The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The lunar hero stylist savages all of the soup, toughing out any soup too hot or cold.

…

Speaker took a deep and careful breath, sighing with understandable relief, while the rest of the circle gathered around him and Rakshi. Her eyes were open, but it was clear that she wasn’t seeing what they were seeing.

“So… this is the power of your dream fighting?” Cash mused, seeing the mighty elder lunar trapped in a waking dream.

It was with a pained expression that Speaker nodded, forcing the wound on his throat to stop bleeding by force of will: “I have no idea how long it’ll hold her – I didn’t have any sense of time while in her dream”

“You were both only asleep for a few seconds before you both woke up” Shimmer said, as she reabsorbed the extra length to her limbs that had been used to snake around Rakshi’s legs to pin her.

That revelation honestly frightened Speaker a bit: “It was short? It felt like hours or days in there… she had split her mind into multiple fragments to remove her madness from her dreaming self… but she was still homicidal when she woke up…. hmmm”

“When we get home, I would like to talk with some meditation experts in Great Forks about that” Sunrise said, her voice betraying a noticeable amount of curiosity.

Sullen Hoof stepped forth, cleavers at the ready: “Why? Do you have any nightmares you’d like to be without? Speaker can remove those from you now directly”

Sunrise scowled at the solar culinarian: “I would much rather learn to deal with my own problems myself. The things that scare me are important, for they remind me of the things I care for and dread to lose – I don’t want to end up unable to remember what I’m afraid of again – we have all seen how that ends up”

Everyone remembered how badly it had done last time Sunrise had twisted her own mind into a state where she had been unable to be afraid and how poorly that had gone.

“Right, but let’s end this nightmare first” Speaker said, once more raising a hoof with Homage to strike.

It thus came to pass that Rakshi, the Queen of Fangs, one of the oldest still living lunar in Creation was executed while trapped in a waking dream.

Cash Charmer used his Recorder of Everlasting Glories to make detailed records of the gory remains of centuries of cannibalism on display in the penthouse’s kitchens. Countless skulls of foals and other ponies stacked high, bones replete with knife and teeth-marks.

Instructions were given to the campus intelligence – the thing manifesting as a spirit-form foal – to finish the cleansing of Sperimin, as well as cleaning up the bloody mess. A two-mile zone around the campus would be patrolled by the magical brass warriors that the spirit controlled, and they would clear away the jungle and debris to the best of their ability, in anticipation of new campus staff and pony settlers arriving.

The keeper would remain deactivated – or at least limit its activity as much as possible – to contain anything Rakshi had snuck into its corrupted mind, until someone had the time to come and properly examine and restore the essence construct. It was simply too dangerous to let it roam freely in case Rakshi had left traps within it.

Beyond the six-fold spire the circle arrived to find that Fire Orchid had fought the gorillas to a stalemate. The apes reacted poorly to Shimmer displaying the severed head of Rakshi to them – but they surrendered none the less. Their goddess slain, they were given a few hours to clear out of the city and seek their own path. Sunrise and Cash spoke vigilantly and eloquently to ensure that the apes didn’t harbour too much animosity to them: “These jungles are vast and bountiful. You will not go hungry in them, but we will not permit you to stay here”

The most intelligent of the apes, the baboons, who for some strange reason had been forced function as basic labourers for Rakshi’s regime, were the most reasonable in these negotiations. They understood the situation, and unlike the gorillas or orangutans did not require Cash to execute their leaders in order to enforce cooperation. For their willingness to cooperate, the baboons were permitted to live closest to Sperimin, that the future pony residents of the city might trade with them and perhaps broker potential agreements allowing a return of the apes in the future. The circle didn’t want to promise anything in advance, but they at least left the door open.

Outside of Sperimin Rakshi was given a grand burial ceremony: On a pyre she was put on display, stacked not with wood, but ape fangs extracted from the tens of thousands of dead apes slaughtered during the day’s fighting, that the queen of fangs might pass on to her next life in regalia befit of her station. The amount of moonsilver weapons, armor and other artifacts also given to her pyre boggled the mind – but none dared steal from her hoard:

Nobody in the circle wanted to deal with the ghost of Rakshi in case her soul felt cheated or robbed.

Many tens of thousands of apes attended the ceremony, howling their sorrow as the bonfire sent her soul on its way to reincarnation, and sent her exaltation to Yu-Shan for processing. Sunrise sent a prayer along to Lytek, god of exaltation, that he take great care to purge Rakshi’s exaltation of memories, that the next bearer of her power not be burdened by her suffering, while Shimmer and Crashing Wave both gave spirited eulogies, thanking Rakshi deeply for her development of their moonsilver tattoos, and praying together that her next incarnation would be as wise and charitable.

With all that over Crashing Wave thanked the circle and said that he would start looking through the university’s material on the strange and exotic first age secrets of crafting life-forms from scratch. The first true second age scholar of Sperimin began his work with gusto, leaving the circle to return home.

It was an elated and relieved circle that returned to Sunhill – and the welcome they got was one fit for heroes. Fire Orchid marched her troops through the city out to the military encampment on roads covered in fresh flowers, musicians at every street corner singing and playing praise to the brave warriors who had fought under the banner of the sun.

Upon returning to the Sunhill manse, Fire Orchid noted that the troops, now granted Sunhill citizenship as part of the deal for them to serve under her, had wept: “They… No, we were mercenaries. We’re not used to accolades like this. Ponies would fear us, but this is the complete opposite”

“The ponies of Sunhill trust us – and with Sperimin free then Creation can start to benefit from the knowledge still left there there” Sunrise stated, sounding both satisfied and certain.

Cash quickly pointed out that as a place of learning Sperimin would likely need a lot of work to restore and reorder the books, tablets and scrolls there: “…not to mention the material looted throughout the millennia”

Shimmer suggested that they contact the god of libraries who lived in Great Forks to head the restoration effort: “I am certain that he would love the opportunity to restore the greatest library in creation”

The next several days were filled with celebration, as Sunhill honoured its new warriors, but also finally got to celebrate what had originally been two thirds of the city – now barely half – having reached essence enlightenment. Sullen Hoof broke out the really good sauces, resulting in many of the dishes he served being watered down with tears of the new citizenry who had never in their lives had tasted food so sublime.

After the celebrations Speaker used his education charm on the new Sunhill army and the rest of the city, meaning that in three weeks’ time all of Sunhill would be enlightened. Cash quickly found himself legitimately challenged to comprehend and oversee and the new business ventures that the enlightened city was pushing for. With their minds and essence broadened, the ponies of Sunhill had a new energy to them, their minds honed and disciplined. They were able to commit themselves to nearly any kind of business venture, and were hungry to do so. Word also began to spread through trade routes to and from Sunhill that the solar hospital now had means of enlightening any pony who came to the city. This would no doubt cause a stir in quite a few places.

Beyond that, with a return to something close to business as usual, Cash and Speaker first journeyed to Great Forks via the new light rail connection, entreating the god of libraries to gather a task force of spirits, scribes, explorers and other suitable minds to journey to Sperimin and start to restore the library there.

Speaker found it difficult to hold back his own tears a week or so later when he witnessed the god of libraries weep on the front steps of Six-Fold Spire. It had been so long since the two had been together. The god of libraries gladly accepted the position as the head of the newly formed university department of Literary Restoration, swearing before Speaker that he would scour all of heaven for ancient records of exactly what should be in Sperimin and where any lost book, scroll or tablet had ended up.

“This is great. The foragers east of the city are reporting friendly contact with the baboon tribes. They’re already trading fruit for iron tools, while the tribes that used to live west of the city have migrated away – and Liberatum told me earlier that he expects a preliminary report on the college libraries’ inventory status to be ready in a few months” Cash said, beaming with pride as he beheld the buzz of activity in the ancient campus, the crystal structures standing glorious while ponies and spirits alike ran around doing all kinds of work to get the settlement into a self-sufficient working order.

Recalling faint memories of ancient first age ceremonies celebrating the creation of the eight heavenly glories, one of which was Sperimin and its colleges, Speaker could only stroke his beard with the utmost of satisfaction: “I’m glad you finally talked him into accepting a name. Calling him ‘The God of libraries’ all the time was getting annoying… though Liberatum is a bit of a mouthful”

“Well, he does like everything around him to be properly labelled, including himself – but you’re right. And once Libby gets the ball rolling here, we can start checking out the books in the libraries here and open the place for actual students” Cash said, sounding only a little annoyed.

Right, that actually had been a contentious issue: Apparently then the spirit of the university still didn’t permit removing ANY books, tomes or scrolls from it – which was fair enough – but the ancient systems for making perfect copies of such things that could be removed hadn’t worked for thousands of years. Indeed, Speaker had been forced to repeatedly free Crashing Wave from the university’s surprisingly comfortable holding cells because of that, the two agreeing that it would best if the lunar would stick to leaving scrolls and tablets where he found himself until proper spirit staff had been hired to restart the replication system again.

It was only the book of three rings was able to replicate itself without outside aid, and after the first sidereal had been caught by the Keeper trying to get the book to make a copy for her, Speaker had instructed the Keeper to safeguard the book and demand that all requests for copies of the book had to be submitted in person to Speaker for his approval. This would at least keep most hostile elements from getting their grubby mittens on such a treasure-trove of sorcerous lore.

It was while Speaker was instructing the Keeper that a magical message appeared before Cash, which caused him to rush to the nearest yeddim. For Speaker, all that happened was that moments later the spirit of the university interrupted him, informing him to make haste for a balcony next to which Cash was flying with his yeddim.

Now, Speaker trusted Cash well enough to respect a request for urgency – but he hadn’t quite expected Cash to shout for him to use the Sunhill hearthstone once he got up on the yeddim’s howdah: “Check on Sunhill, now! I just got a message from a Lookshyan sorcerer at the redoubt they have near the city – shit is on fire; They can hear screaming and fighting!”

Trusting Cash explicitly, Speaker used the hearthstone of the Sunhill manse which allowed him to sense all things in the city, as well as project images of himself or anything else he’d like to see projected magically within the city.

…and what he saw was chaos. Well, he saw the bloody aftermath of chaos.

Ponies throughout the city were cleaning up streets slick with blood. Carts loaded with corpses were being stacked with more bodies, and several fires were still being put out, much of the city clouded in smoke. Snapping his senses back into his own body, Speaker looked at Cash with horror in his eyes: “What the hell happened?”

Cash didn’t have much of an answer, but said that he had gotten a message that several groups of dozens of ponies had run amok through the city, burning things and attacking anyone they saw with simple blades and other makeshift weapons: “…but the message didn’t say anything about who or why they attacked us”

“That’s not how the immaculates operate. Were any of them undead? Was this Thorns with a new trick for attacking us?” Speaker wondered, as Cash flew the yeddim down to the rail-pillar and tied essence to it, making them zip along the light-rail at speeds far greater than what he could make the great beast fly.

The solar diplomat and business-pony could only shake his head: “No idea, but I sure as hell intended to find out!”

A few hours later in Sunhill, the two were greeted by the rest of the circle – all of them looking quite exhausted. The debriefing in the war room atop the Sunhill manse was not a fun one.

Sunrise had been galloping all over the place, raising the spirits of the injured and doing an admirable job of it. Fire Orchid had been patrolling the streets vigilantly, trying to spot any other troublemakers while also giving the ponies of Sunhill the certainty and comfort of seeing their lords on the job… even if they hadn’t actually found anything: “They kept doing hit and run attacks – scattering once we got close, using some very well planned out escape routes, then reforming and attacking somewhere else, always burning something down and injuring as many ponies they could find”

Sullen Hoof and Shimmer in turn had found far more – but what they had found had been quite worrying. Shimmer presented Speaker with a half-crushed skull: “Once we finally figured out what they were doing, they changed plans and went for the sewer systems. You designed the garbage-grinders down there a little too well… they were able to kill themselves before we caught any of them alive – this was the biggest chunk I was able to fish out… even the soul has been mulched”

Speaker reeled, as Sullen Hoof presented his findings: “The ones that couldn’t make it to the sewer entrances killed themselves – we started blocking the sewer access points once we saw what they were doing – they took some kind of poison I’ve never seen before… it didn’t just kill them, it dissolved them from the inside out after a few minutes – we have no bodies to examine”

In the morgue there were a few buckets where the liquid remains of several of the attackers had been gathered – there truly was nothing to examine, though Speaker could confirm that the remains were that of ponies: “What the bloody hell was this…”

“I only got a few looks at them before the stuff kicked in. It’s very little material for my profiling charms, but Fire Orchid agrees with my analysis: This was some kind of probing attack, to test our response times and cause as much damage as possible, with a lot of effort having been put into covering their tracks” Sullen Hoof noted, sounding quite displeased with the implications of it all, especially with all the involved ponies having killed themselves so completely.

Shaking his head at the buckets of pony remains, Speaker sighed: “Thorns has always used expendable undead troops to attack us – and the immaculates are a lot of things, but not suicidal”

Back in the manse war room, Cash said that he had tracked most of the rioters to arrivals that had come in the last few weeks after the victory celebrations, some having arrived under merchant banners, some as visitors to hospital patients: “…but all of them were foreigners, all of them using fake names, no doubt about that”

“If they were under the spell of a foreign power…” Sunrise thought out loud, not quite sure where to go with her idea, but certain that something had influenced them.

The rest of the circle agreed that the ponies had without a doubt been influenced by something. As Cash put it: “Even the most fervent suicide cult will have someone who backs out when things get dicey. This was… enforced magically – or triggered magically”

“Maybe it was a lunar wanting to probe our defences and response speeds? A revenge attack for Rakshi?” Cash considered.

Sully noted that in one of the taverns where he had tracked the attackers back to, where they had stayed and evidently staged their attack and coordinated smuggling weapons into the city, they had found a room secretly converted into an office. The tavern staff had thought it was a rich merchant who had brought her own servants and whatnot, so they hadn’t been in the room. It had clearly been there the whole thing had been planned, though most of the planning maps and whatnot had been torn up and burnt, so only fragments had been recovered: “But we did find a letter that seemed to have been deliberately left behind… it’s addressed to Speaker”

“Do I want to know?” Speaker wondered, not sounding terribly impressed.

Shaking his head, mask and all, Sully explained that the letter had been some random hateful screed. Speaker could only sigh: “Another for the pile, lovely. The price of being the face and name that Cash puts on all the products we ship off…”

“We can add this lunatic organization to the list of bad things to stomp out. Forgive me, but aside from the fires then the damages were limited, and none of ours actually got killed. I think we should maintain our focus on Thorns. We have the book of three circles now, and we have some idea of how to initiate someone to the adamant circle – that should be enough to end every shadowland in Creation!” Fire Orchid cut through, having previously voiced her great dislike of getting distracted by small things when the plan was to work on great things.

Sully said that he had a few things to check up on, a few sources he could question about what had happened – especially now that Cash had the information on where the attackers had come from – but beyond that he was willing to resume operations against Thorns.

Sunrise agreed: “As annoying as this attack was, then our own city guards and emergency response forces were more than able to contain it – for all we know this was orchestrated by sidereals to test our readiness, to see if we are ‘worthy’ or something”

Speaker didn’t like it, but accepted that Thorns was a bigger issue. Shimmer followed suit, while Cash argued that preventing an attack like that would require rebuilding the city into something like Lookshy, with armed and guarded gates at almost every road intersection: “We have enough enemies as is – we would gain nothing by imagining up more of them”

An uncomfortable silence followed as the maps of Thorns and its surrounding territories were brought out, now that maps of Sperimin and its lands were no longer what was focused on.

“Our biggest problem with Thorns is Juggernaut… Speaker, you told me a while ago that you knew about this thing from the first age?” Cash said, pointing at a map of the entire scavenger lands – chiefly a map of the larger rivers of the region – where an extra marking had been added, with text underneath spelling out ‘Juggernaut’, just south of the city of Thorns.

Drawing a deep breath, Speaker used his essence puppetry charm to conjure up illusions of light and essence, specifically one of what appeared to be a generic landscape with rolling hills and tilled fields, with a large town in the middle, replete with first age towers twisting up towards the sky.

“Juggernaut is a ‘thing’ wrought of the wyld – maybe it was spawned by some kind of primordial creation, maybe its spawned by the wyld itself. A lot of very spirited debates were had on that in the first age, plus it behaves like something from of The Boar That Cracks The Sky… but what we knew for certain was that it would show up at the border-marshes of creation, then rampage uncontrollably towards the elemental pole of earth and leave a wake of absolute destruction. We would fight it every time and slay it every time… and a century later it would reappear somewhere else, and we would start over” Speaker explained, adding to his illusion a gigantic mountain-sized thing with many enormous limbs that would strike, stomp and smash its way through any kind of obstacle, be it city, mountainside or army, as it part walked, part ploughed through both all three.

Nobody liked the implications of that. Fire Orchid was the first to highlight the most immediate issue: “Wait… so if we kill it, it’ll just come back?”

“It’ll take a hundred years – but yes, and it’ll likely appear in a corner of Creation where it can rampage for decades before any civilized force comes to meet it – it never showed up the same place twice. It is a thing beyond fate, so the sidereals could never track its appearance” Speaker said, his eyes closed and his mouth scrunched into a foul grimace at the very thought of such loss of life.

Sunrise nodded, drawing down her hood: “Can we bind it with sorcery – like a demon? Is there a spell in the book of three rings we could use?”

Now that was a novel idea. Cash quickly picked up on this: “Speaker, in the first age – who usually dealt with juggernaut? Dawn caste solars, warriors? Or sorcerers? You say it was slain over and over – didn’t any one ever try to bind it?”

“Let me think… right… yes, you’re right. Especially after the primordial war, a lot of dawn caste solars waited eagerly for their shot at doing battle with Juggernaut. I think a few containment methods were tried, but not much worked. Juggernaut’s strength and mass means that it can charge through any wall and break out of any binding” Speaker regaled, admitting that it wasn’t a topic he knew terribly much of, his lands managing to never having to suffer from Juggernaut’s onslaught.

Sunrise appeared to like the sound of that: “Excellent. In that case I suggest that the two of us start studying the book of three rings for spells that can help us. Meanwhile, the rest of us should start looking into the rest of Thorns. Sully, you told me earlier that you had contacts in Nexus who knew merchants from Thorns?”

“Yes, I will see what they know – though I will need time. We should meet up again in a week at the earliest to share what we’ve found” Sullen Hoof said, looking around the table.

Cash licked his lips as he nodded: “I’ll journey to Stygia in the underworld. I know a lot of ghosts I can work over for information on Thorns – plus it’ll be good to get a measure of how the underworld is now with a deathlord destroyed”

“Hmmm… I should go to Lookshy and ask them what their plans are for Thorns. They were not happy after their rearguard troops had to fight Thornguard during the battle of Deep Rot – nor happy about learning of the lost legion” Speaker said, eliciting a gasp from Fire Orchid.

The dawn caste general looked incredulous: “Wait, you’re telling me Thorns lent troops to that, and Lookshy knows? Why hasn’t Lookshy mobilized to stomp Thorns already?”

“We can go and find out” Speaker suggested, saying that if he and Fire Orchid went to Lookshy to see what their plans were, then perhaps they could coordinate battle plans.

The circle agreed on this, and thus everyone had their task: Sunrise would read the tome of three rings, Sully would go to Nexus, Cash to Stygia, and Speaker and Fire Orchid would journey to Lookshy. This left Shimmer, who opted to aid Sunrise in reading the tome of three rings, plus it might improve her own quite limited sorcerous skills.

It was early evening by the time Speaker and Fire Orchid left on a conjured cloud, Fire Orchid once more expressing her gratitude that he had been ok with sharing his teachings with their new army: “This is what they deserve. Iron Hoof used to treat us all like disposable meat, selling our lives cheaply. You doing this proves to them that we care about them as more than just soldiery – but as citizens”

“I’m glad you think so – but our enemies are still legion, and as enlightened ponies they’ll be able to use magical weapons” Speaker noted.

Fire Orchid accepted this, but was quick to see the greater potential of it all: “True, but they can do so much more… I mean, before we left Sunhill I saw so many ponies going around floating things in the air, moving things around without having to bite down on the them first… we’ll be able to do the impossible now”

“You’re a solar – you do the impossible, daily – but you’re right. This will let the citizens of Sunhill do things far beyond what normal ponies can. We’ll build higher, grow our crops faster, and achieve a greater harmony with the gods now that everyone can offer up their essence freely for sacrifice” Speaker remarked, guiding his cloud towards Looksy.

Drawing a deep breath, Fire Orchid contemplated the irony of her years living with false memories: “If that hadn’t happened to me… I don’t know if I would have agreed with you. It taught me a humility I couldn’t have gotten as the daughter of one of the highest-ranking officers in Lookshy”

“Highest ranking – your mother got a promotion, remember?” Speaker corrected, but in a warm that showed how he fully accepted everything else Fire Orchid had said.

The old mare shook her head: “Right – she told me when I met her while you were off west. That’s going to take some getting used to”

“Friends in high places is not a bad thing my friend – hell, we’ve got friends in heaven now, remember?” Speaker said to reassure her.

Frowning, Fire Orchid rolled her eyes: “Oh sure, sounds great… right up until they start asking for favors”

“Lookshy doesn’t ask much of us – Cash has negotiated some amazing deals with them. They ship their sick and wounded to us, we patch them up and nurse them back to health, they pay us handsomely. When they come and ask for me to repair things, they also get to pay for that – Lookshy knows well enough not to mess with us, or treat us like an expendable resource” Speaker stated with a great sense of certainty, and not a small amount of patriotism.

With a chuckle, Fire Orchid gave Speaker a playful slap over the shoulder: “You sound like security directorate propaganda”

“Perhaps – but unlike propaganda, then I’m not wrong here. Also, remind me to ask around for the troops I enlightened last I was were here”

“I will” Fire Orchid said with a slight nod, quietly expressing great respect for what Speaker had wanted to do for his former brothers in arms.

Landing at the Lookshyan aerie, Speaker quickly declared his desire to speak with a representative of the general staff – the military junta that ruled Lookshy. Due to his good connections to the city state, and well-known good relationship with several of the officers on the general staff, Speaker and Fire Orchid were whisked away to the residential district of Lookshy, to the grand estate of Gens Karal.

It was evening, the sun nearly having set completely, when the two solars arrived at the office of Taimyo Karal Linseed. The scarlet mane, the fiery eyes, the crimson horn – these things left one no doubt of Karal Linseed’s fire-aspect to her dragonblooded powers. She in turn gave Speaker and Fire Orchid a knowing nod as they entered: “Lord Bright, daughter – to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Speaker found Linseed’s calling Fire Orchid daughter quite amusing, but bowed politely to her in kind and quickly stated his business: “Forgive the late hour of our arrival. Sunhill is looking to move against Thorns – the Mask of Winters keeps sending barges with secret holds full of zombies to us, and that’s just what they do to us – we have no clue what other evil they’re spreading throughout the scavenger lands”

Fire Orchid nodded, stepping forward: “We want to take the fight to them – liberate Thorns from the undead”

Taimyo Linseed looked at the two with keen eyes, and a smile on her lips: “Really? What a noble quest indeed – and do you think that a former realm satrapi will accept solar rule?”

Ok hold on, were they that transparent?

Her mind not clouded by the same level of patriotism that Speaker had, Fire Orchid chuckled and approached to sit down in front of Linseed’s massive desk: “Mother, we want to free Thorns and destroy the Deathlord that rules it – we have no interest in conquering the place – we have Sunhill”

Linseed gave her daughter a knowing look, one that seemed to recognize a sound military strategist: “That still doesn’t answer who’ll be in charge of the place once you’re done there”

Speaker trotted up and sat down next to Fire Orchid, a bit annoyed that Linseed was asking such questions – chiefly because it was indeed an aspect of Sunhill’s plans that had not been given thought: “We’ll figure that out when done. Ideally, I’d like to see Thorns become a part of the confederation of rivers, not return to being a realm satrapi, but either is better than being lorded over by a mad ghost”

The taimyo nodded, accepting that it was a complicated challenge: “Fair enough. If you’re here to coordinate battle plans for taking Thorns, then I’m all ears. I’ll bring your plans before the general staff at our next meeting – though we would prefer that your plans include suggestions on who should be in charge afterwards”