The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

It was clear that much of what Last Shimmer and Bright Machine Speaker saw under the foundations of the City of Shining Reefs had been built long before the structures above. Ancient mable and verdigris that seemed to have been grown organically over millennia was everywhere, stretched into palaces illuminated by more luminescent fungus and the odd essence-fueled glow stone. Everything was a palace more grand than the other, though swimming past them revealed that the interiors were filled with rotting furniture and finery so degraded by aoens of no maintenance and care that even the most filthy slum hovel in Nexus seemed more clean and pretty than what Speaker and Shimmer saw.

How these Ponatees had ended up like this seemed like a mystery, until the two found their way to the very bottom of this patch of the great western ocean. At the root of a particularly magnificent but also algae-encrusted tower Speaker detected a dark confluence of essence. The dragon lines which fed it ran for as far as he could see in the deep darkness – which wasn’t much – but he could sense that these necrotic essence flows stretched on for hundreds of miles. There was something potent in this place… and the amount of ponatee guards outside seemed to indicate that the ponatees also considered it important.

It was at this point that Shimmer suggested that they consider their exit strategy very carefully. Hidden in a large cracked wall out of sight from the guards, the two discussed how to leave once they had their target.

“How quickly can you swim up to the surface from here?” Speaker wondered ,hopelessly unable to gauge just how deep they were at this point.

Shimmer shrugged, which looked rather weird since she was a in the form of a fish: “We’ve been going down for almost three hours. I’d say if we went straight up maybe two hours of swimming to reach the surface?”

“That won’t cut it – we need to be able to get out of here faster. The ponatees are sure to bring hell once we nab their heads of state” Speaker noted, looking around for something, anything, useful.

Shimmer noted that if she had some kind of self-inflating form to shift into then the pressure difference should rocket them to the surface much faster: “…but none of the puffer fish I can turn into would survive at this depth”

“Well it’s an idea – but hey, we did swim past several air-filled towers up in the first age ruins. Maybe if we disconnect one of the devices that do that, we can make an underwater air-ballon to do the same?” Speaker suggested.

The Shimmer-fish gave Speaker a big wet kiss – then swam off in search of something matching Speaker’s description. She returned not long after and guided Speaker to what she had found.

In one of the still-lit first age towers, through a slightly makeshift albeit still elegantly organic air-lock, Speaker and Shimmer trotted down a hall with soggy half-rotting carpets. Speaker recognized the carpet as being jade-infused, with delicate green jade filigree woven into the spider-silk fabric… which explained why it was ‘just’ half-rotten after millennia – but it was Shimmer’s tugging at his old wet uniform which got his attention:

“I found the air-water extractor above a window… they have prisoners here” Shimmer explained, as she stroked the rather disgusting but remarkably utilitarian necromantic crab-lock thingy that held the door closed.

Speaker was about to ask what in heaven the ponatees needed live pony prisoners at this depth… but then he recalled Shimmer’s tales of freaky necro-surgical monsters wrought of ponies and sea-creatures: “Ok, we’re getting them out, right now”

Shimmer agreed and gave the necro-crab lock a mean glare. Sighing as she shapeshifted into a squid, which flopped over and then latched on to the crab-lock – then ate it – Shimmer turned back into a pony, spitting profucely: “Luna’s hairy balls that tasted bad”

Beyond the door was a massive prison complex, as well as a floor covered in the same half-rotten carpeting, as well as a putrid-smelling mix of blood, shit and fetid flesh: There were hundreds of cells, each with at least half a dozen emaciated ponies, many little more than walking sacks of skin and bone, and quite almost all had some variation of hoof-rot and gangrene.

“Shimmer, how can we get all these ponies out?” Speaker said through clenched teeth, simmering with rage.

Part of Shimmer truly enjoyed seeing Speaker so enfuriated. Not out of malice, but because it reminded her of how she had always wanted Speaker to be: Driven, focused, angry at the injustices of Creation: “Elsewhere den, remember? You just open the cell doors”

Speaker instantly called Gift into existence and swiftly began cutting prison locks on the three floors that still had live prisoners – he couldn’t help the dead. The pony prisoners were beyond relieved to be saved, though a language-barrier prevented Speaker from understanding what they were saying. Many were barely able to move: The ponatees apparently didn’t need well-fed or… well… living subjects, for their necro-surgical exploits.

Shimmer opened a portal to her elsewhere den and the ponies flooded in: Anything was better than watching from your cell as your fellow ponies were cut open, killed on the operating table while tentacles, claws and gills from various sea creatures were grafted on to them…

“They’ll be ok in the den?” Speaker asked, as Shimmer closed the portal.

Shimmer nodded: “I have a lot of food and water stashed in there – its only limitation is that if I go in there and close up, then I can only open the den portal to where I entered it…”

Quickly moving back to the airlock, the two made their way to the outside and swam around to the first age device which still filtered air out of the water… or was it simply converting the water into air? It was hard to tell – either way it was a marvel of first age craftsponyship. Detaching the device was easy enough for Speaker, though it did result in the three floors that had previously been kept full of air imploding spectacularly, filling the water with the disgusting smell and taste of blood and gore as Shimmer packed the device away elsewhere.

The sudden deluge of blood and shit in the water proved quite useful: A pack of the ponatee’s half-pony monstrocities arrived moments later, but were distracted by the chummed waters – buying Speaker and Shimmer enough time to escape down to the temple-tomb of the dead princes.

It was supposed to have been a quick smash and grab. It was supposed to have been a quick break-in, it was… not so simple.

The inside of the temple-tomb was not filled with water – glowing wards on the walls kept the ocean water moisture out, though they didn’t do much for the smell of the place since instead the whole place was filled with some kind of noxious smelling embalming fluid. The ground was covered in granulated bone that stirred slightly as Speaker and Shimmer swam over them… and the ancient ponatee priests were but animated corpses, embalmed and withered from their centuries of undeath with their ghosts having been necromantically bound to their bodies, thus allowing them to serve their dead princes even in death.

Decked out in the rags of once magnificent clerical garbs and jewelry from a bygone era, these ponatee priests looked intimidating and pathetic at the same time…
Oh, and the mummified priests also turned out to be really dandy necromancers… as was evident by the dozen upon dozen of skeletal ponies and ponatees that they summoned in mere seconds the moment that Speaker and Shimmer entered, as black lightning shot out from their decrepit bodies into the ground around them, bonding together bits of bone into whole skeletons.

The skeletons quickly swarmed Speaker and Shimmer, piling on to them as they tried to bite at their flesh. It was a diversion: As most of the priests retreated into the inner sanctum, a few stayed behind and began to shape into being various necromantic spells to slay the two exalts…

Shimmer and Speaker didn’t waste any time going on the counter-offensive: Shimmer turned into her beast-pony form, which seemed surprisingly adept at underwater maneuvering, while Speaker shattered scores of skeletons with Gift and his powerful magical martial arts.

It was when one of the three remaining priests flung a pale sphere of ivory essence at Speaker and the skeletons he was engaged with that the brilliance of these dark power revealed itself: The orb shattered next to Speaker and the skeletons – so at first neither Speaker or Shimmer had paid it any attention, since it obviously wouldn’t hit him, but as the sphere cracked pale energies pulsed out and caught Speaker in the front… and it was then that Speaker felt the flesh on his face and forelimbs begin to sag in a brief moment of pain – then force began to simply push his flesh off his body.

It was by will and essence-shielding alone that Speaker’s face wasn’t ripped off entirely – and even then large bloody rips were left around his jaw and down his legs, rips which trailed blood into the otherwise clear embalming fluid that surrounded them.

Shimmer was all over the ponatee priest that had flung the ivory orb, ripping the undead ponatee to shreds just as another priest raised its skeletal limbs at Speaker who had just downed his last skeleton…

Speaker felt his gaze suddenly torn towards that particular ponatee mummy-priest, and behind it he saw the shadowy figure of a purple hooded being of darkness… and Shimmer saw Speaker momentarily frozen, as his aquamarine coat flickered and inverted its color… and then it shattered – as if Speaker’s coat had been a mirror which was broken, leaving jagged patches of bloody muscle and flesh exposed underneath.

This second mummy priest was also quickly dispatched by Shimmer in a swirling mess of opulent jewelry, ragged cloth that might once had been beautiful, and flesh so shriveled up that it barely even offered any resistance as it was cut into pieces.

The third mummy priest saw what happened to its two fellows and fled towards the inner sanctum – but Gift cut it down in an instant… and thanks to the spirit slaying charm that Speaker had opted to also apply to that attack, Gift equally destroyed the mummy priest’s ghost as it was freed from its mummy prison.

“Shimmer, they’re leaving ghosts behind – be careful!” Speaker warned, Shimmer quickly scanning the surroundings with her third eye, even though the embalming fluid stung. How she had understood his bubbly speech underwater was a mystery he didn’t give much though.

As Shimmer launched herself at the ghosts of the two priests she had slain with claws glowing with pale moonlight, Speaker swam towards the inner sanctum. The feeling was unmistakable: It was a shadowland. Shimmer seemed to detect it as well, giving Speaker a worried look.

The doorway into the inner sanctum felt cold to the touch, much colder than the surrounding luke-warm but clear embalming fluid – and it had the unmistakable feeling of dread to it as well: Soulsteel, but covered in a thin layer of black jade and some other strange substances…

Steeling herself, and growing out her bone-armor over her beast-pony form, Shimmer urged Speaker to put on as many defensive charms as possible: “They know we’re coming in there any second, and there’ll probably be backup on the way so we have to be in and out quick – we don’t have to kill them all, just nab the princes and get out of here, then I’ll pull the air-machine out of elsewhere and spin a web-bubble for it to fill”

Speaker nodded and put on both of his shaping-defense charms, enacted his chaos-repelling pattern and girded himself in as much essence as he knew how to, resulting in him glowing quite intensely with a golding sheen of light as he bucked open the door in the inner sanctum…
The priests were ready for them.

Two lions wrought of tangled bones and blood, which kept mixing with the surrounding embalming fluid to create a murky haze around them, with manes of bone-quills, launched themselves instantly at Speaker – but Shimmer leapt before him and took them both on, all three quickly churning the embalming fluid around them into a mess of blood and bone-chips.

Speaker barely got a moment to turn around and observe the beautiful if macabre murals and decorations which adorned the surprisingly spacious vaulted ceiling of the inner sanctum of the dead princes: A massive skeletal warstrider in the form of a ponatee launched itself at him, with a lance wrought of spinal columns and steely sinew that struck with supernatural precision: Gift was able to block the blow, but Speaker still struck into the ground and almost half-buried in the mix of granulated bone and chipped teeth that made up the floor of the place.

With his balance charms and Sullen Hoof’s jumping charm Speaker quickly launched himself over the priests and past the massive bonestrider. Beyond them he saw two massive claw-like skeletal hands jutting out of the ground, upon each a mummified ponatee sat – but these mummies were different… they were almost buried in jewelry, and the clothing they wore was still pristine, likely spun of imperishable first age silks. This had to be the dead princes!

…then one priest ripped at the flesh of another – in a seemingly very consensual maneuver – and snakes of black essence shot out of the gaping wounds, striking at Speaker as he struggled to maintain his trajectory in the embalming fluid. As the snakes began to entangle Speaker, a third priest grinned at Speaker in a most unsettling way: Its mouth was bursting with blood, but then heaved and vomited forth a brown and grey slurry that materialized into well over a dozen hungry ghosts!
Each of the hungry ghosts tore at Speaker but were unable to penetrate his shield charms – the bonestrider’s massive spine-lance didn’t have this problem, blowing right through it all as void essence tipped the lance… right through Speaker’s left femur.

Emitting a somewhat bubbly howl of pain, Speaker steeled himself and used his one good leg to jump off the lance to the twin thrones of the dead princes – dislodging the bone-lance from his thigh painfully.

As he tumbled into the thrones, the two dead princes remained immobile – but all the priests turned to Speaker with crusty mummified faces contorted in rage… and of the dozens of priests three more vomited forth a tide of hungry ghosts, though at this point the number of ghosts filling the embalming fluid began to work in Speaker’s favor: There were so many materialized hungry ghosts that they were bumping into each other and starting to fight each other… for hungry ghosts were but feral souls, ever-hungry for essence and the warmth of the living – and them getting in each other’s way suddenly made them targets for each other.

For a moment it occurred to Speaker that while these mummified ponatee priests were clearly skilled necromancers they weren’t good with tactical combat spell-casting… of course, that was a very brief moment of thought, as next Speaker tore the two mummified royal ponatees from their bone-thrones and called for Shimmer: “Now!”

What next had been carefully planned: Shimmer burned bright with the cleverest of moonlight as she shot a thick strand of her essence-thread through the mess of ghosts, ponatees priests and other undead horrors conjured during the fray and yanked Speaker back… who had the two surprisingly inert mummified princes in his hooves.

With the twin dead princes so close to Speaker the necromancer ponatees suddenly seemed bewildered and confused with regards on what to do. Any attack on Speaker had the chance of hurting their royals… and failing to stop Speaker and Shimmer meant their royalty, their leaders… if you could call two fairly dead looking ponatee mummies leaders… being stolen away from them.

Leaving the inner sanctum happened in three swift motions: First Speaker and Shimmer collided for a split second, then Shimmer shot out a clawed limb at the doorway out of the sanctum… her avian forelimb stretching unnaturally in a feat of shapeshifting Speaker didn’t recall seeing before, which then latched on and pulled Shimmer who now also held Speaker and the twin dead princes tightly under her wings.

The four of them shot out of the inner Sanctum as Speaker tried to cover them by parrying or deflecting necromantic attacks from the furious priesthood who seemed to have thrown caution to the wind a this point.

The moment the four of them pushed through the door to the dark ocean waters from the outer sanctum Shimmer and Speaker found themselves surrounded by a swarm of the ponatee’s finest and most horrible creations… though their handlers, living ponatees armed with essence whips and black jade shock pikes, were holding them all back: They were using their monstrous necro-surgical abominations to block any escape route… not to attack with.

With this realization, and the priests from within only seconds away, Shimmer spun up a tight ball of her essence thread and withdrew the water-air engine from elsewhere and passed both to Speaker, all the while carefully maintaining a guarded stance in case any of the undead monstrocities around them broke formations and attacked…

In seconds Speaker had the device working, running off his own essence. The essence-thread ball inflated to twice the size of a pony in less than half a second, forcing its way out from Shimmer’s bone-armored wing and instantly beginning its ascent.

Speaker had been clever enough to attack the two mummified princes to the machine, while hanging on to it himself – Shimmer in turn twisting around and propelling herself up to catch Speaker, flinging several essence-threads upwards to latch on to Speaker, the air-filled web-sphere or the even the princes…

…but she was pulled down, as one of the priests and the remaining bone lion had latched on to her and were holding her back – though with each of her limbs flailing about like clawed tentacles, slashing throats and clawing out eyes every second Shimmer was certainly making her impedance cost the ponatees dearly.

With fury and spite the mummified priest, its body already deteriorating simply by being outside the protective embalming fluid of the tomb temple of the dead princes plus most of its face having been reduced to shreds by Shimmer’s claws, gave Shimmer one last hateful remark in old realm before imploding into a dark vortex of purest void… and Shimmer was sucked into that, along with most of the undead monsters giving chase to Speaker in a vile moment of tactical idiocy and mad desperation.

Speaker barely managed to look down and see Shimmer disappear beyond the black event horizon of the vortex, exchanging one last pained look before she was no more to be seen… or heard… or felt. The water-air engine kept inflating the essence-web sphere, accelerating his ascent. The machine’s structural integrity field ensured that anything they bumped into on the way up didn’t damage the sphere, and soon the tomb temple of the dead princes was out of sight, replaced by the gleaming underwater spires of the ruins of the City of Shining Reefs, the essence-thread sphere having taken on an ovoid shape to accommodate the constant acceleration as the air-water engine expanded it…

Moving far faster than the ponatees or their undead monsters could give chase, Speaker quickly closed on the coral labyrinth that encapsulated the city – boosting the air-water engine’s structural integrity field with more essence, the essence-thread sphere shot into the labyrinth like a falling rock from the heavens, punching through several thick layers before even beginning to slow down…

His entr y into the maze hadn’t gone unnoticed – and the sounds of many alarms and captured sea-monsters rang out in the waters around Speaker, barely giving him time to grieve as he looked for a means to escape to the surface with the two dead princes.

It was just as a swarm of disgusting-looking undead necro-surgical creations came around a corner of the maze and saw Speaker that his solution came into effect: By installing Gift between the essence-field projector connecting the air-water machine to the silvery essence-thread sphere, Speaker was able to put a spin on the integrity field by activating Gift, making the by now enourmous sphere into a giant drill.

The solid structure, grown by millennia of carefully cultivated coral and other underwater plants, groaned and gave way to the unconventional drill, sending Speaker and his prisoners on their way up to the surface beyond the domain of the ponatees – though that didn’t mean that the things were giving up pursuit.

Without Gift to throw down at his pursuers it was difficult holding him them off – and they were more than smart enough to recognize that attacking the glowing sphere of essence-thread was all they needed to, meaning that Speaker had to use his essence sight to spot the otherwise invisible shock pike attacks and black them with his bare hooves – and while his charms gave him ample essence shielding, then shock pikes hit hard and by the time the essence-thread sphere breached the surface Speaker was trailing a lot of blood from multiple cuts and stab-wounds, in his battle to protect the sphere and ensure that Shimmer’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain.

Having reached the surface with the essence-thread sphere, Speaker barely had time to dislodge himself from the air-water machine and get to the surface himself when he felt the whole thing being pulled up and out of the water. Thinking that this was the rest of the circle coming to his aid he simply defending the sphere and his prisoners…

A few moments later Speaker was up on the deck of a ship wrought of curiously black wood, manned by sailorponies who looked decidedly pale but otherwise healthy enough… but hey, his circle was there too!

Rushing to meet Speaker, the others quickly noticed that Shimmer was missing. Cash noticed this first and offered his condolences before gesturing for Sully to pull the two prisoners aside.

Sunrise helped Speaker up: “Are these the sleeping princesses?”

“The proper term would be dead princes – but yes…” Speaker said, getting up and finally breathing air instead of water.

Looking around it was clear that the ship was not eastern in any way – mainly because the sailorponies seemed to be talking the same language as the prisoners that Speaker and Shimmer had freed earlier… gods, what would happen to them, now that Shimmer was gone?

Speaker quickly deactivated the air-water machine and then said that he needed time to recover… the rest of the circle seemed to understand, though Cash did note that the captain would want to meet Speaker – in fact he had apparently insisted.

Below deck, tending to the myriad of claw scratches and bite-marks that adorned his hind-legs, Speaker finally felt his tears. Sure, Shimmer had ‘died’ before, but this time there wasn’t any bisected corpse to patch back together and make her come alive again – this time it seemed to be… Speaker banished the thought.

Looking around, trying to distract himself, Speaker pondered for a brief moment what kind of wood the shit was made of: It was a curiously dark wood, with an almost invisible grain. It was also very dense, and the caulking used to waterproof the planks that made up the outer hull seemed to be at least partially made of bone-glue.

Just as he was about to examine the bone particles in the glue Speaker found himself interrupted, a pale but stout looking pony addressing him: “Bright Machine Speaker?”

Turning to face the stallion, Speaker noted the garish costume the pony was. There was no doubt: This was a pirate who enjoyed taking the fanciest looking bit of clothing he could steal and wear them, even if the strange mishmash of colors and styles made the stallion look somewhat silly. The eight cutlasses the stallion had strapped to himself did make up for this though. Speaker nodded.

“I am Captain Moray Darktide. I am sorry to hear that your lunar mate didn’t make it back from the ponatees. They are not kind to intruders taken alive” Darktide spoke, bowing his head in respect.

Speaker shook his head: “They didn’t get her like that…”

The captain sighed: “I must admit, I was actually hoping to speak with her. I’m hunting a lunar who’s in league with the lintha – I was hoping for some advice”

Releasing the last few motes of essence committed to his medical charms, Speaker got up and faced Captain Darktide: “When I meet her next incarnation I’ll let her know – she had no love lost for the lintha and would probably have loved to help”

The Captain smiled and helped Speaker all the way: “I don’t suppose you know anything about the lintha? The location of Bluehaven, or the identities of any lintha mothers or fathers?”

“Only things from the first age – nothing about their current locations or family structures” Speaker mused, feeling utterly useless.

There was a sudden knocking on the hatch up to the deck and the captain excused himself and ran to the hatch while noting: “The lintha rank themselves with family terms. A mother or father is quite high ranking, and would know things I can use… but hold on, I need to check this”

The captain disappeared above deck for a moment. A few seconds later the hatch opened and Cash called: “Speaker, you’re needed up on deck”

Up on deck Speaker was met by the rest of his circle and a messenger spirit – not the sort conjured via sorcery, but a heavenly messenger spirit. It had been sent by the Raven King to collect the dead princes and needed Speaker’s consent to take them away.

“Sure, just tell Hran-Tzu that this had better be worth it. Shimmer died getting these two” Speaker said in a jaded tone.

The spirit faded from sight, along with the dead princes, leaving the circle to ponder a rather uncomfortable conundrum: How were they going to get back to the east? Yeddim weren’t used in the west at all… and without Shimmer to conjure magical clouds then they didn’t have any means of quick transportation at all.

Captain Darktide offered to let the circle stay on his ship until their next port of call – which sadly wasn’t scheduled for several months… this reduced the rest of the circle’s mood to roughly Speaker’s level, because they all knew that without a means to get back and defend Chung Do then the city would burn.

That evening, as the moon loomed high on the sky and Speaker gazed out over the endless waters in the rough direction of the City of Shining Reefs a light appeared on the horizon. It was faint at first, but grew in size as it got closer.

From the lookout atop the main mast the alarm was sounded – and almost just as quickly canceled. It turned out to be a messenger spell… from Shimmer.
“I think I’m in the underworld… somewhere – will try to find a landmark and send another message so you can find me”