The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The Celestial Centipede stylist samples many soups, and survives each encounter with but minor wounds and scratches, before unfurling its many arms and legs to devour each soup at once.

…

The jungle was suspiciously quiet the next morning, around the Seven Quill fortress – so named for the seven exalts there, and for the colorful parrot Shimmer had caught and plucked for decorations. Shimmer and Crashing Wave both quickly concluded that the silence of the local wildlife was because of the many smaller monkeys sneaking around the jungles around them, both on the ground and up in the tree canopies.

“They’re small though, scouts at best – not warriors – but I’d suggest we keep archers and spear ponies on the battlements none the less. They’re looking for weaknesses to exploit” Shimmer noted, her charms extending her senses out far beyond her own body.

Crashing Wave agreed: “I’d like to take a couple dozen ponies at arms and use the rail pillar to skip back a bit, then circle back around, see what we can rustle up”

The rest of the circle saw no problem with that – for apparently Crashing Wave had led many a raid back home west, making him a competent leader of small raiding parties. An hour later a group of volunteers led by the lunar zipped away on the rail network, while the rest of the circle prepared to sortie into the jungle and clear a path to Sperimin.

Shimmer and Speaker focused on the actual tree-clearing, Speaker using a mix of his magical weapons and charms of artifice to disassemble the thick-rooted trees, while Shimmer bulked up into her warform, ripping out the weakened roots Speaker left for her, while storing the logs elsewhere. This left Cash, Sully and Sunrise to scout ahead and keep a lookout for mutants and monkeys.

“Well, there’s plenty of monkeys, but I’m not seeing any mutants just yet…” Sullen Hoof noted, his charms lending him supernaturally acute senses.

Cash shrugged, using his magical shoes and the claws they could extend to cut through vines and other obstacles: “Perhaps, but we know they’re here somewhere – the ones I had the pleasure of speaking to before you lot showed up didn’t strike me as the sort Rakshi would permit to just watch the coming battle on the sidelines”

“I could try to coax them out with song?” Sunrise suggested, noting that the others would have to put their mental defence charms up first.

Speaker found that Shimmer got quite distracted as Sunrise began her beautiful song enhanced with charms of alure. Indeed many a local songbird and other critter came out to join Sunrise, adding a wonderful chorus of eerily melodic chirps and thrills to the mare’s own heavenly singing. This magical display confused Cash: “How is she able to do that to the animals?”

“Musical martial arts – and a lot of charms that enhance her singing in general, plus I think she the charm on that lets her speak with animals – so I guess her song calls to all of them” Speaker mused.

This continued for a few hours, the circle slowly inching towards Sperimin. On several occasions Sully snuck off into the thick jungles, returning a little later with blood on his orichalcum cleavers – noting that while he was finding tracks and other signs of mutant tribal ponies in the area, then it seemed like the nearest tribal settlements had been cleared out completely.

“Well so much for that plan” Cash said dejectedly, referring to the plan the circle had made earlier of using Cash and Sunrise to flip at least some of the local tribes to fight on their side.

“I’m guessing Rakshi predicted that we would try that” Shimmer pointed out as she folded another log into elsewhere.

Less than half a mile later, which still took several hours to clear, the circle was close enough to Sperimin than they could see the crystal towers of the six-fold campus through the tree canopies. Everyone quickly climbed up – or helped each other climb up – the nearby trees so that they could see the place properly.

Speaker felt tears creep up: “I can’t even begin to recount how much time I spent here, both as a student and as a teacher…”

The grand hexagonal central tower of the university, wrought of gleaming multi-faceted adamant and some kind of metal that hadn’t lost its polish over the many thousands of years since the first age, was capped with a done of orichalcum and was circled by twelve parapets. It was a glorious sight to behold, standing clean and seemingly quite untouched by the ravages of time. Of course, it also stood conspicuously alone: Speaker recalled a sprawling city around it, though only the central campus has been built to be impervious to the ravages of time.

“Honestly, something this close to the wyld… back during the great contagion this place must have been completely overrun by the changelings. They probably tore the place apart” Fire Orchid mused.

Speaker sighed, reluctantly agreeing: “True, and while the central tower stands, then that doesn’t say anything about the contents. We want what’s in the libraries, not a tower far off in the middle of no-where”

“Well then Lord Bright, let’s make room for a pillar here so we can get back to the fortress – I’m pretty damn sure that we’re being watched by a lot of angry eyes right now” Shimmer noted, Sully agreeing that while he couldn’t see anything, then he was smelling a lot of monkeys…

Upon returning to the Seven Quill fortress via light-rail, the circle held its final war council. The assault would begin in the morning, with the circle first going out via the path and setting up the final forward rail pillar and then immediately bringing in troops via it. The risk that there might well be apes between them and the fortress was a risk they accepted, Cash noting that he would handle the rear-guard action. Fire Orchid would be up in front, helming the front line, while Speaker and Shimmer would watch for any surprises and help out where needed, Crashing Wave saying that he could lock down a whole flank on his own. Sunrise was on the most important duty: She would be flinging counter-magic around like it was cheap cookies, to make sure Rakshi didn’t just shape up a spell that would turn everyone to ash, and finally Sullen Hoof would stay hidden to be an ace in the hole.

It honestly hadn’t surprised Speaker that much to hear that Sunrise had initiated into second circle sorcery while he had been away – if anything he had been a little disappointed that she hadn’t really used it for much, though as she had put it during the war council: “Even among lunar sorcerers then there isn’t much available to learn. The immaculates burn any sorcerous tomes they find that do not fit with their dogma, and the sidereals are bound by heavenly bylaws from teaching us – the bronze faction hoarding, hiding or destroying anything with solar circle sorcery just the same. With the book of three circles under our control, this will change”

This brought up another topic, one that was a bit awkward to broach considering Crashing Wave’s presence: Sidereals.

“Can we expect any… celestial reinforcements for this?” Speaker wondered, not sure if passing around hopeful glances to the circle would help.

Sunrise shook her head, her hood trailing her movements: “I asked before leaving for here. While they consider the book of three rings to be of great import, then… they’re afraid. Based on what I was told then a lot of sidereals have tried to access the book over the last several hundred years and very few got away alive. That’s why they have given up on it”

Crashing Wave perked an eyebrow: “Oh, you have contact with the sidereal host as well?”

“You know of the sidereals?” Fire Orchid said, sounding genuinely surprised.

The lunar nodded, explaining that before coming to the east for his plant-labourer project, he had worked with a sidereal back west as part of a circle: “…we also had the twins, two unicorns. They were the face of the circle, I was the muscle, while Teeganak the Solar was the brains of the operation. We did a number on the lintha and a series of demon cults back west before we parted. Good times”

Duly impressed with Crashing Wave’s past exploits, the circle finished up its plans for the attack. The army was given one last night of sleep, while sentries kept watch on the battlements.

In the morning six separate packs of dead monkeys were found at various spots outside the fortress, each having been caught in a variety of Crashing Wave’s defensive plant weapons: Some had been tangled in thorny poisonous vines that had sprouted up around them, others had been caught and crushed by constricting snake vines, the rest having falling to toxic spores from instantly blossoming flowers that had already rotted away come dawn. The sentries hadn’t heard anything – and upon autopsies of a few of the monkeys by Speaker, it was found that the monkeys had gotten their throats and tongues cut in such a way that none of them could speak or make any real noises at some point earlier before their raid, judging from the freshness of the barely healed wounds.

Everyone agreed that carving up monkeys like that to set up a sneak attack was just plain sick. Fire Orchid agreed, but added her own observation: “This means they couldn’t be trusted to stay quiet for their sneak attacks. This tells us a lot about how disciplined this kind of monkeys are… or aren’t”

“Good point. Poorly disciplined troops break easier – Sunrise, keep this in mind, user your song charms to demoralize them completely if you can” Cash chimed in.

Shimmer had an idea: “Hey, maybe we can use this – as a no moon caste lunar, I can do a special form of temporary shapeshifting: If I drink just a drop or two of dead monkey blood, I can shapeshift into that monkey form for a short while… could use it to return to Sperimin and scout out their defences and troop organization here just before the battle”

“I thought you had to perform a sacred hunt to learn something’s shape?” Cash wondered.

Nodding, Shimmer agreed: “Oh that is needed if I am to learn the form permanently – but that’s why doing this is temporary… but I only need a few fish scales, or drops of blood, or bit of flesh, tears – anything from the being I’m impersonating – and since these monkeys couldn’t make any noise anyway, it shouldn’t be that hard to act like a frightened ape”

“Not a bad idea – except you won’t know how to act like the ape regardless. We don’t know how the apes act around Rakshi… you would probably be spotted right away” Fire Orchid noted, expressing that Rakshi might be cocky, but wasn’t stupid.

With a frown, Shimmer saw the logic: “Fair enough – it was just an idea, plus I’ve never actually done it before… but ok, lets ready the troops then”

The army was readied, the frontline units donning their fearsome spiked armour-plated barding, the archers stringing their bows. All of the units got on board the various rail carriages which had been prepared the day before, for rapid deployment.

The circle once more sallied out from the fortress, quickly journeying via the path they had cleared the day before. Well, almost quickly – the path was covered with patches of freshly dug dirt, and exceedingly obviously strung-out trip-wire vines. It was almost sad…

“Well, it does match what Cash said about how dull-witted most of the apes are, plus traps like these probably work just fine in dense jungle – I guess they’re not used to dealing with cleared and open ground” Fire Orchid mused as she cut her way through. The vines didn’t seem to trigger any traps, though the freshly dug spots of dirt did turn out to contain sharpened stake pit traps, all of which were quickly collapsed and rendered safe to walk over.

Approaching the small clearing they had set up for the forward rail pillar, the circle found themselves greeted by a pony there – a moonsilver tattoo-covered pony who stood flanked by a dozen armed mutant tribal ponies.

Cash quickly stepped up, introducing himself politely using charms that ensured universal translation, in turn asking who the pony was.

“I am Dark Eyes, chosen of Luna, and the tribes that live around Mahalanka are my wards. You are not welcome here” the stallion said in old realm, glaring at the circle with some very noticeable dark markings under his eyes. They looked a bit like tribal tattoos, though he bore none of the markings that ponies around him wore, which seemed to be chiefly red triangular markings.

The circle shared a mix of smirks and head-shakes. The lunar certainly didn’t seem happy that his little threat display wasn’t taken seriously: “I am the right hoof of the queen of fangs! You defy me at your own peril!”

“Speaker, threat assessment?” Fire Orchid said quietly, being sure to speak in rivertongue, as she hoped that the lunar wouldn’t understand her.

Exploiting his improved essence sight charm that let him see the mystic essence patterns of reality without his eyes or caste mark lighting up, Speaker beheld the lunar to gauge the exalted pony’s power: “He’ll probably give you a run for your money, plus he has some interesting ‘lumps’ in his moonsilver tattoos”

“That’s probably tattoo artifacts – moonsilver weapons and armor blended into his tattoos which he can deploy at will. You can’t disarm a lunar from those” Shimmer quickly noted, her eyes darting all around as the tribal ponies started to fan out in a not-very-subtle attempt to surround the circle.

Fire Orchid shot the mutant tribals a very angry look, making them halt their encirclement attempt, then she turned to Dark Eyes: “Well that’s good for you, because we don’t have business with the lands around Sperimin, we have business in Sperimin”

“Are you a special kind of stupid? The queen of fangs permits no visitors these days. Leave or die screaming” Dark Eyes said, pointing a hoof at Fire Orchid in a most aggressive fashion, as it dissolved into moonsilver and reshaped itself to feature four sharp claws.

Sullen Hoof appeared behind Dark Eyes from a veil of solar essence, an orichalcum cleaver floated up right next to the lunar’s throat: “Sounds like a good idea. You leave, or die – our issue is with Rakshi, not you. If these ponies are your wards, then tell them to stay well away from the coming battle if they value their lives”

Speaker could see the ripple running down the lunar’s spine with his essence sight, the twitch of fear. The lunar turned his head just enough to see Sully, the angular orichalcum helmet and coolie hat making for a very low-key intimidating appearance: “You… solar?”

Cash chuckled and lit up his caste mark: “We all are”

Everyone lit up their caste marks, Dark Eyes’s eyes going in wide in fear. He clearly knew well enough that he wasn’t ready to face off against that many powerful foes. With a few quick but carefully barked orders at the tribals, in their crude tongue, the tribals began to back off and withdraw into the jungle.

Sully withdrew his cleaver from the throat of the lunar: “You can tell Rakshi that all we want is a full copy of the book of three rings. If she gives us that, we’ll leave”

“She’ll kill you before giving anyone that!” Dark Eyes said, shaking his head at the circle as he backed away from them.

Fire Orchid shrugged: “Honestly, we sort of expected that response. That’s why we brought an army and a lot of solars”

The lunar didn’t bother responding to that, instead disappearing into the thick jungle underbrush.

Speaker quickly instructed Shimmer to pull out the rail pillar segments she had stored elsewhere. With his charms the pillar was quickly assembled, and just as the last crystals slotted into place and the pillar top lit up, a great and deep roar was heard from Sperimin.

The entire jungle shook, and the roar lasted for a disturbingly long time.

“Oh, someone’s upset… and has big lungs” Sully noted.

Fire Orchid chuckled: “I’m guessing Dark Eyes finished his report – Shimmer, are you detecting anything around us here?”

Her eyes glowing with pale moonlight, Shimmer nodded slowly as her hooves held an inviable web of essence taught, feeling the vibrations on each strand: “There are almost four hundred gorillas in the jungle around us – but they’re keeping their distance, and the tribals are long gone, headed north. Hold up, detecting motion from the city coming right at us, its… a monkey?”

A single small monkey, the kind of thing you’d see everywhere in the jungles of the south-east, swung from vine to vine, leaping from branches to land in the clearing in front of the circle – but it was obvious that it was no normal little monkey: Its eyes glowed bright with silvery flames, to the point that the flesh on its face was crisping ever so slightly, as if the little monkey body could barely handle whatever charm or magic had been used to take control of it. As it spoke it also quickly became clear that its throat was bulging somewhat unnaturally, but it allowed it to speak like a pony: “Who dares enter the territory of the queen of fangs?”

“Greetings Rakshi, oh queen of fangs. We are the lords of Sunhill, and I am Lord Cash Charmer, of the Solar Eclipse caste. We are he-“ Cash began, but the monkey suddenly screeched and flung a wee bit of poo right into Cash’s mouth.

The rest of the circle chuckled as Cash sputtered and reached for his waterskin, but then the monkey spoke: “I care not for who you are. Leave or die!”

Quickly composing himself, Cash tried again: “Please, Queen Rakshi, we are here seeking a copy of the book of three rings – nothing else”

This time when the monkey hurled poop at Cash he had his invincible ego shield charm up, making the monkey miss. This only seemed to piss off Rakshi as she somehow remotely controlled the monkey: “Then get used to being disappointed. None may approach the book of three rings until I master adamant circle sorcery!”

Sunrise shot Speaker a frowny face: “Didn’t you say that only solars could initiate into third circle sorcery?”

Nodding, Speaker sighed: “Well, doing the impossible is par for the course for any exalt, but still… there are limits – and that one we never found a way to break, not even in the first age”

“So that is her obsession. My profiling charms agree – she won’t let anyone else get near the book as long as she can’t exploit it fully either” Sullen Hoof said quietly, sounding none too happy about what his charms led him to believe, having exploited that Rakshi had laid her soul bare by possessing or remote controlling the monkey.

Shimmer groaned, her eyes darting between the monkey and the circle: “Are there any lunar elders left who aren’t weirdos?”

The monkey screeched aggressively, pounding the dirt with its tiny hands as it seemed furious over being ignored: “Begone or die!”

In a lightning-quick move Fire Orchid drew a blade and sent a charm-projected slash that split the monkey in half as a response to the monkey’s relayed statement from Rakshi.

The jungle around the circle exploded in howls, the circle quickly bracing itself for an attack, but Shimmer reported that the apes in the jungle around them were withdrawing back to the city.

“Alright, time to start this song and dance – I’ll return to the fortress and start bringing in troops, Cash you do your thing” Fire Orchid declared, reaching an essence-wrapped hoof up towards the rail pillar.

Cash nodded as Fire Orchid’s hoof extended a golden tendril of essence up to the shining rail crystal atop the pillar in an instant, quickly yanking her up and away: “Alright, let’s do this!”

A quick prayer with the specific agreed-upon wording saw the local forest gods summoned before the circle. Cash invoked the oath he had bound the spirits to earlier, and with magical gestures from the divinities made of leaves and vines the entire jungle seemed to shuffle away from the circle, revealing a wide stretch of bare dirt leading right up to overgrown Sperimin.

This left a lot of apes on the ground, looking rather confused, if they hadn’t simply taken along as the trees left. They quickly scattered towards the retreating tree-lines or the city, just as Fire Orchid returned with the first three wings of armed and armored troops. With quickly barked orders, the dawn caste solar had the troops form up the front of a battle line, while the rest of the circle positioned themselves as planned.

As the rest of the army came in and formed up, Speaker ignited the ruby pinions on his shoulders, the wings of fire they projected letting him fly up and survey the battlefield: “We’ve got apes coming out of the city – they’re forming ranks!”

Ahead of the apes walked a certain bronze-armored lunar with blackened eyes, several hundred similarly armed and armored gorillas marching with him. Speaker saw several other large gorilla units file out of the city, fanning out to form a far broader battle-line than what the Sunhill forces was forming. That… was bad. Indeed, Speaker counted thousands upon thousands of gorillas marching out of the city – after about an hour there had to be at least thirty thousand gorillas, to Sunhill’s six thousand ponies at arms.

Being outnumbered was never good – being outnumbered some ten to one by foes three to four times as strong as a pony? Much worse. Speaker began to dread the coming battle… Rakshi hadn’t even shown herself yet!

Flying down to the ground, Speaker found himself summoned by Fire Orchid and Sullen Hoof. Sully had apparently been looking very intently at the lunar, trying to sus out what the lunar stallion’s stake in all this was: “He doesn’t want to be here”

“I’m sorry, he doesn’t want to what?” Speaker asked, finding Sully’s claim rather preposterous.

The night caste solar took a deep breath: “He’s only here because he fears defying Rakshi – his own priorities are elsewhere, with the mutant tribals we saw him with earlier. I think Cash should try to engage him and talk him into leaving the battlefield”

“But if what you’re saying is right, he’ll stick around because he doesn’t want to face the wrath of Rakshi” Speaker pointed out, Fire Orchid nodding in agreement.

Sully agreed, but made one final comment: “That just means we have to force her out on the battlefield so we can deal with her. I’m not seeing any archers among the apes – I don’t think they have the fine motor controls for bows – so if you fly up and use your spooking charm to break the apes, that’ll force her out to defend her territory, while leaving the lunar alone for Cash to mess with”

Speaker had never thought of Sullen Hoof as one with a head for strategy or tactics, but he knew that Sully knew how to manipulate others – and in this case those skills worked well here: “Not a bad idea, I’ll fly back and pick him up”

Flying off again, Speaker made his way over the Sunhill army and spotted Cash guardian the rear and the rail pillar. The pile of carved up monkey corpses next to him told its own story. Speaker quickly landed and told Cash of Sully’s idea: “…also, nice job on the monkeys. You, ok?”

“They haven’t been able to touch me yet – but they had shown up with some basic copper tools. It was clear that they had been sent to take down the pillar, not to fight. Who’ll guard this if I go up to mess with the lunar?” Cash said, looking up at the crystal spires of Sperimin.

The shrill bird call called attention to Shimmer as she approached and came to a hover, her wings flapping hard in her warform to hold herself as the sacks she was carrying up: “I can guard the pillar once I’ve dumped the rest of these seeds around our flanks Lord Bright!”

Speaker nodded as Shimmer flew off again, turning to Cash: “Let’s go”

It took a bit of effort, but Speaker was just able to lift Cash up and get him to the front, just as the apes came into range of the Sunhill archers. As Speaker landed with Cash, Fire Orchid flared her anima banner up and cried out: “Archers, three hundred, loose!”

The hail of arrows that came in over their head darkened the skies, each aimed to strike an unseen target three hundred yards ahead. Before the three solars many a gorilla fell – but they still outnumbered the forces of Sunhill over ten to one.

“Well, that’s a good opening volley. Have them ready for another go, I’ll go chat with Dark Eyes” Cash said with a twinkle in his eyes, galloping out from the Sunhill troops towards the apes.

Speaker flew up again, surveying the battlefield. What he saw looked… worrying. Staying at a height low enough to shout down to Fire Orchid, Speaker relayed that he could see three large units of gorillas breaking ranks and charging. Fire Orchid quickly had the archers target them, breaking two of them before they got anywhere close to the Sunhill line, while the third unit… oh she had to gallop quickly to get down the Sunhill line to lead the unit about to get charged, and as the gorillas broke into a sprint she felled dozens of them via slashes of her blade projected out at them.

“Lock shields!” Fire Orchid roared, as the Sunhill line braced against the gorillas and levelled their spears at them.

Speaker watched the fighting open up, and dove down to assist, flinging Gift and Homage with great force at the apes below. Sullen Hoof similarly appeared in the rear of the ape unit, carving up apes with great expertise and absolute brutal precision.

It was a bit strange that the rest of the ape line had held – and in short order the lone gorilla unit was completely massacred, making for nothing but a bloody terrain obstacle in front of the Sunhill line. Landing, Speaker approached Fire Orchid: “You good?”

“Oh, we’re all fine – these idiots might swing hard, but their aim is like a drunken sailor. Pitiful discipline too” Fire Orchid said, her breathing still elevated and her armor scuffed up and stained with ape blood.

Satisfied that Fire Orchid was still in one piece, Speaker looked towards Cash in the distance. At a few miles away, it was hard to make out details, but the silver-blue anima blazing made it clear that Dark Eyes had started fighting back – but there was no golden anima visible, so Cash hadn’t brought up the big guns… yet.

“With their leader distracted, you should fly out and scare the rest of the army away – go!” Fire Orchid said, as she began to check up on the troops around her. They were harried like her, but equally largely unscathed due to their good equipment and her defensive charms.

Right, that was the next step in the plan to lure out Rakshi. Speaker flew up, looking around. At their southern flank was Crashing Wave in his crab warform, looking very heavily armored, with huge pincers on his forelimbs. Their northern flank was exposed, but had been mined with the seeds that Shimmer had airdropped. At the rear Shimmer was waving back at him, perched up on the pillar, which appeared to have been wrapped up in a giant shimmering spiderweb full of tiny wiggling monkeys. This was going good so far, time for phase two.

Flying towards the northen flank, Speaker swooped in towards the apes. They quickly closed ranks, bringing up their shields – but they could not guard against what Speaker brought upon them: His Mob-Dispersing Rebuke, a powerful fear-inducing shout that saw the whole wing of gorillas turn and scatter in a rout towards the nearby jungles.

Pleased that his plan was working so far, Speaker looked down the Sperimin line at the almost two dozen remaining wings of gorillas. Cash and Dark Eyes were still going at it, but from the looks of things then Cash wasn’t fighting back, merely dodging and likely stabbing at the lunar’s mind with his words instead.

Three gorilla wings routed later, it occurred to Speaker that the internal messaging for the Sperimin forces basically didn’t exist. Nobody was notifying Dark Eyes that a quarter of his forces had run off. Oh, this was great! Taking care not to get too close to the lunar, chiefly by taking a detour back the Sunhill line to inform Fire Orchid of his discovery, Speaker flew around to scare off the southern end of the Sperimin line.

This was great. If the Sperimin numbers could be whittled down like this, before anyone ever managed to do a proper mass charge, then the Sunhill forces would have a much stronger position. While numerically absolutely superior, were the Sperimin forces really this poorly organized?

Speaker thought about it while spooking away more of the ape army: What would these things normally fight, if anything? The tribes around the city would keep all the small fry out, so the apes would probably only be called in to deal with larger threats… if any at all? No, it would be a bit too much wishful thinking to believe that the gorillas were entirely without real combat experience, or so Speaker reasoned, but it wouldn’t sound too unthinkable to have Rakshi use the tribes of mutants as expendable meat shields. This made him wonder where those tribals were… shouldn’t they have attacked in their flank or something yet?

Loud screeching and rustling in the jungle a the northern flank of the Sunhill line suddenly caught Speaker’s attention. Something had fallen in the killer plant traps. Hurrying over there, Speaker only got there in time to inspect the carnage and the sight of a few dozen gorillas fleeing into the open, fleeing towards Sperimin while staying well away from the treeline… for the treeline looked hungry.

Hmm… no tribals. But with a bit more than a third of the ape army routed, Speaker flew to Fire Orchid and suggested that they advance the Sunhill line so the archers could start working on the apes that were still holding back.

“You’ve thinned their numbers enough for that already?” the dawn caste wondered, looking at the ape line in the distance that still looked twice the width of the Sunhill line was offering.

Nodding, Speaker said that if they started to charge he’d still be able to scatter a fair bit of them before they could get to her: “…and Cash is still toying with Dark Eyes. I have no clue what they’re going on about, but if he’s keeping their general from noticing that his army is falling to pieces then all the more power to him”

Fire Orchid shouted the orders, and signal banners were raised. The Sunhill line advanced calmly – not a march, for it was with spears lowered to counter any enemy charge – but none came. Speaker followed along on the ground. The biggest issue was the large pile of dead gorillas blocking part of the line – but the unit commanders knew how to think around problems like that, so with some quick manoeuvring everyone got around the piles of chopped up apes. Still, figuring out the issue caused enough of a distraction for Speaker and Fire Orchid that it was first when Cash shouted at them that they turned to look…

Now, the good news seemed to be that Dark Eyes seemed to be gone – but the bad news was that the entire gorilla army was charging, and Cash was galloping as fast as he could go, barely staying ahead of the charging apes to avoid getting overrun.

Fire Orchid instantly snapped to, barking orders left and right, ensuring that the whole Sunhill line was locked down and braced for the attack: “Come on – our time to shine!”

Arrows rained down over the apes as they thundered over the battlefield, while Speaker flew out to help Cash out: “Fire me a claw!”

Cash’s problem was that to shoot one of his magical horse-shoe claws up for Speaker to grab he had to stop and rear up – which meant getting caught by the bloodthirsty apes. The galloping diplomat managed to communicate this problem back to Speaker using charms, prompting Speaker to instead swoop down and lift Cash up.

…but much like earlier when Speaker had given Cash an airlift to the front of the Sunhill line, then this was not a fast liftoff – but with Speaker floating him up, Cash’s hooves were free for aiming, letting his fire his steel claws at the approaching gorillas, felling just enough that they couldn’t catch him, though several threw their spears. For Cash the thrown spears weren’t an issue, his charms making it very difficult to hit him. For Speaker it was a different issue, since his defensive charms were geared towards simply shielding him once hit – and being hit while flying with a heavy load meant he had to struggle to stay in control of his flight.

That was when some of the gorillas threw bolas, completely tangling Speaker up – despite his magical wings of fire. As the two ponies fell to the ground, Cash’s defensive charm failed to protect him from the fall as the ground cared not to be fooled by his charms, while Speaker’s saw him tumble to the ground unscathed. Both were instantly surrounded and pounced upon by bloodthirsty gorilla soldiers.

For most ponies this would have been a problem – a big one at that – but all Speaker had to do was use his fright charm to cause all the apes to run away, or so they should have, if not for a really big gorilla with a bright grey-brown streak down the back of its head. The extra-large gorilla flexed, the bronze plate armor that covered the great ape looking quite thick over its bulging muscles, making for a potent display of its great power and magical martial arts. The massive two-handed green jade maul the gorilla wielded didn’t hurt either. The ape laughed at the two ponies: “Apes no run while Ajit Slave-Of-Might comma-“

…and that was all that the great ape got to say, before Cash and Speaker attacked the great beast with a coordinated attack, Cashing having communicated subtly through wordless charms to Speaker to set up the sneak attack – and Speaker using his various martial arts charms to strike with the speed of a striking cobra, letting him leap up and pummel the great ape with an essence enhanced armor-shattering strike, that saw the ape’s bronze helmet explode in a shower of rivets and torn bits of metal that felled a handful of nearby apes. Cash followed this attack up quickly with an elegant and high leap that saw him come down upon the ape’s head, striking it like a heavenly thunder-hammer, which resulted in the ape’s head shooting straight down into its body, all of which exploded in a gory shower of blood, bone and bits of blood-soaked black fur, which killed even more apes around them.

The gorillas around them looked absolutely shocked – of the few still alive, seeing the strongest among them so easily dispatched. Speaker caught his breath and used his fear charm again: “This is the part where you all run away!”

The apes instantly scattered, howling in fear and even crawling over each other to get away. This appeared to weaken a broad section of the Sperimin forces that had reached the Sunhill line, breaking its morale and forcing a retreat. As far as Speaker and Cash were concerned, this just meant more apes running past them back to Sperimin.

That was when a mighty bestial roar rolled out over the battlefield like thunder, the very ground quaking.