The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Shimmer awoke, finding herself in hers and Speaker’s bedroom back in the townhouse. Wait, why was she there? There was a distinctly uncomfortable glimmer of light shining in her eyes, good grief.

Trying to get up, Shimmer found her body rebelling against her completely – Fuck, rolling around in poisonous anemones off the coast of Wavecrest didn’t leave you feeling this bad, and there was no high along with this either.

“Oh you’re awake already – great, your regen charms should handle the rest” Speaker’s voice sounded.

Looking around – and failing utterly to turn her head – Shimmer tried to speak, but her lungs barely even wanted to breathe, and it felt like the entire pirate fleet from Coral had come by and everyone had taken a most heinous rancid seaweed biscuit shit inside her mouth.

Shaking off a sudden chill, Shimmer forced her essence to regenerate her body – which helped alleviate her pain greatly it turned out. Breathing freely once more, Shimmer sat up. It was then that she noticed that the air was… different – there wasn’t the same feint smell of budding flowers in the air, it was stronger… like full bloom.

“How long was I out?” Shimmer asked, looking at Speaker. He looked happy… and weird – his uniform wasn’t that old faded red uniform that he had patched up a thousand times. He was in a fresh and bright red uniform.

Speaker gave Shimmer a quick look-over with his medical diagnostic charm, nodded to himself, then noted: “You have been out for a little over a month – Tree Hugger did a real number on you”

“What the… the fight – how in the greasy turd did she floor me without raising a hoof against me?” Shimmer snapped, her desire for words outstripping her breath.

As far as Speaker could explain then Tree Hugger practiced a martial art rarely seen outside of certain parts of the realm – and it was rarely used for fighting purposes either. Tree Hugger had mastered the weapon-form version of the style.

“I recall Cash learning it in the first age: Orgiastic Fugitive Style. Also called Drunken Bucking, because… well… it lets not only teaches you fight as a drunk, but to fight better when intoxicated” Speaker explained, adding that to master the style one had to learn to master the essence flows of intoxicants within one self, to the point that one could expel them all as an airborne attack.

“So that’s what she did… she must have loaded herself up on everything you can eat, huff, snort and drink under the sun before the fight, no wonder she looked like shit” Shimmer mused.

Speaker and Shimmer agreed that combining the style with what was no doubt rare eastern plant poisons and narcotics was quite brilliant. He also noted that he had informed the Seventh Legion of this stratagem, receiving much gratitude for finally revealing the secret of the champion of the locked horns.

“So is Lookshy going to start training their rangers in fuck-fighting and weaponized hookahs now?” Shimmer joked.

Shrugging Speaker could only note that it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he had ever heard of the Legion experimenting in.

After a vast breakfast that saw Sullen Hoof swearing repeatedly, as Shimmer ate a month’s worth of food in the course of an hour – much faster than even he could cook, at least with the food being any good – Shimmer was brought up to date on the preperations to destroy Deep Rot:

The Seventh Legion was but a few weeks away from having everything ready, with the second, third and large parts of the first legion all assembled within Lookshy and gearing up. The skyship fleet had never been such good condition, and alchemically treated supplies had been made ready to survive a campaign into the underworld.

“…and yet you’re looking like someone stole your thunder and peed on your breakfast?” Shimmer commented.

Closing his eyes for a moment and stroking his beard, Shimmer tossed a rattling assembly it bits and bobs in the rough shape of a chakram onto Shimmer’s bed. It wasn’t Gift, but looked a bit like it – only it had a hole in the middle, no sign of any folded in blades around the sides, was missing several parts and clearly wasn’t done. The parts of the casing put together were mostly white jade etched with sunbursts and gears, but bands of orichalcum were inlaid onto some of them, making it look a bit like an oversized golden-ring honey melon that had been sliced.

In a sudden revelation, Shimmer recognized the outline of the chakram: “Wait… is this what you’ve been working on? How could you finish it so quickly?”

“It’s not. I’ve just been tinkering with – there’s not enough time to actually make it now, and all the factory cathedrals are booked for a very long time here” Speaker noted. A sigh followed, upon which Speaker explained in a sorrowful voice that a few days after Shimmer had lost her fight the Bodhisattva arrived with dire news: “Remember how he’s told us that the Barbate Arbiter is the only Deathlord who can get the other Deathlords to cooperate? Well, he’s gotten them to commit about five dozen Deathknights to securing Deep Rot. Fifty darkened Solars… that’s the kind of force that takes down Primordial”

“So… we’re screwed?” Shimmer asked, not really sure if she honestly wanted an answer.

A chill breeze shot through the bedroom, giving Shimmer a sharp chill. Clad in thick grey burlab stained with iridescent fluids, the Deathknight known as the Recalcitrant Bodhisattva of Penance and Suffering Ended strode, on limbs of ectoplasmic ghost-flesh that smoldered in the few rays of sunshine that peeked in around the drawn curtain of the windows in the room: “We are not hopeless – but we must act quickly if we are to turn this to our advantage”

Around noon the circle and the Bodhisattva gathered in the Teocala of Tu Yu. The old god was less than enthusiastic of having a Deathknight in his temple – but a single look from Speaker saw the god shy away, even though Speaker had intended no intimidation.

The plan that the Bodhisattva had set up was bold – to put it mildly – mainly because it sounded rather impossible, though he insisted it was not: He wanted the circle’s help to cleanse his black exaltation and become a Solar.

“Well… if we prove that a Deathknight can become a Solar that would probably make a shitload of other Deathknights defect” Cash noted.

The Bodhisattva agreed: Apparently an aspect of the black exaltation was that if you died, your soul was sucked into the abyss, forced to circle oblivion forever – forever to be tortured by the Neverborn: “To my knowledge no Deathknight is ever told of this when offered the exaltation. As Deathknights we have no hope of reincarnation… well… almost”

It was difficult for the Deathknight to put it into words, but as he demonstrated by flaring his caste mark, then it now didn’t look like a bleeding open sore in the shape of a sunburst – it looked like a golden caste mark drenched in blood: “I spent a long time coming to terms with my situation and rekindling what little light there is within me – I have worked with other Deathknights and helped them do the same, but it is difficult”

Nodding, Shimmer was intrigued – mainly because she truly found the idea of persevering through such hardship and coming out on the other side as a better pony to be a very… Lunar thing, but also because it would likely result in a lot of Lunars getting their Solar mates back.

“So… how exactly do you plan on doing this?” Cash wondered, asking the thousand talent question.

The Bodhisattva drew forth a bucket and coughed up something murky, greasy and foul smelling into it: “Before I tell you, I must tell you where I got the information from, less you think I merely made this up”

Cash, Speaker, Shimmer and Sully Nodded – with Sully commenting: “That duel you mentioned?”

“Indeed – I journeyed south in the underworld, to a mountain chain called the thousand edges, where the Deathlord called the First and Forsaken Lion has his grand fortress Merciless. It was known to him that I no longer serve the Bodhisattva, so I asked to fight with him to prove my skills, that I might serve him” The Bodhisattva began.

His visit to what Sullen Hoof jokingly referred to as the southern fried bean-mash known as falafel had of course not been to get a new master: The Bodhisattva had learned that the soulsteel axe that the Deathlord wielded was forged from the soul of a Solar ghost – a ghost that had first been captured and alloyed with grim ore mined close to the tombs of the never about a century or so ago – so the plan had been to ‘converse’ with the tormented soul in the axe.

“…I thought ghosts stuffed into soulsteel sort of died, or were destroyed” Speaker noted, having examined some of the soulsteel they had come across in Stygia, or back when they had recovered those soulsteel pikes that the then mind-addled Bodhisattva had been filling with foal-souls.

“The soul of a first age Solar is too valuable to waste in the forge – this soul was bound to the axe in the same way one might bind a fire elemental to a red jade daiklaive. The soul is bound to the wielder. I simply had to disarm the Deathlord a few times and ‘converse’ with the soul for a few seconds at a time… no it wasn’t simple or easy to disarm a Deathlord” The Bodhisattva noted, seeing the looks he was getting upon having claimed to have disarmed the supposedly most martially inclined of all Deathlords.

To keep things short, the Bodhisattva explained that he had presented his quest to the soul in the axe. The soul had in turn mulled over the quest over some time, ultimately telling the Bodhisattva of an ancient first age right of penance – the ritual of the first sin.

Speaker did not recall this rite, but as the Bodhisattva understood it, then the rite had been devised very shortly after the birth of the Solars – before they had all assembled and begun to work together. It had been a penance right for the first Solar who truly sinned against Celestia. The Bodhisattva’s plan was to use a variation of that rite to cleanse himself.

“Ok… so what’s the procedure – do we need to fetch Sunrise for this?” Shimmer asked, so far pleased with the diligence that the Bodhisattva had put into finding a proper rite.

As it turned out, then the Bodhisattva had already accomplished several of parts of the rite, albeit slightly out of order: First one was to discipline one’s mind to resist the sinful compulsion, which for the Bodhisattva had simply meant to train himself in meditative techniques so he could still his mind and resist any base urges from his black exaltation to just obey or kill. The culmination of this was to fully break with one’s sinful ways – this too had been done, in the form of the Bodhisattva having destroyed the device which the Barbarte Arbiter had used to control his exaltation through.

It was the third step that would require help: “I need to meet Celestia and get her blessing to seek redemption – The most high must approve of my quest to become a Solar, judge me worthy”

“Well… that might require contacting Sunshine” Shimmer noted.

The Budhisattva nodded, then added that he did not wish to tell the circle of what came after getting Celestia’s blessing. Excusing himself with the fact that there were already Abyssals hunting him for his very outright countering of Deathlord activities in Stygia – not that he considered them much of a threat – and that he feared that those who hunted him might attempt to sabotage his quest or prepare ambushes if they learned of his plans.

“Right, you don’t want them messing up your stuff in advance – got it – but I have to ask: If all the Deathlords know that you’re a traitor already, why would this falafel fellow even entertain a duel with you?” Speaker summarized, too curious to help it on the topic of Deathlords.
Craning his neck and letting out a snort of brimstone smoke, the Bodhisattva replied: “The First and Forsaken Lion has battled the other Deathlords in the past – he’s tried more than once to conquer and hold all of Stygia for himself and his own plans. I simply had to present myself as seeking a strong master, having defied a weak master who had resort to subterfuge to control me”

“I take it he’s not much for subtlety?” Cash commented, not looking particularly impressed with the Bodhisattva’s crudely veiled deception.
Shaking his head, the Bodhisattva bellowed a cruel laugh: “Ha! I am by far not the first Deathknight to exploit him. He is a peerless warlord and warrior – but politics and the arts of conversation eludes him completely”

With their meeting all but concluded, Shimmer had but one question left: “Why didn’t you three contact Sunrise while I was still out? Why wait for me to wake up to start this?”

“You’re still the only one among us who knows the messenger spell… and apparently Yu-Shan is warded against unicorn-conjured messenger spells. Tien Yu is busy in Yu-Shan preparing for the push into the underworld, as is the Raven King, and Tu Yu doesn’t have the clout to get us into Yu-Shan from here” Cash quickly noted, not even bothering to veil his annoyance – though it was clear that he also understood why they were all busy.

Looking at the rest of the gang, Shimmer took a deep breath and used a charm that momentarily grew her brain a few sizes. It looked rather grotesque for everyone else – though the Bodhisattva didn’t seem to mind it – but it gave her a brief moment of greater intellect and a spark of inspiration drawn from the infinite dreams of the moon: “Can we say that we captured him and that we’re delivering him to Lytek?”

“Sadly no. I already used that trick with a helpful Sidereal to gain an audience with Lytek. Getting out of there required burning a lot of bridges, but I needed confirmation that my exaltation could be cleansed” The Deathknight noted.

Pondering for a few more seconds, Shimmer nodded: “Ok – well, from what I remember the Jade Pleasure Dome is right next to the calibration gate. Get someone to use the gate spell to summon the gate here… Heath Rose can do that”

“And force our way into the dome to speak to Celestia? Every Sidereal we’ve talked to has said that Celestia, Luna and the mares of the destiny of addicted to the games of divinity they play in there – and even in the first they never let any Exalts into the pleasure dome. That place was fortified to repel exalts back then, probably still is – the bronze faction will stop us before we could make it through the defences” Speaker pointed out, recalling that quite a few exalts tried to put an end to the pleasure dome’s influence on the incarnae – and that none ever succeeded, not even at the peak of the first age in the last few centuries before the usurpation.

Trusting Speaker’s memories on the defences of the Jade Pleasure Dome, Shimmer concluded that aside from getting to Yu-Shan then they would also need a way to get Celestia out to meet them. If only there was a way to get around both these issues at once…

“We would need a scandal – a panic. Something to rouse Celestia enough to draw her out, but ideally nothing that would actually get us in trouble… and from what we’ve so far seen of celestial law, then such a thing simply does not exist” Cash stated in a frustrated tone.
In a flash of inspiration that Immaculates would likely have attributed to the madness of the mare in the moon, Shimmer poked Speaker: “That chakram you were working on… you said there wasn’t enough time to finish it, right?”

Nodding, Speaker presented the tangle of mystic components in the rough shape of a flat disc with a hoof-sized hole in the middle. Bits of blue jade could be seen on the inside, with white jade, orichalcum inlays and filigree of impossibly cut gems spelling out ancients runes: “Calibration is too close – not even a factory cathedral would let me wrap this up in time for the invasion. But it’s ok: It gives me something to look forward to playing around with once we’re done there”

“Speaker – why not make a scene up in Yu-Shan by finishing it there?” Shimmer suggested, the silvery gleam in hers hinting of greater schemes brewing in her head that were so far unsaid.

Looking at his little hobby project, which barely had more than a few weeks of charm-fueld work put into and figuring that there was a good year or so left on it, Speaker gave Shimmer a tentative look: “Ok – but how does finishing this get us to talk with Celestia”

“Because only Celestia can close the doors to the Primal Forge, but I know a god who can let you in…” Shimmer beamed, looking more like a predator who spotted a weak pray than a pony who had a great idea.

Speaker pondered this factoid for a moment. As far as he could recall, then the primal forge’s Gates of Splendor Eternal were open most of time in the first age, with an endless stream of raw materials, essence and other strange things entering the place, and a similarly endless stream of the Great Maker’s creations. The gates were only opened and closed, ah right: “Yes, there was a contest once a decade of the strongest among the Exalted to see who could make the gates budge. Celestia would always win…”

Confirming this – mainly by ‘innocently asking’ Heath Rose via magical messenger about this contest, the circle got a reply surprisingly quickly, in form of a messenger spirit from Heath Rose who shouted in Heath Rose’s voice that the circle should stay the hell away of the primal forge: “That place hasn’t been safe for millennia – they disassemble you and build chairs or dancing crockpots out of you!”

With the whole circle and the Bodhisattva looking at Speaker, the Twilight caste Solar could but shrug: “Well it didn’t do that back in the first age... though I do recall that if the correct protocol wasn’t observed you might be mistaken for crafting materials – maybe they forgot the right rites? I was the official lorekeepers for that stuff after all. I know I remember them just fine”

Satisfied that Speaker could make entry to the place safe, Shimmer revealed how they were all going to get in there: “Back when I traveled east to here, I made a stop in the south briefly – too hot for my taste, and not enough water, but made contact with a Lunar elder working on trying to entice a celestial god who was living in exile near his territory to help him. It didn’t click for me until now, but that god was Jakatam Shining-Hammer”

Nodding, Speaker confirmed that Jakatam, originally a lowly god of the concept of hammers, rose to become the supreme god of artifice in the first age: “He was favored by Autochton… ya he should be able to open the primal forge. Good call there”

“Alright, so the plan is that we get this god to come along and open the gate for us, Speaker gets to have fun making his thingy, and the rest of us wait for Celestia to show up and close the gate?” Sullen Hoof summarized, just to be clear.

Finding the summary apt, Shimmer concurred – more or less: “Basically. I think Speaker has to be done first – I don’t remember the gate ever being closed while there was stuff being done inside. You can’t open it from the inside unless you have permission either, like if you’re that god and stuff”

The meeting over, Cash and Sully quickly left to go shopping for provisions. The Bodhisattva returned to what he had been doing – which turned out to be talking with the intelligence and operations directorates. Speaker was tempted to tag along to listen in on that, but Shimmer noted that Speaker should be gathering up all the things he would need to construct his new magic chakram.

That Speaker only had a day to gather up all the first age components and reagents for a full on high first age magical weapon made things… difficult – but by absolutely no means impossible: Pulling some strings at Valkhawsen, Speaker was given access to the sorcery academy’s stores, plus Shimmer still had a lot of jade from Denansdor. The only thing that was missing was a whole talent of orichalcum, and an all-night visit to the soulforge for that resulted in a tired Speaker returning on the back of a flying Shimmer in warform arriving by dawn to the landing pad where the rest of the gang was ready to fly off on Nah.

Zooming south-west at great speed – evidently Cash had somehow learned to make Nah go even faster than last – it took but a few minutes before the circle had passed the mourning fields, which seemed a lot more fortified than usual.

Sullen Hoof noted that he had helped the stores directorate conduct experiments in how to create and preserve rations in such a way that food can be made to last in the underworld.

“Really? I was under the impression that most fresh food spoiled fairly quickly down there” Shimmer shouted as she enjoyed the brutal onrush of air as she had most of her head out of the protective field of the crystal windshield Cash had gotten installed at the helm of Nah’s howdah at some point recently.

Explaining that it seemed to be mostly an issue of the transfer between Creation and the underworld, Sullen Hoof noted that he had helped test means to carry supplies over via means of the limited elsewhere storage means that the Seventh Legion had access to. Once there food and water would last as if in Creation, depending on temperature and humidity.

“So the installations at the perimeter of the mourning fields, they’re for storage?” Speaker asked. This turned out to be the case.

Passing by Thorns, the circle couldn’t help but notice that the shadowland around the city state had grown visibly larger. The Bodhisattva noted that the Mask of Winters seemed to be ‘fertilizing’ the ground around the shadowland with ritual blood sacrifices.

“A shame… I’ve been told that Thorns used to have a thriving artist community, patroned by the autocrat and his family – and some of the best vinyards outside of the blessed isle, along their territory down the summer mountains” Cash remarked, having heard many a tale of the goods exported from Thorns.

The seemingly endless dry savannahs of Harborhead stretched out for quite a while after the circle passed the summer mountains, but even those sparse grasslands eventually yielded to the aptly named glitter-flame desert, the endless expanse of dry sand that stretched all the way to the eternal fire of the elemental pole of flame.

At Shimmer’s suggestion Cash navigated along the edge of the summer mountains, or at least keeping them in sight. Apparently the place they were looking for was a volcano several thousand miles south along the massive range.

Flying for days, and camping at night within the mountains, Cash ultimately complained that they could probably shave three or four days off this trip if they could just go in a straight line and camp in the desert: “Shimmer, you have enough water stashed elsewhere – we can make the trip just fine”

As far south as they had gotten even the evenings were sweltering, but everyone knew that Speaker could easily build them all a shelter if need be with his singing staff, and yet Shimmer had remained insistant that they stay away from the open sands: “Look, there are things out there we don’t need to rouse – albino pony cannibals, the Jacharenai, maybe even the Lapiz or Ruby court of changelings depending on who’s in control of this stretch of Creation. Up here in the mountains the iron ores in the ground keep the changelings away, and the cannibals can’t hide in the rocks here to ambush us”

“We could take ‘em – we’ve dealth with changelings before” Sullen Hoof casually remarked as he served dinner.

Nodding, Speaker noted and gestured to the Deathknight amidst them: “Perhaps, but if any of those things kill Nah during the fighting we’re stuck here – our friend here weighs too much for Shimmer to carry him”

Indeed, with the Bodhisattva’s few remaining organic parts, mainly his shriveled up heart and a few shreds of other organs, encased in thick soulsteel plating, the Deathknight was not what one might call light freight – and he for one did not fancy the prospect of having to walk all the way back to civilization.

This Cash could not deny – especially since it was the Bodhisattva who now was the lynchpin in the plan to split the Deathlord-loyal Deathknights. As he didn’t need sleep, the Bodhisattva took watch once more for the night.

In the morning the rest of the circle awoke to a gruesome sight: Obsidian lions turn to shreds spread around the camp – none of their lava-blood seemed to have spattered anywhere near the circle, and the Bodhisattva… he seemed… chipper… if it even was possible for him to express happiness in his current form.

“I got us a guide” he stated, presenting the circle with a miserable looking creature he had tied up with sinew torn from the dead lions around them.

It took a few moments to compare notes and figure out what had happened, but apparently some Jacharenai, the lion-formed changelings that prowled the south-eastern deserts, had tried to attack the camp at night – and the Bodhisattva had captured their leader.

Elegance, the quite unfitting name of the decidedly ugly changeling pack leader, was not particularly cooperative – but between the choice of ‘being destroyed’ and ‘allowed to exist as their prisoner’ Elegance chose the sensible option, though she was quite upset that the circle wouldn’t let her cannibalize the remains of her kin for the gossamer that their lion-forms had been woven out of.

With a guide on board Cash was able to fly Nah through the glitter-flame desert further away from the mountains. The seemingly featureless sand dunes soon gave way to dunes of glass and crystal, as the head of the elemental pole had melted it all at some point. It also meant that travel could only be done at night, for the heat in the day was so much that flesh fried after more than just a few seconds of direct exposure to noon-day sunlight.

“I remember talking to a merchant who said that most of the caravans going down to Gem are all outfitted with these fancy talismans they make in the Varangian city states. They make the heat of day bearable… we should totally have swung by there and bought some” Cash lamented.

A few more days of travel by night and the circle arrived at a particularly active volcano. Speaker’s essence sight saw many dragon lines of local fire essence flowing into the place, and Shimmer said that it matched the description she had gotten of Jakatam Shining-Hammer’s humble abode.

Circling the volcano, a ruined manse revealed itself on the south-face of the lone mountain. Landing on a vast balcony overlooking an endless sea of smoldering and ashen dust to the south, the circle entered and found the place… well… ruined. Whoever had built the manse were long gone, though a few broken stained glass windows revealed dragon motifs. This had been the palace of the dragonblooded, though Speaker wasn’t sure if the stained glass motifs were original: “This place might be older… but that doesn’t matter right now”

With a charm or two Shimmer was able to hear through the ever-present rumbling of the volcano to where a chorus of tiny hammers plinked away at… something… somewhere… it was deeper into the volcano, that much was for sure.

Further inside, past fountains of lava and many places where molten rock and liquid fire essence ran like streams through holes in the manse walls, the circle struggled to navigate the hazards of the place.

Shimmer found that the ambient heat singed her feathers if in form with wings, , which made flying over the lava flows quite impossible. She had to shift into a more heat-resistant southern sand-spider form, riding along on Speaker’s head.

Cash and Sullen Hoof, neither of which had Speaker’s elementals immunity charm or Shimmer’s option to turn into something for which high heat mattered not, suffered greatly for they had little to shield themselves with – at least at first…

In a stroke of genius, Sullen Hoof took inspiration from a cooking trick he had learned back in Nexus at a master of open-flame roasts, to use his essence to create a bubble of still air around them, thus insulating them – though periodically he had to cycle in new air that they might still breathe.

Speaker just walked through the lava, or swam where need. The Bodhisattva did so similarly, though without any elemental immunity charms – his ghost flesh was simply so tough that the molten rock could not hurt him in any meaningful way, for it was already dead.

Deep under the manse, at the heart of the powerful demesne that had fueled the manse up above, the circle found the ash-covered Jakatam and his swarm of not so shiny soot-covered hammers, as they flew around a hundred fire-essence fueled forges creating beautiful artisanal blades, more show-pieces than anything actually useful in a fight – but they were each and all elegant, ornate and worthy of many days of sincere poetry and admiration.

Jakatam himself… was not particularly pleased to see that he had visitors – but as Speaker leapt forward and presented Gift, then the god shivered and shook off several thousand years of soot and ash from his forges.

Underneath was had to be tons of ash, the form of a pony was revealed – but with a body of pock-marked copper and steel, with limbs of sturdy and thick wooden shafts. This was a being wrought of the same materials that tools were made of it, and it showed – also his head was that of a hammer, with a mouth, nostrils and eyes at the front striking surface, which made him rather comical.

“It is time” Speaker said in old realm, with Gift held before him.

The god snorted, blowing out a cloud of ash from his nostrils: “For what? You want me to tune the thing up for you? I seem to recall you preferring to do that yourself…”

The voice of the hammer-god was like a chorus of tiny dainty hammers on silver bells, ringing out his words like beautiful and haunting music. It was entrancing for ponies to hear him talk, but not to Speaker, for he had become used to the voice back in the first age: “I need you to open the gates of splendor”

Jakatam’s expression hardened, sizing up Speaker and his other visitors. Speaking coldly he bluntly asked: “Will you leave if I give you my blessing to open them?”

Speaker wanted to argue against the proposition – for he remembered his friendship with Jakatam from the first age, but clearly this god had changed in the interim, for this was not the old friend he once knew – but he chose not to, for this was not the time: “If that’s all we need to open the gates… then yes”

Giving Gift a poke, making it light up and glow from within – white and coppery light pouring out through each tiny riveted seam and crevice in the magical device – Jakatam nodded: “Then leave. You never met me here, and I did not give this blessing”

Before anyone could get a word in edgewise Jakatam turned and began banging his head-hammer against a massive basalt anvil, working on some tiny bit of steel on it. This produced a heavenly degree of noise, making any further conversation impossible.

With what they had come for in hoof, the circle began to make their way out of the volcano. While passing through the ruined manse they suddenly came across Heath Rose who seemed to be waiting for them.

“Hey, fancy meeting you here” Cash quipped, happy to be out of the face-melting heat of the volcano – where they were right now it was only hot enough to crisp skin.

Heath Rose shot the circle a disheartened look, like that of a mother who knew that her foal was about to do something stupid and that she couldn’t really prevent it from happening: “You’re all about to do something really stupid… I’m just here to make sure you all get out of it alive so you’ll be there for the invasion”

It turned out that Heath Rose had arrived via a Yu-Shan gate that had the manse had been built around. This made getting to Yu-Shan exceedingly easy – though it did mean that Nah had to be left behind… but Heath Rose assured the circle that it would be brought back to Sunhill, unharmed, by some elementals who owed her a favor.

Thus the circle and the Bodhisattva stepped through the pearl-studded Yu-Shan gate carved into the wall of what had once been a ballroom, and exited into Yu-Shan, not very far from the Baths of Venus.