The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Having been awoken and finding himself in chains in a dark and dank… place… Speaker first opted to shed some light on the situation. Flaring his anima revealed slightly glossy light-blue stone bricks, which told Speaker that he was in a place built from the grey-blue stone native to the territory around Lookshy, but the bricks had quite obviously, judging from various errant streaks, been infused with white jade – this would have made them damn near indestructible… it also meant that his singing staff wouldn’t do anything to them, since the staff couldn’t affect jade.

The light metallic gray color of the bars on the door to his cell equally looked to be some kind of jade-steel alloy. So was the chains and shackles fixed around all four of his hooves. Gift wasn’t going to be cutting through them any time soon… though with what he was designing, now that would be able to go through the chains and the bars, at least with a bit of effort and repeated cutting.

This was clearly a cell for exalts – that much was clear. The scorch and scratch-marks around the cell door and where the chain was sealed into the stone-brick floor supported the conclusion, indicating that unicorns had also been imprisoned here. The hallway outside was of similar construction, but empty. There weren’t even any lights… nor were there anywho who responded to Speaker’s attempt to call attention to anyone. At least there weren’t any remains in the cell from any previous occupants – though whether that was because ponies usually got released, rescued or because there was a good clean-up service for the place was not readily evident.

With a deep breath Speaker resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t getting out of the cell by his powers alone – at least not at the moment. Sitting down on the cold stone floor, Speaker closed his eyes and simply listened.

Sullen Hoof and his sensory-enhancement charms would likely have allowed for the detection of… something – but Speaker neither heard nor felt anything of note.

The only thing Speaker found himself certain of was that he was still in or around Lookshy. No other place used this kind of stone. It difficult to reconcile this fact… who would dare imprison him? Especially with the general staff paying all kinds of attention to him!?

With a face of quiet anger, Speaker looked intently at the chains around his forehooves and activated his crafting charm, but even his essence did next to nothing to the jade-steel chains. Grunting in frustration as his elemental immunity charm kept him safe from the heated shackles, Speaker turned to his first age memories: In the ancient times solars mastered artifice and construction in ways that made the very gods weep… but to remove the horrors of the primordials they also mastered deconstruction and the art of swift and elegant disassembly. Yes… there was a charm, oh yes.

Having absolutely nothing else to do, Speaker began practicing the essence forms and inverted mudras of making that informed the disassembly charm… it would probably take a while to figure out entirely, but time was something Speaker had plenty of right now, though not because he wanted it. He also took the liberty of applying his training charm, opting to improve the only skill for which he could reasonably perform a corresponding training activity in his tiny cell: His marksmanship with thrown weapons, by using various random pebbles found on the floor and tossing them around at small essence flares – it was the closest thing to a fun activity he could distract himself with when taking breaks to regain his essence when not working on figuring out the disassembly charm.

As time passed, being a Solar gave Speaker a unique intuitive sense of the position of the sun, and thus the exact time of the day relative to sundown and sun-up. This gave Speaker the horribly annoying knowlegde of exactly how long he had been incarcerated. This also meant that he knew that it was around late afternoon into the second day of his capture that he finally got a visitor to distract him from his mounting hunger and grand thirst:

The sound of a metal cell door slamming loudly in the distance, echoing through the likely underground prison Speaker was in, signaled that something had entered. Speaker didn’t bother looking up from his disassembly charm practice… but when Shimmer whispered from the other side of the cell door: “Hey, what’s up with hiding down here?”

Speaker shot Shimmer a very annoyed and indignant look: “I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in almost two days. I had to poop in the corner”

Taking his angry response as an answer, Shimmer shrugged and shifted into her beast-pony form: “Right, not here because you want to – go it. Let me get you out of here”

Tugging at the cell-door, Shimmer heaven and huffed, but Speaker quickly noted: “Tried that. Its jadesteel – It would take my charms weeks to go through it, Gift even longer”

“Oh please, I just have to use a bit of muscle” Shimmer retorted, activating several charms that caused her already muscular beast-pony form to ripple with muscle growth, her claws turning into foot long silvery talons just the same.

Slashing wildly with claws shapeshifted into something akin to the mandibles of rare diamond beetles which burrows through the heart of the imperial mountain and at the same time suffusing those claws with the shell-crushing might she would use back west to combat giant emperor crabs and other crustacean sea-monsters, Shimmer reduced the jade-steel cell-door to a pile of rods and sharp bits of metal.
Speaker was impressed – and hungry: “Amazing! Now get me out of here!”

“Ya… about that… I found you by following your scent through a very narrow vent. I don’t actually know where we are right now… we’re too far underground for my spacial-awareness charms to actually tell where we are – I just know that we’re under Lookshy” Shimmer noted, as her muscles deflated.

Frowning, Speaker looked around outside his cell. It was the same jade-infused brick all around… and more jade-steel from the vent Shimmer had entered: “Ok hold on – there is no way in or out from here for a pony”

Sniffing around, Shimmer nodded: “Now that you mention it… but I am smelling something, essence, from that cell over there!”

The other cell in question turned out to be empty – but Shimmer was quick to point out that the dust in the cell had been disturbed within the last few days: “That fits with you going missing… in fact, there are traces of your scent in here too, but they lead into the cell I just found you in”

“So I arrived here in that cell? Hmmm… how did I get in here?” Speaker mused, looking around for signs of secret doors or hidden seams in the stone. There was nothing to be found.

Shimmer went over to the vent and had a go at it in the same way that she had undone Speaker’s cell door… but to no avail: “Damnit, this thing has active essence hardening – Speaker, do you know how to disrupt that?”

“No, but you just gave me an idea to how I ended up here: Sorcery – teleportation magic is the only thing I can imagine that explains how this place is meant to work, and I’m not seeing any wards with essence sight” Speaker noted, scanning the corridor walls with glowing eyes and caste mark.

Pounding the vent in frustration, Shimmer suddenly stopped: “Wait, unicorns can’t do teleportation magic. That’s celestial circle sorcery. Only Lunars, Solars and… oh…”

“Sidereal. Didn’t you say you smelled one back when we arrived?” Speaker pointed out, trotting up to Shimmer and the now thoroughly scratched up vent.

Shimmer nodded as Speaker examined the vent. It was an incredibly fine-meshed vent, almost like woven metallic cloth. Shimmer noted that she had seen similar designs in old Shogunate dungeons: “It’s made to muffle the sound of prisoners calling for help – and I did, chased whoever that was for a couple of hours down in the sewers, but he got away. Won’t forget the scent though… but I’m not sure if it’s the same – it’s weird, probably from some kind of charm meant to veil or alter it”

“You sure it’s the same scent as here?” Speaker wondered. Shimmer shook her head: “I’m smelling essence-use here… even if it was the same stallion who brought you here, then he masked his scent here very thoroughly. But I’ll be able to recognize either in a heartbeat if I ever get a fresh whiff of either of them” Shimmer explained, sounding thoroughly annoyed that she didn’t have any better answers to give.

Nodding, Speaker took a deep breath and poked the vent: “Fair enough… and this vent is too fine for even fleas – how did you fit through?”

“Shapeshifted into air – it’s not a comfortable thing to do though, lethal in high winds, and it wouldn’t work on you… you’d… oh hey, now I know” Shimmer first said with anger in her voice, but ended on a very gleeful tone.

Waving her hooves about, Shimmer brought about the portal to her elsewhere-den.

“Of course! Shimmer, do the thing!” Speaker said, leaping through the portal.

Inside Shimmer’s elsewhere-den, as the portal closed, Speaker found himself the same western-ish tavern that he had previously seen a large number of captive western sailor-ponies enter… only now they were gone. Wandering the tavern, sampling the somewhat briny ale and enjoying some of the salted fish and dried fruits that Shimmer had stored in the den, Speaker wondered when Shimmer had dropped off the sailors… and where. Maybe on her way back from Chung Do? Would make sense… find a ship going back to the west, help the sailors get hired on.

“Hey, you coming out from in there?” Shimmer’s voice suddenly rang out surprisingly clearly, the portal to reality having silently opened while Speaker had been eating and thinking.

Exiting into the Gens Yushoto compound courtyard, the two quickly alerted the Gens and other relevant authorities to what had happened. Risotto was quite relieved to see Speaker back, as Gens Yushoto had apparently suffered a massive embarrassment from Speaker having disappeared without trace… while other parts of Lookshy had been busy blaming each other for ‘stealing’ Speaker – Indeed it seemed that Speaker was more sought-after than had previously been let on.

“We would do wisely to capitalize this interest” Shimmer noted after the debriefing from the local Security Inspectorate examiner inferior. Suffice to say that the unicorns were very unhappy to learn of a secret prison in the Lookshy underground – even more so that Speaker had seen marks from unicorns imprisoned there… though they did take some solace in the fact that Speaker hadn’t found any messages or graffiti on the cell walls – although that didn’t mean that such things hadn’t just been removed before Speaker got there.

Trotting through one of the nicer parks in the north-western part of the residential district, Speaker couldn’t help but find it amusing how Shimmer sounded so very much like Cash with that line she had said earlier – though he also found the suggestion itself quite reasonable.
“Oh you” Shimmer laughed as she bounced over to a bed of particularly fragrant flowers.

Following her, Speaker enjoyed the little moment of quiet. Considering how busy the circle had been since the Sunhill manse had been built, then this was quite nice. The open air and clear skies were also a nice change.

It was then that the alarm horns sounded to the west of the park. Speaker instantly summoned Gift and reared up to defend himself: “The rebel! That’s three times in three weeks!”

Looking around to see where Shimmer had gone, Speaker found that she was running towards the direction of the blaring alarms… of course.
Speaker caught up with Shimmer at the security checkpoint at the western park entrance – apparently the travel-pass Shimmer had been given by Gens Yoshoto didn’t mention Shimmer being covered in moonsilver tattoos, and she had forgotten to hide them under an illusion like she normally did following her rescue of Speaker.

Just as Speaker thought he had a moment to get a word in edgewise Shimmer suddenly looked like a dog who had caught a whiff of bacon – from somewhere beyond the checkpoint: “He’s here!”

“Who? The sidereal?! Get him!” Speaker barely had time to say, before Shimmer leapt past ponies at arms like a snake coiling through the air. To prevent the guards from going after Shimmer he quickly used Gift cut their spears in half as they were looking in Shimmer’s direction.

As the guards spun around in response to the sudden noise of Gift, even if it was only there for a split second, Speaker used his jumping charm and did as Shimmer – leaping over the two mortal ponies before him, leaving them very confused while he effortlessly stepped off the tips of their severed spears.

Using his jumping charm to also cover ground faster, Speaker leapt up on the sturdy tiled roofs and began to scan his surroundings with essence sight, looking for Shimmer but also signs of Sidereal essence use.

This turned out to fairly easy, as one block down Shimmer’s bright silvery anima suddenly flared. Arriving several seconds later, Speaker found Shimmer digging herself out of a pile of ruble next to a collapsed wall with a massive crack and dent in her: “He went into the sewers again! …and he’s armed with some kind of flail or something”

Looking around, Speaker spotted a sewer-drain that looked… off… at least when viewed with essence sight. It didn’t have the same muddled essence pattern as a rusty old sewer grate – for it had a perfect essence flow, so well that the rust on it were peeling off to reveal cast-iron fresh from the forge.

Now, Speaker didn’t remember that much about how Sidereal charms worked – but he remembered that their charms typically revolved around manipulating fate and reality… or resetting something’s reality, such as making a sewer grate be as new once more after having changed it into something else- like a sneaky trapdoor.

Sure enough the sewer grate wouldn’t budge – but Gift made short work of it. Shimmer was the first going down the hole, calling out from the darkness below: “I can smell him! It’s him for sure!”

Quickly following suit, Speaker and Shimmer instantly found themselves tracking an impossible quarry. With his reality-twisting charms the Sidereal was able to make the sound of his hooves appear to come from a different direction, or to come half a minute later than they should have… once he even left a decoy shaped as himself, that actually ran, to confuse the two.

It became evident very quickly that Speaker was only slowing Shimmer down, so the two split up. Tracking Shimmer for a bit with essence sight, Speaker found that the Sidereal was clearly making them around in circles. Was he trying to delay them? Buy time for something? Or maybe just loop back to an exit?

Not wanting to find out, nor give the Sidereal a change to escape, Speaker recalled what he could about the sewer controls of Deheleshen. There should be a maintenance panel somewhere around here, unless the place had been rebuilt too much… oh yes – oh, clogged with shit, of course, but a quick wash of essence undid that. Lovely, someone had replaced the gemstone controls with stone panels.

Using the maintenance controls of the sewer, Speaker sealed off several of the passages that led to other parts of the city, forcing the Sidereal to loop back towards Speaker – who quickly moved to ready an ambush, fashioning a trap of sharpened sticks and nails that he found in the sewage, using charms to speed up his search and trap-making.

The shrill howl of Shimmer in her warform barreling down the sewer tunnel heralded her and the Sidereal’s approach. Speaker couldn’t see or hear the Sidereal, but he suddenly noticed that his traps had all been disabled… and there was Shimmer, looking really annoyed: “Damnit, I thought you were him – he did something to his scent…”

As Shimmer sniffed around forcefully, amazing Speaker with how she wasn’t gagging from the lovely odor of sewer, the two ultimately concluded that the Sidereal had give them the slip.

“Do you think he escaped topside?” Speaker wondered.

With a very frowny beak, Shimmer said that she doubted it – there weren’t any exits to the surface in the area they were in.

“Good – then take a deep breath and brace for deep sea pressure” Speaker said, resetting the sewer controls and punching in a high pressure cleansing-cycle.

There was a low rumble as first age water pumps that hadn’t really been used in millennia sprung to life, siphoning water from the inland sea up to the city sewer…

The two-yard in diameter circular tunnels began to flood within moments – and second later the a cry of horror rang out in the sewers ever so briefly, before it drowned in a tidal wave of piss, shit and ocean water.

When the water levels receded Shimmer couldn’t help but laugh: “Hehe, wait – how did you know this would get him?”

“I figured that if the Sidereal could use sewer grates as doors, why not also have some hidy-hole down here we can’t see using the same trick? My theory is that it was carved out of the sewer tunnels, not built there originally… I mean, I would have remembered if I had built something like that down here – and I just guessed that whatever hidden door the Sidereal used wasn’t rated to withstand this much water pressure because it really doesn’t look like the flush-controls have been used since I was around… and I got lucky” Speaker stated in a mirthful tone that very much displayed his barely suppressed laughter.

Shimmer had to admit that that was quite sneaky: “Alright – but he still got away… “

“Not for long. Remember that god of shit we prayed to when stopping that rebel army heading to Chung Do? He likes me. Why don’t we pray him a message, asking what Sidereal in Lookshy just got hosed down in shit and if he could tell us who that is Oh, could you also ask him to relay this information to the Gold faction, and mention that this sid is likely connected to the rebel?” Speaker suggested,
Upon realizing the brilliance of Speaker’s plan, Shimmer found herself laughing quite hard for a brief moment: “Oh that is beautiful - with the name we can petition for a formal inquiry in heaven, or just threaten one to force him to stop whatever he’s doing here… that’s sneaky like a Denzik merchant”

“Well I’m hoping that the gold faction might be able to make him stop – perhaps they could do the inquiry instead of us having to press the issue” Speaker noted.

One quick prayer later and within seconds a name began to form as the shit around them congealed and crept up the sides of the sewer tunnel – apparently the number of Sidereals that have recently been flooded with poo was a short list to go through. The divinely-influenced crap began to spell out a name, one “Six Heavens Hunter”, spelled out in beautiful calligraphy.

“Hey Six Heavens Hunter, chosen of the mares of destiny – reveal yourself or know that we will demand a public inquiry in heaven regarding your activities!” Shimmer shouted into the darkness of the sewer tunnels, beyond the part that her and Speaker’s anima illuminated.

There was a moment of silence, followed by a sudden and low rumble. Speaker was quick to point out that the rumble ‘moved’ upwards: “He smashed through to the surface!”

“Well then let’s go!” Shimmer said, galloping off towards the nearest pony-hole cover exit.

With about thirty seconds head-start Shimmer and Speaker weren’t really sure if they had much of a shot of catching the sidereal once they got back to street level, but that turned out to not be that big of an issue: As they got up they were greeted by the rebel alarm horns and panic in the streets.

“Gotta hand it to him – that is a great way of hiding… but I just have to get a nose or three out to counter the many scents” Shimmer said she shifted into her beast-pony warform, now with an extra long beak with multiple nostrils.

Quickly picking up the sidereal’s essence-scent with her enhanced sense of smell, Shimmer gave chase while Speaker followed suit.

The situation this time was clearly different compared before the two had chased the sidereal into the sewers: Ponies left and right were screaming about multiple rebels – it seemed that the sidereal was using whatever sorcery or curse that brought fourth rebels was trying to set up even more distractions.

This quickly led to several confrontations with various rebel monsters. True to what Speaker had said previously, then they were quite easy to kill: There was nothing supernatural about them with regards to toughness or how much you had to slice into them before they fell over dead compared to a regular pony - the only difference was that by being made up of multiple pony bodies smushed together, as if the victims had all been fused together by unholy madness, then there was more than one heart to stop, but Shimmer’s claws made short work of all of them none the less.

The justicars in the… upper part of the port district… right, they were apparently as panicky as the rest of the ponies in the area, due to the dozens of rebel appearances: They were clearly afraid of being made into part of one, while at the same time having trouble keeping panicky ponies from making things worse.

Indeed, as Shimmer led a merry chase through crowds of panicky ponies, past rebels of flesh and nightmarish anatomical horror, the two passed several instances of forming rebels… which allowed Speaker to observe such events first hand, with essence sight once he came by one in the very early stages of forming.

Having seen enough to form an idea on how to counter the thing, as he saw in essence vision the otherwise invisible strands of sparkling green essence pulling at half a dozen ponies that had taken refuge behind a fruit vendor’s stall screaming into a vortex of doom, Speaker leapt at them just as their bodies had begun to fuse together, striking the forming central mass with a hoof blazing with golden essence, using his order affirming blow to quickly reassert that this was meant to be six different ponies, not one muddled mass of pain and howling fury.

Six quite surprised and elated ponies dropped to the ground among groans of pain and continued screams of fear that momentarily died down, Speaker not staying around to see if they were ok: If he could reach other forming masses that would become rebels and undo them, then could save a lot of lives.

While his little stunt with the un-rebelization had put him a few seconds behind Shimmer, then it wasn’t difficult to find her: Shimmer wasn’t trying to be subtle in her hunt, having shapeshifted in additional legs and a second pair of wings to grant her even more speed, which had also resulted in her anima leaving her aflame with silver light.

Leaping across a group of ponies huddled around a street lamp, Speaker finally found Shimmer catching her breath at the entrance to a short street that terminated in a small plaza where she seemed to have the Sidereal cornered – and lo and behold, there was the sidereal… or something indicating his presence anyway: A prismatic swirl of light and shadows that moved erratically down the street, past six fully formed rebels which appeared to have to been busy trying to demolish the surrounding buildings, all of them looking at Speaker and Shimmer with hateful and malformed eyes. At this point Speaker had already tried to use his order-affirming blow on other fully formed rebels – it hadn’t worked… so those ponies were lost for good, but at least now the culprit could be brought to justice.

“I’ll handle these rebels, you catch the sid” Shimmer howled, throwing herself at the rebels with all of her far too many limbs out in front, claws ready to strike.

Speaker galloped past the monsters after the sidereal, ignoring their manic screams of “Down with Lookshy!” or “We must rejoin the realm!”
The sidereal was at this point strangely easy to follow – though at the same time impossible to pinpoint: The dancing lights and shadows around him made it impossible for Speaker to tell where he was, which made throwing Gift after him equally impossible. It didn’t occur to Speaker that he hadn’t been able to keep pace with Shimmer and the Sidereal previously…

Chasing the sidereal up a flight of stairs through hastily abandoned workshops, following the very hard to miss lights, Speaker emerged onto a rooftop where he finally caught up with the Sidereal.

Indeed, it seemed that the Sidereal was waiting for Speaker as he came out on the roof.

Not even bothering with asking questions – for a pony so vile as to turn other ponies into monsters deserved no trial – Speaker instantly reared up and called Gift to him: “Six Heavens Hunter, prepare to die!”

“Your hubris shows. The realm is the only long-term way of keeping Creation safe” the Sidereal stallion said, his face hidden behind what appeared to be a rather featureless mask of polished ivory, indeed it didn’t even have holes for eyes. The rest of the sidereal was covered in a loose-fitting garb of sky-blue silk, except for the stallion’s ears and curly brown tail.

Speaker threw Gift at Six with all his might, the speed of it so great that the moisture in the air blasted away from it, like the trail of a comet of water vapor. That, combined with all the other charms that Speaker had put into the attack, made Gift glow like a small spinning sun as it trailed hot and expanding water vapor behind it.

The Sidereal didn’t even try to dodge – instead flaring his bright blue anima, briefly revealing it to be a blue light with an afterimage of a blue flower in it, but then he struck it with a hoof, shattering the light into that same light and shadow display as before… but this time Six Heavens Hunter also exhaled forcefully, his breath expanding into a massive kaleidoscope of swirling lights, rendering him effectively invisible behind the appearing and disappearing lights, with Gift passing through where he had been without anything happening.

Guarding himself and holding Gift ready to parry anything thrown at him as it returned to him an instant later, Speaker managed to block the first few blows that came his way from amidst the sensory-overload of the intense lights and unnatural contrasts – but it quickly became too much: One moment there would be nothing, the next it would be as if the sidereal was striking at Speaker simultaneously from all sides, with a charm-enhanced force far greater than what Speaker’s defensive charms could handle… the sidereal’s apparent weapon of choice, a weighted rope of some kind, striking him from below and behind somehow, knocking Speaker over, while a second simultaneous strike knocked Gift away from him, over the edge of the roof.

Speaker never got the chance to get up: His foe had a solid hoof on back within a blink of an eye: “Pathetic anathema… you’re lucky my orders require you to live… for now”

“Hold it!” A familiar voice called out. It was that of a mare, clad in ornate heavenly silks, with a dark-brown coat ,a well-coifed black mane and a bright green caste-mark that was the symbol of the mare of secrets, the same color as her eyes.

The masked sidereal threw Heath Rose a brief glance… well, he turned his head for a brief moment – the mask made it impossible to see where he was looking, then he stepped down from Speaker’s chest.

“Six Heavens Hunter, by order of the Convention of Wood you are to come with me to Yu-Shan and explain exactly what you’ve been doing in Lookshy without notifying the convention – and then you’re going to pray to the mares that Ayesha Ura doesn’t demand a full audit of your activities here” Heath Rose called out, looking quite angry.

Speaker struggled to get up, though his pain subsided as he managed to use his anesthetic charm on himself: “He… he’s been conjuring up the rebels – I don’t know how – but he’s doing it”

“I can hear it – whatever the hell you’ve got tied to that starmetal string, hoof it over!” The chosen of secrets shouted.

For a moment Speaker wasn’t sure what Heath Rose had meant by hearing ‘it – then he recalled that Sidereal essence-sight came in the form of being able to hear the presence of essence as music, insight that he had once used to help craft the singing staves.

Six Heavens Hunter remained silent, but slouched ever so slightly into a proper martial stance…

“Don’t even think about it – we have an official complaint from a Solar claiming that you’ve kidnapped and wrongfully imprisoned him – you’re already in deep shit for that. Don’t compound it by trying to run” Heath Rose said, waving a stern hoof at Six Heavens Hunter.

Leaning towards Heath Rose, the stallion Sidereal hissed: “I will get you for this someday – in this life or the next!” then he disappear in a flash of multicolored lights and shadows that hung in the air.

Heath Rose made a frantic gesture at a speed that Speaker simply could not perceive – evidently she tried to catch the other sidereal by yanking on a string of fate, but that strand was evidently cut in that same instant, causing a single row of tiles on the roof to change from bright blue to dull grey as their reality was damaged. Heath Rose then twisted around and reached with a hoof, no she threw something. There was that sharp sound of a small pointy metal object striking a heavier blunt metal object, but the escaping Sidereal seemed to get his way… well, the weighted rope fell from the sky, hitting the tiled roof right next to Speaker quite hard.

“Oh well… I’ll get him later – are you ok?” Heath Rose said with a sigh as she turned to Speaker.

Looking at the weird iron ball with the thin braided starmetal tied around it that had dropped from the sky, Speaker nodded: “I’ll live – right now I’m more curious at what this thing is and how it hit me so hard”

“Beats me – but I can tell you that it’s from outside fate, because I can’t feel its connection to the loom – and Six Heavens Hunter running around with a weapon from outside fate? Oh he is in so much more trouble now” the Sidereal said in a first worried but ultimately bemused tone.

Removing the starmetal cable from the iron ball revealed a deep crack in it, from which bright emerald light shone. Apparently the starmetal cable held the light in somehow – perhaps it was a stabilizing effect?

Speaker instantly felt the effect of the light and put up his shaping defense charm: “The light – this is what pulls ponies together to create a rebel”

“Rebel – I’ve heard of those. But that light, that’s malfean essence, yozi essence!” Heath Rose noted, looking intently at the otherwise quite unassuming iron ball.

It was clear that the starmetal cable had been used to make the sphere safe to carry around, but it also somehow worked as a means to release its power in a controlled fashion, though how that worked was unclear. The only thing essence sight told Speaker for certain was that the crack in the ball was unnatural… it was broken.

His repair charm quickly sealed the hole, which had the unintended effect of suddenly making emerald green old realm glyphs appear around the ball. Upon seeing these Speaker instantly recognized the device for its true horrific nature: “This is a relic from the primordial war… a flesh-forging sphere. How did this… fuck… probably the same cache that they got the crystal-fire device from – and this fiend stole it”

“Right – well, is that it? I need to get to the loom and track Hunter down” Heath Rose asked in an insisting tone, though it wasn’t exactly clear from her statement if she had understood what Speaker was referring to or not.

Nodding, Heath Rose moved without moving, moving to somewhere else. Speaker shook his head… that was a close call – and now he was floating a primordial flesh golem catalyst in front of him.

Going down the stairs to street level, Speaker found the passage leading back to the small plaza where he had left Shimmer with a little over half a dozen rebels was awash with blood… the plaza even more so.

It was at this moment that he found Shimmer sobbing in the middle of it all, her coat caked with blood and clumps of sliced flesh. Taking a few steps towards Shimmer, Speaker realized that something was off: The bloody chunks that littered the ground were too… small… and regular.

These were normal pony limbs and bits – there was no melded flesh nor grotesque fused bones in the remains.

“I killed them… I thought they were rebel monsters, not ponies…” Shimmer slowly said in a tone of utter disbelief as she gazed upon the left half of what had once been a young filly’s head.

Speaker didn’t really know what to say. Had this been some kind of fiendish trap by Six Heavens Hunter? He could have sworn that he had heard and seen the rebels just like Shimmer had.

The General Staff was not going to like this…