The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

The flooded tunnels were far too long for Speaker’s liking. At least the water in the tunnels wasn’t moving – though that could also mean that the saferoom where the martial staff was holed up had flooded entirely.

Finally, down by the exit to the harbor district Speaker found a trio of Brine Curs, large lion-sized dog-elementals of water with manes of kelp and strong fins instead of legs. They were funneling water up from the harbor to the tunnel, though at moment they were just holding the water in the tunnel up in the tunnel so it wouldn’t flow back.

Approaching them, the curs did not respond. Thinking for a moment, Speaker recalled that most curs weren’t any more intelligent than regular dogs – and being summoned, they were bound to their summoners. Passing out of the water and walking up next to the curs, Speaker couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t anyone questioning or stopping the elementals. This would certainly warrant investigation later.

Shouting at the curs in Old Realm, Speaker demanded to know the identity of their summoner, hoping that they were intelligent enough to know how to respond: “By mandate of heaven, I demand an answer!”

One of the curs turned to Speaker and threw him a tired look. It then moved out of the water its two brethren were funneling and faced Speaker: “We are summoned by the sorceress Jui Niang – now leave us be that we may finish our work and be free once more”

“Not happening. Stop now, or I will destroy you” Speaker said, rearing up and readying Gift for battle.

The elementals seemed either oblivious or careless in the face of such threats. Still, Speaker had the information he needed, so he threw Gift with all his might, its blades enchanted by his spirit-cutting charm. It sailed perfectly into one of the curs, ripping into its kelp mane and its green-blue flesh. The water around it quickly took on the color of elemental ichors as Speaker willed Gift to simply keep on ripping around inside the elemental until it was dead… and moments later the spirit collapsed in an explosion of kelp and water plants.

The two other curs seemed oblivious to the destruction of their third. It was difficult to tell if the elementals didn’t care for their kin, or if the sorcerous binding that bid them flood the tunnel prevented them from reacting to outside distraction – though if that was the case, why did one of them tell of their summoner? It thusly pained Speaker to kill the two other elementals, for they were simply doing the biddings of others, not flooding the tunnels out of malice.

Once the last brine cur was cut to shreds by Gift, dissolving into the water around the floating stream of water that went from the harbor to the tunnel collapsed all together, splashing water all over the place, brine cur remains and all. From the tunnel, water also began to gush; no magical power holding it up anymore.

As Speaker watched the water pour out of the tunnel a pony trotted up to Speaker, introducing himself as an assistant to the examiner inferior of the harbor district: “So, they’re finally done refilling their wells?”

“Refilling what?” Speaker inquired, giving the uniformed pony an incredulous look.

The pony explained that earlier, just before dawn, a Sohei had summoned the three elementals and said that it was to refill certain strategic water reserves up in the residential district using the restricted tunnel access point.

“The name of this priest shouldn’t happen to be Jui Niang?” Speaker asked tentatively.

Nodding , the pony quickly found itself asked for name, rank and address – and telling these to Speaker the solar ran back into the tunnel, closing and sealing the entrance behind him. Now he had a witness and the investigation could continue!

Racing back up the damp tunnel, using his balance charm to negate the slippery and wet stone floor, Speaker hoped that Shimmer had been able to seal in enough air to save the martial staff. The death of the military leadership of Lookshy would be disastrous, and would likely allow for any goodwill that Speaker had built up to be wiped away… and Creation needed Lookshy’s help to stop the Barbate Arbiter.

It was thus with tears of joy that Speaker arrived to the hole leading up to the courtyard. A pair of very wet ponies, Shimmer and Sunrise, along with a number of other Yushoto guards and Boribab, were helping the martial staff up to the surface.

The seven members of the martial staff, including Yushoto Risotto and Karal Linseed, all looked like half-drowned rats, but they were none worse for wear and quite grateful.

Up on the courtyard Speaker was called over to Cash, who was sitting on a pillow with his head bandaged: Apparently the mob hadn’t been very talkative – and he had been struck, hard, by a rock that someone had thrown. Speaker quickly patched Cash up, then helped him over to the martial staff where the circle, Boribab and the staff conferred on what to do next.

With the Sohei name that Speaker had learned, which turned out to be the name of a unicorn mare who usually preached in the upper harbor district, the martial staff quickly issues orders to have her brought in for questioning – and officially deputized Speaker and the rest of the circle to carry it out: “Make sure to get them alive. We want answers, not corpses”

Other messengers were also dispatched to seek out reinforcements to quell the riot outside the gate.

“We’ll see about an official promotion and citizenship once this is over – I’m certain that your family here would take great pride in that” Maheka Feldspar noted, as a pair of servant ponies helped dry her off.

Speaker gave the old mare a horrified look, and let out an inchoate grunt as he gestured for the rest of the circle to join him in their hunt for Jui Niang as Risotto called for the martial staff to gather up around her and move to the battlements over the gate to address the mob.

Following Cash up to the battlements, away from the gate where the mob was assembled, Speaker stomped his hooves hard against the stone bricks as if wanting to quash the very words that had been spoken moments earlier.

Sensing Speaker’s emotional turmoil quite clearly, Cash didn’t ask anything, but Shimmer lacked that supreme finesse – plus her tribal roots had taught her to care deeply for familial ties: “Wait, you have family here in Lookshy?”

Cash quickly pulled Shimmer aside: “Perhaps, but he never mentioned them – not once – to us, and he certainly does not appear to want to speak of it. Why not let sleeping dragons lie?”

With an exasperated sigh, Shimmer skipped up to Speaker: “I’m sorry… It’s just that Lunars mainly only exalt when they have lost everything and have endured great hardships alone, but unicorns get to keep their families and be happy with them. Cash doesn’t have any living relatives that he knows of, Sunrise was an orphan… none of us have any living family, but you do – why not offer them to move to Sunhill? Share in your blessing?”

“I am dead to my family” Speaker said slowly through gritted teeth, followed by: “Never speak of them again”

Crestfallen, Shimmer lacked behind until Cash and Sunrise caught up to her. Looking at Speaker up ahead, she couldn’t help but feel that this was something she shouldn’t spoken up about at all…

Climbing, jumping and flying down on the far side of the compound, the circle went out in search of this Jui Niang priest. Their first stop was the western immaculate temple in the residential district. The circle didn’t expect the wanted priest to be there, indeed she wasn’t, but after Cash waved a hefty bribe at the young monks managing the temple outside of officially scheduled prayer sessions and gatherings, the circle was quickly let in to search the archives.

There wasn’t much information to found, outside of listings of local births and the results of cutesenara naming ceremonies, but thanks to Speaker’s investigation charms an invitation to a debate was found: “Found something! Jui Niang hosted a debate at the shrine she manages in the upper port district”

Getting to the upper port district meant dodging riot outliers. Speaker wanted to use the charm he had learned to use against mercenaries in Nexus to scatter the mob, but as Sunrise noted that would simply mean more looting and destruction elsewhere in the residential district – especially since the justicars seemed to be suspiciously missing for the time being.

“Oh it’s not just the justicars that are missing – there should have been alarms and reinforcements from all over the place. There are chains of communication that would send requests for help all over the city” Speaker exclaimed, while Cash ‘negotiated’ their passage past another helot militia guarding this particular gate between the residential and upper port district.

The shrine that the circle sought had been among the many demolished structures that had been completely flattened by the mega-rebel earlier, but it had also been among the first things that had been rebuilt. With very nice blue-lacquered tiles and stone carvings on the outside that depicted the elemental dragon of water, patron to all sailors who adhered to the immaculate texts.

Structure-wise the shrine was but a small hut, just large enough to have a dozen or so ponies and a priest or monk inside, with the shrine proper inside appearing as a sea-shell held by a coiling water dragon, made in black jade. It was scratched up pretty badly, likely courtesy of the mega-rebel stomping on the last shrine, but was otherwise serviceable.

“Are you here for a blessing?” an old unicorn mare who was sitting on a small chair asked. She had been reading a large scroll, one likely containing immaculate proverbs and ritual instructions.

For a dragonblooded pony she was of middling breeding: Instead of fetlocks she had patches of blue-black iridescent scales, and her eyes were slitted like that of a lizard or dragon. Under more normal circumstances her draconic features would likely have been enough to put her above any suspicion. In the realm such features were thought of as signs of a pony being blessed and having supernatural spiritual purity, which usually meant that accusations of foul deeds would be a grave insult – though that only really applied to peasants and common ponies who simply didn’t know any better.

In Lookshy everyone knew better – and Jui Niang quickly picked up on the accusatory look she was getting, floating the scroll over to a rack.
“Amilar Jui Niang, You summoned Brine Curs as part of a plan to kill the martial staff. By orders of the general staff you’re to turn yourself over to us and submit to our interrogation” Speaker stated in a stern and cold voice.

The unicorn craned her neck and flicked back a strand of her curly black and blue mane: “I do not answer to anathema”

“Now listen here – you’re standing accused of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder and all kinds of other unsavory crimes against Lookshy, I stro-“ Cash began, only to be cut short by a furious blast of water-essence from Jui Niang’s horn.

“Shimmer, cocoon her please” Sunrise calmly asked, not even trying to move amidst the shattered pottery and torn tapestries flying all over the place as Jui Niang fired a frenzied volley of essence blasts at the circle in a rather blatant attempt to kill them.

As an essence-blast struck Sunrise head on, shredding most of her hood and the top part of her robes, Shimmer managed to catch Jui Niang with her essence-webbing and cocoon her accordingly. With that done Sunrise asked that the rest of the circle leave the shrine.

“Oh come on, I want another shot at her first – I’ll make her listen to reason” Cash suggested, but Shimmer shot him a terrible and glorious glary, her eyes and her entire body radiating with a heavenly fury that simply could not be denied.

Leaving the shrine and closing the door on their way out, the circle could only listen to Sunrise’s muffled shouts from within, and the flashes of light that came out of the keyhole and from under the door.

“Wow, sounds like she had some issues she needed to vent on someone” Cash noted.

About twenty minutes later Sunrise opened the door to the shrine. The inside of the shrine had been bleached white from overexposure to the bright sunlight of her anima – and Jui Niang… she was sitting in her chair, the tattered remains of Shimmer’s webbing hanging off her, rocking back and forth drooling as she mindlessly and quietly repeated: “Praise Celestia… Praise the dragons…” over and over.

“Damn, anything actually left of her in there?” Shimmer asked in a slightly coy tone, but with a notably worried expression. Sunrise didn’t deign to answer, instead explaining that Jui Niang had received her marching orders from a Teresu Morning Dew, another Sohei from the western residential immaculate temple.

“I’m pretty sure we walked past that on our way here” Speaker pointed out, not sure what to feel about Sunrise’s treatment of the priestess inside the shrine.

Heading back to the residential district, Shimmer remarked on just how empty most of the upper port district seemed to be as they trotted past several unattended construction sites.

“We ran into another group of ponies blocking the a gate into the residential district when we first arrived. They were all construction ponies. I’m guessing that the priests drew ponies in to form the mob from the surrounding areas” Speaker figured.

Sunrise noted that if the general populace of Lookshy had a legit fear of their general staff having been put under mind control by Speaker, then it probably wouldn’t have taken much to whip them into a riotous frenzy. Shimmer agreed: “Ponies who’re afraid are usually very easy to control, as long as you play on those fears. I’ve had more than one lynch-mob come after me on that account, simply because ponies were afraid that having a spooky Lunar anathema help them with something would damn them somehow…”

“I just hope that the messengers that the martial staff sent out come through. Don’t want to see the Yushoto compound burnt to the ground” Cash remarked as the circle passed under the same gate into the residential district they had come through an hour earlier.

As the circle moved deeper into the residential district it became apparent that the rioting had spread. Groups of several dozen ponies roaming around on their own little witch-hunts, seeking out anyone they suspected of being sympathetic to the anathema they so feared. Shimmer, Cash and Speaker had to fight down several such groups – with Cash and Shimmer having to take special care not to use lethal force on the poor misguided fools.

“Oh thank you, thank you so much – I don’t know why they attacked me…” the baker pony exclaimed, brushing himself off.

Having just knocked out the ponies that had been dragging the poor baker out of his shop, Speaker shook his head: “Cash, wasn’t it him you bought those honey-coated rice cakes earlier?”
Indeed it was.

“Great, so every pony I’ve bought anything from here is in trouble? The nerve of these ponies” Cash snorted in a notably infuriated tone as he washed his bloody hooves off in a nearby fountain.

Making haste to the immaculate temple, the circle found it cordoned off and heavily guarded by a unit of heavy infantry and a unit of archers.
“Halt, this temple is off limits until the riots ends” a unicorn mare in full lamellar stated firmly, the glowing light of her horn showing quite clearly that she was meaning business.

Speaker stepped forth, calmly trying to explain the orders that the martial staff had given him and the circle: “We’re under orders from Taimyo Yushoto Risotto and the martial staff to find the instigators of the rioting. We have evidence that Sohei Morning Dew is involved, we’re here to bring him in for questioning”

The mare gave Speaker an indifferent and unimpressed look: “Sure, but I’m under orders to keep this place locked down, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for him”

Turning to the circle, Speaker looked at them quizzically and shrugged. Shimmer was about to step up when Cash motioned for her to stand down before addressing the officer: “Milady, we’re all here to help maintain the peace, but if you would give me a moment…”

The legionaries around her eyed Cash suspiciously with some reaching for their weapons as Cash pulled something out of his jacket: The jeweled orb that was his recorder of everlasting glories. With a hint of essence it quickly displayed a transclucent illusion of the martial staff giving the circle its marching orders. With the veracity of their plight confirmed quite convincingly, the unicorn ordered a legionnaire to check the temple and bring Morning Dew out.

Looking at the legionare galloping into the temple, Shimmer remarked: “I don’t think Morning Dew’ll come along willingly… the other Sohei we’ve tangled with so far just wanted to kill us or wreck the city”

The officer gave shimmer a very disaprooving glare at the mention of a Sohei wanting to destroy Lookshy: “Do not come here and accuse our priesthood of crimes against Lookshy – not on my watch”

“Calm down, please – what she meant was that the realm agent found to be controlling the rebel monsters had been disguised as a priest. Haven’t you heard? I thought everyone knew this” Cash quickly interjected, causing the purple-coated unicorn mare to take off her helmet.
Shaking her head and tussling her crew-cut mane, the unicorn mare gave Cash a look that was both incredulous and curious: “Wait? That was for real? I thought that was just more cougher bullshit”

“It is, sort of. We don’t know the exact nature or allegiance of that pony, but Shimmer and Speaker here fought him just before he spawned the mega-rebel that leveled most of the upper port district – but who other than the realm would have the power and influence to pull something like that off?” Cash eloquently half-lied to the unicorn.

The legionnaire sent into the temple returned seconds later, stating that Morning Dew wasn’t there.
“Well where is he then?” The officer demanded.

The young legionnaire, a young mare half a head shorter than her commanding officer, gulped: “Sorry Taizei. The monks said that he has class at Valkhawsen until sometime this afternoon”

“Damnit, if he puts up as big a fight as Jui Niang we’ll be in trouble there – he’ll have all the weapons and sorcerous gizmos stored in Valkhawsen to use against us” Speaker said in an obviously frustrated tone.

Nodding, the mare ordered the infantry and archer talons to each split into five scales. Two scales of each were ordered to maintain the lockdown on the temple until she got back or someone else came to relieve them, while the rest she ordered to come along to help apprehend Morning Dew.

Grateful for the backup, the circle and the troops marched on Valkhawsen.

Leaving the residential district meant running into a couple of other helot militias ‘guarding’ the district gates, but against twenty times their numbers of legionnaires and archers those militias scattered the moment they saw what was coming. Upon exiting through the gates a lot of noise suddenly became apparent… the sound of riots and fighting in the streets all across the city. The massive park district, the Green Hunt, was in flames, as were many buildings throughout the city.

“Good grief… why didn’t we see or hear any of this before?” Speaker blurted out, horrified.

The unicorn officer, her face grim, scanned the surroundings for movement: “Muffler spell around the residential district, put it in five years ago. Didn’t you notice that you couldn’t hear anything from the craftspony district at night?”

Excusing himself with having retired to a place outside of Lookshy before that, but in retrospect the Yushoto compound was awfully quiet… you’d have thought the many construction sites over in the upper port district would have been more noisy.

Approaching Valkhawsen, the circle and the officer– Speaker never did get her name – was flagged down by the armigers guarding the campus. Cash quickly explaining the situation, with the unicorn officer vouching for them as well, resulting in the circle, the officer, her troops and a dozen armigers making their way towards the grand demonology auditorium.

The students and teachers made way in the halls without a second thought, though many did look a good deal relieved when the whole procession marched past them: It wasn’t entirely uncommon for sorcerer-students and professors alike to be brought in for questioning, under heavy guard, if they suspected of dabbling in forbidden magic… or worse yet: consorting with demons or other evil creatures.
“Whoa, did another realm student try to sneak a neomah lover in here?” a student quipped as the mass of troops and exalts rushed past them, though Cash didn’t seem to notice – he was more distracted by the water fountains that dotted the halls of Valkhawsen, for they were full of coins, as if they were sacrificial alters to river gods.

At the hallway that connected to the large chamber in which demonology was taught the armigers signaled for everyone to stop: “We need eyes inside – suggestions?” armiger-Taizei Spellshield stated.

Shimmer quickly turned into a fly and made her way inside, returning a few tense minutes later: “They’re barricaded themselves inside with demon slaves”

“They? How many are there?” Speaker asked, wondering who or what Morning Dew had helping him… perhaps the true architect behind the coup? Could it be Six Heavens Hunter? Maybe Morning Dew had been seduced by demons? Abyssals? Deathlord agents? Or was he just another chain in a line of patsies and pawns?

Shimmer explained that there was a dozen or students behind a spiky barricade of firmin demon resin, and one Sohei who looked like he was in charge: “…the place also reeks of demons”

“How could they know we were coming from them?” Cash wondered, looking suspiciously at the armigers and legionnaires around him.
Pointing at a water fountain down the hall: “The coins in the fountains… the coin of sorcerers always spy on you”
“That and there’s so much ambient essence here that spotting them with essence sight is damn near impossible” Speaker bemoaned, adding that it would be impossible to tell who had enchanted such a coin.

Lookshyan battle teachings would have it that attacking a fortified opponent that was supported by demon slaves, sorcery who also knew you were coming, was roughly the least desirable kind of thing you could ever find yourself faced with doing. None the less, the legion officer ordered three fangs of infantry and two fangs of archers to form up scales in attack formations at each of the wide doors that led into the chamber, the armigers dividing up into teams of three to stand among the legionnaires to lend them sorcerous protection.
The circle got the main door into the chamber. With a charm that used silent air essence the armiger-Taizei gave the countdown to breach the doors.

Bursting through, the hundred and fifty or so ponies that barged into the vast semi-circular amphitheatre-like auditorium were almost instantly assaulted by a series of deafening pulses of sorcerous sound in the form of terrible wolf howls. The legionaries and arches that all came in from the side entrances were shielded by the armigers among them and their counterspell wards which created spheres of calm silence that the howl could not penetrate.

The circle and the archers positioned behind them were similarly warded by Shimmer’s counterspell ward which she had conjured infront of the circle before they burst in, but a split second later several of the infantry and archer scales were swept away by tidal waves of water as some of the students behind the barricades summoned endless waters. It took a few seconds before armigers from the other scales were able to swat these summons with more counterspells, causing the waters to fade.

At this point the unaffected archers each loosed a volley of arrows at the barricades, but icy mists rose up among the brown resin barridades and blunted the arrows in thick coatings of ice that made the projectiles drop to the ground. Even Gift suffered this fate, though it was able to get free by adjusting its fall to break the ice when it landed on the ground, zipping back to Speaker.

There was a brief second as everyone sized up their next target. The infantry legionaries were under orders to simply screen and defend the archers behind them – for they would likely be no match to the sorcerers in close combat. It was then that from behind the barricades the students floated up yellow apple-sized crystals and tossed them out and their opponents.

A few of the armigers threw their counterspells at the crystals, but they did nothing – however, when the crystals landed at their hooves and shattered demons sprang out from the shards and began to attack them!

“They’re tossing Yasal crystals! Catch them before they hit the floor and crack!” the armiger-taizei yelled, as some of the armigers and infantry
legionnaires struggled to fight the foul demons appearing among them.

Amidst the joyous howls of towering bloodhound demons, or the emerald fire-breath of neomah demons, the circle rushed to catch the remaining yasal crystals being tossed around. Shimmer shot webbing out to wrap the crystals in something that would cushion their fall, while Cash, Speaker and Sunrise all struggled to focus their essence to catch all the crystals being tossed to float them down gently.
“Bloody hell, how many of those things do they have?” Cash shouted, as legionaries leapt around him to catch incoming crystals.

As the archers behind him sounded off that they were ready for another volley, Speaker pointed out that there were probably dozens if not hundred more of such crystal-kept demons and spirits: “…here they’re research material – they were never meant to be used as weapons”
As an armiger managed to pop off a counterspell at the frost barrier the archers loosed another volley, which sailed overhead as Shimmer wrestled with a massive demonic lion made of jade and infernal porcelain.

“Sunrise, do the thing!” Speaker shouted as he threw Gift out to bounce back crystals so they would fall and shatter among the barricaded sorcerers.

The volleys of arrows, no longer hindered by the frostwall, came down on the sorcerers only to be stopped by a swirling wall of quartz crystal that chopped up the arrows effortlessly. A few of the archers found this frustrating enough to call out a couple of less than polite remarks, as Sunrise held up a yasal crystal and let out a series of high pitch notes, until she settled on a tone that began to make the crystal vibrate… and then shatter – all of them.

Sunrise’s anima blazed about her like golden fire as the swarm of all kinds of demons rose behind the barricades, in the air, and all over the auditorium Sunrise quickly switched to a different kind of singing – one that smote all the demons with intense fire and holy sunlight. The deafening cacophony that the burning demons let out was almost worse than the wofl howl from earlier, but as the last of the demons were reduced to a dust-caked slime only two of the dozen or so sorcerers behind the barricade still stood – the rest having collapsed with massive third degree burns covering most of their body, as revealed by the smoldering remains of their robes – they had evidently bonded with perronele demons as means of shielding themselves.

The two remaining sorcerers began to cast once more, but Shimmer was upon them in an instant – though that simply meant that she became the first to suffer from their spells: One of the two unicorns erupted in colorless fire that flickered with elemental hues, causing everyone who looked at her two feel a most intense burning pain in their eyes – making it pretty much impossible to aim anything at the two sorcerers or attack them.

Shimmer fell to the ground, writhing in pain as she pawed at the three eyes of her beastpony form – for her third eye could not close…
The second sorcerer used this distraction to blast out a wave of cool mist that made almost everyone fall asleep instantly, though the circle and the few other unicorns among the armigers and the legion officer managed to remain awake – but they still couldn’t really look at the sorcerers.

Capitalizing on the reduction of active opponents, the two sorcerers began to blast their foes left and right with horrible barrages of sorcerously made razor obsidian in the form of butterlies. Most of the armigers, unable to see the attack coming and raise counterspell wards in time, were reduced to shredded flesh and chipped bones.

Fighting through the pain – mainly because she didn’t have a choice due to her unblinking third eye – Shimmer managed to counterspell the magic that made everyone’s eyes hurt – but the reprieve didn’t last long, as the sorcerers were conjuring up long sinuous fungal vines from the tiny bits of mold growing between the cracks in the floor tiles, vines that began to seek out the enemies of their makers to strangle them.
Between being blinded whenever looking at the sorcerers and now being strangled while at it, the sorcerers did… something – it really wasn’t easy to see how, but they evidently replenished their essence somehow. It shouldn’t have surprised Speaker that there would be means of quickly topping off your essence reserves at an academy of sorcery.

As the two sorcerers prepared to conjure up something else that was probably just as nasty Shimmer, working through the pain of her eyes burning and the constricting fungal vines tightening around her throat, managed to grab hold of the unicorn with the active burning eye spell… and with a series of very crunchy chews began nomming his head off. It looked roughly about as messy as it did not look tasty, but at least now everyone could see – but just as Shimmer was about to peck into the unicorn’s cracked skull the sorcerer unleashed a desperate spell, inverting his own essence in a horrible mangling of the art of sorcery, causing his essence to attain a critical concentration that resulted in a massive explosion that incinerated the sorcerer and left Shimmer in a bad shape: chared and ashen all over, including inside her mouth and throat.

The pain in his eyes fading with the sorcerer now dead, Speaker threw Gift at the final sorcerer – but the unicorn spoke a word more akin to the cry of a bird, though it was impossible to say exactly what bird, for it was the Word of Ten Thousand Birds, the word that all birds across Creation speaks when they sing, causing the unicorn to briefly transform into a flock of birds that flew off to one of the doors out of the auditorium amphitheatre among a pile of sleeping legionaries and then reformed into the unicorn. Gift of course did not really care, for its automaton nature simply make it swerve and redirect itself, swooping in for another go at the unicorn who quickly found herself without time to cast another spell… and as Gift struck her through the quartz crystal shield with its flat side, hard, the unicorn was sent tumbling down into the middle of the amphitheatre, straight into the grip of very smug and toasty Shimmer, her feathers and bone-armor still smoldering from the other sorcerer blowing himself up.

As Shimmer held the terrified unicorn with her serrated silver talons, her terrible and chared maw opened slowly to take a bite out of the mortified sorceress – but one of the few surviving armigers leapt down and slapped a set of familiar-looking orichalcum and soulsteel shackles on the unicorn… and gestured wildly for Shimmer to not to eat this one too.

With a disappointed frown Shimmer threw the shacked sorceress, collapsing on the ground as the pain of her massive burns no longer had any distractions to keep her from paying attention to it.

With the fight over the survivors rallied, with the armigers going around trying to wake the surviving sleeping legionaries up – only to find them seriously disorientated and feeling very bad, as if they had all been drugged with a powerful narcotic. Speaker didn’t bother with any of them: Of the ponies that the sorcerers and their demon slaves had killed there were none who were just injured – no half-measures had been taken – instead he rushed down into the amphitheatre to check on Shimmer who looked like burnt shit.

“You ok?” Speaker asked, knowing damn well from his diagnostic charm that she wasn’t – though the exact level of her discomfort was first revealed when she let out a bestial whine and rolled over on her side, revealing a giant smoldering hole in her throat under her beak. Immediately giving Shimmer release from her pain in the form of his anesthetic charm, Shimmer made a less pained crooning bird-sound and seemed to fall asleep.

“Can she move?” one of the armigers asked.

Speaker gave the armiger a look that said ‘If you try to wake her up, she will likely eat you’ – the unicorn got the message, though he wasn’t happy about it: “There is class in here in two hours. She has to be out of here by then”

“Gotta give it up for Lookshyan discipline – even with half the city rioting the other half just keeps calm and carries on, no matter how heartless that seems” Cash remarked, earning some disapproving albeit groggy glares from a couple of legionnaires.

The old and thickly bearded Armiger-taizei Spellward perked up at the mention of riots, straightening out his officious white with red-trim armiger robes: “What riots? We haven’t been notified of this”

It turned out that nobody had informed Valkhawsen or the armigers guarding it of the riots in the city.

“Were the messengers from the compound meant to come by here?” Sunrise asked, her eyes still recovering from the painful burning sensation from earlier.

Speaker looked at Spellward, who in turn shrugged: “I think whoever orchestrated this, be in Morning Dew or someone else, severely compromised our messenger-system”

“Why not just send magical messages? Why use runners? That doesn’t make sense…” Cash noted, figuring that with all the sorcerers around town it shouldn’t be that difficult to alert anyone and everyone.

Speaker tried to recall the reason, for he knew there was one, as Spellward gestured at Cash: “Lookshy’s walls, even the district walls, are warded against most forms of spirits and demons to prevent anyone from sneaking in. That includes the kind of spirit you conjure up with the messenger spell – if a Realm spy got into an arsenal and began informing the Realm of what we have…”

“Hold on, we were able to message Speaker just fine, right? You got our messages from Chung Do right?” Cash quickly reminded Speaker of.
Spellward did not look happy to hear this – and long after the whole coup and whatnot incident was over it was found that Lookshy’s spirit wards didn’t stop messenger spells sent with celestial essence. Sidereal involvement was suspected, though at that point such things was the least of their worries, but that’s for another scroll.

Leaving Shimmer to sleep off her injuries - her beastpony-form’s regenerative features already in effect – the rest of the circle and the few surviving armigers looked to interrogate the captured junior sorcerer, who in turn looked none to happy about the situation: “Release me you fools! The anathema taking over Lookshy, can’t you see!?”

“Cash, Sunrise… make him talk” Speaker requested with no small amount of anger in his voice, as he glanced at the dead ponies scattered about the auditorium and the legionnaires working on moving the bodies of their comrades away.