The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The deal that Speaker worked out with Drip-Crank was simple, and yet Speaker figured that Cash would be quite happy with it: First of all Speaker was given more or less unrestricted access to most of the tomes of arcane wisdom that Valkhawsen held, for Speaker wished to relearn sorcery. Secondly, and more importantly, Speaker asked that come time for it to be discussed that Drip-Crank exert what political influence he have to make the general staff support Speaker and his circle’s request for armed support to take down Deep Rot.

This of course included explaining much of what Speaker knew of the Deathlords and their schemes, a topic that Drip-Crank and Ruby both found quite interesting. Valkhawsen did not in any way teach necromancy beyond the wisdom of “If it’s undead you should destroy it”, so knowledge of the underworld was quite limited.

Another topic that Speaker got in on was the plain fact that it wouldn’t be realistic for him to remain in Lookshy for eternity fixing things: It would be far more efficient if Speaker looked into Lookshy’s current means of maintaining its arcane arsenal. For example, the irreplaceable lens, could easily be replaced if one knew how to produce artificial sapphires, emeralds and rubies.

Thus, over the course of a fun and exceedingly productive afternoon, Speaker demonstrated to a class full of sorcerer-engineer masters and apprentices how one could take powdered feather-steel into a hopper, mix it with pure air essence, then funneling it down and mixing it with it with pure fire essence in a continuous conflagration, to produce a molten mass infused with elements.

Since Speaker had rigged up a very big hopper filled with most of the feather-steel dust Valkhawsen currently had in store, the molten mix that resulted from the conflagration produced a massive lump of sapphire the size of a big watermelon so pure that one could see right through the blue gem-blob. It was quickly taken away to the craftspony district to be cut.

“And if you fiddle around with the impurities you put into it, like a tiny bit of iron dust mixed into the feather-steel powder, then you can make rubies or emeralds. This kind of alchemy was used all over in the first age to make giant gemstones – like, to carve out a lifesized statue of a pony or something” Speaker explained, resulting in much taking of notes.

A little later, back in the Valkhawsen dining hall as Speaker got to finish his lunch and talk with a couple of students and teachers about the first age, three of the masters that had been at Speaker’s lecture on artificial sapphire creation showed up with a very fancy scroll. It was an honorary masters degree in alchemy – they also had a very nice black silk robe and hat for Speaker, which in his opinion looked very silly, but he accepted them none the less.

The students and faculty members around Speaker and the three masters erupted in cheers, and Speaker didn’t return to the Yushoto compound until very late into the night, very drunk, wearing his silly hat and robe proudly.

The next day, suitably hung-over, Speaker found himself awoken by a messenger spirit from Shimmer. She had reached the rest of the circle, though they would all soon be returning to Lookshy. Apparently the trouble back in the Chung lands had been resolved – Speaker had no doubt that he would be hearing more about that.

It was with a pleasing feeling of self-satisfaction that Speaker had servants bring him something to eat, while he recalled the big scroll with gilded trimmings he had been given the day before. A masters degree in alchemy. In the late end of the first age that would have been considered an insult to most Solars… but hey, one has to start from somewhere.

Apropos of starting from somewhere, Speaker pondered what bits and pieces of Lookshy’s arsenal that Drip-Crank would have him repair first. Oh it would be fun to have a poke at a warstrider – it would clearly be necessary to test it and see if it worked – or maybe a suit of magical armor? Or maybe just a pile of cracked essence canon lenses.

“Master Bright?” a fairly frightened looking messenger meekly said.

Speaker turned to see the young colt, trembling. Gesturing for the messenger to deliver his message the colt stated, with an adolescent voice that broke several times over: “Master Drip-Crank requests your presence at his office at Valkhawsen”

Nodding, Speaker got up and made his way towards the academy of sorcery.

The late morning commute within Lookshy, especially that of traffic going out of the residential district, was miserable. There were ponies everywhere, and far too many bottlenecks at the various district gates. Too many ponies needed their intercity travel papers checked, too many merchants had to have the contents of their carts checked. Cash would no doubt love butt heads with the examiner inferiors of Lookshy’s districts to work out more efficient procedures… though Speaker couldn’t help but recall that in the first age Deheleshen boasted a very thorough metro-lightrail system, but none of the light carrier pillars seemed to remain.

Finally reaching Valkhawsen, Speaker was greeted by Ruby who led him a spacious workshop that had been prepared for him, instead of taking him to Drip-Crank’s office. One workbench was laden with scrolls and tomes of sorcerous mysteries and wisdom, as per Speaker’s request, while the rest of the workshop was a mess of, as Ruby so eloquently put it: “Stuff we either don’t know how to fix, or don’t have the spare parts for”
“That would explain the sign outside reading Hall of Lost Causes” Speaker noted with a smirk. Ruby nodded.

Shortly thereafter a team of fully fledged sorcerer-engineers arrived to assist as well, though Speaker quickly found that they also very much liked to dictate what order the available non-functional devices were fixed in…

“Ok, brilliant – now this, we suspect that the enchantments on the control crystals have been sabotaged here” one the sorcerer-engineers almost casually said as he passed Speaker a jade-steel helmet from what was likely a very magical suit of armor.

The gems socketed inside the helmet, with their arcane inscriptions regulating the flow of essence in the suit of armor, had been destroyed – and no wonder this had been impossible to repair: The gems had been wyld-made, spun out of the purest potential into an impossible essence pattern that simply did not occur naturally. Still, Speaker’s repair charm restored the shattered gems just fine – he barely even had to wave a hoof at the helmet, which suited Speaker just fine as it let him read his current tome of sorcerous and occult lore on with minimal disturbance. What the unicorns around Speaker couldn’t grasp was that Speaker’s repair charm didn’t as much fix a given thing, as remind its least god of its former glory and feed it enough essence for the god to reform the object targeted for repairs.

Beyond absentmindedly fixing things it was amusing to read how the unicorns had twisted the history of sorcery. Speaker recalled just fine how he, among many others, had attempted to console the young Bridge Gap, the then recently exalted solar mare feeling utterly useless since combat charms just didn’t seem to, for the lack of a better word, stick to her. Many others had suggested that she travel, meditate and explore her abilities more to find a way that she too might be able to fight the primordials, as this had been during the primordial war.

It was than that Bridge Gap had ventured on her epic journey throughout creation, to earn more favorable titles than that of Ungifted and Burden to the Sun, though Speaker did recall that her departure did coincide with the news of her lunar mate having died in battle with demons, so it was likely out of grief as much as in search of enlightenment.

The story, as Speaker recalled it being recounted by Brigde Gap herself upon her return, was that she had first come across a pool in the east, in a glade where the sky wept stars, where a spirit gave her a mantle etched with liquid orichalcum, which spelled out ten thousand wonders unknown to ponies. Next she had slowly journeyed to the north by hoof, where she found a circle of crystals guarded by a blade of of ice.

The blade had posed her fived riddles, which she answered based on things she had seen on her journey from the east to the north, allowing her to claim the sword of ice. In the south she used the blade of cut her way through a storm of mocking sand and screaming wind, finding a circle of cinnabar stone set with crimson amber that displayed her greatest fears.

Taking the most potent of these fears with her, she journeyed west where she had found a prince in a floating whale-bone castle, where she stayed for nine days and nine nights, only to find the place a phantom – but with her in her boat of ebony and sails of sunlight she found a girdle of wondrous crimson silk, set with nine gems, one for each day and night spent with the prince she had so briefly loved.

Finally she had journeyed to sacred mount Meru, in the middle of the blessed isle. As she ascended the mountained the mole-ponies, earthen precursor kin of rock and gem to the ponies, came forth from their underground labyrinths and honored her. At the peak she was faced with Celestia herself, who said that the last step was sacrifice, to which Brigid then sacrificed herself and reborn anew: No longer fearful or doubting of her abilities, and wielding a power never seen before.

“That’s how Brigde Gap became Brigded Gap, the root of all spells” Speaker explained, the curious crowd of unicorns and earth ponies around him that had listened intently to him retelling the story of the birth of sorcery.

One of the unicorns frowned: “No, that’s not true. It was Mela who performed the five-fold journey, seeking a weapon to defeat the anathema, before she became the immaculate dragon of air”

“You don’t think it’s more likely that some Shogunate immaculate monks changed the story to fit their world view after the fact? My source is a little older than what I’m guessing yours is” Speaker retorted.

A surprisingly polite discussion on first age sources and fact checking ensued, with Speaker fixing things brought before him while talking, barely even paying attention to what he was repairing: “No no, go to Great Forks, ask the god of libraries. He considers me a very valid source on first age maters”

Later that afternoon, the number of broken things that Speaker had left to work on dwindled to a single set of cracked green jade bracers. Speaker was told that the pair amounted to a set of Essence Talon Projectors. The blood on them worried speaker a bit…

“Oh, that’s because they have to be surgically grafted to your forehooves to work – then they project talons of essence on your hooves, making it much easier to hold stuff and do delicate work. A lot of our best artificers use these, but… accidents still happen – that’s how these broke” Ruby said, reading off the documentation that had come with the bracers.

Nodding, Speaker wondered how the hooves that the bracers had been grafted to had looked after the bracers had been removed… the half-inch thick jade was cracked – that likely hadn’t left the previous wearer in a good state.

“Alright, but why aren’t you repairing this yourself? Lookshy should have more than enough jade to patch the cracks in this” Speaker wondered, tracing the cracks on the inside and outside of the bracers with his hooves.

Shrugging, Ruby could only say that she didn’t really know: “I’m guessing that it’s because the thing is cut from a solid piece of green jade, not pieced together from segments. The newer models that we make are easier to fix like that, but this one is older, probably from the Shogunate or even older if the decorations are any hint”

Once everything was done Speaker and Ruby left for the Yushoto compound. Ruby said that she’d come pick Speaker up the next day, which she did, leading Speaker to another workshop… but this one had only one thing in it: the remains of a device that sent shivers down Speaker’s spine.

Looking at the broken rings, the shattered smoky quartz, the misshapen lump of dark metal with the screaming faces of a thousand ponies trying to push their way out of its surface to no avail, Speaker saw only memories of first age destruction.

“Is that…” Speaker barely managed to say. Truly, he didn’t even want to think of the things name.

Ruby, clearly not understanding the destructive power of what was before her, casually checked the scroll on the table next to the pile of broken pieces: “Let’s see… oh, this is what beat back the realm during the fourth realm invasion, no wonder the general staff wants it working again”

“…and it created the Mourning Field shadowland” Speaker said, not really wanting to take any steps closer to the thing, even if it was broken and inoperable.

The pile of broken orichalcum rings, shattered bits of smoky quartz, starmetal pegs and misshapen lump of soulsteel were the remains of a Soulbreaker Orb.

“Ruby, do you have any clue how dangerous a thing like this is?” Speaker asked, backing away slowly.

The unicorn mare shook her head: “It’s a weapon. Weapons are only dangerous if used improperly – from what I get from the documentation then it’s quite safe to be around”

Sighing deeply and stepping forth, Speaker shot Ruby a very disapproving look: “A Soulbreaker Orb works by flaying the souls out of every sentient being within five miles, including lesser gods and spirits. You cannot stop it once it has been activated – this could end all of Lookshy if it goes off here!”

“Sure, and the Seventh Legion had it sitting nice and safe for six hundred years until they used it to destroy two whole realm legions at once” Ruby said, giving Speaker a condescending look.

Under Ruby’s gaze Speaker felt his argument fall apart – even with him finding his own arguments against fixing the thing quite reasonable. Of course Lookshy could keep its weapons secure – if it couldn’t then Lookshy would have fallen to the realm centuries ago. Walking up to the pile of broken parts and shattered crystal, Speaker gave them a closer look.

“Hmm… does the scroll say why the Seventh Legion couldn’t fix this? Smoky quartz isn’t that hard to come by, and I’m pretty sure that Valkhawsen has means of reforging orichalcum alloys” Speaker asked out loud.

The unicorn mare skimmed the scroll with a quizzical look: “Hmm… oh here, it says that the quartz encasing the soulsteel orb has to be ‘grown’ around the orb, plus the orb itself was apparently damaged as well as in some way that the last team of sorcerer-engineers who had a crack at this thing couldn’t fix”

Looking at the soulsteel orb, even with essence sight, was unpleasant. It sucked in light, making the dark metal appear even darker. Still, there were… bulges… in the structure – was it possible that the soulsteel had been fully saturated with souls? Still, his repair charm worked on the thing – not that Speaker was entirely aware of what he had ‘fixed’ with it.

Thinking back to the first age, Speaker tried to recall the few memories he had of such terrible devices being used – but he remembered little in the way of attempts of piecing the remains of such things back together. He did remember that the sidereal who originally designed the devise ultimately committed suicide out of grief over how much destruction his invention had caused, for he could only conclude that the light-sucking effect of the orb intensified and became more even across the sphere.

“Alright – I… I don’t recall the exact procedure for artificially producing the quartz crystal, I think you have to make some kind of liquid and then dip the orb in it, but I know a work-around. We’ll need transportation to a location about a couple hundred miles east of where the river of tears joins the Yanaze, on the south bank – I can make a crystal casing there, and we’ll need to bring the soulsteel orb for it” Speaker said, wondering to himself how Ruby would react to seeing his former incarnation’s tomb.

After being explained what Speaker wanted to do at this tomb of his Ruby nodded, then told Speaker to keep on tinkering while she made arrangements – then she galloped off.

Thinking that she would secure supplies and travel papers for the three-hundred or so mile journey, which would take them through a number of the nearby kingdoms along the southern shores of the Yanaze east of Lookshy, Speaker tried to fix what he could of the Soulbreaker Orb. Fitting the orichalcum rings back together was a bit of a puzzle, while the few starmetal pegs that had broken snapped back together easily – the things seemingly remembering how they were meant to be.

About an hour later Ruby returned and bid Speaker bring the central soulsteel orb. He had already stashed it away elsewhere, so that was easy enough.

To Speaker’s great surprise Ruby had apparently mounted a larger archeological expedition – or, as it turned out, informed one of Valkhawsen’s archeology professors who had been in the final stages of setting out for a big dig with his senior class at a ruined manse somewhere down the grey river, who had then just changed his itinerary to instead bring his archeology students along to Speaker’s tomb.
Thus, about twenty ponies in total, hauling supplies, carts full of digging tools, and everything else one might bring to an archeological dig, plus Speaker and Ruby turned up around noon at the base of the aviary in the old city district.

“Are we flying there?” Speaker, his smirk betraying his anticipation. Flying around on Nah was fast, no doubt, but flying inside a light skyship was fun.

Nodding, Ruby noted that Master Stoneshift had already booked a manta transport for his expedition.

Looking skyward, up along the towering height of the aviary, couldn’t help but feel a little nostalgic. In the first age the aviary had serviced some of the finest flying vehicles the exalted host had devised, be it chariots wrought of soft cloud and framed by lightning, to glorious sorcerous disks of colored glass and bound elementals – that it still served as the foremost hub of maintenance of such flying wonders filled Speaker with a sense of pride that his creation, his aviary, still worked and saw proper use.

“Remind you of your time in active service Master Bright?” a shrill voice called out from behind them.

Master Stoneshift, a gangly, short and rail-thin unicorn stallion with a curly mob of brown hair for a mane, a mottled brown coat and muddy professor robes, approached Speaker. Behind him were two dozen archeology and geomancy students hauling excavation gear and supplies.
“Greetings Master Stoneshift, I am Bright Machine Speaker and this is my armiger, Maheka Ruby”

With everyone present Stoneshift led the way to the main elevator. About two thirds up the aviary tower, roughly half a mile or up in the sky, was their transport: A massive twenty yards wide and thirty yards long manta-ray shaped flying vessel. Its light blue shape clearly revealed the magical nature of its blue-jade alloyed hull, and its two large side-ramps opened up into a single great cargo hold big enough to carry two warstriders or around a hundred and fifty fully armed ponies at arms.

“Isn’t it a bit overkill to only transport a scale worth of ponies around in a transport rated for a talon?” Speaker wondered.

Stoneshift appeared quite amused by the observation: “Not at all – my expeditions have recovered more than enough first age secrets and weapons that the Skylords never denies my requests, but plus I routinely advice the Stores Directorate and the Arsenal Staff on where to get spare parts for these things”

“Impressive. But tell me, where were you planning on going before opting to go with me and Ruby?” Speaker inquired, curious for fairly obvious reasons.

Telling of a complex of manses discovered in the south-east, Stoneshift explained that his research primarily focused on mapping out first age military installations – which he would then seek out, excavate, and evaluate to see if the seventh legion can use it, or if it’s so ruined that its only good for being broken down for magical materials: “…though we usually outsource that kind of demolition work to scavenger lords”

“Hmmm… I think me and my circle came across a scavenger lord doing that down south of Jades almost a year ago” Speaker mused, recalling the ‘fun’ he had experienced there with all the barely working traps and monsters in the area.

As the giant sea-creature shaped vessel’s tail began to crackle with lightning the whole thing lifted off the ground. Speaker couldn’t help but imagine how amused Shimmer would be to see a flying fish in the sky. For himself it wasn’t all that special: Between what Cash could make Nah do, and the fact that during his decades of active service for the Seventh Legion he had regularly been flown around in this kind of transport as medical support for the Gunzosha units he had been attached to, then this was business as usual to him.

Arriving at the Soulforge, Speaker found that he had to get a little creative in order to set up a system where ponies other than himself could find the stairway down to the doorway leading into the hidden manse – especially since they had to be able to do so when he was gone. Ultimately a simple setup with a rope secured in one end outside the manse, and the other end down inside around his sarcophacus (Which Speaker had Stoneshift swear he wouldn’t try to open…) allowed a pony to close his or her eyes, then inch their way down along the path of the rope down the stairs.

“So… you have to not see where you’re going to find this place?” Ruby wondered, Stoneshift having long since descended into the tomb, resulting in him right now making all kinds of weird and ecstatic noises from down below.

Speaker stroked his beard: “No, it’s more like the essence flows of the place veils the entrance from your conscious mind – so you have to not consciously be fully aware of where you going to find it – or be me, since the place is keyed to my exaltation.

While Stoneshift’s students spread out through the tomb, taking etchings of the many wall carvings and studying the impossibly convoluted essence flow of the place, Speaker led Ruby into the chamber of wyrd making – the chamber with the pedestal of wyld energy.

At first Ruby was understandably hesitant to believe that such a feature in a manse was safe to have, let alone sane to have – but as Speaker demonstrated, then it wasn’t some random pocket of wyld tainted land being contained, but the essence of the manse itself being unshaped into a more primal form.

The real fun of course first came when Speaker recalled the soulsteel orb from elsewhere, floated it above the pedestal and used his wyld shaping technique to recreated the smoky quartz casing around the orb.

Ruby was at a loss for words as she bore witness to Speaker molding permanent form and reality from wyld energy into the crystal casing using his wyld-shaping technique.

Later that afternoon as they flew back in the now empty manta transport a very giddy Ruby quizzed Speaker on what the wyld shaping technique could be used for and what its limits were:

“Well, a patch of wyld-tainted land can be reshaped into a different kind of terrain. In the first age we’d use reality engines to soften parts of creation under controlled conditions, then reshape them into better forms – like turning deserts into meadows, or forming hot springs in the north” Speaker noted, recalling fondly the unique geography that such efforts produced.

Clearly awed by the limitless potential of such a charm, Ruby was all smiles – indeed, with her orders of probing and learning the extents of Speaker’s abilities, this was an incredible discovery: “And the crystal casing, it won’t be vulnerable to iron or anything right?”

“Nope. Though, if you only know the basic wyld shaping technique and not the advanced form, then it would dissolve over time if not worked with often. With the basic technique anything made, be it land, ponies, wealth or materials, it will fade unless creation-born ponies are around it often to ‘remind’ reality that these things that they are real. Won’t be an issue if it’s a dress you wear often, but if it’s jade and gold you lock away in a treasury… though It’s great for pranks that way around” Speaker explained mischievously.

Suddenly looking a bit worried Ruby asked: “Wait… you can ‘make’ ponies?”

“Anything, more or less – but adult ponies, fully formed, armed and armored – During the primordial war Solars wielded impossible weapons that could create entire legions with but a thought, a necessary counter to primordial demon spawning magic” Speaker recounted, sighing silently as memories of truly miserable battles flashed across his mind: Battles where demons were drowned in the bodies of dead ponies that had only known life for mere hours.

Ruby, displaying a keener perception that Speaker, cocked an eyebrow: “More or less? So there are limits to what you can make?”

“Yes – but the rules are a little weird, though anything dealing with wyld energy is weird. Basically anything you make with this shaping technique cannot be completely finished, unless it’s a living creature. The wyld energy makes it impossible to make truly finalized things: You can make a mountain-sized uncut diamond, but you can’t make a completed pony-sized statue of purple stone” Speaker explained, sounding very much as if even he found the limits of the charm strange and nonsensical.

Ruby appeared to share the sentiment: “So… you can’t shape finished coins, but you could shape in silver bars?”

“Pretty much – could make a mountain of silver bars if you give me enough time. I remember when Cash learned of this charm. He was afraid I would single-hoofed end all commerce, but you saw how long it took to make just the crystal casing – making enough of anything to affect creation-wide trade would take too long. It’d be easier and more efficient to go into the bordermarshes and shape up a mountainous land rich with veins of silver-ore” Speaker shrugged, looking out one of the arrow-slit hatches that also doubled as windows. The green and verdant landscape along the river looked nice, and they even flew over the forest region where the circle had helped that unicorn sorceress out with her unbound demons. Ruby found the story of that little event quite interesting.

“See that is why the General Staff is wise to restrict knowledge of summoning magic to the Sohei – only trusted and devout ponies who can resist temptation should even know of such power” Ruby noted, frowning.

Speaker nodded: “Well that’s the thing Ruby. In this day and age ponies a lot of ponies only think of immediate gain and short term solutions. I’m in this for the long run. I want to restore creation to its former glory… that’s why my last incarnation named my tomb Soulforge: With it I can forge a renaissance for all ponies – and I want to use Lookshy as the example for others to follow”

“I would love nothing more than to help you make that dream come true” Ruby said solemnly, sitting up rank like a good soldier, smiling.
Arriving back at Lookshy, Ruby escorted Speaker back to the Yushoto compound where a message had from Cash and the rest of the circle: They were evidently enroute – and anticipating their arrival with a day or so.

Later that evening a unicorn came to Speaker while he he was busy wrapping up his improved chakram design. The unicorn was clad in the worn but officious robes of the senior professors from Valkhawsen, but he was flanked by two other unicorns in stark white Security Directorate armor: “Speaker, come with us please”

Hunched over his designs in his study, perfecting impossible geometry and essence-flow calculations, Speaker looked up: “What’s this about?”
That was the last thing Speaker managed to say or do before blacking out.

Coming to, Speaker found himself up in the air in relative darkness, enveloped by the distinct elementally flavored essence of a unicorn.

Trying to twist around to look at who was carrying him around, Speaker quickly discovered that he was also chained and shackled quite securely, and when he tried to use his disassembly charm on those shackles he found that… he could not.

“He’s awake” a mare’s voice rang out somewhere behind Speaker. The dull echo of her voice told Speaker that he has indoors somewhere, somewhere without windows or torches – and somewhere with really bad acoustics, though the slight echo hinted of an underground location. All he could see was the bright sparkling purple glow that was continually enveloping him in an iron grip that he just could not break.

“Should I dose him again?” A young stallion’s voice rang out, again from somewhere behind Speaker.

The lack of sound from any hoof-steps worried Speaker, though he wasn’t very keen on being ‘dosed’ again – but it wouldn’t matter: As soon as these fools got Speaker to whatever cell they were taking him to they would likely remove the shackles and he would be able to summon Gift and free himself… well, that was the plan.

“Wait until we get there – we don’t want to waste any blood” the mare said.

Ok, that worried Speaker a little more: “Hey, what’s the meaning of this? Let me down!”

There was no reply.

About half hour or so later Speaker finally saw light around the bend of the tunnel they apparently were in and got a glance of his captors by painfully twisting around to catch a glance. He recognized them quickly: It was the Valkhawsen professor and the two Legion Security ponies he had seen briefly before… before they had drugged him, right now he remembered– lovely.

“Ok, what’s the plan here? Lock me away again? Throw away the keys? Chain me up in some secret workshop and use me to repair stuff until I die of old age or starvation?” Speaker inquired – but again, he got no answer. The fact that they had mentioned spilling blood and weren’t talking to him worried Speaker quite a lot, for obvious reasons, but also because he knew that it was protocol in the legion to remain silent to ponies sentenced to death.

The source of light around the bend turned out to be a wall of golden fire, not entirely unlike that of a solar anima. The flames radiated no heat, but had a very harsh spiritual radiance – angrily so.

His captors all donned what looked like cloaks of spun and woven orichalcum, with a cloak draped over Speaker – they then passed through the flames. The experience was by no means pleasant, though Speaker suffered no burns from the fire. Instead Speaker felt as if the fire had chipped away at his very soul, leaving it frayed around the edges… though that feeling quickly went away after they left the flames and the cloaks behind.

Beyond the fire the tunnel began to change. There were glowing crystal light fixtures, and the hallway itself changed from being clearly hewn out of the blue-gray rock of the Lookshy underground, to being made of cracked, dirty and tarnished orichalcum, or similarly dirty alabaster tiles.

It was when the completely oxidized inlaid copper sunburst symbols on the walls became visible that Speaker got a dreadful epiphany: He was in the old Maker Cathedral Prime of Deheleshen, the flying factory cathedral and temple to Celestia… but… they were underground – how could this be? Thinking furiously, Speaker tried to puzzle out what all this meant.

A manse of any kind suddenly appearing underground was rarely a good sign, even less so a solar-aspected manse built to float up into the sky to receive the light and blessings of Celestia. How could this manse have ended up down here? Ok, that question was actually fairly easy to answer, since Speaker knew that after the Usurpation the sidereals had worked hard to destroy or cover up most of the works of the Solars.

Right, so how did the blood-spilling factor into this? Like any pony versed in even the most basic of the occult secrets of Creation, Speaker knew that there was power in blood. It was the most basic of essence conduits. A solar aspected manse hidden underground, that would mean it was disconnected from its dragon lines – a manse would normally blow up from that: “Are you taking me to fix the manse here by draining my blood?”

The unicorn floating Speaker around paused for a moment. Speaker had obvious hid a nerve – but after a few seconds they continued moving. Great…

At a hole in the wall which seemed to lead deeper into the manse there was an alter, a basin of orichalcum and jade in front of a crystal console – Speaker was certain that the altar was not part of the original manse design… he should know, he built the place. The dark stains around the ground near the altar and on it hinted strongly that this was where the bloodletting took place.

It was the crystal console that turned out to be the most revealing: Flashing gemstone displays warned of essence buildup with old realm glyphs, which said that the essence vents needed a new supply of solar essence to function – essence buildup was already occurring, but it wasn’t critical yet. Bloody hell, they needed his blood to keep the place from blowing up!

With the added force of the two other unicorns Speaker was dangled above the alter and bent so that his neck was exposed at just the right angle. Speaker pleaded once more: “You idiots! You do realize that the medical charms I know mean that I can safely produce any amount of essence-laden blood for this thing – without killing me in the process!”

His head still held tight in a magical grip so he couldn’t see his would be executioners, Speaker had no idea if his plea was even heard – all he could do was wait for them to slit his throat or not… it was then that he heard a familiar bird-like cry of absolute fury, followed by the magical grip on him fading, letting him drop to the ground.