The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The art forceful of declaration stylist boldly grabs his soup and scarfs it down aggressively.

…

Despite the complaints of the young lunar Anja Silverclaws, then the sanctum’s leadership hadn’t been lax during the Mask’s reign: Using Silken Laughter’s smugglers as spies, and having trained many of them in the arts of stealth and quiet observation, they had engaged in a thorough and systematic program of espionage up in the city. Sure, most of those spies had been caught eventually, but the information had allowed them to make an extensive list of the names, locations and staff at all the various parts of the Mask’s administration and war machine – and it was a prioritized list, both for low priority targets that could allow for a death by a thousand cuts approach, or for high priority targets in case you wanted to quickly paralyze the Mask’s operations.

The circle loved this, as it meant they didn’t have to do any of the grunt work in finding where and what to hit to distract the Mask from what they had planned…

“And exactly what do you have planned? Anja inquired, curious about what the circle had in mind, as she had clearly sensed that the circle hadn’t arrived with a few of their own.

It took a bit of explanation, between Sperimin and whatnot, but Fire Orchid was able to sum up their plans as: “…and there we got our hooves on a first age spell that removes shadowlands. Sunrise will cast it in the square where the dead god is spiked, but we’ll need some very good distractions to keep the Mask away from us, because the shaping of magic like that isn’t subtle”

“Sorcery that can remove shadowlands… that would be something everyone would want, all across creation” the unicorn mare noted, reaching for a snack.

Silverclaws nodded enthusiastically: “It would be a hell of a way to sell the rest of Thorns on Solars”

“Perhaps, but we didn’t come here to take over Thorns – we came here to get rid of the Mask so he’ll leave us alone. We’ve got plenty of territory to manage already” Sullen Hoof quickly pointed out.

Servants came and went, new refreshments distributed. One of the servants whispered in Silken Laughter’s ear.

Silken Laughter breathed a quiet sigh of relief: “Good to hear – because I’ve just gotten the first notification of immaculates down in my sanctuary making trouble, shouting at my costumers, clients and employees. The general population of Thorns would never accept solar or lunar rule”

Silverclaws shrugged, bobbing her head about as she thought about things: “True – and none of us have any plans for staying here permanently, but I think I have a solution for that… I found a distant relative of mine the other day while sneaking around up top. I’ll set up a meeting if it looks to be relevant”

Discussion continued on what places to hit and what the Mask’s forces looked like. The circle had already met the Seven-Degree’d Physician, the Mask’s chief necrotech artificer – or as Anja called him “Fizzy”. Silken Laughter explained that the two deathknights that the circle had downed had been part of the mask’s circle of primary enforcers. Silverclaws told the dark tale of how the Masks’ undead goons had done a grand tour throughout the territories of Thorns: “Every village and town got a visit. The mayor would be made to swear fealty to the Mask, and if they refused – or even hesitated – they would be dragged back to the shadowland, killed, and their ghost brought back, brainwashed into obedience”

“That’s horrible. There’ll be so much clean-up work once this is over…” Cash said, feeling happy that he wouldn’t have to be the one doing that, but also feeling sorry for whoever had to.

Sunrise appeared unphased: “Once the shadowland is banished all the ghosts will be forced back into the underworld or suffer the consequences – they can’t exist in creation under the sun”

Silverclaws smirked at the notion, nodding ever so slightly while toying with a cookie – one of the many snacks and treats that Shimmer had stashed in her elsewhere den: “The Mask is a ghost – he can mess around outside shadowlands, and so can the ghost-mayors he installs… though most of the towns they’re set up in quickly got swallowed by the expanding shadowland – or at least they’re able to exist there briefly”

“Interesting. Say, do you know exactly how the shadowland here is expanding? Normal shadowlands don’t do that – not even in the first age” Speaker wondered, finding the mention of the expanding shadowlands quite interesting, even if he had his own theories.

Shrugging, Silverclaws shivered briefly as she ate the cookie: “Oh that’s good… but no, I have no idea. I know the basics of how to wrangle spirits, but shadowlands that behave like this? I have no clue”

“That’s because you’re not as deeply connected to your essence as the dragonblooded. We live with our essence in our blood – we feel it differently – and I think I know what’s causing it” Vanilla Bean noted, arguing that it was indeed the dying god impaled in the middle of the city doing it, Speaker nodding along.

It turned out that the god in question was the old city father of Thorns, the very god of Thorns. City Father, which was the god’s actual name, had been a benevolent and sophisticated god, enjoying a good relationship with the local immaculates and wielded great power on account of the monetary, cultural and military power of Thorns when he represented Thorns in heaven… right up until the dread night when the Mask had invaded, where the mask had dragged City Father out and impaled him. Yet the Mask’s greatest cruelty was denying him death. Vanilla Bean’s theory was linked to this: “I’ve been near him in disguise, heard his quiet whispers carried on the wind – begging for death. For every drop of blood that leaks out of City Father, the shadowland gains power and I’ve felt that dark power flow out of the city. We will need to rescue him, nurse him back to health, and destroy the spike he was put upon to end that effect – or we risk that the shadowland will just grow back around Thorns”

The circle noted that they had already planned to do something about the god, since they had identified the plaza as the spiritual centre of the shadowland – but it was good to get the more in-depth analysis from a local who had a better sense of it.

“By the way, how long do you think it’ll be before the Mask realizes that he’s short two deathknights?” Silverclaws wondered in the general direction of the circle.

That was a difficult question. Various ideas and possible answers were discussed, ranging from how well organized the Mask was when it came to checking in on his deathknights – which Anja noted wasn’t very much at all – while Sully pointed out that if the Mask at least kept tabs on their monstrances then he would quickly be able to detect that their black exaltations had returned.

“Well, that begs the question of whether the Mask brought the monstrances with him here to Creation or not” Sunrise noted, to highlight how much of a security risk that would be.

Cash nodded, but waved his pot of tea at Sunrise: “True, but ever since we got the ball rolling on redeeming abyssals then the deathlords have been keeping their minions on much tighter leashes – and yet, how that works for the Mask is anyone’s guess. I could easily imagine that unless they want to leave Thorns, then they wouldn’t have to check in – Fizzy didn’t have to sign in on a log or anything when he showed us around outside the city”

Smirking, Silverclaws nodded: “I’ve snuck through most of the offices in his administration, seduced quite a few of the department heads too – they’re all scared shitless of the Mask’s abyssals. Told me that they never know when they might show up, and I never found any kind of ledgers or logs for keeping track of them”

“Interesting. I could probably exploit that – impersonate the physician and start ordering things around to spread chaos” Sullen Hoof mused.

The circle agreed that all of this could be exploited – though the conversation was briefly interrupted by a tremor. This startled everyone in the circle, though they quickly noted that everyone else around them didn’t seem very worried.

“What gives?” Speaker wondered, not at all liking the idea of tremors when one was that deep underground.

Wind Dancer breathed deeply: “It’s the sewers – the sewers of Thorns do not lead to the ocean, they lead down, down around the sanctum. There’s a water aspected demesne about half a mile further down, not the one powering this place, but anything that flows into it is crushed by infinite pressure. That’s why the mask can’t just open the drains and flood this place with ocean water – but it is how Thorns stays so effortlessly clean, being able to flush away everything”

“Interesting – was this demesne cultivated for that, or did it occur naturally?” Speaker inquired, finding such a phenomenon above a heavily populated city quite interesting.

Nobody present knew that – though Silverclaws was sure that in the palace archives there might be records about that.

The next day, a while before dawn, the circle awoke to cries of alarm ringing out in the sanctum. They quickly rushed out, finding Silken Laughter in panic and the unicorn mare shouting orders: “Check all the salt lines, make sure all entrances are covered!”

“What’s going on?” Fire Orchid called out, not quite shouting, but speaking in a loud manner like that of a soldier reporting to a superior officer.

Vanilla Bean shook her head, her crude makeshift armor rattling noticeably: “It’s nothing new – the Mask periodically swarms the sewers with ghosts to find any stragglers hiding down here. Only the sanctum is safe, and that’s only if the salt lines hold – and it’s not that long since the last time he did this, but with your stunt at Shackle Maw then it’s clear he’s looking for a lot of escapees – and we’ve barely got room for everyone in here”

“Fair enough. Say, how exactly are we hiding that many thousand ponies in here? The sanctum manse is big, but it’s not that big” Fire Orchid wondered, trying to have what she had seen of the internal layout of the sanctum make sense.

The black-maned unicorn mare gave Fire Orchid an exasperated look: “This place is a manse – its magic, that’s all I know. I’m thinking it has something to do with how Silken Laughter hides all the smuggled goods in here”

Speaker was about to join in the conversation, knowing quite a lot about manse construction and their various magical effects, but that’s when a new voice spoke up – one that only Speaker and Fire Orchid had heard before: “It’s bigger on the inside”

Fire Orchid and the rest of the circle turned to look at the fez-wearing brown-coated stallion with the hour-glass cutiemark. Speaker perked up: “Doctor!

“Indeed!” the Doctor exclaimed cheerfully, sauntering past the rest of the circle to approach a Silken Laughter who looked a bit tired.

The mysterious master of the sanctum gave the Doctor a look with tired eyes: “How can I help you in this time of peril old friend?”

“Well, the way I figure it, we need her” The doctor said, pointing a hoof at Sunrise “up on the pulpit, and you need to refit this place for public address, extra on the acoustics”

Silken Laughter looked at the doctor, then Sunrise, then back at the doctor: “This will help?”

The doctor nodded, his confidence radiating off of him like a soothing scent.

To the circle’s surprise – and evidently also the surprise of the unicorn mare – Silken Laughter reared up and started to dance, his steps making the tiles underneath his hooves light up. His moves were slick and stylish, but it seemed that the manse itself responded to his dancing. With a light rumble and the scouring sound of stone grinding against stone, the manse began to rearrange itself. Quite a lot of yelps of surprise rang out, as countless ponies got caught by walls that folded in, pushing them into other rooms and leaving them quite confused. That nobody was getting crushed was… a relief, if nothing else, at least for Speaker.

Once the sanctum was done reorganizing, it looked strangely like huge a circular amphitheatre, with a central podium where Silken Laughter beckoned Sunrise to approach, though quite a lot of the ‘seats’ were filled with barrels and crates: “The acoustics in here are to die for…”

Sunrise nodded, getting the hint. She ascended the podium and raised her hooves. Golden essence whirled around her as quite a few charms were brought to bear all at once, all of that essence being sucked into her as she drew one mighty breath. For a few precious seconds she held her breath, feeling the air around her, sensing the discordant clamour of armed struggle at the doors, distant shouts of panic and cries for help.

Her song made everyone stop, even the circle. It was the filthiest and most dirty-mouthed sailor shanty anyone had ever heard. Of course, despite everyone in earshot having stopped what they were doing, then one would not have been able to hear a pin drop. This was chiefly due to the roaring white fire that several ghosts and a dozen or so zombies at the periphery of the sanctum had burst into. Their howls were quite loud but only for a brief few seconds, as they fell over quickly, smouldering as they fell apart into spectral ash or toasty zombie remains. Everyone who had seen them go up in smoke quickly began sweep away the ashes and ‘chunks’, a testament to their discipline – but in the places where the salt lines had been breached a few more ghosts and zombies came in and burst into flames before the attack ended. In the chaos, nobody noticed that the doctor wasn’t there anymore… and yet nobody questioned that either – perhaps they had forgotten him? Nobody asked, nobody wondered.

With peace restored the salt lines were fortified, and a headcount was made. A few poor souls had been snatched, and several others had been wounded. Speaker quickly tended to the wounded, while the rest of the set off to rescue those missing.

Silverclaws remained in the sanctum with Speaker as the others left: “I’ll guide him to you – you lot can clearly fight a lot better than I can, but I can track for you no problem”

Speaker didn’t object, being hoof-deep in a smuggler who had been bitten and eaten almost to death by zombies.

The rest of the circle was gone in an instant, hunting the ghosts and the fading cries for help of their recent captives. The unicorns worked to organize the remaining smugglers, bringing order to the chaos of the sanctum: As Silken Laughter restored the normal layout of the place, Vanilla Bean had squads sweep for ash and undead debris, checking the food stores for contamination and generally trying to track where the ghosts and zombies had been – which probably wasn’t made easier by the whole sanctum having been physically reorganized once more.

By the time Speaker had finished, he found Silverclaws standing ready with saddlebags loaded with salt from the supplies that the circle had brought in: “Let’s go – we’ve got a city to burn”

He couldn’t exactly fault her very forward and direct approach – and her enthusiasm was infectious, as she led Speaker up through the sewers. They emerged in an alley somewhere in the city, some piles of rubbish near the exit containing ragged disguises. Speaker couldn’t tell exactly where they were, but Silverclaws was sniffing the air, so he trusted her as she guided him along.

“This pillar, can you see the ghost up top?” Silverclaws said with a hushed voice, not quite a whisper, but quiet enough that Speaker was not in doubt whether she was trying to be low profile.

Quickly checking the pillar with a mix of essence sight and his investigative charm, the one that let him instantly intuit all salient information in a glance, Speaker nodded: “Yes, it looks hideously deformed… poor thing”

“I know – it’s part of the Mask’s alarm system for the city. If the ghost sees or hears anything too much out of the ordinary, it’ll start howling an alarm into the vocal amplifier – we’ll need to bring these towers down so their screams can’t be heard, but we can’t be doing them one by one… that would alert the other ones” Silverclaws said, looking intently at Speaker.

It struck Speaker that the two of them might not be linking up with the rest of his fellow lords of Sunhill any time soon. Lovely. Looking at the pillar itself, he evaluated the masonry: “Right, we would want to take as many of these out before discovered. Some kind of delayed demolition…”

Silverclaws nodded energetically: “Exactly – can you do that?”

“Probably… give me a moment to think” Speaker said, examining the masonry in detail for weaknesses. His disassembly charm, learned while he had been kidnapped a while ago in order to free himself, quickly gave him a multitude of insights into potential micro-fractures he could exploit, and how they might propagate and how fast.

It was while looking very carefully at the dark grey mortar that shadows crept over the rooftops, despite Silverclaws keeping watch. Speaker first noticed anything happening when he was tapped on the shoulder.

“What, I’m not done ye-“ Speaker said, turning just enough to look – and seeing a grinning smile flash, only for an instant, before he found himself encase in ice.

His elemental immunity charm kicking in instantly, so the pressure of the ice and its chilling cold could not touch him, and for some strange reason whatever attack had encased him had left him quite conscious. Looking around, though no able to move his head, Speaker was able to just barely make out the shape of another blob of ice next to him – Silverclaws, obviously.

Ok, now what? Speaker’s first impulse was to think things over, though as a matter of basic precaution he raised his magical shield charms just the same. That’s when he felt the block of ice he was in tilt… was someone trying to break him free? No… wrong kind of motion – this was like being in a boulder that was being shuffled around by a work-crew. Oh, he was being captured and taken away, of course.

Can’t have that.

Using his deconstruction charm, Speaker had the ice melt around him in an instant, drenching the crew of witless zombies that stood around him, though it also melted away his raggedy disguise. Their deathknight overseer standing behind them did not look pleased: “What the – seize him!”

It struck Speaker as rather odd that the voice of the deathknight was so… plain. Then again, pretty much every deathknight he had met, at least those he’d had the mixed blessings of talking to, had sounded as if they spoke from beyond the grave.

Right, there were zombies trying to grab him.

Dodging the first zombie that lurched and lunged for him, Speaker simply ducked and placed all four hooves on the sturdy cobble under him. Using his deconstruction charm again, he had the cobblestone explode into a plume of thick and hot dust that just hung in the air as if glued, like setting off a smoke-bomb, using the wisdom of one of his old special forces buddies: “Anything can be a smoke-bomb if you use enough alchemical explosives”

“Oh please, you think that’ll hide you?” the deathknight called out, sounding as if he was applying some kind of mask or something on himself as his voice was momentarily muffled before it cleared up again, likely to keep the dust out.

It just so happened that Speaker very much expected that, for he activated the latest charm he had learned in his sleep back in Lookshy, the latest of his dream based martial arts: The Ephemeral Presence Technique, which had taught him how to reshape his own essence so that he became as fleeting as a dream, and as difficult to pin down or strike. The smokescreen from the disintegrated stone further worked in conjunction with this, making him next to impossible to detect.

The charm likewise saw Speaker’s senses attuned to the infinite subtleties around him, allowing him to peer through the smoke as if it wasn’t there. With a series of swift blows, he effortlessly removed the heads of each of the zombies, before making his way over to the iceblock with Silverclaws. Melting the ice, Speaker heard the deathknight swear and turn in his direction – right, the melting ice and Silverclaws dropping to the ground wasn’t covered by his charm.

Seeing how the Deathknight extruded a rather nasty looking dart of bone from the soft sole of his hoof and made ready to throw it, Speaker called Homage from elsewhere and positioned himself between the Deathknight and Silverclaws, so she wouldn’t get hit – he knew he couldn’t speak up lest he reveal himself, so he couldn’t tell her to hide, but this seemed acceptable.

The deathknight threw the barbed bone dart with an angry shout, but Speaker parried it quite easily – though the sound from the metallic impact gave the Deathknight something to lunge after, but Speaker swatted him aside and grabbed him, then flipped him around and threw him… up. Where he he stayed, because Speaker also knew magical martial arts that let him do that.

“Do you give up?” Speaker asked, knowing full well that saying anything, even while still covered in stone dust, meant giving his position away, at least partially.

Clearly quite confused by the strange sensation of being stuck in the air, the deathknight screamed in rage, swearing like a sailor: “Give up? I swear I’ll gut you so hard your mother and your children will bleed from their rears! I’ll catch them and make them eat your eyes!”

With his jumping charm, Speaker leapt up in the air right in front of the deathknight: “I gave you a choice. You chose poorly”

While obvious that the Deathknight wanted to say something back, then he didn’t get much of a chance as Speaker’s hooves blazed and he used the Heaven Thunder Hammer technique to punch the abyssal straight down into the cobble, coming down to land next to… hold on, where was the crater?

“That… that’s not a normal hoof of the daystar ability, making me hang in the air like that!” the abyssal said, the direction of his voice making Speaker home in on his position: he had hidden behind the pile of beheaded zombies, but seemed largely unharmed.

Silverclaws finally staggered to her feet, Speaker turning to check on her. Her eyes were red – which made sense, since the hot stone dust was quite the irritant, plus she might have been hurt by being encased in ice. She coughed: “What… ugh I can’t breathe in this”

Oh, where was an air-aspected unicorn when you needed one. Or an air elemental – or some… wait… wings! Speaker ignited his ruby pinions, bright wings of red and golden flame erupting from around his shoulders. Beating the wings a few times, he cleared the smoke – and parried two more darts from the abyssal, before he extinguished the wings again.

“Thank you… and that’s the Hollow Arbiter of a Perpetually Painful Year, or just ‘Happy’ for short” Silverclaws said, glaring hatefully at the abyssal.

Stepping out from his cover, the abyssal revealed himself in full: A young but adult stallion, clad in a fine black silken vest replete in shimmering embroidery, along with some very pretty metal bands around each of his legs, his stance martial and his dark and pitiless eyes locked on Speaker and the lunar: “Oh I do love it when someone uses my full title, though having it come from the argent whore of Thorns does tarnish it a bit”

“I care not for your scorn, for I know what makes you cheer” Silverclaws shot back.

Speaker got the impression that there was a lot of bad blood between the two, to which end he calmly inquired: “Right, you two don’t like each other – can we get to the part where we kill him and get on our way?”

“Just grab him alive – we need all the information we can get from him” the lunar said, hate in her eyes as she shapeshifted into a half-cat half-pony warform with paw-hoof hybrid limbs featuring some very sharp-looking three-inch claws.

Shaking his head, Speaker simply walked up to the deathknight – the barrage of wicked bone darts he got in return bouncing off his shield charms much to Happy’s dismay: “Why won’t you die!?”

“I’m a doctor – my stock and trade is making sure ponies don’t get hurt, including myself. Now, here’s what I offer: We’ll send you on your way with a message for the Mask. You’ll deliver the message, and that’ll be it” Speaker stated firmly and clearly, looking the deathknight right in the eyes.

Looking about as confused as a confused cat-pony hybrid could, Silverclaws approached the two: “Hold on, weren’t we fighting?”

Happy looked back and forth between Speaker and Silverclaws, his body tensed up and ready to strike or fling more bone-darts: “We were… but who are you? Why should I be you messenger?”

“You’re not answering my question. That means you get to become the message instead” Speaker stated, striking at Happy’s forehead with… no force at all – but done so quickly that the abyssal was left looking cross-eyed up at the hoof touching the head.

Silverclaws was quite startled by this sudden motion, having no clue that Speaker could move that fast: “Holy… wait… why is he not moving? Have you hypnotized him?”

“No, he’s just asleep. Could you pick him up, or stuff him in your elsewhere den? We’ll need to sneak off with him without anyone seeing anything” Speaker mused, looking the abyssal over quite carefully, then laying the sleeping pony down and closing Happy’s eyes.

Shifting back into her normal pony form, somehow manifesting a new ragged disguise, Silverclaws shook her head: “I’ve heard of the den charm, but I don’t know it… but if we want to be able to sneak around with him, we don’t need to hide him… just dress him up properly. Also, you need a new disguise”

Stripping the abyssal and putting on his clothes, Speaker discovered that the outfit that Happy had worn was some kind of magical silken armor outfit. It was eerily smooth, but clearly not of the same make as the heavenly spidersilk that Cash’s blue shirt was made from, and had a strange quality about it: It was quite cool to the touch, and didn’t seem to heat up by exposure to body heat. The bracelets that Happy had worn had similarly been emitters for a discrete essence shield system, the silk outfit and the bracers combining to shield its wearer about as much as if wearing a light plate armor or a heavily reinforced leather outfit, while being as light as a thin cotton shirt.

To cover up the body, Silverclaws smothered Happy in goop and gore from the zombie corpses, lathering the sleeping abyssal up so well in various bodily fluids and gore from the zombies that Speaker found him passing quite well for a corpse: Dried blood mixed with rotten ichors made Happy’s coat look very bloody in places, and by mixing that with bone chips and other small bits then he was given some fake but passable lumps and whatnot, giving the illusion of open wounds and gashes.

“You’ve done this before” Speaker mused, observing the lunar’s handywork.

Shrugging, Silverclaws noted that it helped being able to dispose of high-profile corpses… or warm bodies “I’ve done that a lot to hide ponies I’ve had to sneak out of the Mask’s custody, whether they were dead or alive… and cooperative or not”

Using the very same cart that the zombies had brought to haul the two previously frozen exalts, Silverclaws hauled the sleeping Happy out into the street, with Speaker walking next to her in the dark silks they had stripped from the abyssal, guiding her along.

It turned out that they weren’t the only ones hauling corpses around out in the open, which initially greatly confused Silverclaws: “Hold on… what’s going on here?”

“You’re saying this isn’t normal?” Speaker wondered, not having much of a point of reference for what was normal for a city ruled by the dead.

Her ragged disguise giving her a truly pitiful appearance, Silverclaws shook her head: “No but… ah of course! You and your circle took out Shackle Maw, the zombie factory! They don’t have anywhere to deliver corpses! This is perfect! We can wander the city without it looking weird at all! Where do you want to dump this idiot?”

“Well… First off, you seemed to know him, what’s his deal?” Speaker wondered, wanting to know more before he decided the fate of the deathknight.

With a slight shiver, Silverclaws spat on the ground, then recounted the long list of villainy and cruelty that ‘Happy’ had committed as the Mask’s most stealthy enforcer and assassin: “Happy is the one the Mask sends out to kill nobles and princes who refuse to engage him in diplomacy. He’s also very good at capturing his targets so they can be brought back and tortured to death – he has more blood on his hooves than you can imagine”

“Delightful – well that makes this so much easier” Speaker said with a face of disgust, guiding Silverclaws over to a nearby alley where he started cranking up his medical and surgical charms.

An hour or so later, a somewhat worried Silverclaws walked next to Speaker down a street, her voice quivering: “That… I had no idea you could even do that to a pony”

“Abyssals work like solars – if you kill them they can just be reincarnated. By weakening and disabling them instead, you don’t get a new fresh enemy, you get a weak enemy who’ll hopefully tie up a lot of his master’s resources to fix him. It’s all about sending a message both to the Mask and his minions” Speaker noted, sounding quite satisfied with himself.

Finding both Speaker’s tone of voice and topic of conversation rather disturbing, Silverclaws didn’t quite know what to say. “I get what you mean, but… damn… I thought Ma-Ha-Suchi was fucked up”

“Really? What’s wrong with partyboy? I mean, I remember him from the first age… and I think Shimmer once said to stay away from him” Speaker mused as he looked around, wondering where the rest of the circle was.

Silverclaws groaned: “Oh he would get so mad if anyone called him that. Gods, where to even begin… let’s just find the others after we’ve put stinky here somewhere awkward”