The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Upon hearing that his mother’s grave had been decommissioned without informing Speaker, Shimmer quickly offered to give Bright Idea a slow and painful death – but to Speaker it simply wasn’t worth it: “It’s such a typical move by him – acting on other’s behalf and doing something stupid. The price to maintain a private grave in the Green Hunt isn’t even that much for a small tombstone like mother’s… greedy bastard”

“I know… but hey, look at his: Another missive from Drip Crank. He probably has some new toys you can tinker with” Shimmer noted, pointing to some unopened letters with Drip Crank’s seal.

The remaining time leading up to the Games was spent by the circle dabbling in various fun private projects.

The amount of assassins coming after had lessened to the point that Shimmer didn’t feel the need to watch his every stop, so she eventually found time to visit some old friends back west.

Speaker made friends in the Stores Directorate, helping with restoring and readying ancient magical weapons of war for the incursion into the underworld, making many trips to the soulforge to shape spareparts into reality. When he wasn't fixing stuff he was reading up on sorcery, tinkering with his strange artifact design and remotely checking in on the Sunhill Hospital to see if they needed help with anything by use of the Sunhill manse hearthstone.

Cash spent his time making an unholy amounts of money, using Nah to fly from the north to the south with salt and never-melting “True Ice”, coming back with unheard of spices, exquisite hoof-voven carpets with exotic and colorful patterns, and gemstones the size of chicken eggs – the amount of money he was depositing in Sunhill’s vaults quickly went from ‘enough’ to ‘we need to contact the heavenly gods of first age math to learn the numbers for this kind of wealth' - though Cash also seemed to have already planned on what to spend all that money on.

Sunrise… was in heaven, getting her singing lessons?

Sullen Hoof spent a lot of time liasing with the Operations Directorate, giving them informationon how to combat the undead, as well making sojourns into the underworld to talk with the Bodhissatva.

As the date for the two week long Lookshy Games came upon the city the buzz around the various markets and residential neighborhoods reached a fever pitch. There were thousands of foreign ponies in the Market District’s hotels and hostels, even more in the large tent-city that had sprouted up around the large arena complex that third field-force combat engineers had set up in record time.

There were well over a hundred events, mainly because there was a strict delineation between events and contests that were for the enlightened, and the ones that were for mortals only – it simply wouldn’t be fair – plus events with exalts competing against exalts had a reputation for being a lot more spectacular.

Now, unlike the Realm Invitational – the Realm counterpart to the Lookshy Games – then the Games were far more humble and austere in how it presented itself: Wasteful pomp and ceremony would eat into the arsenal maintenance budget, though a grand parade with units from every field force in dress uniforms did march through the market district and the arena complex outside the city walls.

To Speaker it was quite a sight: Only twice before in his (mortal) life had he seen such a grand sight, and he had not expected to live to see it again.
From the first field force marched talons of gunzosa in their bright red magical armor, the heavy plating impossible to wield for mortals not prepared properly through secret rites and talisman implants. They were truly a sight to behold, each a hero in their own right for their willingness to sacrifice any prospect of old age to defend creation – well, in Speaker’s opinion they were, for he had served with them. To the rest of the circle they just looked like really heavily armored infantry.

Next up marched market heavy infantry and archers from the second field force, in gleaming blue armor and livery, looking triumphant.
From the third field force rumble a set of parade floats with siege weapons mounted on top. Great ballistas with log-sized bolts, massive catacults with large pony-sized balls of steel ready to fire.

“Say Speaker, why aren’t they really showing any of their magical arsenal?” Cash wondered, looking at the comparably mundane weapons being put on display: “Where are the warstriders, or some skyships?”

Speaker shrugged: “They showed some gunzosa, that armor is about as magic as it gets without being full on jade dragon armor… but beyond that, you know… I never thought about that”

The first event of the games the elimination round for the mortal martial arts tournament. This passed with great fanfare, with as-of-yet unexalted scions from the various Lookshyan gens vied for the attention and enlightenment of the dragons through displays of martial skill. They sought to earn their horn through trials of mortal combat.

A similar elimination round for the magical martial arts tournament was next. With it being possible to sign up at the last minute, and it being fairly common for hesitant late-comers to use this, it was rarely possible just pair off opponents and go from there – there would simply be too many. This was also why the mortal elimination round had taken place.

To Speaker’s less than enthusiastic reaction it turned out that Shimmer had taken the liberty of signing up anyway after discovering that unicorns from the realm had arrived to participate in the magical martial arts tournament – she just couldn’t resist the chance to beat up realm unicorns… or worse.

“Well, let’s hope that we won’t meet each other before the semi-finals” Speaker said with no small amount of hesitance… he knew damn well that Shimmer was a dangerous opponent, especially with her prior admission that she wasn’t entirely sure if she could keep things non-lethal.
Like the mortal combat games, then the ‘enlightened league’ had its elimination rounds in the form of battle royals, each with five contestants. There were twenty in total – a big turnout compared to the elimination rounds Speaker had seen himself from the stands – and down in the fighting rings it seemed even larger… for all around on nineteen other smooth circular stone platforms, each with a lot of other unicorns and other clearly enlightened ponies. Speaker had to wonder if the rumors were true that the contestants from Thorns were also taking part in this tournament, or if they were deathknights in disguise?

The four ponies Speaker was pitted against – everyone being randomly paired via number draw – all looked like they meant business: Two clearly lookshyan unicorns, each in jade armor and with jade weapons befit their martial styles: The husky earth-aspected mare had a grotesquely massive tetsubo by her side, the other - a wiry looking fire-aspected stallion who barely looked old enough to have finished secondary school – had a pair of short daiklaives of red jade flitting about him like two flickering flames. Each weapon denoted the styles that they were clearly steeped in: Celestial earth and fire dragon style respectively.

The two other opponent in Speaker’s elimination round looked just a tad more plain – a gruff unicorn mare with an eyepatch, a definite handicap, who was clad in rough leathers – and an otherwise plain-looking stallion, though his jewelry revealed magical talismans and other shiny things of jade and enchanted gems that the unlightened would probably not be able to use…

The arenas that everyone were positioned on were large six yard in diameter stone circles, raised about a yard above the ground. Falling outside of these would mean defeat – as would yielding or being rendered unconcious, though Speaker’s own experiences in watching these games in his youth told him that usually one lost here by being flung outside the ring… often explosively so, thanks to the volatile nature of the elemental essence of unicorns.

The gong sounding the start of the fights came all too quickly – Speaker had barely had time to look at his opponents in advance! The drums and wooden percussion instruments that followed to give rhythm to the fights were barely noticed by the contestants.

Dropping into a defensive stance, and raising all of his shield charms, Speaker enveloped himself in a golden sheath of neigh-impermeable essence – and just in time, as the mare with the eyepatch came in swinging, her hooves wreathed in a thick wash of water essence – “Damn-it” thought Speaker, knowing full well that the chosen of Danaa’d, the dragon of water, were by far the most skilled martial artists of the dragonblooded unicorns.

Still, her blows were not that hard to fend off – and the few that connected failed utterly to penetrate his shield charms.

Looking to his left – just for a split second – revealed that the burly earth-aspected unicorn mare had barely moved, though her tetsubo was floating in a defensive position – while the bejeweled one was fighting thefire-aspected colt quite fiercely.

Having not even summoned Gift yet, Speaker quickly found himself barely even needing one hoof to ward off the eyepatch-wearing mare – with a swift motion that was much too fast for the one-eyed mare, Speaker had her eye-patch off, revealing an ugly gaping hole where an eye had once been.

Taking a step back, Speaker to the mare that he wished to disengage. “You yield?” she snarled in heavily accented rivertongue that sounded made her sound like a far-eastern native, her one good eye flitting back and forth between glaring at Speaker and looking for eyepatch.
“No, you will – and in return, I will restore you missing eye” Speaker quickly replied, not dropping his defences – but not making any further moves to engage the mare either.

The mare looked understandably confused at Speaker, but as he flared his castemarks and asked if she had ever heard of the miracle-doctor from Brookside in Nexus her face became a rapid succession of conflicting emotions and careful evalutions, culminating in her bowing her head: “If you’re lying I will have your head”

“You will have to get in line for that – but come, I can do it right now” Speaker said.

Taking a cautious step forward, the mare shot Speaker a curious look: “You’ve done this before in a fighting ring?”

“I once did it while knee-deep in biting demon blood, patching up troops up whiling fighting the river of all torment – this is nothing” Speaker said, casually swatting the mare over the face. The effect was almost instant, her empty socket bursting with white and golden light that seemed to compete for the attention of the tens of thousands of ponies watching in the stands around them.

The now twin-eyed mare happily jumped off the ring, thanking Speaker as she happily trotted off.

Speaker barely had time to congratulate himself as the be jeweled pony was thrown at him, his enchanted jewelry and talismans exploding violently just as he got near Speaker. Using his jumping charm to leap some four yards straight up into the air, Speaker saw the hapless pony with burning talismans fly screaming into the ground next to the arena, where medics, aides and others quickly rushed in to douse the flames and render any medical assistance needed.

The fire-aspected colt stood blazing, his burning anima scorching the stone he stood on: “You better just give up or I’ll burn your essence out of you!” – and with one quick whack over the head with the tetsubo the colt was out cold, bleeding from the head, lying quite still in the stone fighting ring.

Looking at the unicorn mare, Speaker wasn’t really sure if he found her tactic that tasteful – but it was undeniably effective… letting everyone else fight it out and then take out what likely looked like the biggest threat with a surprise attack, leaving a hopefully weaker opponent to fight in the first real round of the tournament.

Without even saying a word the unicorn mare jumped off the elevated fighting ring, the ground quaking as the thick-limbed mare landed with all her armor and massive jade-studed war-club of a tetsubo.

All around him, along the inner rim of the massive race-track, the other elimination rounds were wrapping up as well – with medics and other helpers flocking to whichever ring was resulting in the most messy and bloody fights.

Stepping down from the ring, Speaker suddenly found himself being yanked along by some of the medical staff over to one of the rings where they said that they had a contestant who refused to be treated by anyone but him… it was Cash – who looked reasonably well all things considered, though the multiple lacerations on his forelimbs told a rather bloody story of his ‘victory’

Patching Cash up, Speaker learned that Cash had actually fought a lunar… and no Shimmer. The Lunar had evidently exploded in a mess of fangs and claws – not much of a coherent attack, but its reach had been so that Cash’s dodge charm had been quite ineffective: “So when the thing enveloped me and started chewing, I started punch-stabbing it in the soft innards – I think I hit something sensitive, because it took off like you would not believe it”

“So where is this Lunar now? What did he look like?” Speaker wondered. Those around the two Solars also looked rather curious.
For a moment Cash had the most ponderous gaze – lost in thought, like a poet staring mournfully at the moon: “No clue… I think he used some kind of charm that’s making it hard for me to remember what h- oh what am I thinking”

Cash yanked out his recorder of everlasting glories and had it project an image of the lunar stallion before he transformed. Grey mane and coat, shifty eyes that seemed shaky – the stallion appeared nervous in the few seconds of steady imagery that Cash’s recorder had gotten before the fighting had broken out.

“Be sure to show this to Shimmer - she might know who that is” Speaker suggested.

That was all for the Locked Horns tournament for that day – it only had one series of fights per day, so no contestant fought more than once a day. This was both so you could recover from your wounds, but also to replenish your essence: No sense in fighting with magical martial arts if you couldn’t power any of it – the exception was for those who were participating in multiple disciplines, though that was usually only done if you knew you could handle doing both…

In Shimmer’s case, the next day had the grand cross country gallop: A race across difficult terrain, water and open roads. A three part race meant to be traveled either by hoof or whichever other way you could… as long as you made it past certain heliograph towers, which in turn would signal your progress back to the arena.

“Oh Shimmer will have this in the bag no contest – she can just fly the whole thing over in no time” Cash quipped from up on the Gens Yushoto spectator balcony.

A large polished silver mirror with enchanted gems set around it showed the image of the contestants as they were making ready – quite a few obviously fire aspected unicorns, but also a number of air and water aspected ones plus a couple others.

Yushoto Risotto chuckled: “You’ve never seen truly advanced unicorn athletics charms have you? Plus, the water post is underwater… they have to yank a rope to ring a bell up on the heliograph tower”

Cash was about to ask what Risotto had meant, when Speaker tugged at his shoulder and gestured to the silver mirror: The fire-aspected unicorns were blazing up, getting ready to run as fast as their fire could burn, but the air aspected unicorns… were jumping in the air… and not falling down.

Levitating on balls of air essence, the floating unicorns sped off at amazing speed the moment the start klaxon sounded. Shimmer set off just the same, flapping her wings fiercely to gain lift in her beastpony-form – but the unicorns of air were just pure speed. The fire-aspected unicorns were a close second, their muscles like like as they galloped, their hoof-prints setting the gravel road on fire as they blazed across it. Finally came the few water-aspected unicorns and the rest trailing behind at slightly more mortal gallop speeds – though it was clear that they were expecting to gain an advantage come the water -leg part of the race.

First up was the difficult terrain part of the race. For the air-aspected unicorns this was mainly an exercise in dodging obstacles – they appeared to be limited to how high up they could fly. Shimmer had no such issues, and took a clear lead.

Well, she thought she had a clear lead… there was a lone pony, no horn, with a race number stitched to her rather drab and plain clothes – she wasn’t even going that fast, merely galloping at a mortal pace.

Out of sheer curiosity – mainly to figure out how such a mortal-looking pony could have navigated the obstacle course so quickly – Shimmer descended, but in doing so her third eye picked up the pony’s aura: Bright yellow essence, the essence of the chosen of journeys… this was a sidereal.

Gliding down silently until she was just behind the sidereal mare, Shimmer asked: “So, bronze or gold faction?”

For whatever reason, be it absentmindedness, knee-jerk reaction, or because she was distracted by the sound of explosions from the firedust-mines back in the obstacle course, the mare said: “That is really rude to ask – I always keep politics out of work you know”

It took a second or so before the mare realized what she had just said – and that someone was right behind her – causing her to stumble, tumble over and take a nose-dive into the by now solid dirt road.

“You ok?” Shimmer asked, landing to help the mare up.

The grey-coated mare, her hood now thrown back – revealing a tuzzled blond mane – looked up at Shimmer. Her eyes were each pointing very much in a different direction: “I… oh you’re not supposed to see me, at all! But come to Whitewall, bring Speaker and his friends”
Before Shimmer could get a word in edge-wise the sidereal just wasn’t there – and there was no trace of her having been there, despite Shimmer’s fresh memories of her being there. Looking around and seeing nothing, not even smelling any trace of the mare, Shimmer flew off to continue the race… bloody sidereals.

The water part of the race wasn’t just easy… it was quite amusing. Despite waiting around for her fellow constentants to arrive, the air-aspected unicorns reaching the lake where the water-leg of the course was set, then they also turned out to have the most difficulty reaching the bottom to activate the bell. The mechanism was dead simple: An enchanted gem that needed a mote of essence to run was wired via jade thread to the bell up on the surface – and Shimmer figured that the ponies up at the bell had some means of scrying to see who was activating the bell…

The amusing part came from watching all the air-essence infused unicorns struggling to not remain hopelessly buoyant.

The fire-aspected unicorns fared better, using their inner flame to boil the water behind them so that they could propell themselves quite fast by being pushed by a continuous jet of expanding warm water.

The water-aspected unicorns simply galloped into the water, striding through the murky fluids as if it wasn’t there, while the few godblooded ponies that had managed to keep pace struggled to dive into the water – you really needed a plan before joining the race… and these poor fools did not have one.

Having long since rung her bell, Shimmer sped off once more – satisfied that her fellow contestants hadn’t just given up despite her superior speed, both above and below water.

It surprised none in the circle that Shimmer won the race, though she did excibit a rare level of sportsponyship in that she waited for the furthest of the other contestants to come into sight before stepping over the finishing line. More than one of the unicorns that had run against Shimmer lodged protests that Shimmer had clearly turned into both birds and fish in the racae, but as the judges pointed out, then their surveillance sorcery in the numbered tabards everyone had galloped around with proved that shimmer had not shapeshifted once, remaining in her warform throughout the race.

Cash wanted to congratulate Shimmer on her victory, but she declined: “Come on – this was never a fair fight. I just wanted to fly in a race… its been so long since I’ve had a chance to do that”

A few hours later the first of the Locked Horn fights took place. It was one unicorn against another, resulting in a spectacular display of elemental fury – but it wasn’t until the third fight that anyone from the circle was up: It was Shimmer, against a unicorn who seemed quite hesitant about getting into the ring with her… to the point that Shimmer’s opponent conceded the fight before it was even started.
At first Speaker got the impression that this had disappointed Shimmer, but after the results of the next fight she was ecstatic: “He won! The realm unicorn won! That means I get to fight him tomorrow”

“And I wish you the best of luck in that” Speaker said, wondering once more how a mare so old could act so young and energetic still… completely oblivious to himself, as far as he was concerned, was a three-thousand year old pony, at least mentally.

His time pondering the behavioral psychology of ancient exalts was cut brutally short: An official came galloping up to Speaker, telling him that he was up next and needed to get to the fighting ring this instant.

“Very well” Speaker said, activating his balance and jumping charm, allowing him to leap up onto a nearby tent-pole – and from that along the series of banner-poles that lined the inner ring of the vast arena.

Now, the fighting ring for the ‘proper’ Locked Horn fights was just like the ones in the elimination round – a big circular platform of stone bricks, roughly smoothed for great traction and nasty scrapes if you got thrown onto it. The scorch marks and impact marks on it already told of a lot of fighting… the somewhat washed off blood stains told of even more.

Jumping down on the ring from his tent-pole vantage point, Speaker bowed to his opponent: The massive earth-aspected mare from the elimination match, in her equally massive white-jade plate armor. There wasn’t an inch of exposed flesh, with even her eyes being covered in what looked to be a jade-sealed crystal visor.

The announcer said something to the thousands of ponies watching, and the grand illusory projection of the fight erupted above the ring – a somewhat transparent magical image that showed what was happening to everyone. For a moment Speaker contemplated how such a setup worked, but that was quickly ended as the mare addressed Speaker.

“Puke, I am here specifically to smear you across the ring and show the ponies of Lookshy that your gilded freaks are nothing special. Prepare to be broken in every way that it is possible for a pony to break” she said, with such a stony conviction and scathing tone that Speaker had to debate with himself whether he should take offensive to it or not.

Seeing that Speaker wasn’t taking her bait, the mare continued: “You are an affront to everything that my family and the good ponies of Lookshy have worked towards for centuries – you think a quick deal with a devil will get you what you want? No, behold what might and power decades of faith and adherence to scripture have granted me!”

The massive jade tetsubo swung through the air like a boulder launched by a catapult, swinging hard, heavy and with a very good aim – but while powerful, it was also obvious: Speaker simply leapt up into the air, out of reach.

…but he had to come down again, and the mare stood ready in her magical armor.

Speaker recalled the fights the circle had had with the Bodhisattva when they had first met – his armor and ghost-flesh body had been too strong for any in the circle to pierce or damage. This pony wasn’t that different… but she was clearly a student of the dragon of earth and its magical fighting style, which meant that she could render herself steady as a rock if need be – wrestling her to the ground and flinging her out of the ring simply would not be possible… or would it?

A plan formed… a sneaky plan at that.

Calling Gift to him from elsewhere, Speaker flung it at the mare using the special technique that let Gift impart excessive motion onto the things it hit. This had a predictable effect: The mare hadn’t expected that such a small flying bladed disc to throw her off balance… or nearly out of the ring, though by use of that very martial ability that Speaker had dreaded, the mare rooted herself perfectly, preventing Gift from making her budge even an inch. This was all according to plan.

Landing on the other side of the ring, Speaker had Gift simply continue attacking the mare using the simple but profoundly efficient technique he had rediscovered while trapped in that containment field full of demons under Valkhawsen - this forced the mare to keep herself rooted, otherwise any of the attacks might throw her off the ring entirely… well that was the implied threat.

Reaching out into thin air and withdrawing his singing staff and a rosined bow, Speaker brought tip of the staff down to stone ring’s surface… and then he played a mocking little ditty that spun the stone that the mare stood on around at great speed.

Dizzy to the point of wanting to throw up, the mare released her rooting charm, getting off the spinning disc – and she promptly rewarded by Gift knocking off the rings, sending her tumbling almost ten yards down the gallop track along side the ring, spewing puke all the way…

After the mare was done vomiting from the spin-cycle and subsequent tumble she initiated a tirade of swearing rarely heard outside of nexus harbor pubs, to the point the point that whoever was in control of the sorcery that maintained the image and sound projection of what was going on the in the ring to the illusory image above the ring, cut the sound feed… to the which the crowd boo’d , so intensely that the sound was put back on.

Shimmer congratulated Speaker on the creative solution to the fight: “…but once you come up against me it won’t be as easy”
“You mean I can’t just ask you to yield?” Speaker said in jest.

Shimmer chuckled: “You’re assuming that I will be in a farm that can even hear at that point…”

This gave Speaker food for thought: With Shimmer’s control of her body and powers of shapeshifting… how would he beat her should they both advance far enough into the games that they would have to fight each other.

The next day Shimmer came up against her realm unicorn, who like Speaker’s opponent, made a big deal of how he was going to show how truly puny this vile anathema before him was – for before the students of the elemental dragon of fire, all things were but ash.

That was the bark… the bite was a series of attacks on Shimmer’s chakra points, infused with concentrated fire essence. Indeed, so quick had this initial onslaught been that it had barely registered to Speaker before Risotto poked him:

“Oh goodness… she better yield now or she’s in trouble” the old unicorn mare said, sounding concerned in that unique senior officer who just saw the tide of battle turn kind of way.

Speaker, skeptical that anything could really have Shimmer, questioned this logic: “You sure? I’ve seen her weather far worse attacks”

“The Fire Within technique… using both the smoldering would attack and essence-igniting nerve attack at once – unless Shimmer has a way to deaden her sense of touch entirely, then she will now begin to burn up from the inside, no matter how much armor she grows on her outside” Risotto said – her tone undeniably grim.

Shimmer recalled having seen victims of this technique during the battle of Mishaka – still alive, at first, rushing to scribes for something to write their wills or last words to a loved one on… it was absolutely terrible to see them combust from within. It was usually once their bellies burst open in flames that you knew it was all over.

“Hold on – Shimmer can regenerate a lot of injuries very quickly – and doesn’t… oh wait, look!” Speaker said.

With her essence webbing Shimmer had caught the realm unicorn, who in turn had dug in his wavy – almost flame-like – short daiklaives into the stone ring. It was a tug of war, and Shimmer was heaping more and more webbing onto the blazing stallion, his flaming anima flux barely being able to burn through the webbing before being smothered by more of it.

Ultimately an intense burst of flame scoured away the webbing, but the distraction had worked… Shimmer was gone – or so it appeared, as the dust settled.

“So, what do you think she shapeshifted into?” Risotto asked curiously, as the fire-aspected stallion stomped around the ring looking for his opponent.

The beating drums quieted down, when suddenly the realm unicorn began to flail about, pounding on his left ear.

“Oh… she turned into a flea, how original” Speaker chuckled, though he quickly revised that to something slightly larger, as his medical diagnostic charm told him that the stallion had started to bleed from that ear ever so slightly.

A few seconds later, with the crowd quite amused to see the realm unicorn desperately trying to get the lunar bug out of his ear – lest it eat him up from the inside – Risotto laughed: “Oh this is brilliant…”

Speaker kept his eyes fixed on the fight, but listened to Risotto’s commentary: “I heard her wanted to kill realm unicorns, but this… this is brilliant”

His curiosity piqued, Speaker shot Risotto a brief inquisitive glance. The Taimyo explained, a vicious smile on her lips: “Well you’re not allowed to kill your opponent in these… but there’s nothing in the rules against making your opponent commit suicide – look at how the poor thing is eyeing up his daiklaives. He wants to jab ‘em in his ears to dig her out…”

His curiosity turning to dread, Speaker witnessed in horror as Risotto’s prediction appeared to come true: The stallion roared in pain, bleeding profusely from both ears at this point – and not even fireballs shot into his own now quite scorched ears seemed to do much beyond cauterize the bleeding… those swords sure looked handy as bug-pokers right about now…

“Can’t you stop this? She’s driving him mad!” Speaker pleaded, but Risotto shoot her head with a cruel smirk: “Why would I do that? This’ll send a great message to the realm not to send any more idiots over here to try and embarrass us”

Speaker had to turn his head away – he couldn’t watch… the sound of the bloodthirsty crowd cheering a few moments later seemed to indicate that the fight was over – and Shimmer was the only pony still standing in the ring.

Rushing down to the ring, Speaker met the medics hauling the unicorn off on a stretcher – to Speaker’s surprise the unicorn was actually still alive, hanging on by a thread… though the lacerations and stab-wounds in his left ear told Speaker everything he needed to know, most of which he would rather have gone without.

Shimmer was far too busy bowing gracious and basking in the cheers from the tens of thousands ponies up in the stands to notice Speaker far less than pleased expression as he fought to keep the realm unicorn alive in a nearby field hospital – the main issue was that the unicorn and his friends really didn’t want to be serviced by a Solar doctor, though since neither they nor Speaker was in charge of the tournament medical staff then the lot of them were shooed out of there, though not before Speaker managed to stabilize the patient, not that he got much in the form of thanks for it.