The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The day after the emergence and defeat of what the ponies in Lookshy called the mega-rebel, Speaker walked through the port district with his newly assigned armiger – his legion assigned bodyguard – in the early morning hours, just as the work crews began to arrive to haul away the remains of demolished buildings.

The damages were quite extensive. Sure, the clean-up process was already underway, but it seemed clear that hundreds, if not thousands of sailor families would be homeless for the time being. A sizable tent city had sprung up over night outside the city walls – something that the general staff probably disliked greatly, for it would be a great way for Lookshy’s enemies to sneak spies and things into Lookshy via it, that much Speaker was sure of.

Ruby was more curious about the rumors she had heard the evening before about Speaker’s involvement in the destruction of the port district, to which Speaker could only say that he was going to destroy the thing that caused it, so that it couldn’t happen again.
“What? No, you can’t. Give it to the legion. A weapon that powerful… it would be such a waste” Ruby pleaded.

Giving the red-maned unicorn mare a very frowny glare, Speaker yawned as the morning sun tickled his eyes: “Waste? This is not a weapon meant for ponies to wield – it is meant to be wielded against ponies. The monsters that this thing can make will be hostile to all ponies, including the one that activates the orb!”

Ruby didn’t appear to buy Speaker’s explanation, at least if judging by her expression, but at the same time she seemed to understand that it wouldn’t really be possible to get Speaker to hoof over the orb unless he really wanted to relinquish it.

Amid the massive paw-prints of the flesh-monster in the rubble from the day before Speaker sat down and assumed a meditative position. He explained to Ruby that during his captivity, prior to his rescue, he had been working on figuring out a charm that disassembled things very well.

“Makes sense – would it have let you break out?” Ruby asked, flicking a broken stone brick aside with a hoof.

Speaker nodded: “That and once I’ve figured it out, I can destroy this infernal orb for good – it is a relic of a time when true evil roamed creation. It simply should not exist”

Looking somewhat puzzled as to what Speaker had referred to – her knowledge of history, like so many other scholars in this age, only reaching back to the great contagion and the changeling crusades that followed.

Ruby was about to ask exactly what Speaker was planning on doing when he began floating ruble up and reassembling the building who’s remains he was sitting in the middle of. He did so at a frightful pace, so much so that Ruby had to gallop away to outrun the expanding swirl of rubble, broken furniture and anything else that hadn’t been retrieved from the piles already.

A few minutes later a large crowd had assembled to watch the now almost finished building that appeared to be reassembling itself by the power of a wondrous golden light. When the tenement had finished itself Speaker emerged from a door, carrying the crushed remains of a dead pony that hadn’t made it out during the battle.

Looking at Ruby, who appeared genuinely dumbfounded, Speaker shot her a grim look: “What are you waiting for? We’re not done yet – there are others inside, down in the basement”

After another dozen dead bodies had been retrieved Speaker solemnly continued on to the nearest destroyed tenement, purposely seeking out demolished high-density residential buildings to restore – and then clear out of dead bodies that were revealed.

“Are you going to do this to all the wrecked buildings here?” Ruby asked, as she sat down next to Speaker right after he had begun his third round of architectural restoration.

His face, an intense grimace of concentration, Speaker didn’t even bother opening his eyes as he focused on reaching out with his essence to piece back together every shattered wooden beam, every brick and every tile: “No, this one will be my last today – I can’t keep this up much longer”

“Ok, what about tomorrow? Will you start working on your designs then?” the unicorn mare asked, trying to mask the fact that she was quite bored.

With a deep breath and a strained expression, Speaker guided his essence as the roof of the tenement was threaded back together, each newly restored tile interlocking perfectly: “I will not. This is multitasking: I’m feeling each piece of ruble to figure out how they came to be – how they broke”

“To figure out that disassembly charm you mentioned? You know, us unicorns known some fairly good unmaking charms” Ruby noted, to which Speaker quickly retorted that the orb would be difficult enough to break with celestial-grade essence: “…terrestrial essence is too weak for this.”

Now, Speaker wasn’t looking, but Ruby’s expression in response to Speaker’s statement was quickly becoming one of grand disapproval: “Hey! We have the powers of the elemental dragons! Don’t come here and say that unicorn powers are too weak to break some stupid iron ball”
This wasn’t the first time Ruby had brought up the topic, with the same outcome of her sounding insulted – but by the heavens she was persistent, as befit an earth-aspected unicorn. Aiming by the direction of her voice, Speaker recalled the flesh-forging orb and tossed it. The surprised gasp and lack of sound of the orb hitting the ground hinted that she caught it.

“Right, then break it – and for heaven’s sake don’t activate it unless you want another monster stomping around” Speaker said. He didn’t get a reply, but heard Ruby trot away.

Sighing, Speaker wondered if his armiger truly would try to get the orb destroyed to prove her point – or whether she would just turn it over to the Seventh legion. Oh well, it was a moot point: The secrets of the Shattering Grasp Technique had already revealed itself to Speaker… he was just finishing the current tenement so all the more ponies could move back in all the sooner – and he was still attuned to the orb, so he could feel the rough direction of where it was.

About an hour later, as the last parts of the inner brickwork was falling into place and the old bits of crumbled mortar was knitting itself back together, Speaker got up and left. He ignored the cheering workers outside… well… he would if there had been any: It seemed that the head of the district, the Examiner Superior, was keeping everyone busy: There were still plenty of warehouses and other structures that needed to be rebuilt. With a bemused look on his face Speaker couldn’t help but imagine how Cash would just love to sell Speaker’s services for reconstruction. Resisting the urge to help construct a warehouse or two, Speaker trotted off in search of the orb.

As the he continued further away from the residential parts of the port district, Speaker finally found himself among teams of ponies filling carts with carefully sorted salvaged building materials picked out of the neatly gathered up piles of rubble. Most of the ruined buildings with sections that were beyond saving were in the process of having those sections carefully torn down, while bamboo scaffolding had shot up like weeds everywhere.

At the construction sites for the demolished warehouses, Speaker noticed several patrols of Justicars roaming the area. Seeing the exposed warehouse goods waiting to be housed again this made perfect sense.

Turning a corner Speaker came across a young Lookshyan priest holding a somber ceremony at a cleared lot where one of the collapsed tenements he hadn’t gotten to rebuilding had stood. The decorations and flowers put on the ground indicated clearly that someone died in the collapse:

“Just as the dragons gave the gift of wisdom and enlightenment to ponies without us at first understanding why, we must recognize that the gods still move in mysterious ways. This was a terrible tragedy truly, but tomorrow the dents in our armor will be beaten out by the sweat of our brow, and our wrath be turned on those responsible – the anathema that has brought the fury of the rebel spirit upon us!” the unicorn priest said, his voice intense but without shouting, with an earnest and very relatable feeling.

Nodding as he passed by, Speaker sighed and rubbed his temples. Solars and Lunars might not qualify as anathema any more, but he could easily imagine the bronze faction sidereals being lined up and shamed for their actions – for truly, if judging from the state of creation as a result of their actions, then they were anathema to all that is good.

It was then that someone yanked hard on Speaker’s old faded uniform – nearly making him stumble and fall over.

“Wha-“ Speaker barely managed to say as he snapped back into reality. The priest was gesturing angrily at him and saying something along the line of “…and there he stands. The shame of Lookshy, a fallen one who sold his soul to darkness, that he might appear bright and alluring to our eyes. He might have fooled the general staff with his powers and gifts to them, but those of faith know better!”

Getting a proper footing and wrestling off the young colt who had bitten onto his uniform, Speaker turned to the preacher and shook his head: “What in blazes are you talking about? I’m just trying to give the ponies who live here their homes back”

“It would bribe us with gifts of things that it already stole from us – how disgusting” the priest said in a self-aggrandizing way, while holding his horn high and snubbing his nose at Speaker. It pained Speaker that the unicorn was actually right – but the dirty and hateful look that the unicorn was giving, it was pure venom.

The ponies around the unicorn didn’t exactly give Speaker any kinder looks either.

Taking a deep breath, sighing just as deeply, Speaker shook his head and turned to leave. He had no interest in a theological debate – that was for Sunrise or Cash. Hell, Cash would probably have the priest sucking his dick by the end of it. It was then that Speaker was struck over the head with something very heavy.

Dropping to the ground, the world spun for Speaker as he reeled from the massive blow. Turning over, he barely managed to see the steel mallet come down on him and swat it away so that it struck the cobble next to him with a massive thud – it only cost him a broken hoof.

The massive stocky mare wielding the mallet was quickly joined by others as Speaker found himself mobbed. His defensive charms protected him from most of it, but as they pinned him and held his hooves out to bash them with that big old steel mallet… well… one thing is turning a blade, but the force of a mallet is something different.

Thanks to his anesthetic charm Speaker didn’t really feel it as his hooves were systematically cracked – if anything it mainly annoyed him as they bashed his right forehoof into a bloody mess of pulpy meat-sponge with mighty mallet blows, as he had just fixed that hoof yesterday. His lack of expressing any kind of pain only seemed to enrage the mob, as they took it as proof that dark forces were protecting him.

Despite struggling to the best of his ability, the mob began to reshuffle Speaker so the pony with the mallet could have a go at his legs.

The priest just kept egging the mob on, spouting hate and encouragement: “Strike at the anathema! Let it feel the pain it has put us through! Its death will appease the cruel spirit of the rebel, that it might leave us be”

Oh how Speaker wanted to just buck that priest something fierce – but at the same time he couldn’t help but feel horribly conflicted: The ponies actually doing harm to him were clearly being manipulated. With essence sight he could see the charms the unicorn was using to make his encouragement irresistible to mortal ponies – but he had no means to counter or stop it… at least not without hurting the ponies around him, and that was something he really didn’t want to – and where in blazes were the justicars? This kind of violent mob attempted execution shouldn’t be possible!

It was the loud snap of his left thigh-bone cracking that snapped Speaker out of his hesitance against retaliating with force. The situation was simply too wrong, too absurd! He had been lauded by the general staff, by the Examiner Superior of the Port district – and yet he was now being mobbed by three dozen ponies with hammers and picks trying their damndest to kill him?

The epiphany that followed this train of thought was not an expected one: Broken things had their use – to some a warning, to others a deterrent, and to some a call to restoration. With this epiphany in mind Speaker called Gift from elsewhere.

The sudden appearance of a golden disk floating in the air above Speaker surprised some of the ponies wailing away on him, but it didn’t deter the others. It was first as Speaker employed the new insight he had attained: He made Gift spin into activity, its blades unfurling – but this time he had it misalign the blades, so they ground against the orichalcum casing of the gyroscopic chakram: The shower of white-hot sparks that came in the wake of this left manes smoldering and more notably boiled out the eyes of all who didn’t manage to turn their heads away in time, leaving half a dozen ponies writhing and screaming in pain on the ground next to Speaker.

The ponies attacking Speaker instantly pulled back, Speaker using the breathing room to get up – not an easy task with a broken leg and smashed hooves – but his perfect balancing charm helped greatly.

Rearing up, albeit with a left hindleg that dangled lifelessly in a very wrong angle, Speaker gestured furiously at the priest: “I do not take kindly to cowards who trick others into killing for them – face me if you want me dead”

Even in his injured state Speaker must have appeared quite fearsome, for the unicorn seemed quite hesitant at engaging him direct combat. Speaker had no such reservation, flinging Gift with another new twist: The insight from the use of a broken machine had lent him another epiphany: Sometimes you only needed to break something just enough, while leaving the rest functioning – and so Gift was revved in a way to produce a greater torque, allowing it to chew through tougher materials, such as bone, without doing any additional overall harm to its target.

This seemed to surprise the unicorn greatly, as Gift swung under him and amputated his left leg just under the ankle. The look of shock and surprise on the unicorn was without measure, and yet in the blink in the blink of an eye and a flash of light the priest was gone… or maybe it was bloodloss on Speaker’s part… it certainly was difficult to remaining standing, or conscious...

At this point Justicars swarmed the scene and began hauling ponies away, just as the mallet-wielding mare – now with a half-singed face and a burnt out left eye-socket, was about to take another swing at Speaker.

The next thing Speaker knew he was back in the Gens Yoshoto compound, on a stretcher, being taken back to his room. Ruby was also there, and from the looks of it she seemed quite upset, though from how dizzy and woozy Speaker was feeling then it was difficult to tell what was happening.

Some time later Speaker found himself conscious enough to work enough medical charms on himself to get out of bed. Gods, what a mess he had been… broken femur, all four hooves cracked, his head a mess of contusions and welts. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how much it would have hurt he hadn’t used his anesthetic charm – though at the same time it also struck Speaker that with the anesthetic charm he had been far less aware of just how hurt he had been: It wouldn’t have taken that much more before his injuries would have become lethal.

Outside his room Speaker was met by Ruby who seemed incredibly embarrassed and sorry that she had left him: “I failed you as armiger… I’m so ashamed – can you forgive me?”

Feeling far too tired to bother with this would-be apprentice, Speaker simply ignored the young mare and made for the dining hall. All that healing had left him very hungry.

Ruby followed him, continuing her begging for forgiveness – again with that persistence born of the earth dragon. It was difficult to just brush her off, so ultimately Speaker simply looked at her: “If you let me finish this meal in peace – then yes – you are forgiven – now scram!”

Sufficiently instructed, Ruby did as requested and left. She returned about an hour later with the orb – much to Speaker’s surprise.

“And here I thought you had turned it over to the legion” Speaker chided, not really feeling that much positivity left in him, as if it had been pounded out of him with a mallet.

Giving Speaker a stern look, or rather appearing as if for a moment she wanted to and then deciding against it, Ruby dropped the orb down on the thick wooden table before Speaker.

The loud thunk made Speaker look up, if nothing else. The orb was scarred with scratches, scorchmarks and indentations of various shapes and sizes – though nothing more severe than what a good round of polishing could fix: “We tried everything. The largest jade hammers I have ever seen, the hottest flame that Valkhawsen could produce, the sharpest edge… nothing could hurt it – and you were right about it being infernal. Is that why it’s indestructible?”

“It’s not indestructible – but it is primordial… from before they were cast down and their spawn branded demons – so it would appear infernal when you look at it today” Speaker mused.

The unicorn mare looked at with some suspicion: “You keep saying that you can destroy it – when are you going to prove it?"

Speaker pointed at the food before him – the half-eaten chicken-fried rice and steamed veggies – then shot Ruby a somewhat knowing look. She got the message.

“Right, when you’re done… but you’ve been eating for an hour” Ruby noted, pointing to the stacks of plates surrounding Speaker.

Opting not to reply, Speaker finished his meal and dropped his chop-sticks: “Between being kidnapped and being beaten half to death… I don’t know why it’s making me hungry, but it’s one of the few things that comfort me right now. For weeks I was telling my friends that Lookshy isn’t like the Realm, that here we do not judge ponies purely based on dogma, and yet look what happened to me?”

The red-haired unicorn could do little but express a deepfelt disappointment that matched Speaker’s: “You’re right – but it’s being looked in to. The ponies you blinded are suffering enough as is, and the others that attacked you are being rounded up… though, the priest that started it all has vanished”

“I got his leg…” Speaker noted, wondering if Ruby knew about it.

Nodding, Ruby said that a leg had indeed been recovered.

Perking up at the mention of this, Speaker quickly inquired into the legs location: “Where is the leg? Has it been destroyed?”

“It’s on ice at the Dragon’s Mercy Hospital – in case the owner wants it back” Ruby noted. Speaker nodded – that was standard procedure for any accidents involving amputations. He just hadn’t thought of it because it was a criminal who was involved.

This changed the planned order of events. The two quickly made their way to Dragon’s Mercy and retrieved the leg – under no small amount of protests from the doctors there – but after Speaker ‘convinced’ them with a little work in the ward for terminal patients, which suddenly found itself quite empty… well, suddenly they were very cooperative. Indeed, Speaker’s old master, the now Chief of Medicine Ba-Wan, who had taught Speaker most of what he knew of medicine and surgery was duly impressed. Arrangements were quickly made for Speaker to come by the hospital later.

Leaving the hospital with the leg of the offending unicorn Speaker first made a quick statement: “This leg… is not that of a unicorn”
“What? Did we get the wrong leg? How many legs did they have in there?” Ruby wondered, looking suitably confused.

Suddenly laughing quite loudly, Speaker realized that the residual essence he could see in the leg wasn’t dragonblooded essence: It was sidereal. Oh the delicious irony: “This is the leg of the… well, probably the same pony that used the orb yesterday”

“Serves him right – but didn’t you say you saw him as a unicorn?”

Shaking his head, Speaker shrugged: “Could have been part of a disguise. A ceramic horn dusted with jade to react to essence use so it glows like a real horn.

“Pathetic. But now it’ll probably be a while before he’ll try something similar” Ruby said, sounding just a little too happy for the misery of this other pony.

A sudden thought occurred to Speaker as he stopped, who’s expression turned to a somewhat more worried one: “Wait – is Valkhawsen still producing jade prosthetics for crippled unicorns?”

“You think he’ll try to steal a new leg?” Ruby said, turning towards the direction of Valkhawsen without even thinking about it.

Speaker didn’t answer – instead he broke into a gallop towards the nearest district gate. The residential district was in the second ring, and Valkhawsen – appearing more as a fortress with heavy buttresses and jade-steel reinforced battlements than that of a house of learning – loomed tall in the third ring.

Getting in was surprisingly easy – apparently then Ruby was still officially a student there, and as such could bring visitors along. The medical ward was small, with barely a single hall of beds for ponies awaiting prosthetics or still learning to use them correctly.

Getting access to the medical records of the current patients there turned out to be a lot easier than getting access to the leg over at Dragon’s Mercy – this time the two simply explained that they were tracking a realm agent who lost a leg yesterday, who had likely snuck in with false papers. The head nurse was furious at the very thought, and cooperated fully.

Looking at the pile of scrolls with permits and signed orders from the various patients’ superior officers, Ruby wondered how they were supposed to find the fake ones.

“Well, that assumes that our pony hasn’t just killed a legit patient and assumed their identity” Speaker said in a worried tone.

Between Ruby, Speaker and the head nurse the three all agreed that in all likelihood the realm agent probably wasn’t interested in waiting around too long, so replacing and impersonating someone on top of the prosthetics list indeed seemed quite likely. The head nurse quickly pointed out the ones scheduled for new prothstetics that day, which narrowed the number of ponies down to three.

One was a unicorn mare who lost a hoof to a demon. Speaker quickly ruled her out, since the injury didn’t match. The second was a similar dud: A young scion of gens Amilar who’s pelvis had been crushed when a pile of crates had fallen on him down in the lower port district. The third one… well, it looked right, but it was a unicorn stallion who had lost his right hindleg in battle.

“Could you have been wrong about what leg you got from him?” Ruby wondered as Speaker paced about the small head nurse office.
Shaking his head, Speaker frowned furiously: “No, but this has to be him – the pony we’re after… his sort has powers that affect fate. It’s difficult to explain… revealing too much of his true nature makes you forget him”

“Oh, I was briefed about that – but how do you fake what leg you’re missing? An illusion?” Ruby noted, looking at the medical scroll of the unicorn in question. His name was Karal Gai Fan.

Speaker tried to explain the idea of altering fate and ‘swapping labels’ so that a pony with the right powers could effect small changes in reality: “Like, making it so that it’s one leg not the other that’s missing”

“But wouldn’t that change the leg you have then?” The head nurse wondered out loud, as she fidgeted nervously with her white nurses uniform.

A great big smile grew on Speaker as he nodded fervently: “Oh it would – it would also mean that if I have a right hind leg now, then this confirms it”

Half a minute later and both Speaker and the head nurse confirmed that the leg that Speaker had stored elsewhere was a right hind leg – you could tell from how the hoof was worn, and from how the coat was a little different on the side of the leg that had faced inwards and the one facing outwards.

“So… what are you going to do now? Should I go get backup?” the head nurse wondered, throwing a nervous glance out the window of her office door to the other nurses that were going about their work, blissfully unaware of the killer hiding in the ward.

“Is there an armory nearby?” Ruby wondered, figuring that she might as well gear up if they were going to take this pony down.

The prospect of a full on exalted level fight on her ward did not seem to please the head nurse one bit. With a look that very quickly went from nervous to furious, she stomped her hoof and clearly stated: “I will have no fighting in my ward!”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary…” Speaker said, asking the head nurse to describe to him in great detail the layout of the room that the fake patient was in, what bed that pony would be in, where that bed was, and how the pony was most likely positioned.

About ten minutes later Speaker had produced a very detailed sketched of the ward and where his target would be. Using this to ‘aim’ in advance, Speaker figured that he should be able to catch the pony unaware and incapacitate him by throwing something heavy in from outside the patient dorm hall.

At the door to the patient dorm hall Speaker reviewed his sketch. The hall would be roughly ten by ten yards, with several load-bearing columns, and rows of beds with patients. The bed he was to aim for would be bed eight.

With a hastily made weapen wrought of four iron paperweights that he had moulded into a very blunt chakram, Speaker took a deep breath and took aim – it was then he felt the disc suddenly gain in weight, and turned to see Ruby use a charm on it: “What are you doing?”

“Imbuing it with earth essence – duh. Unicorn charms are all about working together and enhancing each others’ charms – this isn’t any different. Now it’ll hit all the harder” Ruby quietly stated.

Speaker thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. Sure, what he remembered of unicorn charms in the first age didn’t say anything about being able to enhance the charms or attacks of non-unicorns, but that was a long time ago: “Alright – be ready to burst in when it connects”

Taking another deep breath, Speaker steeled himself and assumed the martial pose that informed his Thousand Wounds Gear Style form. With a strong and sturdy posture, his muscles tensed, he nodded and Ruby opened the door into the patient hall ever so slightly – and Speaker flung the chakram into the room.

At first there was silence, then there was a dull thud – the chakram hitting something – and it wasn’t the sound of metal hitting stone or wood. Seconds later there were several alarmed voices calling out, shouting that they were being attacked or something – the general sounds of confusion.

Speaker and Ruby burst into the room, finding the pony in bed eight knocked out cold. The other patients in the hall didn’t exactly look happy that Speaker and Ruby had seemingly attacked one of them, but moments later several armored ponies and unicorns arrived, declaring that they were with the security directorate and that the now unconscious pony was an enemy of the state, so nobody should be alarmed.

As the security directorate ponies began to haul the crippled pony away Speaker recognized the unicorn mare in charge – the thing was just that last time he had seen her, she hasn’t been a unicorn: It was Heath Rose.

“Where are you taking him?” Speaker inquired. His first age memories bid him not mention her true identity. He couldn’t remember why, but it made sense.

Ruby, having no clue at what kind of Sidereal deception she was currently subject to, asked what one might expect any Lookshyan unicorn ask: “Where are you taking him? He’s dangerous, and a master of disguise”

Speaker didn’t bother to notice what Heath Rose told Ruby. It was some flavor of lie about taking him where secure, where he couldn’t escape. For Speaker a deep sigh of relief was all he felt like looking into.

“You, Bright Machine Speaker, you told informed us that he might have fate-based charms and sorcery operating on him” Heath Rose said, sounding very much like a random official who had simply been briefed about Speaker without ever really meeting him.
Nodding, Speaker acknowledged the statement.

“Very well – would you be so kind as to use your order affirming blow technique on our captive? You’ve made us understand that it disrupts and breaks the kind of sorcery that makes him fade from our memory” Heath Rose reqested. It was difficult for Speaker to refuse, despite the last couple of days straining his mental stamina greatly, and the Order Affirming Blow being a very taxing charm in that respect.

The only thing Speaker could think of that annoyed him about the request was that he hadn’t really ever mentioned that charm, or its potential uses, to the general staff or the Lookshyan security directorate – and he didn’t really fancy such a powerful charm becoming that well known via such… casual circumstances.

Doing as requested, Speaker struck the unconscious pony. To the gasping shock of the Lookshyan nurses and patients in sight, as well as Ruby, the pony stallion’s missing leg faded into view, while his seeming good left hindleg faded to a half-healed stump.

“So he really was hiding the wrong leg… holy shit” Ruby blurted out.

Speaker looked intently at Heath Rose. It was difficult for him to choose the right kind of words that wouldn’t blow her cover: “You be careful with him. By my count, as a chosen of the most high, he has caused the untimely death of hundreds of ponies, and at least one unicorn. I would personally like to see him punished greatly for this”

“Your request will be taken into consideration” Heath Rose said, her voice dripping with cold bureaucratic apathy – though Speaker was certain that it was just a front. He had no doubt that Six Heavens Hunter would suffer for his acts, especially with a Solar expressing his grievance.

As the security directorate ponies left, and a nurse screamed in the distance as she suddenly found the corpse of a dead unicorn in a supply closet – likely the poor soul that Six Heavens Hunter had replaced – Speaker and Ruby left the prosthetics ward of Valkhawsen.
“Well that’s one way to spend your morning” Speaker casually noted, sounding quite pleased with himself.

Ruby appeared more shaken: “I don’t know… this is sounding way above my pay-grade. Heavenly spies you can’t remember, and ponies who can fake being a unicorn so well you can’t tell”

“I wouldn’t worry. There aren’t many of his ilk – and trust me, some of them are on our side” Speaker noted.

As the two journeyed into one of the open garden areas of Valkhawsen, shielded on all sides by tall walls and thick jade-reinforced buttresses, Speaker and Ruby talked briefly about Ruby’s studies at Valkhawsen. Apparently she had been getting artifact manufacture when she was tapped to become Speaker’s armiger.

The two were about to break for lunch when a messenger bid them report to the headmaster’s office. Ruby at first appeared quite enthusiastic: “Holy dragons… Drip-Crank’s office, what an honor!”

Speaker nodded. He had heard that Headmaster Drip-Crank was the wisest artificers and occult lore-keepers in Lookshy. It was then that Ruby’s expression changed into one of hesitance: “Wait… he probably just wants to see you, not me – can’t I sit this one out?”

“Are you an armiger or a common student? Come on – we’ve been summoned” Speaker chided Ruby, who had just spoken of the honor of meeting the headmaster.

Ruby, looking afraid in a whole new way that Speaker had never seen on a unicorn before, stammered: “Yes, he’s brilliant in lectures – but meeting him up close? He’s… how do I put this… he’s not really a pony anymore...”