Chapter 21 Monkey Business

The Celestial Thriller stylist dances vigorously while consuming his soup, making everyone else around him dance along, as if they are mindless zombies. Any fool who tries to ignore him and eat soup gets slapped with a sequined glove.

…

Speaker and Shimmer quickly shook off what drink they had in their bodies, using essence in their own ways to purge themselves of such simple toxins. Crashing Wave, their new friend lunar, took a few more moments to clear his mind – but he none the less quickly called for his troops to be assembled… or rather, he called for his servant plants to gather up the seeds for his warrior plants.

“You have warrior plants?” Speaker said, sounding ever so slightly impressed.

Crashing let out a belly-rippling laugh: “Do you have any idea how many flesh-eating plants there are here in the everfree forests? I can barely leave my lair to take a piss without some nasty plant trying to nibble on me”

“Sounds more like horny wood elementals” Shimmer joked.

Crashing Wave chuckled at Shimmer, noting that he usually only entertained those when he got lonely: “…but seriously, there are plenty of large predators around here. You live in the cities; predators don’t go there. I’ve developed several types of plants to help defend myself and the burrows where I conduct my experiments”

“Fair enough. Can you bring some of those?” Speaker wondered, looking around the den they were in. The earthen walls, decorated with elegantly woven roots and lit with brightly luminescent mushrooms and fungus, not featuring any visible ‘plant soldiers’ or anything similar to that.

Poking around some of piles of barely organized chaos, Crashing Wave apparently not being much of a fan of desks or shelves, the lunar retrieved several different pouches of seeds: “Here, this should work”

The three left via flying cloud, heading to the nearest light-rail pillar. At the pillar they found some local tribal ponies painted with green paints dancing around the pillar. They seemed to think that the stone column with its glowing light at the top was some kind of holy thing. Staying out of sight while up on the cloud, above the tree canopies, the three managed to call in a carriage and zip away without the ponies on the ground noticing.

Tracking their path east on the self-arranging crystal display, Crashing Wave marvelled at the speed they were going: “This is very impressive”

“We have an eclipse caste member of our circle who says this will revolutionize trade here in the east” Shimmer said proudly.

Crashing Wave agreed whole-heartedly: “As much as I respect the thousand streams project, then stuff like this will without a doubt help a lot… but I can easily imagine that a lot lunars will object to this, on the grounds of it making the ponies of creation dependent on exalts”

“True, but that’s why Cash – our eclipse caste solar – he insisted that we teach the ponies of Sunhill how to make light-rail pillars by themselves. This is something they can do now, on their own. At best we’re speeding up the construction of the network, but they’re doing all the work making the pillar parts and cutting and etching the gemstones that go into the gizmos on top of the pillars” Shimmer explained, feeling that it was probably her former self who at least inspired – if not outright convinced – Cash to ensure that the mortal population of Sunhill could do it all on their own, even if slower than with the aid of the exalted host.

Speaker found the discussion between the two lunars spirited but overall quite positive. A few hours later their rail carriage descended to a large clearing south of the maruto river, far to the east. Speaker instantly spotted the parked yeddim, with a nice tent set up next to it that bore the banners of Sunhill.

In the tent he found Cash having a lively debate with what turned out to be spirit emissaries from the regional gods of the jungles. They seemed quite frightened at the idea of being connected to anything that ran counter to Rakshi’s designs, but at the same time none of them appeared to object to getting rid of Rakshi – something that Cash used to push and pull the spirits into pledging various forms of aid to the forces of Sunhill.

It took about half an hour of quiet watching until the negotiations were done, Cash appearing to have been working the spirits over verbally for quite some time already. The deal he finally struck didn’t give Sunhill any kind of direct military aid, but the elementals of the divine jungle courts would perform a long list of services when called upon.

The spirits faded into nothing upon the conclusion of the negotiations, Cash instantly turning to Speaker who had waited in the doorway of the tent: “There you are – you two finished connecting to Denansdor?”

“Yes, the network there wasn’t as degraded as I had feared, so we didn’t have to stop for repairs – though when the time comes to actually travel to the dead city, I would be very surprised if we won’t have to service some of the pillars further into the city” Speaker noted.

Cash nodded, his expert charms of social deduction and observation having told him long ago that Speaker had something more to say – to which end he only nodded, and awaited Speaker’s full report.

Telling Cash about the lunar they had met and the lunar’s strange plant-worker experiments, Cash quickly found his mind reeling with the possibilities of using such things to expand Sunhill’s industries: “He sounds like someone we need to invite over to give a demonstration once this is over”

“Sure – by the way, where are the construction crews that came with you?”

“I sent them back to Sunhill. We’re just under fifteen miles from the outskirts of the tribal territories surrounding Sperimin. Fire Orchid has messaged me that she’ll have an army ready for us in a few weeks, Sunrise and Sully will arrive with her and the troops” Cash stated, drawing a deep and concerned breath at the end of it.

His brows furrowed, Speaker inquired: “Something bothering you?”

“I’ve tried to open diplomatic connections to Sperimin…” Cash said, shaking his head instead of putting words to how badly that had gone.

“That bad?” Speaker said, as he walked off and struck a nearby tree, making the trunk explode into several comfortable wooden chairs.

Replacing the makeshift furniture in the tent with nicer ones, Cash lamented the hostility he had experienced while trying to make contact with the tribes around the city, and Rakshi’s government itself: “The tribes operate on a very strict variation of ‘If it’s not one of us, we kill it and take its stuff’, and that makes it rather difficult to approach the city to talk… and Sully saw enough magical air defences to make me not want to just fly in”

“So… we’ll have to sweep some of the tribes first?” Speaker pondered, thinking whether Sunrise would be able to project her mass mind-control charms through the thick jungle.

Shrugging, Cash said that sneaking in was another option: “…but all things considered, then all that would do is give us trouble when we have to run away”

It thus came to be that Speaker and Shimmer spent the next two weeks mapping out the local jungles on their side of Sperimin. This inevitably also involved running into hunting parties and patrols from the local tribal ponies, and as Sully had reported then they were indeed quite mutated.

Cash looked quite curious at the three tied up tribals that Shimmer hauled out of her elsewhere-den, begrudgingly noting that they had shit and pissed everywhere in it: “Oh that is just filthy…”

“Did you leave them in there for that long?” Cash jokingly wondered, quickly being informed that the prisoners had only been in there for a few hours. That clearly indicated that they had put actual effort into soiling the place, out of spite perhaps?

Cash said he would find out, looking quite curious at what exactly he would be able to gleam from them. The next morning Cash was able to report that he had made all three of the tribals into his very best friends, loyal to a fault: “…and I’ll be really honest, then I don’t like what they told me”

“Is it that bad?” Shimmer wondered, leaning in over the wooden table Speaker had made, while jungle birds sang freely around them up in the endless canopies.

Cash nodded and told the two what he had learned: “They’re a strange mix of tribal and feudal serfs. The orange apes, the orangutangs, they come to them as priests of Rakshi to dictate what the tribes should do, when the next offering is and so on. Whole place seems to run like a very primitive theocracy, with Rakshi at the top – though they don’t call her that”

“What do they call her?” Speaker said, curious at what cover identity Rakshi had chosen to use for interacting with the tribes.

The expression of the business-pony soured a bit, as he admitted that even with his powerful translation and linguistic charms, then he honestly wasn’t entirely sure if he had understood the tribals right: “They speak of some strange form of royalty, a king of the jungle – but that’s what the local gods of the jungle also call themselves… but they do worship Rakshi, no doubt about it – I showed them images of her, and they instantly tried to throw themselves to the ground for prostration”

“Could be that she presents herself as male to the tribes? That’s a pretty simple shapeshifting trick” Shimmer commented.

Cash nodded, taking notes, adding that he recalled old Shimmer having said that: “True, but point is that they worship her – and when I asked what her dogma was, and then explained what dogma meant, then they just said that it was all about doing whatever she said. There doesn’t seem to be any actual scripture or properly defined religion in this. It’s just a cult, with the orangutans as clerics, and her as a god-king ruling by decree… and it is the greatest of sin to defy her”

Shimmer noted that the expression that Speaker made was not a happy one. It was not quite one of disgust, no, it was just a tad more subtle and nuanced. Revulsion perhaps? Either way it was clear that Speaker was at a loss for words for how much he didn’t like any of it, so she cut in and asked: “Well that sucks - but Cash, what should we do in the mean time?”

A deep breath and some careful thought later, Cash looked at the two exalts before him: “You can start work clearing jungle around this place. We’ll need a camp for the army Fire Orchid is bringing in, with room enough to muster and march out”

“Exactly how big an army are we taking?” Speaker wondered, feeling a yawn creeping up on him, it still being early in the morning. The noise of all the wild animals in the surrounding jungle had erupted at dawn, leaving no real quiet to be had.

The duo found Crashing Wave wandering the jungle surrounding their camp, planting his special seeds. They quickly informed him that he should retrieve anything he had planted and coordinate with them so his seeds would grow outside of the fortified encampment they were planning on building. The next few days saw a large clearing made, the two lunars using their great strength to pull up trees, roots and all, while Speaker played his singing staff to build the foundations of a jungle fortress with a wide two hundred yard no-pony’s-land between the jungle and the wooden palisades.

The light-rail pillar was in the middle of the new fortress, made for a very shiny centrepiece – Cash was certainly quite impressed, though Shimmer and Crashing Wave both quickly started catching tribals from around Sperimin lurking at the edge of the jungle.

Cash didn’t worry: “It was never the plan to be sneaky about this. Now, I got a message earlier this morning – I’m needed back in Sunhill to help organize the last few details before the army arrives. You three will have to hold down the fort until then. No monkey-business”

Speaker groaned at Cash’s monkey joke, but accepted that there probably were some loose ends that the business-pony needed to tie up to keep things going in Sunhill. It was the weakness of a society ruled by solars: It depended on solar brilliance and charms to keep going at peak efficiency. Sure, the goal of Sunhill was to make a society that could operate well enough without solars while they were gone – but well enough wasn’t the same perfect.

Crashing Wave poked Shimmer as they looked at Speaker while he was lost in thought: “Does he do that often?”

“Pretty sure he does. Gets lost in his own thoughts. By the way, how far are you on planting your seeds around the fortress?” Shimmer replied, her voice signalling a calm acceptance of Speaker’s quirk.

The older lunar smiled: “The cleared no-pony’s-land around the fortress has been fully seeded. Anyone walking in there will be lunch. Only clear path is in front of the main gate, but it’s lined with long-stalked snapdragons. I’ve also seeded much of the surrounding jungle, though local bugs and critters are eating some of them… back at my labs I’ve wrangled the local animal spirits to make them steer the wildlife clear of my special seeds, haven’t been able to do that here”

“Clever. My circle told me that I negotiated similar deals with the local forest gods around Sunhill, when we moved in there – makes sense, bringing them to hell and having them work together with you” Shimmer mused, nodding in agreement.

A few days later the army began to arrive. For almost two days the rail-network dropped off ponies non-stop, each of them quickly filling out and setting up tents within the fortress grounds. Fire Orchid arrived half-way through, barking orders left and right, the troops around her quickly and efficiently doing as she commanded.

While it pleased Speaker’s Lookshyan side to no end, then he did find the whole thing rather odd, because by his count then at least three thousand ponies had come through already, which was far more than what Sunhill had ready to field: “Fire Orchid, where did you find all these troops? I mean, they’re not in Lookshyan colors or under a mercenary banner”

“Not any more – remember, until just before I arrived at Sunhill I had worked for a mercenary warlord” Fire Orchid proudly declared, beaming with pride as she oversaw the next rail-carriage drop off fifty-some more armed and armored ponies.

Speaker frowned ever so slightly: “So they are just mercenaries you hired? Where’s their commander?”

“You’re looking at her. I challenged that old fool and smeared him across the town square we had met at – claimed the whole army right there, and gave the troops an offer they couldn’t resist” Fire Orchid proclaimed, just as an officer with a scarred face came up to her.

Speaker looked at the officer, recognizing her as one of the few ponies who had originally come with Fire Orchid to Sunhill, though he didn’t know her name as she spoke to her: “My lord, half the Sunhill Legion has arrived. The rest will be here by noon tomorrow. We should be ready to deploy by evening tomorrow”

“Thank you Berry Petal – Now return to Sunhill and liaise with Lord Cash and Sunrise. Remember, you speak in my name” Fire Orchid said, waving a hoof over Berry Petal’s brow, making Sunrise’s sunburst caste mark appear on her brow briefly before fading.

Speaker recalled that charm, having seen Cash use it every now and then. It marked a pony as a trusted emissary of a solar, making one’s caste mark appear on their brow when they spoke in your name – a great way of verifying that such a messenger spoke for an actual solar.

The burgundy-coated mare with the scarred face and light barding quickly turned and galloped to the rail-pillar, getting up on the carriage that had just unloaded another group of ponies as it moved to return to Sunhill to bring more ponies to the fortress.

“Impressive. Now what kind of offer did you make to these ponies? I hope you didn’t have to use mind-control charms on them” Speaker said quietly, not wanting any nearby troops to hear him.

Fire Orchid let out of a deep laugh: “Ha! No, I offered them the three things I could give them as a lord of Sunhill: Citizenship, the healthcare of Sunhill, and once we’re done here at Sperimin… enlightened essence – and also a home. They won’t have to wander and scavenge anymore now”

Speaker mused on the offer for a moment. It made sense, but at the same time it didn’t exactly guarantee the loyalty of the troops… or had Sunrise had a go with them to preach to them as well? “I guess that’s not out of the question – but we talked about the danger of enlightening a bunch of mercenaries”

“They’re not mercenaries anymore – Sunrise and Cash had a go at them, don’t worry. Plus, I’ve trained them hard, they love how well they work together now” Fire Orchid explained, setting Speaker’s worries at ease.

Satisfied, Speaker brought Fire Orchid up to speed on what him and Shimmer had done, as well as introducing Crashing Wave to her. The lunar was at first a little apprehensive, unsure if the martially inclined mare would be his solar mate, but once he was sure she wasn’t they got along well enough.

Fire Orchid found the idea of plant-based traps interesting, having seen a few princelings surrounding their castles and fortresses with poisonous thorny vines instead of motes, if they didn’t have easy access to water: “Can’t wait to see how they look in action”

“You don’t have to wait; we’ve got monkeys massing north of the fortress!” Shimmer shouted as she came galloping.

Alarms were quickly sounded, archers quickly lined the northern wall of the fortress.

Now, the fortress itself, its shape, was a five-pointed star. It was an old first-age design Speaker had recalled, made to bottleneck attackers at every turn. Attacking a star-point meant that defenders could quickly barricade and bottleneck attackers at their point of entry. Attacking a deeper section meant that archers could fire on their flanks as they approached. The mix of earth-walls and thick hardwood-palisades also made for tough walls that would resist most siege weapons. On the northern side of the fortress two points of the star jutted out, one to the north-west and one to the north-east. Archers were positioned all along the line on the battlements.

“What are we dealing with?” Fire Orchid barked, as she, Speaker, Shimmer and Crashing Wave arrived up on the battlements.

The officer in charge quickly saluted, then reported that they couldn’t see anything yet.

Turning to Shimmer, Fire Orchid shot the lunar a look that without words asked what exactly she had seen.

“I have an essence-web out around the fortress, extending out into the jungle. I’m sensing about three dozen larger-than-pony creatures approaching from the north” Shimmer said.

Crashing Wave quickly chimed in, having sniffed the air a bit: “I can smell them. Big apes, bronze weapons and armor, poison on the weapons and bananas on their lips”

It wasn’t long after that the tree-line began to rustle. Large blood-hound sized gorillas in bronze armor with green lines painted on them began to appear, howling and hooting nervously. One gorilla, with a helmet outfitted with bright green feathers – clearly an officer – came forth, first screaming something at its gorilla troops to shut up, then calmly looking at the fortress.

“Interesting…” Speaker said, his eyes glowing with golden essence as he carefully observed their equipment.

Fire Orchid equally looked keenly at the troops, but she was clearly not seeing the same that Speaker was: “Disciplined, but not that well equipped. They wield their spears like clubs, and they aren’t forming up into much more than a loose formation. Makes sense if you’re fighting in dense jungle, but with the cleared area around the fortress… useless, except their leader”

It was a bit shocking for Speaker to see Fire Orchid with her eyes blazing with golden fire – indeed he hadn’t really pegged the old mare for someone capable of such thorough analysis, and then there was her comment about the leader of the gorilla troops: “What do you mean their leader?”

“Observe” Fire Orchid said, leaping from the battlements and quickly galloping across the no-mans-land to approach the gorilla troops.

With no prior warning, a lot of the pony troops cried out in surprise at the sight of seeing their commander leap forth and charge at the enemy troops all alone. Speaker found the display quite surprising too – but with even Cash having said that he had managed to fight off an ape ambush, then he wasn’t afraid for Fire Orchid’s safety – but he was curious at what she had been wanting him to see.

Drawing her steel blade from elsewhere as she approached, the very finest masterwork of edged steel that the blacksmiths of Sunhill had been able to produce, Fire Orchid flicked the blade around quickly in the air as it floated around her. As the sword was twirled and flicked, slicing air, it sent out razor waves of essence as the cuts of each swing shot forward – each magical cleave felling an ape.

It happened so quickly – the officer gorilla with the fancy feathered helmet almost instantly finding itself standing alone, surrounded by the corpses of the troops it had been leading.

“Surrender!” Fire Orchid shouted in old realm, loud enough that even Speaker and the other ponies on the ramparts could hear her.

The archers on the rampart seemed a little confused about what she had said, but Speaker quickly figured it out: “She’s speaking in the old first age tongue – and look, the ape is saying something to her. It makes sense… their mistress is a lunar from the first age, so that language is her native tongue”

“Right, so that’s what she taught them to speak – I guess it beats speaking monkey” one of the archers joked to another.

Nodding, Speaker agreed, adding that if the language barrier was that steep then it would likely make it needlessly difficult to defeat them: “…it’s hard to negotiate their surrender when you can’t speak to them”

“You that sure we can defeat them?” another archer wondered out loud, quickly getting a hoof over the head by a nearby sergeant who corrected the archer with stern words and an icy glare, explaining in the unkind words of a harsh junior officer that Speaker was to be addressed as Lord Bright, or at the very least ‘sir’.

Oh, the joy of military discipline – though Speaker did find himself oddly satisfied that the sergeant hadn’t beaten the archer. In Lookshy, for a lowly trooper to fail to properly address a senior officer could get one the lash or the rod in the worst case, depending on how offended the officer in question was – and the realm was, according to the stories he’d heard and wounds he’d treated following the battle of Mishaka, even worse, their feudal societal structure making absolutely no room for ponies at the bottom to ever speak out of turn.

This did make Speaker think for a moment. This model of no corporal punishment was something he had instituted with Sunhill’s meagre defence force. He didn’t recall briefing Fire Orchid on those policies, but he did take note that he would have to thank her for choosing to continue using them now that she had taken over training Sunhill’s troops.

“Lord Bright, Lord General Fire Orchid is returning with the gorilla prisoner!” another nearby archer called out.

Fire Orchid and the gorilla slowly made their way around the edge of the no-man’s-land, making Speaker wonder if she had told the gorilla of how the cleared buffer zone had been mined with Crashing Wave’s seeds.

At the main gate Fire Orchid brought the gorilla into the fortress, the number of ponies inside clearly startling the great ape, even more so as troops were still arriving via the light-rail network.

Cash quickly swooped in and took control of the situation, drawing the gorilla’s attention and ensuring that only the correct things were said to it.

It seemed that Fire Orchid had talked the ape into being a messenger, it thoroughly convinced of her strength – though it seemed clever enough to be dubious of Fire Orchid’s claim that Speaker and Sunrise were greater warriors than her. Not wanting the ape to see too much, Cash quickly put together a diplomatic message supposedly simple enough for the ape to remember – then gave up on that as he found the creature unable to memorize it, instead quickly writing up a much more eloquent message for Rakshi, or as the ape referred to her “The Queen of Fangs”.

As the gorilla was led back to the gate, with Cash’s scroll tied to its back, Speaker wondered exactly how well this diplomatic overture would go. Killing the whole patrol… the fortress… none of it was terribly friendly. Speaker found himself doubting their plan, wondering if a more honest diplomatic approach wouldn’t have been better.

A few hours later a cataclysmic roar rolled out of Sperimin, its shockwave causing the entire jungle to quake and briefly fall silent, if not for a host of birds flying off. The lookouts on the highest towers of the fortress saw this radiate out, and indeed Speaker and Shimmer had to act quickly as the wave rolled over them, for those wooden lookout towers snapped like twigs. Some quick thinking and some even quicker jumping around saw the lookouts saved, while Fire Orchid was able to just as quickly shout a series of orders around that saw everyone on else on the ground move out of the way of the falling towers.

“I don’t think Rakshi appreciated my offer” Cash said, sighing deeply.

Fire Orchid shook her head: “Did you even think for a moment that a barbarian warlord would ever share her hoard? Have you ever even dealt with foes like this?”

“Hey, just because she probably doesn’t smell of perfume and soap doesn’t mean she’s a barbarian” Shimmer protested, not at all liking how Fire Orchid spoke of Rakshi.

The old mare groaned at Shimmer: “No, she smells of blood and monkey shit. That ape we just let out? He spoke of Rakshi as his mother”

“No wonder… he had enlightened essence – that ape was a half-caste, explains everything” Speaker commented, nodding to himself.

Shimmer did not seem very surprised: “Right, because we’ve never heard of lunars who bred powerful animals to help them? Halta anyone?”

Right, Halta – the forest kingdom up in the far north-east where ponies and intelligent animals live together. Sunhill didn’t have any official diplomatic connections with the place, but it didn’t surprise anyone that a lunar would be behind such a society. Fire Orchid frowned at Shimmer: “Whatever. Point is that if she wanted to share and have open relations with the rest of creation, then she would have done so a long time ago. Instead, she has isolated Sperimin with a wall of mutant tribes and local wildlife. It’s a pretty clear message”

The last of the troops, along with several groups of crafts-ponies, arrived later that afternoon. Sunrise arrived with the last carriage, reporting that a great feast was being prepared in Sunhill – both to celebrate the expected victory in Sperimin, but also to celebrate that most of the city had achieved enlightenment: “It’s quite impressive really – ponies everywhere are floating things around and doing their work much faster than before, without tiring physically. They are overjoyed”

The elation Speaker felt was only tempered by the impending strife with Sperimin, but the solar healer and educator none the less felt quite happy at this news.

Formally introducing Crashing Wave to Sunrise was quick and painless: Sunrise found Crashing Wave’s plan about plant-based laborers to replace slavery quite promising, while the lunar in turn concluded that Sunrise was not his solar mate and graciously accepting her moral support for his project: “Now I know who to ask for help once the god of slavery starts getting upset at me”

That evening the final battle plans were drawn up, Sullen Hoof having apparently arrived in secret earlier to better scout the jungle between the fortress and Sperimin. This resulted in Crashing Wave meeting Sully at the war council, the lunar once more concluding that the solar in question was not his solar mate.

“Is it really that important for you to find your solar mate?” Shimmer asked as an aside, while the rest of the circle spoke of plans for deployment.

Crash Wave shrugged, scratching his chin: “I wouldn’t mind finding someone like yours. I’ve been working on my project for years, but I’m not an intellectual. I would love to find a solar to work with who could really speed this up”

“Fair enou- hold on, what’s that?” Shimmer said, turning to the entrance of the large tent they were all in.

The commotion she had heard turned out to be a messenger tussling with the guards outside. There were apes at the gate – not to fight, but envoys.

The war council was quickly paused, the circle moving to the gate to see who and what exactly had come.

It was two bronze-armored gorillas, each with a massive spear, flanking an orangutan priest clad in what could best be described as crudely woven and quite poorly bleached cloth that only lightly smelled of piss. It was clear that it was supposed to look like white cloth, but between many green stains from having rubbed up against various plants, and other colorful stains from food and whatnot, then it really didn’t look very white anymore. This gave the orangutan cleric a very scruffy look, which did not in any way help his attempt to loudly declare in broken old realm that the ponies of the fortress where to leave and never come back: “…lest you suffer the wrath of the king of the jungle and the queen of fangs!”

Upon the battlements, overlooking the envoy and its two guards, Cash smirked and quietly noted: “If that’s how she thinks you send a message, then I think she’s misunderstood something”

Fire Orchid shook her head: “Maybe it’s a test – Sully, do you see anything hiding out in the jungle?”

“There are others out there – but they are hiding in the underbrush, too far to come to the aid of these three if we do anything, so that’s a useless gesture… and I would prefer not to think that they’re that stupid” Sullen Hoof quickly stated, his orichalcum helmet shining in the torchlight.

Cash agreed, saying that the ape he spoke with earlier hadn’t been that stupid either: “…but let’s see what they say when we tell them that we’re not leaving”

A call was made, and Sunrise stepped up on the battlements. Raising her voice, she called out to the apes and declared that the forces of Sunhill weren’t going anywhere until the lords of Sunhill were given free and unrestricted access to the Sperimin university grounds and libraries: “Return to your queen of fangs with this message. Our demands will be met, or we will take Sperimin by force”

“Should I ready the troops?” Fire Orchid inquired, as Sunrise jumped down from the battlements.

Speaker looked at the three apes walking away: “No, let them sleep – we’ll need to wait for Rakshi’s reply – but tomorrow me and Shimmer will sally out to start clearing a small path to Sperimin. I’d like the rest of you with me, but you should stay here Fire Orchid in case they mount a sneak attack while the rest of us are gone”

“A small path? We need to move an army through thick jungle – not sneak them through winding paths that invite only ambushes” Fire Orchid protested.

Gesturing for the solar general to calm herself, Speaker noted that this had been planned for: “You don’t need that much space to move parts for a rail column, and Cash struck a deal with the local jungle spirits to make room for us at the city”

Chuckling, Fire Orchid slapped a strong hoof on Speaker’s shoulder: “This is why I let you do the strategizing. I prefer to do my thinking while on the battlefield”