The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Walking through the upper port district in the early morning was always fairly uneventful: The rampage of the giant flesh-monster was so long ago that most of the construction work on the new apartment buildings were long done, so beyond seeing the odd wood-worker or team of painters finishing up detail-work it was difficult to tell that a grand battle had even taken place. Well, there was a noticeable difference between the new and old buildings – but there wasn’t any battle damage of note.

Quickly crossing through the southern edges of the residential district, Speaker passed into the district of barracks. There were noticeably more ponies milling about, maintaining gear, stomping around on the various parade grounds or stumbling home from a long night of partying really hard – it was obvious that there were a lot of troops home on the roost. This probably also explained the large attendance at the games, since normal ponies would still have to go to work – such ponies usually only turned up for the events in the afternoon or evening.
Tagging along the groups of legionaries going to the arena, Speaker quickly found himself chatted up by several such young off-duty soldiers. They thought him a veteran going to the games, and so asked him when and where he served.

Now, among those serving in the seventh legion it is well understood that the first field force was all special forces – the very best – so even having served in that as a medic earned Speaker some instant respect, that he had served as combat-medic to the magically-armored gunzosha got him even more looks of admiration – though grunts being grunts, they also asked if he had any good stories from his time in the legion... mainly so they had something to listen to while getting to the arena: The main roads leading down to the gates out of the city were all clogged with thousands of ponies who were also heading to the arena, most as audience, some as vendors, others as competitors, some probably to do security, or be officials… basically a very large number of ponies were going the same way and thus one had a traffic jam.

Speaker knew that he wasn’t scheduled to fight until around noon, so he wasn’t in a hurry: “Alright… there was this one time I was stationed south of south-west of Nadir. We were there to stomp out some mutant raiders that had crept out of the everfree – but the mutants weren’t showing, and we spent five weeks waiting for recon to tell us where to go. Personally I didn’t mind – but the hardhats had to be on constant readiness to ship out… and the brass managing the garrison was so green you’d think they picked her off a tree”

“Hardhats?” one of the grunts wondered. Speaker recognized the confusion… good grief, these grunts were straight out of hoof-camp!

Taking a deep breath and giving the grunt the steely look of an officer, Speaker replied mockingly: “You dragon-damned hoof – Gunzosha! The gem-marked, the bright ones! Don’t they teach you anything in Hoof-camp?”

“Sir, sorry – we just got back from there… haven’t even been on our first deployment, but we’ve heard that the second field force is massing for something big that we’re sure to come along for”

Twenty years ago Speaker would have taken such a reply as a good thing, and encouraged the young legionaires to continue on with steely nerves, fire in their belly and a prayer on their lips, but now… now he knew what they were massing for – and green recruits fresh from hoof-camp was not what he had hoped for. This would need to be discussed with Maheka Feldspar.

Speaker’s lack of words of encouragement struck the young legionaries as discouraging. As oblivious as they were, one asked if something was wrong. Another quickly chided the first, guessing that Speaker was recalling some nasty battle where he had lost friends or something…

“Something like that – but trust me, with a little luck we’ll ensure that that won’t happen” Speaker said, forcing himself to sport a smile.
This calmed the grunts down, though now they began to ask into the story Speaker had been telling…

Looking at a mare clad in southern silks, selling spices he had never heard of, as they very slowly moved along the main road down the market district, Speaker nodded: “Ok, so with brass so green that they were budding the hardhats were having a run of the place. In less than two weeks they had three stills, a brothel, a casino blessed by Plentimon and two acres of prime hashish going. The only catch was weekly dawn muster which was handled by one of our own, a unicorn so hard-flanked you’d think he ate spears and shat barding – so every evening before muster every idiot who had gotten drunk despite knowing that they had to get up at dawn came in to me for a hangover cure…”

The grunts laughed – though it was that insecure ‘ya, we will likely end up doing the same’ type of laugh.

“I can’t begin to say how tired I got of doing that – plus it strained by medical supplies, so I put up a sign that anyone coming in after sundown on those days would have to pay with sexual favors in order to be treated” Speaker continued, looking stern but with a mischievous grin dangerously close to revealing itself.

The grunts listened closely – curious and amused.

“Now hardhats, they’re all alpha – so submitting to something like that… well… the mares didn’t mind, but after I bummed one of the stallions and then sent him off to the barracks still dripping from both ends at least half the morons stopped getting drunk the night before muster. I don’t even have numbers for how much I laid through that…” Speaker mused, reminiscing of his more lurid exploits during his time in the legion. The grunts were very much amused.

“Sweet gig – how do we get something like that?” one asked, sounding giddy.

Speaker shrugged: “You’re fresh out of hoof-camp. Show your best, learn what the test requirements are to qualify for specialist training and make sure to get into that – then walk the career path, gain rank… I had what… four tours over twenty years?”

Seeing the nods from the grunts around him, Speaker added: “Even if you don’t plan on making a career in the legion, do your mandatory tour with pride – serve with honor”

Speaker got a rowdy response of “Hoo-rah!” from every grunt in earshot, to which he could only smile.

As they approached the grand arena, Speaker had to split off from the grunts to enter the competitor waiting area. Upon realizing that Speaker was a competitor in the games the grunts became confused, at a loss of how to express their admiration and awe – even more so when Speaker revealed to them what he would be competing in by flashing his caste mark: “The big noon semi-final for the Locked Horns… you can’t miss it”

Leaving the grunts to the sound of their cheers and shouts of encouragement, Speaker felt invigorated. He had to fight and win for Lookshy, for the grunts, for the seventh legion.

Elsewhere, atop a flagpole, Shimmer sat in seagull form, opening her eyes. Bemused, she noted to herself: “Cute… but chatting with grunts won’t win you this…”

The first events of the day were mortal athletic competitions, mortal weightlifting… but it was clear that everyone was there to see the semi-final of the locked horns. To Speaker’s surprise, as he stepped out of the waiting area in the arena, he saw many ponies waving yellow or gilded flags, a few even waving flags with sunburst symbols. He couldn’t help himself but feel dutybound to fight for fans as well…

There weren’t any silver flags. Shimmer had taken note of this, keenly – and in turn she was plenty ready to express her displeasure…

As Speaker entered the fighting ring he found it empty… but the officials around the ring seemed calm and merely urged him on. It was then that maggots began to crawl up from cracks in the ring, clumping together… and slowly forming a writhing form resembling Shimmer.

With Shimmer somewhat ‘present’ the fight was declared started – but the maggot-Shimmer only bowed and gestured for Speaker to begin.

Taking a deep breath and recalling the wisdom that Speaker’s martial arts trainer in hoof-camp had expressed to him, the wisdom of the elemental dragon of water, Speaker weighed his options: Water can be calm, or it can crash – water conforms around the obstacles put in its path, never stopping… one should be water. This was a basic but profound lesson in martial arts and philosophy – but closer to Speaker’s heart was the wisdom that he himself had devised in honor of the Great Maker: A faster piston strikes sooner and harder, an object can be put into any motion through application of essence, a machine cares not for its user… and most profound: A machine can repeat its task ad infinitum.

With this realization Speaker found himself aware of a riddle he had known that he had been repeated countless times since his exaltation: What is the key to the thousand wounds gear? The gear that inflicts injury a thousand times, never stopping. The key was repetition.

To the audience it appeared that neither Speaker nor Shimmer was moving – which wasn’t entirely wrong either, though in Speaker’s case it was an acute onset of martial zen that had taken him over.

Then the fighting ring erupted into a gaping maw that reached up and tried to swallow Speaker whole. Shimmer had somehow shapeshifted in such a way that she had become the ring itself…

Leaping high into the air, Speaker called gift to himself and flared his anima fully – with its bright light and his essence sight he saw Shimmer’s essence clearly within the stone maw, revealing to him structural weakspots and cracks in the stone from previous fights: Gift roared, its blades a foot long with golden razor essence extensions.

Like a comet Gift flew, raining sparks down a trail of bright sparks as if it was lit fireworks.

The sound that the stone maw made as Gift struck around it, the whole thing crumbling and exploding at the same time as Shimmer erupted from the thing in her warform as she took to the sky, was a weird inorganic groan mixed with the furious grinding of metal on stone.

Landing in the ruble perfectly, despite the decidedly uneven surface thanks to his balancing charm, Speaker hurled Gift with deceptively gentle force, it flying past Shimmer – above her – only to bank and come down upon her, striking her at second shoulders, slamming into where her right wing connected to her body.

Just as she was about to be struck Shimmer’s bone-armor linked up tight around where she was about to be hit, meaning that Shimmer suffered no real injury from the blow aside from her bone-armor getting scratched up pretty badly – but as with Morning Dew, Speaker had Gift slam Shimmer head-first down into the ringat great speed, making for a grand explosion of dust, rock and specks of silver light.

Knowing full well that he wouldn’t be able to pierce her armor, nor tire her, Speaker briefly considered his options. Leaping at Shimmer, attempting to get her in a clinch before she could get up properly to orient herself, Speaker just barely saw her feathers ripple before a silver-talon’d claw came up to catch his hoof, swinging him aside without her head even having been pulled from the ground.

Coming around for another go as quickly as he could, Speaker saw he feathers flutter once more – and again his attack was parried without her even looking.

…how?

Shimmer extracted herself from the ground, shaking her three-eyed bird-head off. Her third eye was in a bad shape, caked with dust and a bit of blood – of course! It’s essence-sensitive nature prevented her from blinking with it. Oh well, none of Speaker’s plans had involved preventing Shimmer from using essence sight anyway, the rest of her senses were probably…. For more sensitive, right! That would include her sense of touch, like feeling motion in the air telegraphing his attacks!

Making another attack, this time knowing full well that it would be parried again, Speaker simply smiled up at Shimmer as she gave him a rather disappointed look upon her predictable parry: “Really? Trying for a third time?”

Nodding, Speaker used his anesthetic charm on Shimmer – wondering if there even was a way to counter it. Either way, he leapt back and was about to await Shimmer’s next move, but she made that before he had even landed: From essence nodes around her body, Shimmer fired streams of sticky essence-webbing at Speaker, trying to catch him. Gift zipped back and forth, severing the strands, but it turned that the webbing had simply been a distraction!

The fighting ring being in the shape of a stone cylinder with a flat surface on top for the actual fighting, Shimmer had extended one of her taloned hind-limbs down over the edge, then all the way around the edge the of the ring… and then she grabbed Speaker from behind, only to undo the shapeshifting that extended her limb, yanking Speaker along for the quite uncomfortable ride.

Holding back his stomach, Speaker fought to recover quickly from the disorienting experience, only to find himself being cocooned by Shimmer and her essence webbing. Gift cut at the webbing, but it simply couldn’t cut it fast enough… and thus Shimmer flung Speaker over the ring, holding back a single thread connected to the cocoon.

Pulling the lone thread, the cocoon unraveled just as Speaker was about to hit the ground, allowing him to use his Graceful Crane Stance to land safely – but also defeated.

Bowing to Shimmer, who bowed respectfully in return, the fanfare for the victor sounded.

Well that hadn’t gone exactly as he had expected.

Trotting back to the ring, Speaker looked up to Shimmer who shifted back to her normal pony form: “Well fought”

“Darling, I’ve been fighting a lot more than you have the last century – you really shouldn’t be that surprised” Shimmer mused, not really able to hold back her urge to gloat a bit.

Taking his defeat in stride, Speaker consoled himself with the knowledge that now he would at least come in third in the tournament – that was a good compromise all things considered: “Now you just have to contend with Master Six Winds for the final bought tomorrow”
“Six Winds? He retired half a decade ago…” one of the officials commented, catching Speaker by surprise.

Quickly turning to the blue-uniformed official who was otherwise busy checking the damages to the ring, Speaker quickly inquired: “Wait, retired? Then who is the champion? Who’ll Shimmer be fighting tomorrow?”

The official gave Speaker an apologetic look that also tried to communicate his annoyance that he was being disrupted from doing his duties: “I’m sorry – but you’ll have to talk to someone else about that”

Shimmer and Speaker left the ring with the official muttering something about stupid old coots who couldn’t remember anything…

Later that day Speaker and Shimmer consulted the rest of the circle. Cash knew nothing of value, while Sully noted that all he knew on the topic were of the annoyed whispers usually spoken in privacy about this new champion: “It’s some metic unicorn mare from the south-east. She was raised in a temple of some kind, and spends a lot of time there. Gens Yushoto tried to adopt her, but she rejected every offer – apparently she’s a pacifist to boot”

“Wait… so the current champion of the Locked Horns, a martial arts fighting tournament, is a pacifist? That’s ridiculous” Shimmer blurted out incredulously.

Asking around at the Yushoto compound, much was revealed: The unicorn mare Treehugger was indeed a pacifist, though she had mastered a strange mix of martial arts, one that she refused to disclose after winning the tournament – she had evidently also turned down offers to work for legion, disappearing to where she had come from.

“She returned three weeks ago to defend her title – before that we didn’t even know if she was going to return” Yushoto Boribap noted, the mix of frustration and curiosity in his voice undeniable.

This presented Speaker and Shimmer with a great quandary: For the last couple of months, outside of tending to their own personal projects, they had also spared a little in preparation for the tournament – and during that time they had both trained themselves to ultimately face the many-style master Six Winds… not some unknown mare from the south-east.

“No wonder everyone else were so miffed about us showing everyone else up – their champion is already a foreigner, so they don’t want more contenders for that position” Shimmer said as she realized just how much such a turn of events must have impacted the martial honor and morale of Lookshy – that they themselves were not the best martial artists in the east?

“It is an embarrassing fact that we try not to speak too much about – that’s why so many of us had hoped that she wouldn’t return, though that would mean that you Lady Shimmer would have won the title already… not sure how well that would have gone over” Boribap sighed, sipping from his beautifully decorated tea-cup.

As servants brought in more tea and cakes, Cash noted that at least Shimmer was fighting with and for Lookshy to a certain extent – at least in the coming campaign. Boribap agreed that this would likely improve the reputation of Lunars in general to the general population.

Thus the circle spent the evening before the final bought of the Locked Horns tournament at the Yushoto compound, attending what turned into a spontaneous social event as other game finalists and semi-finalists showed up to chat and mingle. With only a few days left in the games many seized the opportunity to exchange contact information – including with that of the circle.

Speaker in particular was ask for, as word of his healing powers – and his ‘victory by ocular regeneration’ – had spread far and wide among the game contestants. With a bit of cajoling by Cash, Speaker ended up making a bit of a show out of it – there wasn’t any shortage of ponies present who didn’t have some kind of ache – and the spectacle of Speaker treating toothaches by making all the patient’s teeth fall out, only to grow in entire new sets of chompers, how he similarly could amputate entire limbs who’s owners had aches in them, fixing them up with new ones spun from pure essence. That the drink going around was strong enough to work as a disinfectant didn’t hurt either – and his anesthetic charm even made sure that it wouldn’t sting.

The next day Shimmer woke up next to Speaker back in the townhouse. She couldn’t quite remember how they got there – but that was ok. Unlike yesterday she didn’t feel any real kind of unease – but she did feel… hesitant, weary.

Back west, if she absolutely had to fight some unicorn upstart or monk who was screwing up her work she would usually stalk her target for weeks – she would learn everything about them, what they ate, who and what they liked to fuck, their favorite immaculate verses – and she would then use it all against them: Come to them as argumentative immaculate scholars and ruin their love of immaculate lore, turn into a rat and infect their food so they would become sickly – and finally, if she was being really mean, she would shapeshift into the guise of their lovers to kill them in their sickbed. Ok, she had only done all that once or twice to someone – but her general tactic to fighting anyone when the fight was planned was to scout things out and employ whatever intelligence she could gather to her advantage.

Even the preliminary tournament battles hadn’t been that big surprises to her – for she had snuck into the office that kept the books on who was in what initial elimination group and fixed things so she could be sure to be grouped with that realm unicorn – and with all those names known to her, she had also asked around extensively to learn who and what they were… and then she had fought to ensure that the realm unicorn, despite being an inexperienced and exceedingly hotheaded ponce, would at least make it past the elimination round.

To this end it irked her that it hadn’t been possible to do any kind of research on this mystery Tree Hugger unicorn. Was she even a unicorn? Maybe it was a sidereal in disguise… no, using essence while fighting would reveal that.

Poking Speaker, Shimmer shot him a coy and seductive smile: “Darling… are you awake?”

After he didn’t respond, Shimmer employed some slightly more direct and stimulating means of waking up her Solar mate.

Feeling something tugging on his nads, Speaker cracked open an eye: “Shimmer… I told you stop doing that a long time ago”

“You didn’t wake up when I poked you – now, would you be ok with me using all the teeth and legs you removed yesterday for today’s fight?” Shimmer said, smiling like a foal innocently asking if she could open all her birthday gifts a week before her birthday, merely because she wanted to.
Taking a deep breath, yawning and stretching, Speaker gave Shimmer a look of dreadful anticipation: “Do I even want to know?”

Smiling, Shimmer gave Speaker a friendly pat on the head: “I’m thinking a macabre display to unnerve the pacifist. If I do a bit of quick scouting and get a tasty of her blood, then mould the limbs and stuff together to look like her parents… then rip those apart in front of her”

On one hand Speaker wanted to commend Shimmer for coming up with such a devious strategy – but on the other hand it also made Speaker feel nauseous. Nodding, if for nothing else than to make Shimmer go away, Speaker rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom.
Quickly shapeshifting into a seagull and flying out of an open window, Shimmer rushed to find her soon to be opponent.

Asking around among the local birds and what little other wildlife that lived inside Lookshy – mainly cats – Shimmer learned that there was indeed a foreign wood aspected unicorn living in the tent city around the games arena. Well, more than one – but it was a good lead none the less.

Circling over the tent city, Shimmer found a couple of good and high banner poles. Landing on each of them and turning into her Western Prism Newt form, in order to observe the tent city with essence sight in a discreet manner, Shimmer quickly got a sense of where all the enlightened contestants were staying.

Sniffing out which of the tents reeked of wood aspected essence wasn’t difficult, a simply tracking charm let her to do that in her regular pony form, and simply asking around at each of the half dozen locations ultimately narrowed where this mysterious Tree Hugger had hidden herself.

To Shimmer’s minor annoyance it turned out that Tree Hugger hadn’t as much hidden herself, as she had simply never bothered to get her own tent – which was why she didn’t have a registered tent in her name: She had been sleeping in the tent of a group of young mortals who were supposed to compete in some of the long-jumping contests. Her payment for staying there? Shagging them all rotten from the smell of the tent… lovely.

Finding a few strands of hair that smelled like unicorn wasn’t hard – but damn, hadn’t Lookshy diverted an aqueduct for the tent city? Didn’t these ponies bathe every now and then? The rank smell in the tent was so thick one could cut it with a blade.

Stepping outside, Tree Hugger hair floating next to her, Shimmer took a deep breath – which she quickly regretted, as a cruel breeze had thrown the smell of a nearby dead and decaying rat right into her nose… oh the horror.

Very quickly stuffing the bit of mane into elsewhere and turning into a seagull, Shimmer took to the sky for cleaner air – also her seagull form didn’t come with a gag-reflex, which stopped her feelings of retching.

Finding a secluded rooftop with a row of chimneys to hide behind, Shimmer examined the hair she had recovered: It had a definite taste of unicorn and wood essence. Using a charm she had learned back west by her elders, Shimmer applied her own protean essence to the hair to reduce it into the blood of the being that had grown it.

To most ponies, even to Solars, a drop of blood from someone wasn’t really that useful – but to a Lunar… to a Lunar blood spoke volumes.

Consuming the drop of blood, Shimmer’s eyes flashed bright white-blue light as the lineage of Tree Hugger was laid bare before her. Visions of the unicorn mare’s parents, their parents and so on for several generations became known to her – not their names or personalities, but appearance and physical appearances became keenly known to her.

With this wisdom gained from blood, Shimmer recalled the limbs and teeth she had saved from Speaker’s medical show. Using the same shapeshifting charms that had originally let her grow out Speaker’s beard, Shimmer altered the limbs so their coat color, hoof shape, length of fetlocks and whatnot, all matched Tree Hugger’s ancestors.

With a bemused chuckle Shimmer recalled the last time she had done something similar, which had been right after learning that blood-ancestry keening trick: She had turned the body of a tribal pony that an immaculate monk had beaten up so badly that the poor soul had died from the injuries, into the shape of the monk’s father… and then she had presented that corpse to the monk – and informed her that if she didn’t return to the Blessed Isle, never to return, then her mother would be ‘presented’ next. Oh Shimmer had never seen a realm ship sail that fast…

With the legs done, Shimmer beheld the teeth: They were… less useful – who could recognize teeth? Still, having a bunch of teeth chucked at you would probably do for a great distraction. Or maybe string them into a macabre necklace? It would be a shame to let them go to waste.

In the distance the fanfare that signaled the Locked Horns finale sounded. Shimmer took a deep breath and took hearth, knowing that against a mere unicorn there was little which could be done against her…

Flying in over the arena complex, Shimmer landed in her seagull form and turned back into her pony form, looking around for her opponent.
A moment later a unicorn mare with a ruddy-brown mane done up in dreadlocks, dreads shorter than Shimmers’, staggered out from the staging area. Her coat was muted green, eyes bloodshot and her face contorted in what was probably an attempt at veiling her discomfort.

She looked like hell: Swerving, stopping repeatedly to prevent herself from vomiting. It was pitiful to see the mare crawl up the wooden stairs to the fighting ring, how she dragged her hooves, how she barely seemed able to hold her head up. She also reeked of every kind of booze and smokable drug that Shimmer knew – and she knew of quite a few.

Shimmer had to wonder if Tree Hugger had been roughed up by someone in order to make her lose the fight.

“You ok?” a nearby official who had been nervously watching the mare approach asked. Tree Hugger nodded ever so slightly, her nod quickly stifled as she chocked back another spasm from her body as it tried to vomit.

The official looked to Shimmer, to see if she was ok with going ahead with the fight.

“If I find out that someone did this to her so I could win easier I will be so pissed” Shimmer noted back to the official, keeping her eyes on the unicorn mare.

Nodding, the official signaled for the fight to begin. The fanfare sounded, and Tree Hugger reared into a swervy and unstable stance, half-stumbling from side to side as she tried to steady herself.

That Tree Hugger hadn’t simply asked for the game to be called out was… suspicious – no, it was beyond suspicious. Was it an illusion? A ploy to lower her guard? Shapeshifting into her warform, Shimmer beheld the mare in essence sight: Her essence was a mess, muddled, especially around the belly, the lungs, the head and… the blood? Damn, this mare was messed up.

Approaching cautiously, Shimmer sighted up her target and took careful aim, tensing up to pounce.

“You don’t have to fight me – wise ponies do not raise hoof against one another” Tree Hugger barely managed to force out, her breath ragged and strained.

As Shimmer leapt, Tree Hugger suddenly shivered and belched – loudly and at great length – and Shimmer hit the ground, out cold, with a blue cloud and a sweet smell being the last thing she sensed.