Leaving the memory-addled orderly, the circle conferred on what to do next at an alehouse as the sun slowly dawned.

“Why did you ask if he had talked with anyone at the chapel? He said he had just prayed there?” Sunrise inquired while sipping on some rather bland tea.

Enjoying the last of the honey-covered rice cakes, Cash explained that so far it was the only common thread among the attacks on Speaker were Lookshy’s immaculate priests – the Sohei.

“Hey, the first one was a sidereal in disguise” Speaker pointed out, still not that hot on the idea of Lookshyans conspiring against Lookshyans like what Cash was suggested.

Shimmer poked Speaker: “Maybe, but Heath Rose’s message… it said that Six Heavens Hunter had friends – if he had been parading around as a priest, then his buddies might be among the Sohei. Immaculate priests tend to bond over scripture when they cloister up and stuff”
“…and the Sohei are initiated into most of the restricted sorcery that Lookshy knows of. Memory-erasing spells are probably on the restricted list” Speaker noted, recalling what Ruby had told him on their flight back to Lookshy on the manta transport.

Speaker’s statement on Sohei and their access to sorcery taken into account, the circle debated on what to do next. Cash wanted to interview the remaining orderlies together with Speaker – for his truth-telling charm – just to be sure that they weren’t dealing with a single absentminded pony. Sunrise said that she had a few ideas on where she could ask around to get a proper feel for the Sohei.

“Ok, but then I want Shimmer to go with you” Speaker insisted.

Shimmer shot Speaker an accusatory look: “You wound me – plus now that we know for certain that someone is out to get you, you need all the protection I can give you!”

“No. Now that you’re all here, and with Sunrise being the least combat capable of us, it would be obvious to get at me through you” Speaker said, looking at Sunrise.

The young mare gave a displeased nod, followed by flipping a stray lock of her bright orange mane away from her eyes: “Understandable – though you’ll have to keep a low profile Shimmer, be a fly on the wall”

“I have many fly-forms” Shimmer said with a coy smile.

Having mulled the topic of Sunrise as a potential target over for a moment , Speaker noted: “If the ponies out to get me… or all of us for that matter… really were behind the rangers coming after me, and honestly you do not falsify orders like that, so they have to have been given by someone legitimately in the chain of command, then today most of the coughers will be tracking that original order down. That really shouldn’t take long…”

“Your point being?” Cash wondered, looking dejectedly down into his empty cloth bag that had been full of honey-coated rice cakes.
Speaker looked around the ale house, trying to get a read on whether any of the ponies in earshot were listening in: “It means that whoever gave that order will be found within the next day or so. I’ll bet you that the city gates are closed for outgoing traffic until the ponies responsible are found. This means that the conspirators will have to make their next move really quick before they’re tracked down”

“All the more reason I should come with you two” Shimmer noted, her voice tinted with a rare tone of urgency.

Dismissing her fears, Speaker explained that by forcing the conspirators to act quickly they had already limited the scope of what they could do. The attempt to kill him with the rangers had likely taken weeks to set up: “Plus, now that we know to be cautious it’ll be all the more difficult to catch us off guard”

“Hue and cry is a powerful tool when you know what to look out for” Cash added.

Splitting up, Shimmer and Sunrise returned to the Yushoto compound to tell Risotto of the circle’s discovery, leaving Cash and Speaker to hunt down the two remaining orderlies.

This hunt was surprisingly brief: The other orderlies both lived close by, so all Cash needed before they went to interview the two was to buy some more cakes.

“Oh come on – do we really have time for that?” Speaker wondered, as Cash scouted intently for open bakeries to no avail.

Giving Speaker a purposeful look and standing tall, Cash admonished: “My dear friend, where are your bedside manners? We’ll be disturbing their sleep, we must compensate them – plus, didn’t you see that our first orderly completely failed to see that he was being interrogated while he was being fed cake?”

“Very well… let them eat cake” Speaker said with bemused incredulity.

One problem: This early, just past dawn… there were no open bakeries. Cash despaired.

“Oh don’t fret – look at the chimney above this one: They’re baking the bread they’ll be selling in an hour or so when ponies come to fetch bread for breakfast. Just go knock” Speaker noted, having used a quick charm to find a way in.

A few minutes later, after a tiny amount of coin had changed hooves, the two Solars sped off to talk to the two remaining orderlies.

Sure enough, both of the orderlies told fairly similar stories - though their reactions to the realization that their memories had holes in them did vary a little. One of them also noted that she usually chatted with a friend who worked in the hospital kitchen on her way back from the chapel – but she couldn’t remember doing that, which was weird. She freely gave Speaker and Cash the address of this friend, which a while later gave the two a solid witness to support their theory that the memories of the orderlies had been tampered with.

Leaving via the rooftop accesss to the home of the friend of the orderly and looking out over the other rooftops of the south-eastern residential district, Cash mused: “Ok, so now the question is whether the orderlies committed the murder – or if they were just witnesses”

“Even if they did kill them, then I would rather focus on rooting out the sorcerer behind taking their memories. They didn’t do this alone, if at all – and the sorcerer behind this is probably linked to giving the rangers those orders” Speaker said with a pained expression. The fond memories from his youth of seeing Sohei perform grand and spectacular feats of magic, stories of them banishing terrible demons with a single gesture and the inherent trust one had with the steadfast clergy Speaker had grown up with were clashing in his mind with these new terrible revelations.

“You ok?” Cash tentatively inquired, putting a calming hoof on Speaker’s shoulder.

Looking at Cash in his beautiful heavenly blue silk jacket, his perfectly done up blond mane and his disarming smile, Speaker sound it difficult not to take hearth in the company of his friend, but there was still something else nagging him: “How many times do you think they’ve done this in the past?”

Shaking his head, Cash threw Speaker an apologetic smile: “Let’s focus on this incident right now – without sidereal backing I’m sure they’re on their leg already”

In a puff of silvery smoke, a messenger spirit suddenly appeared. The tiny sprite of essence and language bound together jittered for a moment and assumed the form of Shimmer’s head, speaking in her voice as the head shot Speaker a worried look: “Get to the Yushoto compound right now – It’s really bad – Stay out of sight and come around the back from the port district side, there’s a mob protesting at the front gates”

Cash looked at Speaker: “You did say that they would have to make their next move quickly”

Not knowing the jumping charm that Speaker had learned from Sully, Cash was forced to remain on the street while Speaker leapt up and traveled along rooftops to remain well out of sight.

Taking a slight detour into the port district, where Speaker couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the work crews at the construction sites were missing, Cash enjoyed the benefit of blending with the foreign merchants that lived in the district. Speaker used his balancing charm to perfectly nail the ten or fifteen yard leaps he had to pull off to move among rooftops and construction scaffolding.

At the gate into the part of the residential district where the Yushoto compound was Cash couldn’t help but notice the dozen or so ponies armed makeshift weapons made from construction equipment.

“Greetings esteemed Lookshyans, may I pass?” Cash inquired innocently enough.

The burly construction workers glared at Cash: “Beat it. This part of the residential district is off limits right now”

Nodding, Cash shot a quick glance up at where Speaker was hiding. Thirty seconds later the burly construction workers were trotting behind Cash and telling him everything. A priest had arrived an hour earlier and explained to them that the time of reconing was nigh: The rumors that everyone had heard about anathema raising Yushoto Risotto weren’t true: “She said that the anathema cured her but did it in exchange for her soul. She’s in thrall to him I tell you, and through her he got to the rest of the martial staff” a frightfully earnest construction-pony blathered to Cash.

With the level of mind-control charms Cash had spread around these ponies, if he asked them to kill themselves they wouldn’t just do it – they’d set it up so they didn’t make a mess that would inconvenience Cash in any way or form…

“Tell me, this priest, do you know her well?” Cash asked.

The construction ponies had to be told to quiet down as they began talking over each other to be the first to tell Cash, so eager were they. The priest one they had known all their lives, a unicorn Sohei who had spread the good word of the dragon for well over half a century.

“So what’s the plan? Why were you stationed at the district gate? Where are the usual guards?” Speaker quickly inquired.

The construction ponies, under careful essence-fueled instructions from Cash that ‘This is not the anathema you’re looking for’, said that they had just been told make sure that no civilians got until the all-clear was sounding, or justicars came to disperse them, at which point they should just got home or go back to work.

“So what’s going on in there?” Cash wondered.

Speaker closed his eyes and furrowed his brows: “The only thing you can do when the government has been compromised. Replace it – Cash, this is a coup!”

Quickly looking to the towering aviary further up in the old city, Speaker tried to see if the Lookshy Manse had gone active. The great bulbous minaret was still out of sight beyond the walls separating the residential district and the old city district – that was good. This meant they still had time.

“…good why?” Cash calmly asked, certain that the answer likely wouldn’t be reassuring.

Looking his fellow Solar, Speaker gritted his teeth and steeled his himself: “You don’t want to know – now, Shimmer said there was a mob at the compound?”

Sure enough, even a block away from the compound the mob came into view. It had spread almost all around the place – and Speaker recognized the signal banners flown from the walls: The entire martial staff was present, and the “siege response plans active” flag was also up… which meant that the compound was locked down and was considered under attack.

The flickering lights closer beyond the mob, at the gates to the compound, revealed that a fire had been lit in an attempt to burn the wooden gate down.

“Hold on – if this is a coup then a simple mob of civilians won’t do it. They would need to help from parts of the Seventh Legion to pull this off, what if we-” Cash began.

A series of explosions at the gate cut him off.

“There are no justicars out here trying to reign in or disperse this mob. That was unicorn elemental blasts at the gate, that won’t hold for long” Speaker said despairingly: “Are we too late?”

“Hey, don’t give up yet – we need to do something!” Cash admonished, not at all feeling interested in giving up just yet.

Getting into the compound turned out to be reasonably easy. Cash shot a claw up into the compound wall battlements, then reeled himself up, then shot a claw down to Speaker and pulled him up. Up on the battlements there was a brief tussle with some very frightened ponies at arms, but luckily they recognized Speaker before sounding any kind of alarm.

“How is the gate holding soldier?!” Speaker ordered.

The fearful legionnaire snapped to attention, instinctively recognizing the bark of an officer: “Won’t hold for much longer sir, the fire has softened the hinges, and whatever they’re hammering the gate with from the outside is gonna break them soon, sir!”

Speaker motioned for Cash to followed, then leaping down towards the courtyard, landing on a roof with a heavy crunch of breaking tiles, then on to another rooftop a bit further down, then down on the cobble of the courtyard.

“And of course they didn’t get you – now they’re not just shouting nonsense out there!” a very angry Yushoto Boribap shouted, approaching Speaker and Cash.

In full on lamellar armor and with a sheathed daiklaive hanging from a belt, the unicorn stallion looked ready to defend his home: “Where the hell have you two been? Ever since your two friends came back a mob started forming outside demanding your head!”

Cash began explaining what the circle had uncovered, displaying the evidence him and Speaker had collected. Apparently Shimmer and Sunrise had tried to explain the same, but without Cash’s recorder of everlasting glories to record and play back the statements from the various ponies interviewed, then Baribap hadn’t believed a word of it.

Speaker meanwhile retrieved his singing staff from elsewhere and went to work on the gate. The sturdy steel-reinforced gate had several cracks in it, and the battering from the outside had already opened several small holes and cracks big enough to fit a hoof or something through. This gate was falling within minutes if by nothing else then once a hole big enough to fit an adult pony through was made.

Drawing up the stone in the cobble that covered the courtyard, Speaker played a swift tune of bulwark reinforcement. The stone rose like a storm being called over the ocean and flowed in waves upon the gate like waves upon an oceanside-cliff. In seconds the holes were plugged and as Cash revealed truth to Baribap Speaker made a thick and heavily reinforced wall covering the gate. Sure, the courtyard look like a plain dirt-covered lot, but it would be a while before the gate would go – and if even the stone was made to crack, then it would be very easy and quick to fix that.

Turning back to Baribap and Cash, Speaker noticed that Cash was… backing away. Was he afraid? Was he… no wait – Baribap had been on the martial staff, as Yushotto Risotto’s replacement – if Risotto was deposed as part of a coup, who would take her spot? Who had initially been against Speaker being allowed to treat Risotto?

…Baribap was in on the conspiracy. It had to be what Cash had found out.

“Hey Cash, get over here – quick!” Speaker called, trying his damndest to make it sound more like a casual order and not an urgent ‘get away from that pony’ type request.

Cash stepped back from Baribap demonstratively, ending their conversation, and rushed over to Speaker where he quickly and quietly said: “Hey, Baribap is in on this – we aren’t safe here”

“I figured the same. Any idea where Shimmer and Sunrise is?” Speaker wondered, thoroughly dissatisfied with the lack of updates that Shimmer was magically sending to him. Why hadn’t she sent another message sprite?

Cash agreed that Shimmer not being up in the sky to relay them information was really bad: “But there’s something else… its about Baribap”
What bothered Cash was that, well… Baribap wasn’t doing anything to the two of them: “If he’s in on the conspiracy, and my sagacious reading of intent is screaming at me that he is, then why isn’t he having us arrested and executed?”

Closing his eyes for a moment Speaker considered all the current tactical and strategic information he had on the situation – though honestly it really bothered him that he didn’t have a better idea of what exactly was going on in the rest of the city… his worst case the scenario – the coup, which seemed to be confirmed by Cash’s social charms, required that there were co-conspirators throughout the seventh legion because otherwise there should be all kinds of loyalist versus coup fights going on.

“Speaker, don’t you get it… they don’t need that – the assassination attempt yesterday on you, it wasn’t just to kill you… it was to make the entire general staff convene an emergency meeting so the martial staff could be taken out in one fell swoop” Cash said, marveling at the elegance of the whole scheme. It reminded him of a couple of similar takeovers done in Nexus.

Nodding slowly, Speaker stomped his hooves, hard: “Of course. With Risotto not feeling well they probably moved the location of the martial staff meeting to the compound. This was a trap from the very beginning”

Cash threw a quick glance back at Baribap, who seemed to be conferring with some officers: “But why isn’t Baribap then throwing open the gates and letting the mob rush the martial staff?”

Speaker’s best guess was that Baribap was buying time. There had to be fighting going on elsewhere in the city: “It has to be to buy time to take out the rest of the loyalists. It just doesn’t make sense: There would be city-wide alarms going off everywhere if something like that was to happen”

Cash shrugged. He had passed by enough battles while touring the hundred kingdom trade routes to know that battles could usually be both seen and heard at quite a distance – but Lookshy was Lookshy… maybe there was some kind of city-wide noise-dampening spell at work that Speaker didn’t know of?

Suddenly the very ground heaved, and the courtyard cracked and bulged. In multicolored explosion of elemental essence and silvery feathers Shimmer burst through in her telltale beastpony form, followed by a throng of ponies, some unicorns, some not.

Wreathed in her charm-made bone-shell armor, Shimmer quickly tumbled around to face her foes – albeit on her back, no wait – her limbs flowed around, along with her eyes from one side her head to the other, effectively flipping her around without doing so with her entire body. This caught the two unicorns out in front off guard, allowing Shimmer to make a couple of hard silver-talloned swipes at them – but the unicorns were clad in strong jade armor, leaving them largely unharmed.

“Now this is more like it!” Cash blurted out strangely cheerfully. Speaker wasn’t sure what to think – namely because he had no idea why those unicorns were fighting Shimmer.

For Shimmer, she was quickly aware of Speaker and Cash’s presence, but equally aware that she under a constant barrage of wind and water that prevented her from explaining what was going on.

Indeed, her foes were very well coordinated: One or two unicorns would attack fiercly, threatening to either cut Shimmer down but also opening themselves up to attack once Shimmer inevitably dodged or parried their daikliaves – but as Shimmer would then try to attack, the other unicorns would repeat the process, locking her down in a constant struggle to keep her defences in the face of a very well coordinated staggered series of attacks.

Shimmer’s solution was using a charm she had previously mainly only used underwater, where speech wasn’t much of an option anyway. It was a simple charm, but it enhanced her body-langueage in a way that allowed her to speak without using words. The message was simple and to the point:

“Staff cornered, more assassins still down with them, Sunrise holding them off – oh, and how did the investigation go?”

Speaker nodded, finding that the message oddly… calm. Sure, Shimmer was fighting quite fiercly with her quintet of… no, quartet of unicorns, as soon as she could get that dead one unstuck from her claws – but the way in which she had spoken to his mind had not communicated any kind of urgency.

“So… Sunrise holding down the fort with the martial staff? Neat” Cash commented.

Looking at Baribap, Speaker couldn’t help notice how frustrated and annoyed he looked. Pointing this out to Cash, Speaker noted: “You were right… look at him – he probably expected to be able to hold down the gates while the assassins did their work”

“Oh it’s better than that. By holding the mob off he can feign being unaware of what happened to Risotto and the others. That would give him legitimacy to join a new general staff once the old one is decimated and the dust settles. The cheeky bastard, bet he didn’t expect us to show up here” Cash noted gleefully.

Speaker couldn’t really see what Cash was so amused by. He was intent on watching Shimmer fight. She was down to three opponents at this point, having knocked out a unicorn by catching the poor soul in her webbing, then swinging the armored pony around like a long-chained morning-star or flail.

Baribap was looking appropriately torn, almost comically so, as per Cash’s theory on Baribap’s involvelment in the coup – he couldn’t order the archers on the wall to fire on Shimmer lest he reveal his part in the plot, but he didn’t seem to want to commit troops to help. Suddenly a guard from the battlements above the gate shouted: “Master Bright, the crowd is calling for you”

“Well if they’re here because they think you’ve mind-controlled the general staff they probably want your head on a stick” Cash went, looking mildly amused as Speaker as Shimmer wrapped up her two remaining opponents in her essence webbing and stuck them to the tops of nearby flagpoles.

Shaking his head, Speaker trotted towards the stairs that led up to the battlements: “Cash, make Baribap have a change of heart. We’ll need witnesses to expose the truth when the dust settles here”

Cash nodded as Shimmer sped past him towards Cash, who used his jumping charm to quickly reach the battlements overlooking the wide street in front of the compound.

Shimmer reached Speaker moments after he had gotten there, but he was strangely unresponsive: “Hey, what’s…. oh…”

Down before the gate, just beyond the dozen or two ponies and unicorns who were working to no avail to breach the gate, the crowd had parted to reveal a macabre display: Two dozen ponies, all horribly bruised and battered, tied up and with crude wooden signs strung around their necks that read “Traitor” in big red letters.

Shimmer recognized one of the ponies, a very old looking pony, as the old ex-gunzosha pony that Speaker had helped with her eyes – which were had been gouged out, courtesy of the frothing mob. No wonder Speaker was horrified.

Thinking quickly, Shimmer leapt over the battlements and howled as she dived towards the ground. In the few seconds that her dive lasted, she shot out two dozen essence strings that caught all of the mangled ponies with signs around their necks. Yanking them to her, she managed to catch most of them as she opened a portal to her elsewhere-den, pulling the last one in right behind her. The crowd barely had time to respond, the few armed ponies among them looking as if they had expected Shimmer to simply land and try to pick up the ponies – not disappear into a hole in reality that also vanished.

Recalling what Shimmer had said about not being able to open her den-portal anywhere other than where she herself entered it, Speaker realized that it might be a really good thing if Shimmer got some cover if she was to exit and get back into the compound.

Quickly throwing Gift into the cobble under the spot where the portal had been, Speaker had his magical clockwork chakram throw up a dirty great plume of stone-filled dust. A moment later Shimmer shot out of the cloud, amidst a hail of rocks that the mob threw at her.

Back beyond the battlement, Speaker joined Shimmer down in the courtyard as she retrieved the injured ponies from her den.

It was terrible: The ponies that Speaker had treated at the Valkhawsen medical wing, the ones that had been waiting for prosthetics, all had broken limbs… and not just the ones that Speaker had fixed. Thundermane was the worst off: Dirt had been kicked into her eye-sockets, and her frail body simply did not have the strength to handle this kind of pain anymore.

In tears, Speaker begged Thundermane to hold on: “Don’t give up on life… hang in there”

Cash found it difficult to understand why Speaker simply couldn’t heal the old mare, but as Shimmer explained: “You have to want to live in the first place… and Thundermane’s life has been leeched from her – she doesn’t have anything left to give”

Restoring Thundermane’s eyes, only to close them on the mare, Speaker looked up and gave Cash a livid glare: “Has Boribab been made compliant?”

Nodding, Cash apologized: “He has, but he only said that he too was convinced by a priest that this was the only way to prevent Lookshy from falling to anathema rule…”

“Not good enough. I want to know why Thundermane had to die. I demand satisfaction!” Speaker angrily proclaimed, stomping hard into the ground.

Looking around, between the unsure archers on the walls and the sad sight of Speaker waffling about the broken-legged ponies on the ground as he administered his anesthetic charm to them, Cash compared notes with Shimmer. According to her the quintet of unicorns had been leading five dozen demon warriors: “Sunrise sang them a cute little tune, smote the demons quite spectacularly – I took on the unicorns. I think they were expecting reinforcements, but they hadn’t bet on me and Shimmer being down there”

“What do you think their backup plan would be? Have the mob storm the place? The general staff, half of them are sorcerers and they’re all senior officers and competent warriors. I can’t imagine that there isn’t a contingency plan in place” Cash pointed out.

Baribap, appearing a bit confused for a moment, looked back towards the hole in the ground that Shimmer had burst from: “I think I know what the contingency is… maybe”

With everyone all ears, Baribap noted that the saferoom under the compound connected to tunnels that led into the port district, with one that led all the way down to the harbor: “The tunnels are usually barred and sealed, but I was instructed to have them ready to be opened from the inside… before I thought it was to have an exit ready in case the gates fell, but now… I don’t know”

“What could they bring up from the harbor district?” Cash asked, thinking furiously if he had overheard any merchants mention anything relevant, like talk of arms shipments or something.

Looking intently at Boribab, Speaker asked: “Any new residents in or around the Hexagon recently?”

The unicorn looked absolutely incredulous: “What? No. You think they would try to move mercenaries all the way around the city to get them in here? It would be painfully obvious”

“Sure, but if they said they were going to the harbor district to ship out?” Speaker proposed.

Catching on to the idea that it was relatively easy to get from the district of trade and the mercenary district known as the hexagon, down to the harbor – which honestly made sense – Cash proposed a different scenario: “Anyone can get entry into the trade district. Instead of trying use mercenary companies that have shown decades of loyalty to Lookshy, why not just sneak in an assassin from out of town?”

That was a definite possibility as well – but of course, what could the conspirators have brought in? Unicorns? Lunars? Abyssals?

“We’re making an awful lot of assumptions about the reach of the ponies who masterminded this…” Shimmer noted, pointing out that if this was indeed engineered by unicorns who’s devolution to Lookshy was so extreme that they were willing to kill its current leadership, then it really wouldn’t make that much sense to involve potential enemies of Lookshy like abyssals or even other lunars, or any other outside powers.

It was then that the hole that Shimmer had come from erupted with water. Everyone looked at the overflowing hole in the ground in disbelief and confusion, when Boribab blurted out: “Dragons… they’re drowning them!”

As Shimmer, Cash and Speaker ran t the hole Boribab explained that the door to the saferoom had enchantments that sealed it if it was pushed on from the outside, but it wasn’t watertight: “They won’t be able to get out!”

“But aren’t a couple of the Taimyo in there water-aspected? They can breathe underwater?” Cash quickly asked.

Boribab looked like he was standing on hot coals. Drowning all but one of the martial staff… now that was a tad excessive.

“Shimmer, get to the door, if you can – get on the other side of it – then seal it with your webbing” Speaker commanded. Shimmer didn’t need to ask twice, jumping into to the water with gusto.

Cash frowned: “That won’t hold forever”

“No, but I’ll go down and try to capture whatever is creating this water. There’s probably elementals at work here, summoned elementals” Speaker stated willfully, looking at Boribab to see if the unicorn could spot the idea he had.

Boribab’s eyes lit up: “Interogate the elementals, find the summoner?”

“Exactly. The priests are behind this for sure, but catching the one that actually summoned elementals to drown the martial staff will give us a reason to officially investigate the Sohei after this” Speaker said as he jumped in, activating his elemental immunity charm.

The waters were murky and full of dirt, prompting Speaker to activate his anima. With the light of his soul showing the way, he called forth Gift and held it before him, mentally rearranging the blades on the weapon so it would pull him forward in the water.

Back on the surface Speaker’s light disappeared into the murky depths. Cash looked at Boribab: “So, why don’t we go address the crowd a little?”

Author's Note

Oh snap, Lookshy breaking down into civil war it seems... can this be nipped in the bud, or will the bulwark of the scavenger lands fall apart?