the rest of the circle immensely, mainly because she was the only native westerner among them.

Sullen Hoof was all for scouting the place and doing some thorough legwork first, but only Shimmer and Speaker had the ability to breathe underwater… and for Shimmer that required some amount of shapeshifting.

Thus, Shimmer first landed the cloud atop one of the ruined towers and then leapt into the water in the form of a school of small fish. The fact that Shimmer could turn into more than one thing at a time and its various implications escaped the circle.

She surfaced an hour later, turning into a seagul and flying up to the circle as quickly as possible – for moments later the waters where she had appeared from began to churn violently from quite a lot of marine life poking around just under the surface.

It was then that a ponatee poked its head up through the water: It had a gnarled grey skin and features not unlike a pony, with sunken black eyes and these jewels of black jade set in its forehead – but where a pony had hind legs the ponatee had a big round fin, and its overall features were more rounded and bulbous. The circle had taken cover so as not to reveal itself, sans Sullen Hoof, who was using stealth charms to remain unseen while he silently observed the primordial being.
After a while Sullen Hoof became visible once more and signaled for the circle to come out of hiding.

Shimmer explained that the city underneath was indeed akin to that of a reef: On the outside it was a maze of underwater tunnels, quite well suited to defend from everything from changeling from the ocean floor to pirate raiders diving in from above. While Speaker suddenly found himself curious at how western pirates could fight underwater effectively enough to consider it viable to raid underwater cities, then Shimmer’s description of how the coral labyrinth housed scores of barracks and holding pens for strange and foul-smelling creatures, many of which looked eerily… stitched together… ended up worrying him far more.

“Basically a lot of their ‘troops’ look like ponines that have been surgically turned into some kind of freaky mix of undead and sea-pony… and it doesn’t look like it was voluntary procedures” Shimmer noted, sound none to happy about her discoveries.

Sullen Hoof’s observations about the lone ponatee that had come up from the waves and looked for Shimmer gave equal amounts of grim insight into the true nature of the beings: The spear it had been wielding had a black jade tip, as well as other black jade protrusions along the length, and was floated in the air – so the ponatee had awakened essence.

Speaker confirmed that most primordial creatures had awakened essence as a natural part of their nature, while he also identified the spear – based on Sullen Hoof’s description – as a shock pike.

“Something you’re familiar with?” Sunrise asked, noting that Speaker referred to the device in a familiar tone.

Taking a deep breath, since he was to explain quite a lot, Cash quickly interrupted him – having read the entire exposition dump in Speaker’s expression and breath alone, thanks to his charms – and summarized: “Lookshy has them, they were the standard issue weapon for mortal troops in the first age, it’s basically a short spear allows you to hit stuff at range as if it shoots the thrust of the thing out at your target”

Speaker nodded: “That, and the versions meant for enlightened users pack a very serious punch – and they’re damn near impossible to dodge or parry, if it’s their ranged attack”

“If they’re equipping their scouts with that…” Sullen Hoof mused.

Shimmer interjected: “That wasn’t a scout, the lone ponatee that came after me: It was herding the other… things… that they sent after me, those freaky half-pony monsters they had made”

Thus, the circle concluded that the ponatees were likely a lot better armed than previously imagined – they weren’t just some ancient tribal remnant of primordial barbarians: These things knew how to cut ponies apart, attach enough fish-bits to make them work underwater and maintain first age weapons. This called for a more subtle approach.

Ultimately the plan for the subtle approach turned out to be somewhat untenable: Sullen Hoof had no doubt that he could sneak into the place – but he could not breathe underwater. Only Speaker had charms for that, and Shimmer with her shapeshifting. Thus, the plan became for the two to sneak in and kidnap the sleeping princes and just get out quickly. The kidnapping part itself should be simple enough, since Shimmer could ‘store’ the sleeping princes elsewhere with her den charm where they were currently holding all those indestructible oath-scrolls.

Using her shapeshifting powers to change Speaker into a small parasite fist and attaching him to herself in the form of another small western fish, Shimmer swam into the coral labyrinth that covered the outer parts of the City of Shining Reefs.

With her charms she could still communicate with Speaker, but Speaker was unable to respond since being a tiny lamprey mainly meant that he was struggling not to try to eat the fish-Shimmer he was currently latched on to.

To Speaker it seemed like both an eternity and no time at all having passed when Shimmer suddenly undid her shapeshifting of him. He found himself underwater, obviously, with Shimmer in her fish-form calling for his attention to his left: “I need you to figure out how to open this”

Swimming around a bit to turn himself around, Speaker beheld his surroundings with great awe: Adamant struts held together lattices of black jade, transparent crystals and first age metal alloys, creating a beautiful organic looking hallway. In front of the two was a large door of black and green jade fused with some kind of really hard sea-sponge. Around them was bio-luminescent fungus that shed a light bright enough that one might mistake the underwater scene for being exposed to bright sunlight.

It was a strange kind of door, but using his charms to quickly deduce the central essence focus of the locking mechanism. Speaker brushed his hoof up against several parts of the sponge he could see were essence-reactive, making the semi-organic jade door react like animal being poked into reacting.

It took a little while to puzzle out the right sequence to get the door to open, but ultimately it yawned open as the jade-infused sponge pulled away, revealing a massive panoramic view of a ruined underwater city: Metal-framed adamant towers, some lit by still-working essence-powered lighting, many other were overgrown with the same luminescent fungus from the hallway, creating eerie outlines of beautiful first age architecture.

Shimmer noted that there were surprisingly few guards and sentries beyond the coral labyrinth – but Speaker reasoned that the ponatees probably didn’t expect anything to get by their outer defenses un-noticed, so internal security likely had a lower priority.

“True – and honestly, I think it was a good thing that you didn’t have eyes while I swam us down here… you wouldn’t have liked what I saw going through some of the holding pens for the necro-surgical monsters the ponatees hold here – hold up, take cover!” Shimmer said, quickly swimming into cover as memories of ponies sewn back together wrongly in combination with sea-monster parts flashed before her.

Speaker scrambled to get out of sight of the open door as four ponatees swam by outside. They were mumbling something that Shimmer couldn’t hear in her form as a fish, but Speaker’s elemental immunity charm meant that his senses were as unimpeded by the deep waters as his breathing was. They were speaking old realm, using an accent that was considered old and arcaich even in the first age. The topic of their discussion was the sighting of a foreign ship near the city’s surface ruins.
Speaker hoped that the rest of the circle was safe. Shimmer agreed on the sentiment, but pointed out that they had to get the princes before heading back to the surface and checking on the others: “I don’t know if I’ll be able to dodge their labyrinth security again... they were still looking for me from my scouting run, and I don’t see us leaving quietly”

With their internal security surprisingly lax, Shimmer and Speaker were able to approach the undercity of the first age ruins very quickly: Shimmer conjured several yards of her essence-spun thread and gave it Speaker, who in turn tied it around Shimmer after she had turned into a suitably larger pony-sized fish – allowing her to pull him towards the depths much faster than merely sinking.

At the foundations of the first age constructions, among still gleaming pillars of adamant and black jade so thick that it truly boggled the mind how such vast quantities of magical materials could ever have been amazed, the two found several large holes where ponatees dressed in gaudy garbs seemed to move in and out. With a little bit of careful timing the two were able to enter and behold the wonders hidden under the first age foundations…