Chapter 73: From the Ashes Into the Elements

The recon mission the circle had planned was simple enough , on the surface: First Speaker wanted to check out the location in Creation that mirrored where Deep Rot was in the underworld, to see if there was anything to be learned from the terrain or the local dragon lines, since that was likely to be identical in the underworld.

This was of the mission was exceedingly easy, since it simply mean flying Han to a spot roughly seven or eight hundred miles east-south-east of Lookshy, in the heart of Marukan nomad territory.

Having left Sunhill early that morning, the circle arrived in the skies above the Marukan heartland, with the Grey river disappearing over the horizon to the east. Down on the ground the last few guild plantation dotted the terrain before giving way to the open plains of the roaming Marukan ponies and their cattle-herds.

Before having left the circle the Bodhisattva had given them the most accurate location of Deep Rot that he had known: Apparently the Arbiter didn’t let deathknights go there – and any maintenance work was done personally by the Arbiter or ghost slaves who were never heard of or seen again.

Both Shimmer and Speaker looked long and hard for any signs of geomantic disruption as they circled the area – and it didn’t take long for someone to detect something…. Though it was Cash who noticed it first: “Hey, Han here keeps acting up when we pass over the western part of this area. There’s something he doesn’t like there”

Focusing their attentions on that particular area, Shimmer quickly spotted a series of minor demesnes there. This was nothing out f the ordinary, but looking at the area at large Speaker pointed out that something was off: “Those demesnes are far less potent than the dragon lines in the area than they should – something is draining them”

The implication was obvious. Cash landed the yeddim near the cluster of weakened demesnes, letting Speaker and Shimmer have a closer look. After chasing out a group of changelings that had taken up residence in the heart of one of the demesnes, the circle soon came across strange shrines of soulsteel and inverted fountains of blood.

Shimmer found the shrines most curious: Set in the geomantic centers of the of the various earth and wood aspected demesnes in the area, the things seemed to focus and suck in the ambient essence flows, turning the essence into blood via lenses of black jade and soulsteel – yet from the outside the demesnes didn’t appear as if they were tapped or drained in any way.

“That’s because these shrines aren’t sending the essence they’re collecting back out in a new form – they’re sending the essence to the underworld” Speaker said, looking very unhappy about that conclusion.

Shimmer gave the particular shrine they were at a careful lookover: “The surface of the soulsteel basin where all the blood is draining way is etched with runes – but I can’t read them all because of the blood. If I could just read a few more lines so I could get an idea of what kind of sorcery was involved in making this”

“Just be careful… this kind of stuff… even towards the of the first age… was still theoretical. Draining essence from one plane of existence to another, without using hearthstones? This is amazing” Speaker said, still shaking his head ever so slightly in disbelief.

Cash was quick to ask if they shouldn’t simply destroy the shrines, but Shimmer was even quicker to point out that that would likely just alert the Arbiter to something being up…

“Perhaps, but Lookshy would probably like to know that another deathlord has a base of operations so close to them – it would be far less suspicious if they destroyed these things” Speaker pointed out.

With their survey of the creation-side location of Deep Rot, the circle flew towards the tiny shadowland known as the Mourning Field.
“A shadowland that close to Lookshy? I’m thinking it’s related to a realm invasion?” Cash noted, as they approached immaculately marked and salted borders of the shadowland six miles south-west of Lookshy.

Speaker thought about Cash’s question for a moment before recalling the relevant history lesson he had learned as a foal in one of Lookshy’s primary schools, though he was far more preoccupied with whether Lookshy would react to a flying yeddim coming the Lookshyan hinterland airspace: “The second realm invasion, back in year seventy-five after the great contagion. Four realm legions came, one directly for Lookshy – but we were ready for them. By the time they were done burning and pillaging the hinterlands beyond the Lookshyan Wall siege-response plans were in full effect. Lookshy held out just fine for well over a year of siege before sneaking something into the legion encampment that wiped out three quarters of it in one go – that made the shadowland. It is called the mourning field now”

“Any idea what they used for that?” Shimmer wondered, seeing an opportunity for a way to possibly sneak a similar thing other realm holds. Speaker sadly did not know this – noting that it was a legion secret withheld from their history books.

Crossing into the shadowland, the circle performed the same simple ritual that they had used several times already, as taught by the Bodhisattva, allowing them to transition into the underworld while still in daylight.

The pale sun of the underworld lit the ashen plains of the marukan wastelands as the circle flew high above marukan ghosts that herded animate effigies of cattle and goats, just like they had done in life with real livestock. Approaching the location of Deep Rot the terrain changed…

The rolling plains flatted, having clearly been dug out and leveled. A grand circular wall then rose, replete with towers, soulsteel fortifications and massive buttresses all around.

Cash dared not bring Han in too close, as Shimmer quickly spotted lightning ballistae in the towers – a yeddim was no match against that. Thus the circle circled high up in the underworld sky, at a safe distance to the outer walls of Deep Rot.

From their position it was clear that the circular walls of Deep rot contained a similarly circular domed structure, and Shimmer was sure that she could see what looked like some kind of pit extend downwards under the dome, but from this distance – even with her charms – it was difficult to tell.

“Cash, put us down – I need to get closer for a better look” Shimmer said, her now truly hawk-eyes searching the wall for anything that looked like a gate.

On the ground Shimmer leapt of Han, instantly beginning to scurry around the ground, alternating between listing and sniffing around… apparently in the hunt for bugs. After a few minutes she cried out in frustration: “Aww come on!?”

Evidently the ground around them had no life in it – not even the ghosts of bugs or anything. To this end Shimmer explained what she had tried to do: “I wanted to find a local bug so I could eat it and shapeshift into its form, then use that to sneak over the walls”

“How about going under the walls?” Speaker suggested, retrieving the singing staff.

Cash and Sunrise stayed behind to guard Han and be ready to leave in a hurry, while Speaker and Shimmer moved underground, carried by the inquisitive and quiet tune played on the singing staff.

A few minutes later Speaker and Shimmer very carefully broke through just under the wall, upon which Shimmer shifted into a cockroach and snuck above ground while Speaker waited patiently.

While Shimmer was away Speaker carefully considered his essence sight observations of Deep Rot from up above. The geomancy and dragon lines of the area was vastly different from the same area in creation, for Deep Rot seemed to be capping a massive necrotic demesne, with several lesser ones feeding into it. Disrupting those essence flows might very well do wonders to mess up Deep Rot, but it would only cause catastrophic essence building up at the points of disruption, not inside Deep Rot itself.

Speaker continued to ponder the mysteries of Deep Rot until things started getting noisy up above – and suddenly Shimmer, in her beast-pony form, fully encased in her bone-armor, crashed through the thin layer of ashen dirt separating the tunnel from the surface, down onto a very surprised Speaker.

Shimmer barely even bothered to take the time to let Speaker untangle himself as she simply shouted: “Run!” and hoofed it down the tunnel. Speaker instantly activated his graceful crane stance charm and righted himself instantly, following suit as quickly as possible.

A second later a swarm of war ghost led by a truly terrifying being plunged into the tunnel: It was a creature of horror that might once a long time ago have looked like that of a pony ghost, with a ravaged and bizarrely tormented form that trailed semi-transparent blood. Its devouring eyes hurt to look at, for they gleamed deeply with the cold madness of oblivion – but worst was its chilling scream, like the last cry of a dying tortured foal.

Using Gift to collapse the tunnel behind him, Speaker only barely managed to buy himself a little extra distance to the disturbingly distended jaws full of roughly hewn iron teeth that were snapping behind him.

Emerging from the tunnel Speaker found Cash with Han up in the sky, flying around erratically in evasive maneuvers, as dark beams of essence that glistened in the red sky along with thunderous arcs of lightning shot up at the flying yeddim from the walled fortifications around Deep Rot.

Mere seconds later the ghosts and the freakish super ghost spilled forth, clawing at each other to get up and out of the tunnel. The monstrous ghost shrieked once more, but this time the cry drowned into a horrid black mass that the thing vomited forth – and the black mass congealed into the form of a shadowy snake, which quickly began slithering towards Speaker, while the monster ghost and its minions held back.

Gift did nothing to the ghostly black snake as it purposefully approached him at speed – and it suddenly coiled up before launching itself at Speaker, trying to strangle him. Slashing at the thing with Gift did nothing; neither did pulling at it with his hooves.

As Speaker fell to the ground, struggling to remain conscious, the ghosts began to advance. To Speaker the world began to darken, so much so that he didn’t see Shimmer slamming into the ground in the form of a solid moonsilver tyrant lizard, or how she began to rip the ghosts apart with silvery teeth and claws. This reminded Speaker of the fact that he knew a similar spirit-smiting charm, and using that he had Gift cut the ghost-snake strangling him to pieces while he felt somewhat silly.

With the spirit-slaying charm in fully effect, plus a few added tricks via his thousand wounds gear style of martial arts, Speaker began chipping away at the tide of ghosts pouring out towards him – but these ghosts… they were dodging, they were weaving, they were even trying to parry Gift with their grim blades. Of course, unlike the fight at the late Lord Stalwart’s mansion, then this wasn’t a fight about destroying the defences of Deep Rot, only making enough room that Shimmer could safely shift back into her beast-pony form and fly off with Speaker – and with Speaker’s jumping charm this was even easier… well, it would have been if not for the fact that some of the ghosts started flying up after him! The essence artillery blasting at them didn’t help either, having already scorched many of the feathers on Shimmer’s wings and tail.

Shimmer flapped her wings as hard as she could – the muscles around her ribcage and and back bulging and glowing with unearthly silvery light as charms, her body straining to the point that Speaker had to use his anesthetic charm on her. Feeling release from the painful strain on her wings, Shimmer gasped: “Thank you – now let’s get out of here!”

With another charm that had Speaker scramble to hold to Shimmer’s feathers lest he fall off, Shimmer’s body suddenly went into overdrive, her eyes blazing with silver fire as her grand feathery wings began to flap as if they were that of an insect, producing a strange humming noise akin to certain rare eastern birds.

Having attained the speed and maneuverability of a hummingbird, despite her size and passanger, Shimmer effortless dodged the lightning and necrotic essence beams shot at them as they flew up into the sky to Cash and Sunrise.

Landing on the howdah, Speaker shouted to Cash to get them out of there as he jumped off Shimmer and quickly began to check her for injuries.

Cash didn’t need to be told twice, yanking on Han’s reins hard which caused the yeddim to bellow a deep and throaty moan, plus it made the already flying yeddim accelerate at breakneck speed, something it didn’t seem all the happy about – likely due to the hits it had taken from the essence artillery, which had left much of its left side a scorched mess smelling of burnt fur.

Despite the wind howling around them, Speaker quickly began to examine Shimmer’s body as she shifted back into her normal pony form. Her body was a wreck, having strained nearly every muscle possible, and pulled even more. His medical diagnostic charms told Speaker of multiple internal hemorages and near lethal buildup of lactic acid in the muscles around her shoulders – of course Shimmer felt none of it, thanks to the anesthetic charm.

“Shimmer, you need to use your regeneration charm, right now – your body, it’s…” Speaker began, but Shimmer motioned for him to shut up.
“Shush – I know – now listen before I go into hibernation to heal: Inside the Deep Rot… all the ponies you found records of being captured and brought there? It’s their brains and eyes. They’re all in jars! They have buildings up on the surface with holding pens and rooms where they’re butchered, but somehow still alive. They have thousands of them, and they keep them alive with the blood stuff from creation, but also blood brought in from other places. It… gods… I’ll tell you more when I wake up, ok?” Shimmer quickly blurted out before she faded off into a deep slumber.

“She ok?” Cash shouted, his attention fixed on controling Han as they made for the mourning fields shadowland.

Speaker nodded: “She better be… she better be”

As the circle neared the mourning fields Cash slowed down so Sunrise could perform the rite of transition into the lands of the living properly. During this Speaker and Cash talked about their options.

“The brain-eye thing in jars fits with what the bodhisattva said – so Deep Rot is like having a legion of clerks enslaved to read and think about whatever you tell them to” Cash noted bluntly, thinking of how the whole thing was organized and if his position as a lord in Stygia could help disrupt the operation.

Speaker shrugged, at a loss for words to describe how horrible he felt, to the point that he could only focus on how to destroy the place: “The way it’s fortified certainly won’t make any attempt at sabotage easy – and we’ll have to wait for Shimmer to recover to tell us more about those additional blood feeds running into the place. If we could shut them all down we might be able to starve all the jarred brains”

“Wouldn’t you want to save them?” Cash wondered, finding the idea of simply destroying such a massive enterprise a bit wasteful if nothing else.

Giving Cash a stern look, Speaker reminded the eclipse caste pony that he too didn’t really want to be saved after Blueblood nearly killed him: “And then factor in that a lot of these poor souls have likely been held captive like that for decades – the ponies I read about in the kidnapping ledgers were all young… the Arbiter isn’t taking elderly ponies, because they’re likely to die from old age too quickly… a lot of the ponies down there have probably been like that for decades, assuming a brain in a jar lasts that long”

Cash sat down, hard, on the howdah, the look on his face telling Speaker all he needed to know about the dawning realization of what horror the jarred pony-brains had to be going through – and for how long they might have had to exist like that: “You’re right – that place has to go. Did Shimmer say anything about the relay?”

“She didn’t – hopefully she’ll have something on that when she wakes up again. In the mean time we can plan what to do next” Speaker said, looking towards the blurring edges of the shadowland as Sunrise finished the final incantations of the ritual to ensure their exit of the Mourning Fields would lead to Creation.

Being more of a business pony than a military strategist, Cash wasn’t entirely sure about what to say to that, but he was certain that it would require a lot of held to breach Deep Rot, and likely even more help to destroy the place – that much he was certain of: “…what do you think Speaker?”

It was then that Cash noticed that Speaker was looking at something else, something off in the distance…

There was something off on the creation-side of the shadowland – and judging from the flashes of light coming whatever it was, it seemed to want to communicate, maybe…

“Speaker, what are those lights? It’s not something being shot at us, right?” Cash said, picking up the reigns and holding them tightly.

With a look of deep concentration, Speaker tried to make out the repeating sequence of lights: “I think its heliograph communications – and from their height up in the air I’m thinking its someone from Lookshy who came to the Mourning Fields after we crossed into Lookshyan airspace”

Cash had heard of the Lookshyan heliograph system. He had seen the various Lookshyan outposts and fortresses scattered around the scavenger lands, though he had never understood how they were able to read blinking lights at such a distance, nor had he ever been able to figure out the code the lights represented – of course, that had been while he was a mere mortal pony. With a glance at the lights Cash laughed: “They want us to identify ourselves or they will open fire”

Speaker looked at Sunrise, then back at Cash: “Do they even expect us to be able to understand that message?”

“That’s actually not a bad question, why don’t we go ask them?” Cash said, turning to pilot Han out of the shadowland.

Sunrise cleared her throat, loudly: “Speaker, something flying straight Lookshyan forces out of a shadowland that doesn’t identify itself… what would Seventh Legion protocol be on that?”

“Destroy it” Speaker noted.

Cash didn’t put down the reins, but he did slump his shoulders and sigh: “Right, well then lets identify ourselves – Sunrise, you have the brightest anima, show them some lights for when we come out of the darkness here!”

And thus it came to be that a light that shone like a small sun, on the back of a wounded albeit flying yeddim, came out of the dim grey wasteland of ashen grass that was the Mourning Fields straight into the very large jade-steel hooves of five blue jade flying warstriders, which were held aloft with enormous blue jade wings.

“Well fuck me… they scrambled the Wondervolts to catch us” Speaker said, absolutely awestruck.

Cash too found the sight that met them very impressive: “The Seventh Legion’s best fliers – never thought I’d see them this close”

“Yes, you can see their mounted lightning ballistas tracking us so clearly” Sunrise glumly noted, reminding Speaker and Cash that they weren’t in the clear just yet.

Indeed, in the gigantic metallic forehooves of the equally enourmous and metalic flying pony-shaped warstriders – which looked a good deal like the similarly sized automatons in Denansdor, there were open apertures which revealed the business ends of lightning ballistas ready to fire.

The middle Wondervolt warstrider, decorated with more streaks of yellow and dark blue than its peers, suddenly activated a voice-enhancer, allowing its pilot to talk – very loudly - to the circle: “Land immediately or we will blow out of the sky!”

Cash gave Speaker a bemused grin, the yanked the reins to make Han circle down towards the ground: “This is awesome”

As Han landed the lead Wondervolt warstrider landed as well, while the four others circled around them in the air – weapons still trained on Han and the circle.

“Is there a pony by the name of Bright Machine Speaker, formerly Heart Speaker, among you?” the pilot of the warstrider in front of the circle boomed out, the gruff but female voice coming out at an almost pain volume.

Speaker shot Shimmer a worried look, then an annoyed one at the warstrider before quietly quipping: “Looks like someone got the vocal relay system stuck on Royal Canterlot Voice”

The lead Wondervolt warstrider reared up and point its forehooves at the circle, opening its lightning ballista gun-ports: “I will not repeat myself!”

Taking a deep breath Speak activated his balancing charm and his jumping charm as he leaped the impressive ten yards between Han and the warstrider, landing perfectly right on top of the armored head of the thing.

The warstrider instantly began to twist and turn, seemingly trying to spot where Speaker had gone – for Speaker was right between the two primary vision-crystals in the warstrider’s eyes that let the pilot see outside: “Where are you? What are you doing?” the pilot again boomed out – and this close to the warstrider’s vibro-crystal from which the sound of the pilot’s voice was emitted that meant that Speaker’s ears started bleeding.

“I am Bright Machine Speaker – and your warstrider is broken!” Speaker said as he reared up, channeling his repair charm into his hooves before slamming them down on the warstrider.

A golden glow flowed down through the warstrider, giving off an inner light under the jade-steel armor plating, as Speaker flushed the warstrider’s systems and realigned its essence signal relays around the control core where the pilot was. The vibro crystal gave off a burst of static which quickly faded as the pilot shouted – now at a far more comfortable, albeit still amplified, volume level: “The hell did you just do?”
“I fixed your warstrider – now, you wanted to talk to me?” Speaker said, speaking into one of the warstrider’s ears.

The warstrider got down on all four, Speaker effortlessly – thanks to his charm – moving to the back of the giant mechanical suit of armor’s head. A hatch then opened to the left of the warstrider’s ‘spine’, and out came a unicorn mare with a mane that was all yellow, orange and red streaks, as if it was on fire. Her uniform was, to the surprise of no one, a Seventh Legion officers uniform, a red one, similar to the one Speaker was wearing, only not faded.

Looking at Speaker with her slitted eyes – one of the most common traits among even mildly pure-blooded unicorns thanks to their dragonblooded heritage – the mare respectfully nodded: “Ok Bright Machine Speaker – how in the seven hell shells and a wet coat did you fix my ‘strider, from the outside, without tools or even looking inside?”

Speaker smiled sheepishly and shrugged: “Old first age trick – now, you were looking for me?”

“Yes, there are standing orders to bring you in for questioning – Taimyo Karal Linseed wants you in her office almost two seasons ago” the unicorn mare said with a smirk.

On one side Speaker wanted to quip that Taimy- wait… Linseed made Taimyo? “Since when did Linseed make Taimyo? She was Shozei when I retired”

Over on Han, and still very much in ear-shot of Speaker and the unicorn, Cash asked Sunrise: “Do you know what those terms mean? I get they’re military somehow but…”

“The Seventh Legion still uses old realm rank names. This Linseed pony is a general, but used to be a high-ranking mid level officer, like a major or captain, but not a colonel” Sunrise noted, knowing just as little about military organization as Cash did, but she did recall the terms from the first age.

After Speaker jumped back to Han and told Cash and Sunrise that he was to come with the Wondervolts to Lookshy Cash insisted that the rest of the circle follow suit – the Wondervolt commanding officer, her name being Karal Warm-Steel, didn’t seem to mind this, and thus t he Wondervolts escorted the flying yeddim in over Lookshy.

Looking down at the marvel that was Lookshy Speaker got all sorts of nostalgic – both from having grown up as a mortal in Lookshy, but also from his first age memories of having built and ruled the place back then… now gazing out over the walled rings of the city, as it rose up the peak of the promontory it was built on, Speaker couldn’t help but feel proud that he had the unique honor of having been part of shaping both Lookshy’s past, but now also its future as a Solar again.

Cash and Sunrise’s appraisal of Lookshy was slightly more practical. Having never been in Lookshy they mainly remarked at how very… fortress-like the place was: Lookshy was apparently built at the top of a peninsula that rose up towards its end, making fortifications built along the way highly effective. The city was built in four tiers of fortifications, with Cash easily spotting that the biggest markets and whatnot seemed to be concentrated between the outermost walls and the second-outermost walls. Speaker identified this as the fourth ring, and pointed out that Cash had rightly so identified the district of trade into which the main gate to the city opened, next to the agricultural district, which had several neatly arranged fields inside its walls. Each district was walled of, and each wall intercection had a massive tower that undoubtedly house artifact artillery and other weapons to counter sieges and defend the skies above Lookshy.

As per the instructions of the Wondervolts, Cash followed in formation at a very slow speed – indeed, the circle had been told that breaking formation or any sudden acceleration could result in them being shot down by the city’s air defenses.

The plus side to the slow approach over the city was that it gave the circle ample time to enjoy the sights.

“You sure this isn’t a trap? I could easily see someone spinning a story here that we did something wrong to get us shot down…” Cash said, in a moment of anxiety as they passed over a heavily armed battlement bristling with ballistae and strange-looking essence artillery.

Speaker put a calm hoof on Cash’s shoulder: “This isn’t the realm – in Lookshy a pony is judged by his actions, not his faith or the faith of others”

Crossing from the fourth and outermost ring over into the airspace above the third ring, Speaker explained that the forest-covered district that took up half the ring was called the Green Hunt, and was a game preserve, as well as public park and recreational area, as well as the location for quite a few tombs for various heroes and leaders of Lookshy. The other half of the third ring was made up of fairly similar and non-descript buildings – though the far side opposed the Green Hunt had an almightly and constant noise coming from it.

“It’s like being in earshot of the Nighthammer district again” Cash remarked.

Speaker nodded: “Well, it’s the districts of savants and craftsponies – all of Lookshy’s heavy industry is housed there. A lot of metalworks and essence-fueled industry is housed there”

Approaching the second ring, above the sea of blue stone buildings roofed with mostly flat roofs covered in white stone, or tiled in blue stone tiles where pagoda style architecture was in use, there was a notable shift in the kind of buildings one could see. The second ring had several towers and magnificent structures in alabaster and gold, clearly first age structures, with many of their surrounding buildings fashioned in similar styles. Speaker explained that the second ring was called ‘The War Quarter’: “Most of the ponies in the city live in the second ring, I grew up here… though my family’s apartments are on the other side of the old city”

“And that’s the Lookshyan port, right? I’ve heard about the naval fortifications here… they’re supposed to be the finest in creation” Cash remarked, looking down at the massive wall jutting out to shield the harbor district. Speaker agreed, noting that he’d see if he couldn’t arrange a proper tour of the city once their business with Taimyo Karal Linseed was done.

“Karal, that’s one of the noble houses of Lookshy, right?” Sunrise asked.

Nodding, Speaker noted that Lookshy clung to a lot of old realm terms in their daily parlance: “Like, the district where we’re going, the old city, is also called Deheleshen – that was the name of… well… my city, that’s what this place was called in the first age. The lighthouse on our left, above the harbor, that’s still called the Deheleshen Lighthouse – it has a shard of the eye of Oliphem embedded in a star-light focusing array… hmm… I wonder if Lookshy actually knows that”

Cash found this clinging to archaic terms silly, but Sunrise found it admirable: “They venerate the old ways, instead of simply doing whatever pleases them, as is custom in the realm – that is a good quality”

Approaching the heart of Lookshy, the old city, the last remnant of ancient Deheleshen, Speaker found himself in tears. Beneath them was the pyramid-like Teocala of Tu Yu, the temple of the god old Deheleshen. It looked just like it had in the first age. Indeed, the entire district, which was roughly the size of the market district in the fourth ring, was a perfectly preserved and still functional first age city district. Not the many realm invasions, or when the then Seventh Legion of the Shogunate had made its last stand in Deheleshen agasint the oncoming tide of changelings during the Baloran crusade had this part of Deheleshen been breached by enemy forces. It was pure. It was protected, by all the blood and lives given to keep it safe.

Speaker silently wowed to repay that dept – as thanks for keeping at least this part of his city safe… though he subconsciously doubted that the Lookshyan general staff would let him take over the city just yet.

Cash followed the Wondervolts up, as they passed by the bulbous and looming Lookshy Manse, the biggest and most heavily armed manse in the city. It was in a noticeably different style from the otherwise organic and flowing style of the first age structures around it – but Speaker was still able to make even Sunrise blush as he told the story of the place: “Legend has it that the architect of the fortress manse, on the day of the official inauguration of the place, was rewarded by the goddess of Lookshy with steamy oral sex on the front steps on the manse”

“Doesn’t something like that happen on a weekly basis in Great Forks?” Cash wondered, while giggling at the thought of a grand military parade being interrupted by a divine blowjob.

Sunrise refrained from commenting, though her silent frown and look of embarrassment spoke volumes.

The only other truly grand feature in the old city – and it was indeed the grandest of them all - was where the circle was being led on Han by the Wondervolts: The Aviary. This was where Lookshy’s fleet of magical first age skyships and flying artifacts were docked and maintained. It was a gigantic segmented obelisk with multiple platforms with gates leading inside its three-hundred by three-hundred yard interior, where giant platforms reminiscent of the lift in the Denansdor manse moved ponies, equipment, the odd flight-capable warstrider and whole skyships around. Ponies on every platform stopped to look at the flying yeddim, flanked by the Wondervolts, approached to land – though Speaker found it far more interesting to gawk at the hulking Kireeki-class skyreme known as Skywolf, the flagship of Lookshy’s skyguard.

The Skywolf dwarfed Han, being more than a hundred yards long and shaped like a giant steel and blue-jade orca. The hulking killer whale sported dozes of mounts and pods where artillery could be mounted, and Speaker claimed that it could ferry around almost a thousand (cramped) ponies at once.

“Well that’s neat… but it must cost Lookshy a fortune to keep that thing in working order” Cash mused, looking at how many repair crews were buzzing around the thing.

Speaker laughed: “Oh you have no idea… it took Lookshy 28 years to build the thing, and they had to put all other artifact production on standby while that went on. It’s probably the most expensive and powerful mobile weapons platform made in recent history”

“Neat – now, it looks like they want us to land over there…” Cash pointed out, bringing Han down for a nice and gentle landing.

Half a dozen teams of support ponies and sorcerer-technicians rushed to the Wondervolt warstriders as they landed around the yeddim, while three unicorns flanked by two dozen obscenely heavily armored mortal ponies approached the yeddim and the circle.

Telling Cash and Sunrise to wait for a moment and keep an eye on the still sleeping Shimmer, Speaker jumped down and greeted the unicorns before him. Not recognizing any of them, but seeing the rank pips of the unicorn in front being that of Kazei (colonel in more tongues), Speaker saluted: “Chuzei Bright Machine Speaker reporting, maam”

The unicorn mare gave Speaker a derisive sneer: “We’ll see about that – Taimyo Karal Linseed wants an audience with you, now”

“Of course – but… what about my friends? Should they stay here? This isn’t a place suited for an injured yeddim” Speaker asked.

The unicorn officer, a mare with a dull blue coat and a mane as white as snow, frowned. Lightning began to crackle around her horn: “We can euthanize it, carve it to pieces for transport off this level and reimburse you”