The Scroll of Exalted Ponies

Returning to Sunhill after setting the two junks and all the junks on board on fire – something that required an inordinate amount of oil, tar and the help of a surprisingly helpful fire elemental – Speaker, Sullen Hoof and the Bodhisattva discussed what to do with their prisoner.

They knew well enough that if they simply killed the Scarlet Puppeteer, the deathknight sent by the Walker in Darkness to attack and destroy Sunhill, then the Deathlords would know what had happened upon the interrogation of the Scarlet Puppeteer’s ghost.

There was also the issue of how to keep a deathknight captive – since Sunhill barely even had facilities keep mortal ponies captive: The judiciary system that Cash had set up relied less on prisons and more on talking things out, finding the root cause of a dispute or crime and then using potent social charms and magical oaths to ensure that one wouldn’t commit such a crime again.

Sullen Hoof had a partial solution, though afterwards Speaker wasn’t entirely sure if he liked it: Using his orichalcum helmet on the Scarlet Puppeteer, Sullen Hoof was somehow able to ‘remove’ the deathknight’s identity of self… indeed, upon taking the helmet off her, after she stopped flailing about and screaming, having simply gone limp, the abyssal’s head simply had no face…. Just a sheer flat surface.
“How will she eat?” Speaker felt it necessary to ask.

Shrugging, Sullen Hoof noted that how he had gotten it explained then one who’s face had been taken didn’t need to eat… on the plus side it allowed the magic mask to disguise Sully very thoroughly as the one who’s face had been taken.

“Disguising yourself as a Deathknight – yes, that will be useful” the Bodhisattva noted.

Without her face, the Scarlet Puppeteer had become quite docile. Speaker theorized that it was the sensory deprivation – or perhaps the mask took more than just the face, perhaps it was part of her will and personality as well? As much as he wouldn’t mind investigating this curious phenomena, or how he didn’t like mistreating prisoners, then… well… it’s a deathknight – he could live with that.

At this point it became a question of waiting for Cash and Shimmer to return. Speaker found it annoying that he hadn’t quite learned the messenger spell from Shimmer yet – learning sorcery was just so much more difficult than puzzling out charms.

During dinner, the three talked about what the Bodhisattva needed help with now:

“So, you said you needed Cash’s help – I take it for traveling purposes?” Speaker inquired, while relishing in the lush odors wafting up from the nut-flour bread stuffed with forest herbs and some kind of ludicruisly succulent fowl.

The Bodhisattva, not really eating anything – for his stomach and intestines had been removed along with the rest of his insides when he had been under the influence of the cursed daiklaive, so now the entropy of creation somehow fueled him – nodded: “That and from now I need to stay on the move. I renounced my fealty to the neverborn and the Deathlords quite publicly at the mouth of oblivion – up until that point I had never publicly moved against the Deathlords or the neverborn. I had always been able to infer that I was working to aid the neverborn outside of Deathlord control, but this… this was too much”

“But you are still working to end the suffering of the neverborn?” Speaker wondered.

Nodding, the Bodhisattva sighed heavily: “Oh that is still part of the plan. I have search the deep wyld extensively, parlayed and fought with countless changelings. Through this I found war manses with various primordial-killing weapons – but most of these require solar essence and deliberative activation codes”

“You do know that we probably wouldn’t mind helping with that” Sullen Hoof noted, relishing in his culinary creation from within his mask.
Shaking his head, The Bodhisattva straigned to force a look that didn’t seem to quite cooperate with his ghost-flesh body: “You have work here, with Sunhill, with Creation – what I work towards relates to the underworld, towards ending it… you can’t afford to leave Creation for the time it would take me to wrest control of the changeling occupied war manses I’ve discovered”

“Fair enough… but remember: You have friends and allies here” Speaker reminded the Bodhisattva with a kind smile.

Gazing at one of his fore-hooves, spectral maggots diving in and out of his ghost-flesh, the Bodhisattva remained pensive for a moment: “Thank you – but know that our time of peace is short here. The Scarlet Puppetter was no doubt sent because my enemies knew that I would be coming for your help. I am now officially hunted by all of the Deathlords – and once they realize that the Puppeteer isn’t sending in status reports, then more will come”

“So that’s why you want Cash’s help? To get around to wherever you need to go next as part of your quest?” Sullen Hoof reiterated. The Bodhisattva nodded, adding that he would tell them were he wished to be taken once Cash returned.

It took two days before Cash and Shimmer returned, flying in on Shimmer’s warform. In that time Speaker inspected the brand new paper mill that a group of entrepreneurial citizens had set up, using water wheels set in the canals to slowly operate large hammers that pounded wood chips into fine wooden pulp. That they had made such a fine production facility all on their own, without Speaker or Cash’s input at all, made Speaker quite proud.

The paper-makers in turn took great pride in their commendation, but Cash and Shimmer returned to Sunhill before Speaker had time to look into what other nifty things the ponies of Sunhill had set up.

While Nah was loaded with food and supplies the Bodhisattva explained the next two steps were – logistically – closely linked: “To transgress against Creation, against its lords in Yu-Shan, is to bring yourself out of balance. To be in tune with Creation was to be in tune with its elements. Thus, to redeem myself, after gaining permission to do from Celestia herself, and officially denouncing that which corrupted me, I must journey to all five elemental poles and realign my essence with that of Creation”

“Well that sounds like fun – I’m sure the realm will just let us zip up to Meru…” Cash noted glumly.

The Bodhisattva gestured for Cash and the others to withhold their commentary – for he was not done yet: “After that I will to mend my body. I was tricked into giving most of it up to the Neverborn, and from my research there is only one power left that can be said to be greater than them – I need to find Gaia and get her to restore my body – this must be done immediately after I realign my essence with Creation, for I will be weakened greatly by it”

Shimmer perked up at this, while the rest of the circle looked rather perplexed as to how one might get an audience with a primordial…

“So you want to go to the moon?” Shimmer inquired, looking very much as if she knew exactly what the Bodhisattva was talking about.

The rest of the circle looked even more confused at this point.

Shimmer explained: “It’s well known among Lunars that Gaia and Luna were lovers. Some even speculate that it was Luna who seduced Gaia into fighting on our side during the primordial war. Now, the thing is that Gaia left Creation a while ago… poking around the wyld”

Learning that Gaia had straight up left creation caused the Bodhisattva to visibly wilt, his ghost-flesh briefly getting crusty and stiff, flaking off...

“…now hold on – Gaia isn’t all gone, and she returns to Creation every now and then. Her jouten lives on the moon. We can go talk to her” Shimmer hastily added, the Bodhisattva breathing a raspy sigh of relief.

“Thank you – I have come too far to just run into a dead-end… my life and soul would be forfeit in so many different ways” The deathknight lamented.

Taking off with great haste, Cash charted a course that would take the circle all the way around Creation with great haste, for they knew well that if they remained away for too long then Sunhill would no doubt suffer.

First stop would be the easy one: The elemental pole of wood, and thus Nah was pointed due east and made to fly at great haste.

Taking council, the circle agreed that a route that would take them clock-wise around creation, going from the wooden pole to the pole of fire, then water, then air before finally heading to mount Meru for the pole of earth.

“I figure if we pick up pursuers on the Blessed Isle we can flee away from there towards Lookshy” Cash argued.

Shimmer frowned, pointing towards the west on the map Cash had nailed down to the floor of the howdah: “No, we should head west after that – getting to the moon is always easiest when you’re near where the moon sets. If you sail into the reflection of the full moon at midnight then… somehow… you’re supposed to end up on the moon, or so I’ve heard. That’s our best bet – otherwise I guess we could ask Heath Rose”

The circle found this agreeable.

The course that Cash had plotted would take them around most realm holds, ensuring that there would be a minimum of pursuers that might put Nah at risk. In the east this meant nothing, for the realm had little to no power there, and thus two days later the circle was close to the elemental pole of wood, with the trees reaching to the sky so high that it was impossible to tell where their tops were.

For the Bodhisattva a day’s meditation on the nature of wood at the base of one such gargantuan tree was enough, while the rest of the circle struggled to keep the three local tribes of wyld mutant ponies, a few large and frighteningly intelligent predators and a pack of cruel wood elementals at bay.

For Shimmer this resulted in a nice new ebony-tiger form, while Cash ‘bartered’ – or scammed, by Speaker’s definition – two of the three tribes for of a large amount of green jade, the tusks of many a local beast, and exotic hides. Speaker helped by keeping Shimmer patched up, while Sullen Hoof foraged for strange fruits, nuts, beans and vegetables. The intense levels of wood essence in the air was so much that even the seeds and nuts that Sully gathered kept growing on their own, without water or dirt – and to Shimmer… well… the predators she kept at bay and occasionally slew would often regenerate quite swiftly, making killing them a bit more of a challenge than at first expected.

Moving on, Cash flesh the circle west-south-west. Flying south of Great Forks and crossing just north of Denansdor, as long as Cash could get Nah to pass it, ultimately crossing the summer mountains and entering the dune sea, the endless desert.

Like their journey to Jakatam, the weather grew hot and dry as the days went on. This time however, Shimmer had prepared a few tricks to combat the heat: Using timbers she had stored in her elsewhere-den, Speaker added a nice roof to the howdah, while opening up parts of the crystal windshield to allow for a constant cooling breeze to be circulating around the circle.

When they reached a point where desert sand gave way to rolling hills of glass that would melt during the day and harden during the night, the Bodhisattva declared that they were close enough – indeed, at this point they had gone two days without landing Nah, for the ground was too hot for the beast to touch down, even at night.

Hovering about twenty yards above the surface, the Bodhisattva leapt down.

As he sat down to meditate, the hot glass around him rippled like red-hot soup, his ghost-flesh hissing as it cooked… but it was too numb, too tough, for him to even notice. At least his necrotic essence seemed to ‘deaden’ the molten glass so he didn’t sink in it…

This presented the circle with a problem: Nah clearly needed rest – but there was no place safe to land.

Despairing that anything he could build would no doubt just melt away, Speaker couldn’t see any kind of solution. It was then that Sullen Hoof simply suggested that he keep building: “Just raise a platform on some pillars that you keep ‘growing’ to counter them melting away”

“You know, sometimes focusing on the problem too much means you can’t see the solution… thanks Sully” Speaker said, as he reached out and took his singing staff from elsewhere.

At the end of the day, when the only slightly cooler nightfall came and the Bodhisattva was done, the circle left for the endless oceans of the west.

Crossing the firepeak mountains several days later, the air began to cool and the terrain turned into endless jungle, though that quickly gave way to thousands of miles of plantations and rice paddies fed by a tight network of rivers. From his maps Cash recognized the rivers, revealing that they were flying over the realm satrapi An-Teng.

“Hold on – got to do a little course correction or we might attract trouble” Cash quickly noted, pulling on Nah’s reigns.

Flying south around An-Teng, skirting what Cash said was called the Banyan jungle, the circle reached the great western ocean before nightfall. The endless waters underneath them was a blur of speed as Cash raced Nah much faster than a flying yeddim had any business going, however without landmarks then navigation would have become an issue, if not for Shimmer’s familiarity with these her native waters.

Guiding the circle directly north-west, Shimmer led the circle towards Wavecrest, though they ultimately only skirted the southern beaches of the large island. The fisherponies down on land, tugging at their nets and working on their boats, barely had time to notice the brown streak of fur and golden essence zip across the sky high above.

Feeling no small amount of unease at coming so close to her old master’s stronghold of sunken Luthe, Shimmer steeled herself and led the circle a few hours further north-west until the Bodhisattva said that they were close enough…

“Uhm, won’t you sink if you jump into the water here?” Shimmer wondered, looking at the soulsteel-armored Deathknight.

The Bodhisattva shrugged: “I do not need to breathe – I can meditate on the bottom”

“We’re close enough to the pole of water for there to be no bottom…. You would sink forever” Shimmer pointed out. Speaker nodded, recalling a few ill-fated attempts to find the bottom of the elemental pole of water in the first age.

The Deathknight glared down at the water with a truly vicious scowl: “If I could be made to float… or be boyant, underwater…”

Speaker pursed his lips as he looked at the Bodhisattva, then at Shimmer, then at the Bodhisattva again… and finally at Shimmer once more – and Shimmer did not like how he was looking, but how could she deny her Solar mate?!

A shapeshifting and surgical removal of a float-bladder from the giant fish-form Shimmer had been in, followed by some quick regenerative healing, with the combination of some string that Sullen Hoof had, resulted in an inflated balloon made of out an air-bladder that was normal in most western fish to help remain boyant, tied to the Bodhisattva. In turn, the Deathknight removed what armor he could, to lighten himself.

With Shimmer providing backup, the Bodhisattva and his bladder-balloon was lowered down into the water where he sank… but only enough that the large bladder remained on the surface, keeping him from sinking any further.

Nah was landed in the water as well, the large fuzy yeddim remaining boyant quite well on its own – though it did seem to prefer to tip over to everyone’s surprise…

Spending the afternoon on the side of Nah, Cash had a sudden realization: “Hey, Speaker – that float city made of barges that we found you on, the Denzik? Where is that this time of year?”

“That was not something I paid that much attention to… but I think they said they always make sure to be anchored outside the same place come calibration. I think they do that at Wavecrest” Speaker noted.

Cash pulled his big ol’ map from elsewhere. It was a detailed map, and apparently made of some kind of water-resistant paper treated alchemically to stay dry and clean: “Ok, it’s too early for that – but… we found them going south-east. Of course! They spend the winter down south, makes perfect sense. That would mean they’re further north. Perfect! If we can spot them when heading to the pole of air we could do a little business with them – and you could say hi to your friends”

“Might be nice – if the delay is ok with the Bodhisattva” Speaker said.

Flying off that evening, the Bodhisattva found no issue with visiting the circle’s friends on the Denzik, but sadly the circle’s flight path and that of the grand city-ship did not cross as they flew north-east.

Disapointed, Cash made a note to fly by the Denzik next time it crossed the inland sea come descending earth or whenever exactly they head north.

Several days flight over open waters, dodging storms and any ships that Sullen Hoof spotted flying with realm flags, the circle came to the south-western shores of the north. It was cold, rocky and nothing but wilderness for as far as the eyes could see.

Heading further north-east the circle started to see signs of civilization, though mostly just small encampments and what was probably small tribal villages. Half a day’s flight got them to a point where Cash pointed out: “I don’t need to use my flight charm on Nah anymore… there’s nothing pull us down to the ground”

Speaker concurred, noting that he had activated his chaos-repeling pattern to stabilize reality on the howdah – ensuring that nobody started to float off…

“Very well – the air essence here is strong. I will meditate here – pull be back down by sunset” the Bodhisattva noted, leaping high into the air… and staying there.

Looking around, Sullen Hoof spotted some scattered structures on the ground. They looked broken, but he could make out some old realm sigils on a large sign. Speaker translated them and was able to make out that it was a ‘flight school’ – which made sense to have this close to the pole of air, seeing how easily damn near floated around here.

“Makes falling impossible, right?” Sullen Hoof half-wondered, half-joked. Speaker nodded, noting that the biggest issue was usually getting ponies down again.

“That would explain the frozen unicorn corpse I can see floating around up above us” Sullen Hoof said in a somewhat more grim tone.

The discovery of the frozen unicorn prompted the circle to try to get the poor thing down while the Bodhisattva floated about, meditating on the deeper nature of air and its significance as an elemental aspect of Creation.

Getting the frozen body down was… difficult – Shimmer found that while it was very easy to ascend in her winged beastpony form, then flying downwards proved a struggle. Ultimately she was able to throw one of her essence strings down to Cash, who tied it to Nah and then
dropped his ‘whatever beast I’m riding can now fly’ charm, causing Nah to very slowly drift down and thus pull Shimmer down as well… but that also turned out to be a really bad idea: “Cash, we need to fly up! Changelings on the ground!” Sullen Hoof cried out, having spotted the creatures peeking out of the ruins on the ground.

A hail of razor ice from the ground followed, prompting Cash to make Nah fly upwards. Once out of range they closed with Shimmer.

The frozen body of the unicorn was positively ancient: It was equally mummified and frozen, for the winds around it had drawn every drop of moisture out of the corpse over the century – it also bore the marks of the shogunate fifth legion, meaning that it had been floating around up there for more than seven hundred years.

Aside from the frost-worn uniform and a few personal items that Shimmer tucked aside for when they were to bury the poor thing, then the real attention-grabber was the device which Speaker insisted was how the unicorn had gotten itself stuck up in the sky to begin with.

“Alright, up where frosty was floating you simply do not fall down – at our current altitude we do, albeit slowly… and these…” Speaker presented the ornate gilded shoulder-harness thingy he had removed from the ponycicle.

The harness fit snuggle over Speaker’s head and onto his shoulders, and allowed him to atune to them remarkably quickly, which in turn made magical straps connect themselves around his forelegs. Shimmer found the hoof-sized rubies set under golden pinions on either side of the thing, just behind Speaker’s shoulders, might more interesting, though as Speaker committed essence to the them they lit up:

“Watch this” Speaker said, as the rubies began to blaze and emit a golden spray of essence that coalesced into wings: “You can fly with these things!”

Flapping his wings a few times, Speaker ascended upwards – though he was careful to avoid getting too high up, as he did plan on going down again. It was during this that he saw the giant serrated ice spike fly by Nah – apparently they weren’t entirely out of range!

Diving down to aid his friends, Speaker found himself joined by Shimmer as they together dove towards the ground – weapons and claws ready to strike.

The changelings appeared wrought of clear ice crystals that orbited each other like sentient clouds of ice and snow. Shimmer just plowed into them, clawing, slashing and throwing them about with a hate-fueled wild abandon, while Speaker remained aloft, tossing Gift down at carefully aimed at targets to reasonably great effect.

It didn’t take long to scatter the icy changelings – but as Shimmer quickly pointed out, then these things had merely been the figments of some other greater changeling’s imagination, for they had been pathetically weak: “Scouts, outriders – these things were eyes and ears, not teeth or fangs”

Finding Shimmer’s analysis agreeable, Speaker suggested that they get back up to the others before the real changeling lord of the region arrived.

Up at Cash the two were informed that the Bodhisattva was signaling that he would like to be picked up. A bit of Shimmer’s essence string and Nah flying south where reality let things fall from the sky later and the deathknight was back on the howdah.

“Ok, when we enter realm airspace we should expect to be detected almost immideatly. Our only hope is that they won’t have any skyships around to give chase” Cash said as he briefed the circle, having traced the route he was planning on his map with a glowing line of essence.

Sullen Hoof scoffed: “Bah – as if they have anything that could catch up to us. I’ve seen how fast those sky-ships can go – and Lookshy has more of them than the realm”

“You’re missing a rather crucial element. The realm doesn’t need to catch us – it needs to intercept us. If its spies or lookouts spot us and managed to send a message in ahead of us we could meet a wall of essence artillery… “ Shimmer noted.

“We don’t want either of those things to happen, I get that – which is we’ll be passing over the blessed isle under the cover of darkness” Cash noted, sounding confident in his plan to avoid the realm’s lookouts via cover of night.

With this plan in mind the circle made camp on the shores of the inner sea, at the southern base of the Dehennan mountains. There was little in the form of civilization in the area, making for another night of camping under the open sky with Speaker tinkering with their newfound shoulder-mounted wing-projectors.

According to Cash’s maps, which he revealed had come in part from a few gods of cartography in Great Forks – meaning that they were accurate far beyond what was necessary – then the distance from where they were to the shores of the blessed isle was somewhere around six or seven hundred miles: “We’ll reach the isle near Chanos, then it should be another three hundred to reach Meru, and gods knows how long to fly up along it before the Bodhisattva feels out a spot suitable for his meditation”

“…and what if we’re pursued? The realm’s sky-ship fleet is stationed at Chanous! They could catch up to us during our wait” Speaker worried.
Cash once more dismissed Speaker’s worries: “Again, we’ll be leaving soon so it’ll be nightfall when we reach the isle – they won’t spot us”
“They won’t spot a giant yeddim glowing with golden essence, which leaves a trail over a mile long, at the dead of night?” Speaker pointed out.

Nodding to signal that he acknowledged Speaker’s worry as legit, Cash smiled: “That’s just for show… Nah doesn’t normally do that when I use my charms – though I do plan on doing that when we leave for the west”

It was with no small sense of trepidation that the circle packed up camp and left for the blessed isle.

Approaching it the weather became noticeably milder. The feeling of earth essence was strong, and its stabilizing influence was undeniable. Even the waves on the inner sea closer to the isle were milder than the breeze above them would normally have.

It was about a few hours before midnight when Nah sped across the northern shoreline of the blessed isle, not terribly far from the Chanos Prefecture.

Not wanting to give the legion stationed at Chanos any excuse to spot them too easily, Cash guided Nah in low over the shoreline and quickly found this to be a terrible idea: The Chanos prefecture was a hilly and mountainous prefecture, and so was the lands bordering it. On the plus side, then flying low through the valleys that these terrain features produced gave the circle good cover against anyone watching the skies at night. This didn’t help much when a realm sky-ship, a small light skyreme, roared overhead… they clearly hadn’t seen the circle, but they had flown so close by Nah that the yeddim got frightened… and it’s deep rumbling groan of fear was very easy to hear.

It took the skyreme, with its blue-jade keep glowing brightly, about a minute or so to turn about and come around to try to spot the source of the noise. The circle didn’t wait around, but Sullen Hoof – with his sensory enhancement charms – could tell, even as the circle flew away from the location, that the unicorns on the skyreme were looking around the sky with devices similar to the essence lenses he had seen in Lookshy.

There was a tense silence as the circle continued south for the rest of the night. By dawn they reached the northern slopes of Meru, to which Speaker wept: Where once sacred Meru, the resplendent city of gold and ivory that had housed the gods before the primordial wars, then later the Solars during the first age, which had wrapped all the way round the peak of the enormous mountain, there was nothing – at least from the north face.

It was plainly evident from the overgrown debris that stuck out of the ground along the many rivers that sprung from the mountain, that the entire north face of the mountain and its portion of the ancient city had simply collapse and fallen down the mountainside. Such artifice wasted so cruelly was more than Speaker could bear.

Since their exit-plan involved heading west out of the blessed isle Cash turned Nah right, so they would scale the western slopes of the mountain. This made all the more sense since the eastern slopes were, according to Cash’s magical map, dotted with pilgrimage trails and temples for immaculate faithful, making staying out of sight impossible.

The base of the imperial mountain was replete in dense forests only parted when a river that ran from the mountain carved a wiggly line through it. This gave good cover for Nah and even allowed the circle to land in a small clearing for breakfast and to wash up: One had to look just a tad presentable when nearing the heart of the first age.

Taking flight up the western slopes, Cash noted that it would take most of the day to reach the summit as the Bodhisattva had requested. Apparently, according to the deathknight, there was a powerful demense at the very peak known as a sublime site for meditation: “The seat of Passiap – though it is also guarded by unicorns and earth elementals… but that shouldn’t be an issue we can’t handle”