The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The sinking feeling in Speaker’s stomach over the trouble Shimmer was going to be in was only barely countered by the nauseous gagging sensation spurred on by the sight of a plaza full of what had to be the sliced and diced remains of about a hundred or so ponies. There wasn’t a single living creature in the chunky piles of torn flesh.

Feeling understandably sickened by the sight, Speaker momentarily turned his gaze to the buildings surrounding the plaza. When he had found Shimmer and the Sidereal at the plaza the buildings looked as if they were being attacked by the rebel monsters – but now… sure, there was damage, but it looked a lot more like something you would get from whacking a starmetal-wrapped iron sphere of demonic power into the building, as opposed to monstrous horrors tearing down the walls.

The buildings themselves were nice tenements – well, they had been nice tenements. What a lovely way to trick all the ponies living in them to come running out. One thing still nagged Speaker: How did the Sidereal make it appear as if the crowds of ponies were rebel monsters? Probably some Sidereal trick of fate. It annoyed Speaker that he could remember being able to detect such alterations in fate, as well as effect minor ones himself, back in the first age but not now.

With no apparent solution in sight Speaker felt sorely tempted to just sit down in the blood and gore and wait for the justicars to arrive and start asking questions. This would no doubt ruin most if not all of the goodwill Speaker had built up with Lookshy, that much was certain.

The sound of panicky screams and explosions from elemental essence blasts were still audible from beyond the deadly quiet plaza, indicating that other rebels were still rampaging. The only sound in the small square was the drip of blood – and there was no mistaking the bloody remains from that of rebels: There was no fused flesh, no misshapen body-parts…

Looking at the demonic flesh-fusing orb Speaker wasn’t really sure if it was a good idea to show it Shimmer – but then it occurred to him: The orb was just the thing he needed… well maybe… he couldn’t quite remember what the orb would turn ponies into, but anything was better than the carnage strewn around them.

“Shimmer, get up – warform – You can still save face” The Twilight caste Solar said, trying to sound brave and inspiring.

Turning her head and giving Speaker a truly miserable look, Shimmer tossed the half foal-head away from her, it making a nasty hollow thud as it impacted a bit of slashed leg and hoof before sinking into the pooling blood.

Holding the orb up high, Speaker forced the device to obey him – despite the demonic artifact not really wanting to cooperate – but in a matter of seconds its emerald green sigils floated outward, spinning around the flesh of the dead ponies in the square, floating them up.

It was at this point that Speaker realized that he couldn’t quite let go of the orb… and that it was floating up in the air as well, along with all the bits of dead pony from the ground.

“Speaker? Speaker what’s happening!? Is that the rebel making thing?” Shimmer cried out in confusion.

Speaker could only cry out: “Yes, now kill whatever this turns into before it consumes me!” before he was swallowed up by the flesh clumping up around him.

In a matter of seconds the entire square had been sucked clean and dry of blood and loose bits of flesh – it had all been combined into a monstrous form that resembled a giant demonic monster, but this time with no randomly misshapen limbs or half-fused heads: This was quite well made, and all the more horrible… especially to Shimmer since Speaker was stuck inside.

It was then that a dozen heavily armed justicar’s swept into the square, led by a grim-looking unicorn stallion with an ugly scar over his nose and forehead: “The hell is that?!”

“It’s the source of the rebels! We tracked it down but it swallowed Speaker up as it formed! We have to kill before it digests him!” Shimmer shouted frantically as the severity of the situation suddenly washed over her like a cold bucket of water to the face.

With a mighty howl and reckless fury of the likes that only the truly bestial lunar warform afforded, Shimmer leapt up at the massive twenty yard tall flesh monster that seemed to be taking on the shape of some kind of horned blood-hound. The justicars held back, only armed to take on pony-sized foes, but the unicorn leading them charged ahead with a battle cry of “Ever resolute!” while blasting at the monster with jagged razor-sharp elemental stone blasts.

Inside the monster Speaker found that his elemental immunity charm allowed him to breathe and protected him from the pressure. That was nice. On the negative side then the lattice of bone that had formed around him held him tightly, and the orb seemed to be siphoning essence out of him to fuel the monster. Was this how the orb was supposed to work, or was this some kind of anti-theft response to non-demonic essence?

The weak jerks and mild shockwaves that passed through his bindings told Speaker that the fighting was still going on outside – but he could also feel that his essence reserves were dropping… and he didn’t want to know what happened once he ran out. If only he had Gift… Hold on, the Great Maker had made Gift so it could be recalled through elsewhere!

Willing Gift to appear, Speaker felt the flesh around his right forehoof yield ever so slightly as something metallic and familiar-feeling appeared. Willing Gift to activate had much more of an effect: The flesh around Speaker’s right forehood was blended… along with that hoof, but Speaker was still on his anesthetic charm, so he barely noticed.

Floating Gift around himself, Speaker was ultimately able to free himself – after a fashion. He was still inside the flesh monster, only now he could swim around in the blood and flesh pulp Gift had made.

Orienting himself, Speaker aimed Gift up and applied the flesh-rending gear technique, causing Gift to positively liquefy the flesh and bone it encountered as it carved a path for Speaker to hopefully escape via.

Outside, the battle against the grand rebel raged. Apparently the massive flesh monster came with demonic powers, such the ability to emit searing beams of emerald light, or fire of prismatic crystal from its strange limbs. To the half-dozen unicorns that had showed up to help fight the monster this meant that they had to dodge and keep moving to avoid being reduced to cinders, though Shimmer found that the unicorns were quite adept at having some play decoy, while the rest would focus their elemental and magic attacks on a single joint or limb, to try to reduce the mobility and offensive capabilities of the monster.

Speaking of Shimmer, then the Lunar had found that whatever power the orb had to attract flesh meant that whenever she clawed at the monster it would simply reattached those bits a second later. At least the flesh-attraction effect didn’t seem to work on ponies with enlightened essence, so Shimmer and the unicorns seemed safe – with the mortal justicars evacuating all other mortal ponies in the area quite efficiently.

Thus, with little ability to harm the monster directly, Shimmer had taken to using her bone-armored warform to help shield the unicorns playing decoys, helping them stay alive while they drew the monster’s ire.

Between the devastation of the monster’s various magical attacks, or its attempts to stomp on the unicorns playing decoys – something they did by targeting their elemental bolts at the monster’s face – then the battle quickly spilled from the small plaza to the rest of the upper port district. Buildings were being reduced to rubble left and right as the monster mindlessly blasted and struck at the ponies around it, indeed Shimmer and the unicorns quickly concluded that the monster wasn’t very good at coordinating itself or planning its attacks, which made baiting it around all the more easy, but also made it all the more destructive.

“Get it down to the harbor! Bring it range of the port citadel essence artillery!” one unicorn officer shouted from under her jade lamellar armor.

Shimmer nodded and flew up to the monster’s face. Its eyes were like that of a fly, only it was pony eyes arranged on the surface of a sphere instead, all of them looking at her angrily as she slashed at them.

The monster turned to her, shifting its massive bulk around just as a massive geyser of pulpy blood erupted from a spot between the monster’s left shoulder and throat. Among the bits of pureed meat and gore Speaker spilled out on the monster’s shoulder, completely drenched.

“Speaker!” Shimmer cried out, overcome with joy as she dodged the monster’s massive clawed paw swiping at her.

Getting up, Speaker coughed a little, then took a deep breath before looking around: “What the… what’s going on here? Why haven’t you killed this thing yet!?”

“The orb, it just pulls back whatever bits we cut off the monster – can you stop it!?” Shimmer shouted.

Looking at his cut up hoof, Speaker realized that the orb was still somewhere inside the monster: “It’s still in the monster – but can you go in through the hole here and do what you did to that tyrant-lizard?”

Diving in towards the monster’s throat, Shimmer landed next to Speaker while the monster turned its attention back to the unicorns blasting at it. Looking at the blood-pulp filled Speaker had come out from, Shimmer shook her head: “If I turn into a fish I would choke in that… and I won’t fit in there in my beast-pony form”

“Ok. Look, the monster isn’t regenerating the bits I had Gift pulp up – what if…” Speaker began, but Shimmer interrupted him, telling of the unicorn’s plan to get the monster in range of the port citadel’s weapons.

Looking south-west towards the cliff-edge that led down to the lower port district and the Lookshy port, Speaker frowned for a moment: “Is the lower port district evacuated? And this thing doesn’t seem stupid enough to just fall over…”

“You’re right… hmm… oh I know – keep it distracted!” Shimmer said, leaping away and flying off.

Speaker sighed and shook his head as he saw Shimmer fly down to the unicorns on the ground. He couldn’t tell what they were saying, nor make out much detail of what they were really doing due to the monster moving around, but moments later Shimmer flew off to somewhere Speaker couldn’t see.

Oh well – if nothing else Speaker trusted that Shimmer had a good idea of what she was doing, so he instead looked at his options and revved up Gift before plunging it into the monster’s neck with all his might.

Gift chewed through the outer layers of the monster’s blood form easily enough, but getting that damage to remain permanent seemed to be the problem: It was just like Shimmer had said: Anything cut off was just sucked back into place by the orb’s power a second or so later. Of course, being situated where he was, Speaker couldn’t tell that the unicorns down on the ground were having far more success by having some of their numbers cut into the monster, then having other unicorns blast the monster’s wounds with elemental fire and ice to cauterize the wounds and thus prevent regeneration.

Back up on the monster’s shoulder not even slow and meticulous pulping of the flesh worked for Speaker – to which end he came to the conclusion that it was likely that the only reason the path he had carved out of the monster hadn’t healed was because it was still inside the monster… it was only the bits that were removed from the whole that were fixed. How to exploit this?

Ultimately the best way Speaker could think of exploiting this apparent weakness was to dive back into the monster and try to weaken it from the inside… but depending on what Shimmer had planned, then that might be a really bad idea. Sighing heavily and almost absent-mindedly fixing his cut up hoof with a bit of Solar medical magic and essence, Speaker walked over and looked into the hole.

With his balancing charm ensuring that he wouldn’t slip and fall off the monster, Speaker took a few careful seconds to choose his aim, then he threw Gift back into the monster. The direction he had aimed at was meant to strike at the monster’s spine. Having done that Speaker found that there was little else he could really – if Gift at some point got to the monster’s spine then that should be that – but until then he couldn’t really help with anything while stuck up on the monster.

Looking around for a suitable place to jump to, Speaker used his jumping charm to cross the distance – though his timing turned out to be rather poor: Just as he leapt the monster swung a massive limb into the very same building, demolishing most of it, and leaving Speaker with no safe place to land.

This resulted in what would have been a very painful landing, if not for the anesthetic charm still working on Speaker. To the unicorns that rushed to his rescue, they found a pony with a broken left hind-leg, who’s entire left side was one big bruise, and yet Speaker acted like he wasn’t even hurt: “Let go of me! I’m fine! Just get me to a field hospital and I’ll patch myself up”

The two armored unicorns that had come to Speaker’s aid, home guard soldiers if judging from their purple lamellar armor, looked at each other, then at Speaker with a somewhat condescending smile.

Speaker protested loudly as he was floated up in the air and carried away from the battlefield like some useless old wounded veteran.

A few minutes later, the two unicorns were pausing to helping some other ponies get out of a damaged building. It was clear that it was going to collapse fairly soon from how the thing was leaning, groaning and crumbling at the edges. With a big part of the end of the tenement knocked down, it was missing a lot of structural support, and there were other home guard soldiers running back and forth, helping sailor families evacuate. It just wasn’t quick enough…

Having been put down in a fairly comfortable resting position that didn’t put pressure on any of his injuries, Speaker saw how the roof, third and second floor of the building began to dip. Collapse was imminent.

Speaker knew that he could call in his singing staff instantly – but the rosined bow needed to play the damn thing would take too long. Looking around, he spotted a trio of frightened looking street musicians. One of them, a grey-coated mare with a nicely done black mane and a large string-instrument that Speaker didn’t know the name of, had a suitable looking bow.

Looking back at the near-collapsing tenement, the home guard soldiers had pulled back, leaving several families stuck up on second and third floor, all of them screaming for help as they could feel the floor under them slowly begin to give way.

Recalling Gift from the monster via elsewhere, Speaker threw it with a level of precision in mind he had not really done before: The mare with the instrument and bow didn’t know what hit her – or rather, hit her bow – as Gift banked, swerved and spun perfectly to strike the bow out of her hoof, causing it to fly in a nice arch right over to a spot in front of Speaker where it broke on impact.

Speaker didn’t even miss a beat as he floated the broken rosined bow up, using his repair charm in the same instance to mend its broken wood and snapped tail-hairs. His singing staff was ready as the bow came up against it, to which Speaker hurried off a quick rendition of the Earth Dragon Claw Jig, causing several broad stone spikes to rise up and poke into the tenement. With the new make-shift supports the collapsing parts of the building came to a precarious rest, plus the ponies stuck up too high to jump down were able to carefully walk down the broad stone spikes to safety.

The ponies down on the ground cheered at the home guard ponies, thinking that it was one of the unicorns who had performed this miracle, while the home guard ponies looked at each other with some confusion.

Trying to throw the bow back at the mare he had ‘borrowed’ it from but failing, having spent pretty much all of his available essence over the last few hours of having been a captive, getting rescued, fighting rebels, fighting a sidereal, getting swallowed up by a meat-monster, and now powering the singing staff’s stone-shaping magic, Speaker collapsed, barely managing to send his singing staff back to elsewhere.

From the ground, Speaker was barely able to look up to see the gigantic beastpony form of Shimmer rise up a few blocks away as he had the noon-day sun in his eyes, her taking to the sky with massive wing beats which saw hundreds of roof tiles blow all over the place – a few of the nicer blue granite bungalows where Lookshyan naval officer families usually lived even collapsing simply from the force of the gusts of wind from her wings.
Shimmer was as massive and gargantuan as she had been back at that battle with the Water Walkers at that farm. Coming around she slammed into the giant monster, using the massive strength of her form to hoist the beast up into the air, all the while the monster gnawed, clawed and blasted away at her, but her enlarged form’s equally enlarged bone-armor looked yard thick so it had little effect beyond making it difficult for her to fly due to its weight.
As the monster howled in terror, the volume and pressure from flesh-beast shattered every glass window in the district, the five wondervolt warstriders swooped in and helped push Shimmer and the monster out to sea.

About half a mile out Shimmer suddenly dropped the monster, and from the massive port citadel two dozen lightning ballistae, other flavors of fight age essence artillery and probably a few of Lookshy’s more blasty sorcerers unleashed their might, blowing the monster in half in a spectacular multi-colored kilo-mote detonation that sent shockwaves out in every direction.

Coming around once more, still in her gargantuan form, Shimmer flew into the falling debris and took a huge bite out of it before flying back to the upper port district and landing in a sufficiently large area of already flattened buildings. The home guard soldiers present didn’t really look sure about what to with the enormous Lunar, but when she began to shout for Speaker, they were fairly quick to begin to look for him – for an ornery Lunar is not a being to be trifled with.

His exaltation-given sense of time told Speaker that it was later afternoon, which meant that he had passed out for at least four or so hours. To his relief there no longer was any sound of battle, only the shouting and noise of dozens of work-crews hauling off debris. Oh, and apparently Shimmer was still in her emperor-ox sized beast-pony form and she was cradling him in her… what do you call forelegs with claws and digits for fine manipulation? Arms? Something like that.

“You can let go of me now” Speaker said, looking up at the massive three-eyed bird of prey head looking down at him.
Shimmer roused herself, releasing Speaker: “Yay – you’re back!”

“Inde- ow” Speaker lamented, having discovered that the side he had landed on when he had originally fallen was still quite messed up. Another application of his anesthetic charm, plus some additional medical charms saw that fixed a few seconds later – or at least healed to a point that the remaining bruises would face over the next few hours.

“Ok – now, tell me why you’re still in your warform. It looks like the monster is gone, so why are you still scaring the locals” Speaker asked quizzically, not really seeing any reason for Shimmer to have remained as such.

Pointing into her beak with a massive claw, Shimmer said: “Ah gak sangsan stak ang mah tath”

Smirking, Speaker looked into Shimmer’s imposing maw. He had treated enough soldiers with tooth-aches to recognize when someone was saying “I got something stuck in my teeth” in even the most awkward way. Of course, he didn’t expect to find the flesh-forging sphere stuck between her rows of curiously shark-like teeth inside her beak.

“I’ll have to come inside to yank it out – you might lose a tooth as well, it seems to have cracked on” Speaker said, climbing inside Shimmer’s beak.

For obvious reasons Shimmer didn’t respond, at least not to begin with – it wasn’t until a mouth and an eye appeared at the tip of her hulking tongue that she was able to respond, as well as weird Speaker out quite thoroughly: “Ah, thank you – I tried to just swallow the thing, but I didn’t know exactly where it was when I took the bite – oh, and we have company outside”

With his anesthetic charm and a swift buck Speaker knocked the cracked tooth, causing the now inert flesh-forging orb to drop down – Speaker spun around and caught it with a careful hoof: “Alright, time to face the music I guess”

Leaving the mouth with the tooth and orb, Speaker found a large gathering of ponies-at-arms, seventh legion officers and other unicorns assembled outside.

The moment Speaker stepped off Shimmer’s beak she began to shrink, though she did note that it would be about ten minutes or so before she was properly pony-sized again. The assembled unicorns and other ponies expressed a mix of various states of being impressed as well being non-plused over Shimmer’s appearance and nature: “Now that you’re both in an approachable state, I would like an explanation” the unicorn in charge said.

“Sure, once I know who you are so know who I’ll be directing to the general staff if you’re here to give us grief” Shimmer snarked as she slowly shrank.

The unicorn, a short and stocky stallion with a bright green mane, an even greener coat, slitted eyes and a very officious looking uniform with al lot of insignia on it, looked positively agitated at Shimmer’s quip: “I am Taimyo V’Neef Oilygear, Secretary bloody General and Examiner Superior of the port district. I am ON the general staff you tribal nitwit – now show some respect and do as you’ve been told!”

The fact that the clearly very purebred dragonblooded unicorn had no apparent qualms with talking down to a Lunar who was still in the process of scaling down from ‘towering above any remaining four story buildings’ spoke volumes about Taimyo Oilygear’s resolve. Shimmer was quick to pick up on this, especially since it didn’t come off as recklessness or any kind of underestimation of what she herself was capable of. To this end she recused herself, albeit in a somewhat spiteful tone: “Right, sorry – Speaker, show him the thing”

Sighing, Speaker displayed the flesh-forging orb and simply stated: “This is the source of the rebels of Lookshy – the pony who wielded it escaped, but it was an agent working to weaken Lookshy in order to further the Realm”

No pony in earshot said a word. There were a few small scuffles and rattling of digging gear as ponies gathered to see the source of the rebel – but none dared even ask how it worked.

“Hey must be nice getting a visit from home right V’Neef?” Shimmer said in spite, referring to the painfully obvious fact that House V’Neef of the realm was one of the five biggest noble houses there, founded by the youngest daughters of the now missing empress.

The look on Oilygear’s face turned quity thorny as his anima flux fully manifested in the form of spinning green flowers – something that usually only manifested if a unicorn either used a lot of essence, just like other exalts, but also if they got very emotional, due to the fact their powers were more closely tied to their physical bodies, namely their blood.

Seeing the Taimyo looking ready to break to Lookshy’s ban on duels, Speaker very leapt up to Shimmer’s face with a few charm-fueled jumps, landing on a shrinking shoulder, and slapped the beast-pony across the beak: “Don’t you have something to feel really bad about? Why don’t you go think about what you’ve done back at Cash and Sunrise”

Jumping down from Shimmer before she could get a word in edgewise, Speaker gave her a look that very clearly stated that he wasn’t interested in discussing this any further.

It was with tears in her eyes that Shimmer shifted into a seagul and flew off east-wards.

With that done Oilygear requested that Speaker come with him for a proper debriefing. This took a few hours, and the Security Inspectorate officers present during the event were very unhappy to hear of this mystery agents working to further the realm by weakening Looksy, though they were mostly upset that Speaker was unable to identify the pony. It was very difficult for Speaker to convince them that this pony was veiled in such a way that it would be forgotten after every encounter.

“Right... you keep saying that – but how come you remember him?” officer Hard Case asked, for the sixths time.

Speaker, feeling that the debriefing had long since turned into an interrogation, finally sighed deeply and stroked his long beard. He knew quite well that he couldn’t simply orate this pony away, but why not simply question his motives then? Speaker had always been good at asking the right questions: “You keep asking that in a tone that implies that I simply do not want to inform Lookshy of this pony’s identity, as if to put my loyalty to Lookshy into question. What if I told you that I have already told you the identity of this pony several times over, and that I’ve seen it fade from your memory before my very eyes?”

The cream-coated unicorn mare shot Speaker a dirty look. Readjusting her white lamellar armor with blue officer trims, she looked Speaker straight into the eyes: “Do you think I’m stupid. We have recorders of everlasting glories running here – crap like that wouldn’t work”

It took surprisingly little to convince Hard Case to bring one of these recorders forth and replay the ‘debriefing’. After the fourth instance of the recording fading out during the times when he had tried to explain Sidereals or mention Six Heavens Hunter Hard Case quite thoroughly disappeared. She had been with Speaker throughout the interview – so she knew that he couldn’t have tampered with the recorder… by every right it should not have been possible to make alterations to the recordings like the ones she was seeing.

Finally released, with Hard Case going off somewhere for a really stiff drink, Speaker finally returned to the Gens Yushoto compound and checked up on the designs he had been making prior to being captured.

He found the study tidied up and all his scrolls and designs gone – instead he was greeted by a young unicorn mare: “Hi – I’m Maheka Ruby Star, I have been assigned as your armiger”

Speaker looked at the grey-coated unicorn, in the typical Valkhawsen student uniform robes, the green colors of the robes and the bright yellow trims making it clear that this mare was a student of sorcery and artifice. Her bright orange eyes, and mane of short ruby-red hair both sparkled ever so slightly like broken granite, indicating that she was an earth-aspected unicorn. The combination of these two aspects of his so called armiger – the special bodyguards assigned to important Lookshyan sorcerer-engineers – made Speaker wonder: “Are you meant to be my bodyguard or my apprentice?”

Ruby shrugged: “A bit of both I guess – I first got the assignment the day after you went messing, and after word spread that you had reappeared here I’ve been looking all over for you”

“Sure – but why not assign me a master? Why a student?” Speaker couldn’t help himself but ask. Part of him felt genuinely insulted from having had a lowly apprentice put upon him, when he knew damn well that the scope of his abilities and powers would test even the greatest of Lookshyan artificer master.

Bowing her head, Ruby gave Speaker a serious look: “First of all, I have worked for sixteen years as armiger for legion sorcerers. It was when I had to escort an artificer to Chiaroscuro that I discovered that I was quite good at artifact construction and repair, and I’ve studied at Valkhawsen ever since. So maybe the Battleaxe wanted to set you up with someone who can both protect you and learn from you”
Blinking for a moment, Speaker found himself nodding as the weight and stress of his captivity and the stress of the day’s events washed over him: “Good point – in that case the first thing you can do is fetch my schematics and notes. I don’t know where they’ve been put, but I will need them back”

Ruby smiled and floated out some scrolls from a pocket inside her robes: “You mean these?”