The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The art of meditative discussion stylist waits for her soup to cool, taking measured sips, appearing deceptively normal right until someone tries to take their spoon away.

…

Searching for his circle, Speaker wanted to send them a magical message – but Silverclaws warned that the ghostly observation towers dotted throughout the city, which they had originally been out to take down, would sniff out sorcery instantly: “…they’ll also cry out if they see anything but a black anima flare up – learned that the hard way”

“Right – that’s why you want the alarms down. We should have another crack at that while we’re looking for my circle” Speaker mused, looking down the drab streets of the dilapidated neighbourhood they were in with all the weary, frightened and hungry eyes peering out at him.

Spending a few hours walking around the city to fiddle with the towers, with Silverclaws touching base with a few informants and other contacts, they also confirmed that no alarms had sounded that morning – so… there hadn’t been any big fights, so the circle had either failed or succeeded in saving the ponies they were trying to rescue. Silverclaws argued that either way their hunt was over: “At this point, unless they’ve been saved, those ponies will have been ripped apart. We should just return to the sanctum when we’re done”

“True – but I would have hoped that they would sent me a message about that then…” Speaker said, all the while infusing essence into the last of the towers.

Acting as the lookout once more, Silverclaws could only guess: “Well, messenger spells aren’t that subtle here – I should hope that your circle is clever enough to realize that you receiving a golden magical scroll hovering in the air would be a bit revealing…”

That was a fair point, so Speaker simply nodded: “Alright – well, I’m done here. That’s all the towers here weakened without being loud about it. Now we just need to arrange some bad weather and all of these should be coming down”

“And you’re sure that Sunrise will be able to talk the local weather gods into delivering a storm?” Silverclaws wondered, as her ears flicked around several times a second, as if desperately trying to catch every rustle and noise around them.

Speaker nodded, looking towards the palace towering above the rising Shroudwant district in the middle of the city, then towards Juggernaut with the much greater palace built on the back of the mountain-sized monster: “Oh completely – But tell me… where does the Mask reside? In the autocrat’s palace here in the city, or on the palace on top of Juggernaut?”

“Old two-face stays up on his corpse-mountain most of the time, though he comes down here regularly to oversee things and leads a parade in his own honor at every full moon” the lunar said, venom in words.

Still nodding, Speaker had to ask: “Right… and when was the last time he did that? I don’t want our big stunt to be derailed by him showing up and attacking us. Sunrise will be quite vulnerable while she does her thing”

To Speaker’s relief, Silverclaws was able to tell him that the next full moon wouldn’t be for another two weeks or so. Of course, Speaker in turn noted that it would be a few days until Sunrise would have fully internalized the spell she needed to know – so they would have to hold out until then.

“Shouldn’t be a problem – especially not with the ‘message’ you left with stinky back there. But is that it? Are we just going to pray for a storm and wait for a few days? Is that it?”

Thinking about the question for a moment, Speaker found himself wanting to nod – but in stroking his beard he thought of an idea: “We brought a lot of salt with us. It would be amazing if we could get away with circling the city in salt – or at least the area we’ll be in when Sunrise does her thing – to block the mask from getting near us”

“Ringing the city in salt? Well shit, I’ll go ask the mask’s road workers if they could just look the other way for a day or so” the lunar snarked jovially.

Chuckling, Speaker shrugged: “That’s one way of doing it – I think Cash could work that into a better plan, one that actually does involve the city’s road workers”

That got Silverclaws’ attention, but Speaker said she should wait until they got back to the sanctum to discuss things.

Returning to the sewers, the two made their ways towards the sanctum, constantly checking that they weren’t being followed by ghost spies – and catching and slaying eight of them while on their way. At the sanctum they took care not to disrupt the salt lining the doors, the guards waving them through as they recognized Silverclaws.

“Alright, spill – what’s this plan of yours!?” the lunar said, holding Speaker up against the wall next to the door, as if senpai had noticed him.

Speaker didn’t answer – he just smiled – because he saw Shimmer galloping towards the two of them. Silverclaws only barely managed to let out a surprised cat sound as she was tackled, Shimmer shouting: “What are you’re doing!?”

Prying Shimmer off her catty peer, Speaker explained the situation – and informed her that not only was the city’s warning system primed for destruction, but a subtle message had been sent to the Mask. Shimmer was happy that the pillars were ready to fall, but still unhappy about Silverclaws’ behaviour: “You stay off my man”

“Oh catty, I thought I was the only one like that here – but seriously, what’s this plan with the city road workers!?” Anja laughed, as she brushed out her mane after the tumble Shimmer gave her.

Cash approached, helping Silverclaws up: “Really Shimmer, this is no way of treating a lady – she’s a noble”

Silverclaws graciously accepted the hoof from Cash to help her get up: “Why thank you – you really are a real charmer”

“It’s my name for a reason” Cash said, smiling far too much.

The rest of the circle let out a spread of groans. Speaker shook his head in bemused dispair: “Oh gods she’s just as bad as him…”

Shimmer chuckled, leaning on Speaker: “Nah, the moment Lilith catches wind that another lunar is hitting on him she’ll swing by and eat her”

Silverclaws’ ears swivelled around in an instant, the rest of her body freezing: “Lilith?”

“My lunar mate… we’ve gotten on quite well actually, but yes she still exhibits some very overprotective yet oddly hostile tendencies” Cash said sheepishly, as Silverclaws quickly drew away from him.

Looking at Cash as if she suddenly realized that he was poisonous to touch or even being near, Silverclaws briefly shivered: “That means you’re the reincarnation of… oh gods, eww”

Shooting Shimmer a very displeased glare, Cash said: “Thank you Shimmer…”

Sticking her tongue out at Cash, Shimmer gleefully replied. “No problem – now you can stop leaving me books on etiquette in my quarters back in Sunhill”

The standoff between the two was broken by Sunrise asking what time exactly she should try to order the storm over the city for: “The bureau of weather usually doesn’t mind special requests, but this would be an out-of-season storm – and how strong winds do we actually need?”

Speaker did some quick math and gave Sunrise an estimate, framed via analogies and references to things like the dive speed of certain species of hawk, since he didn’t expect Sunrise to understand references to first age meteorological storm categorizations: “…but yes, when should we try to schedule this?”

Fire Orchid perked up from her hoof-wrestling session with a beefy smuggler: “Just book it for the same day Sunrise is done learning the spell – two days from now, around an hour before noon? We need daylight for the spell right?”

Nobody objected to this, so Sunrise accepted the information, repeated it back to Speaker once to confirm that she’d gotten it right, then she left for a private room to pray in.

Silken Laughter came running shortly thereafter, looking rather angrily at Cash: “You! You said you had talked to the immaculates you let in here!”

“And I can talk to them again if need be – how bad is it?” Cash wondered, shifting his position to face the bandit king.

Letting out a very deeply frustrated groan, Silken Laughter glared at Cash – speaking not with words, but venting his frustration via a series of somewhat aggressive strangling gestures.

A quick visit to some of the biggest dormitories within the sanctum, and tent cities just outside the sanctuary, saw the immaculates causing trouble – well, trying to council addicts out of their addictions, and encourage whores out of their life of prostitution – much to Silken Laughter’s fury. This worried Sully and Fire Orchid, them not liking the idea of the master of their refuge ending up on bad terms with them, but Silverclaws reassured them: “It’s been difficult enough for him to keep the sanctum running the last five years – he doesn’t want to lose his control over the residents like this, but he’s known for a while that he can’t prevent this either… just give him time to get used to it”

Cash and the others could see how that made sense, nodding at Silverclaws as she continued: “The immaculates usually always stayed topside, trying to help the poorest and hungriest in Legacy – I think they knew that the ones who fled down here were taken care of. The average citizen of Thorns is far too proud to ever crawl down here to seek shelter, even with the Mask taking over – so there are plenty of souls up there who still need help, and the immaculates do what they can”

“Sounds about right – though I guess your exaltation means you’ve abandoned that kind of pride?” Fire Orchid commented.

Silverclaws’s face drew into a smirk: “Can’t deny that – but yes, I mean the monks know they aren’t welcome down here, but the ones you freed didn’t have much of a choice. It was only a question of time until enough immaculates showed up here that he couldn’t stop them from coming in – he’s good at fighting, but a couple of temple-trained unicorns would probably be more than he can handle if they put their minds to it”

“Fine. By the way, you said earlier – before we had to run off on that impromptu rescue mission – that you had an idea for how to resolve who’ll run the city once we clear the Mask out?” Sullen Hoof inquired, not liking that the circle didn’t quite have a proper plan for wrapping their activities in Thorns up.

The way Silverclaw put it, then she wasn’t entirely sure, but she had some clues: “A couple of weeks ago we started getting ‘competition’ along our smuggling routes – maybe that’s why the Mask’s patrols got alerted to some of them. We’ve tracked some of that activity to somewhere in the south-eastern part of Legacy, and I’ve smelled new scents in the air there… unicorn scents – so I think we got another team of would-be saviours who snuck into the city”

“Another team of unicorns? This has happened before?” Fire Orchid wondered.

It wasn’t quite a sigh, but Silverclaws walked over to a bookshelf and rifled through the ledgers there: “Here we go… yes, over the last five years we’ve had so many circles of unicorns show up, thinking they would poke the Mask with their horn and make him go away. If they brought troops, Juggernaut would swat them, if it was immaculates with their martial arts, then the mask would send his enforcers like the Master of Five Agonizing Torments, or Reaper of Bloodstained Snow… their heads and horns would be on separate pikes spread around the city by sundown”

“Good thing that ‘Fives’ and ‘Rip’ are both dead then– and the abyssal we met earlier today will be in for an ugly surprise next time he tries to fight” Speaker said, trying to make things sound a tad more cheerful.

Fire Orchid looked like she had a ponder: “Say, Silverclaws – exactly how many deathknights does the Mask have in his employ?”

The lunar didn’t have an exact answer to that – but noted that beyond the four abyssals that the circle had met, then the Mask had at least a few more: “He has one that works as his high priest. You either kneel to him or you just drop dead – and he’s freaky good at raising the dead to do his bidding”

“Ah yes, we’ve encountered the ‘killing words technique’ more than once” Cash noted, his voice clearly giving away discomfort, as he clutched his chest without thinking.

Silverclaws gave Cash a nod that spoke of shared pain: “I’ve found the best way to avoid that is either get away from them, or make them stop talking – ideally with a good knife in the ribs”

“That’s about what we’ve figured too” Speaker chimed in.

Fire Orchid sat down, thinking even harder: “Ok, but how about this one: Do you know long it takes for the Mask to reincarnate dead abyssals?”

“Well… again, we don’t know if the Mask is even aware that Rip and Fives are dead” Silverclaws responded.

It was quickly pointed out that with Speaker and Silverclaws’ run-in with ‘Happy’ earlier that day, then the Mask was likely to do a headcount – if for nothing else to brief and warn his minions that there were solars loose in the city. Silverclaws had to agree that such a course of events was quite likely, but first once Happy woke up: “…say, Speaker, when will Happy wake up?”

“I honestly don’t know. He’s not dreaming, I made sure of that – but the Mask won’t get word from him until he wakes… so I think we still have some time – but if we assume he’s woken up around this afternoon and reported in, then the Mask would become aware of his two dead abyssals about now. So how quickly does he reincarnate them?” Speaker stated, turning the question back to Silverclaws.

Appearing unsure, Silverclaws looked at Silken Laughter who thought at about it for a moment: “Well… a couple of years ago you did learn that Typhon had died – and the Mask spent months looking for a suitable replacement, but after we heard that the Mare with the Mirthless Smile was killed the Mask had her replaced by Rip in just a few days – so I guess it depends on whether he has a suitable host ready or not”

“Interesting… but that gives us a few days at the very least – though it also means we shouldn’t wait too long. I guess that fits well with Sunrise trying to order the storm for the day after tomorrow” Fire Orchid mused.

Cash took a deep breath: “Right, but that means that some of us will have to work quickly tonight if we’re to set up our last trick so its ready for the big show”

Silverclaws shot the solar a curious look: “What trick?”

“One that involves quite a lot of salt, come – I’m sure you can help out too, and Silken Laughter we’ll need a lot of hooves to haul cargo on the sly!” Cash said, sounding as devious as ever.

It was thus that the circle called for an assembly of Silken Laughter’s smugglers, briefing them on their plans for the evening: It involved sneaking dozens of crates of carefully carved and painted blocks of salt into various city warehouses, as well as forging orders to the mortal foremen managing the city’s zombie road worker crews.

The plan itself was beautiful in its elegance, and Speaker found it quite impressive too – apparently based on stratagems devised during his travel west for Shimmer. The basic idea was almost as old as time itself: Ghosts could not cross unbroken lines of salt. That combined with Sunhill’s very strong trade ties with the lands of the Bull of North, in particular the salt-spire city of Plenilune, meant that Sunhill had some quite impressive stores of salt in the form of massive solid blocks of the stuff.

This had led to an initial scheme of maintaining salt lines around Sunhill, to keep out ghost spies and whatnot – but with normal commerce going in and out of the city, such lines were near impossible to maintain. To solve that problem some enterprising ponies of Sunhill had found that carving solid salt blocks into long boards, as if cutting a log into planks, allowed them to slot such salt bars into the ground and achieve the same effect as if pouring a line of ground up granulated salt.

Once Sullen Hoof had caught wind of this clever scheme, the ponies in charge were greatly rewarded and honoured, the mare who had gotten the idea being adorned in an official robe of honor, after which Sullen Hoof had applied his culinary genius to further refine the setup for covert use: Carving the salt planks with patterns akin to wood grain, and painting them with food dye so they looked indistinguishable from real wood, they could be snuck into places where white salt was no allowed – such as Thorns.

Vanilla Bean found this idea of solid salt blocks quite interesting – chiefly because such blocks were a lot more durable than normal salt powder for making lines: “Can we have some of those too? What happened earlier today can’t happen with blocks like that – especially if we fit them into the floor”

“Are you sure? Have these painted salt blocks been tested? I thought salt had to be uncovered to provide protection?” Silken Laughter said, expressing worries about the plan.

Sullen Hoof nodded, his many-faceted orichalcum helmet reflecting the light from many various candles: “It has been tested – and the reason you shouldn’t cover normal salt lines is that doing so has a very great likelihood of scattering the salt, breaking the line. With this, you have to put in a lot of effort to shatter and scatter the salt”

Silken Laughter’s smugglers were quickly assigned each their crate of painted salt blocks. Cash’s plan was to have the city’s road workers install the salt blocks along the edge of the road that ran along the outside of the city wall. The Smugglers were to bring the crates out to locations near the work crew’s material storage yards and warehouses, or as close as possible without risking themselves. Shimmer would sneak the crates into their final position, while Sully and Silverclaws would run around between the work crew foremen, bringing forged orders to them about the installation of the new ‘special planks’.

It was a few hours before dawn when everyone reconvened, Speaker, Fire Orchid and Sunrise having spent their time tending to the ponies within and around the sanctum, raising their spirits and tending to the many injuries and infections one got from living in a sewer.

This saw everyone sleep in late, first waking from the sound of rushing water around the sanctum: The sewers were awash with rain, the usual fun of rot and sewage being slightly lessened outside the sanctum.

It made for a solemn and otherwise quiet day of waiting, checking equipment, and preparing one self for going into battle. Meditation, tea, and more than a few distractions by Silken Laughter faffing about saw the quiet before the storm pass easily enough.

The next morning, Sunrise awoke with a start, announcing her epiphany in having finally understood the spell she had been taught. The circle thus prepared itself, loading up on extra salt, and all the other weapons and gadgets they had brought to Thorns. Traversing the sewers during heavy rains was difficult, many of the passages being completely flooded, but with a bit of grit, essence, good cooperation, Shimmer’s elsewhere den and her turning into a freshwater fish, the circle made it to a sewer exit in the Shroudwant district… and good heavens it was chaos. The previous days rains had turned into a thunderstorm, as had been requested…

There were Thornguard running all over the place, as all the alarm towers were blaring – but with each gale-force gust of wind, one of the shrieking ghosts in the alarm towers winked out, followed by the distant sound of a building collapsing under the darkened stormy sky. Oh, it was beautiful.

“Good work Speaker, looks like the whole city is up in arms but has no idea where to focus their efforts – Sully, that means you’re up” Fire Orchid ordered.

Nodding, Sully used his illusory disguise charms and his magical helmet to grant him the ethereal appearance of a translucent ghost – though unlike the ghost disguise he had used last time, he was this time in the guise of a ghostly Thornese government official, complete with the mark of the Mask embroidered into his very official-looking illusory robes. Thusly disguised, Sully quickly headed west down the street to carry out his part of the plan.

“Alright, the square we’re looking for is three blocks down the other way. We’ll need to wait for Sully’s trick to work, but once we’re in the clear we’ll have to move fast” Fire Orchid said, forcing on her disguise of rags a bit too hard, but Speaker was there to mend it, so her suit of armor underneath wouldn’t show.

Making their way to the square in question, the large plaza in front of an impressively large amphitheatre, which featured the ghoulish decoration of a large barbed soulsteel spike with the god of Thorns slowly sliding down it, the whole circle got chills from the gruesome view. The circle had deliberated on whether to simply kill the god, or try to save it. Speaker had of course voted for saving it, but he understood that his attention would then be split between protecting Sunrise and tending to the god, so if he couldn’t stabilize the god quickly, then…

“They’re moving out!” Silverclaws said, sounding quite giddy, despite being drenched from the heavy rainfall.

The Thornguard troops dotted around the square started marching towards the harbour. Other units of Thornguard from other parts of the city also marched through the square came through, as they headed towards the harbour, all of them acting on the orders given by Sully who was in the guise of a ghostly government official: He was to go around on the harbour, ordering all the troops in the city to go there under the guise of some kind of impending invasion sailing in on the stormwinds. The final part of his deception was to call for the city gates to be closed and sealed for the day, preventing the troops from flooding back into the city easily.

Shimmer was up in the sky in the form of a raven, monitoring the city gates. She came down to the circle, announcing Sully’s success in having the gates closed: “The Thornguard is locked out! Let’s go!”

Disguises were thrown aside, and the circle strode boldly into the mostly vacant square. There weren’t many witnesses, at least not many outside at that moment, except for a few government officials – some mortal, some ghosts – huddled in alcoves to avoid being while caught in the rain, though there were many more peering out from windows that oozed incense smoke.

Silverclaws was quite happy to toss aside her rags, using her shapeshifting charms to adorn herself in a beautiful garb of bright peacock-feathers: “Oh Thorns, are you ready to shine again?!”

Rushing up to the impaled city god, the circle quickly went to work trying to free the suffering spirit – and trying not to slip in the divine ichors leaking out from the poor thing.

Shimmer quickly shifted into her warform, flying up and using her essence webbing to pull the god upwards – while Speaker leapt up on the spike and carefully applied his deconstruction charm to shear off the spike just above the god, as well as removing as many of the barbs on it as possible.

The instant the spike was weakened Fire Orchid leapt up and kicked the upper spike bit aside, after which Shimmer heaved and got the god off the spike with a truly sickening wet ripping sound as the last few barbs added insult to injury.

Gently putting the god down on a soft bed of non-sticky webbing, Speaker quickly went to work, all the while Fire Orchid pounded the remains of the spike into a somewhat flattened platform for Shimmer to hide elsewhere.

Silverclaws quickly began patrolling the square, looking for trouble while Speaker worked each and every of his medical charms in a desperate fight against time. In the years of being in charge of a hospital, he had seen so many strange and exotic diseases and medical cases, but this… this was new – and yet it was also simply all the same injuries, but in new and cruel ways. Bleeding wounds could be closed, lacerations could be sealed up with sutures of essence, torn off flesh could be magically regrown, infections could be purged, poisoned blood could be cleansed – there was nothing new, and yet the way in which all of these cruel things had been mixed and compounded was most definitely new, even more so because of the god’s divine anatomy.

Speaker briefly wondered if a new god would have to be appointed in Yu-Shan, to oversee this type of cruel injury.

“Can you stabilize him?” Fire Orchid called out, barely audible through the heavy rain.

Speaker looked up, his blazing golden anima lighting up the gruesome chest wound of the god for all to see. He didn’t say anything, but he did nod. Of course, the real question was how long the god would be stable… for the god was still far too weak to even speak. Speaker had to find some way of putting the god out of harms way too…

Some very confused and frightened ghosts ran from the square as Sunrise ascended to the broken pillar turned platform and began shaping sorcery. Her anima flared brightly as willed magical intent into the strange and arcane patterns of essence around her. While she did that Speaker called out to Shimmer: “I need you down here!”

Circling around the square one last time to scan it with her third eye’s essence sight, Shimmer came rushing back to the circle as she landed next to Speaker: “I saw two units of Thornguard coming in from the palace, from the south Lord Bright!”

“Great. Open your elsewhere den – I want to stash City Father inside, to keep him safe” Speaker said, straining to float the god up to move him.

Shimmer frowned – which looked funny due to the three eyes of her warform: “Right Lord Bright, that’ll be fun to clean up later…”

Opening the elsewhere den, Shimmer carefully grabbed the god and moved him inside – but before she closed the den Speaker jumped up and did… something… to the god before skipping : “There, now you can close up”

Shimmer did as requested, though she did at first look at the god with her three eyes: “There we go… now tell me what you did Lord Bright, because that looks weird in essence sight”

While Speaker would have loved to have gone into detail on how he had used his dream-based martial arts to not just make the god sleep, but sleep with a wonderful dream about Thorns being remade and experiencing a great new cultural renaissance, as opposed to having been trapped in a living nightmare of perpetual impalement. Instead of doing all that, he simply said: “I made him sleep with happy dreams – now where are the Thornguard units coming from?”

Pointing towards the southern exit from the plaza, Speaker galloped out to meet Fire Orchid who appeared to always be in position: “What’s the plan general?”

“General? Cute – but what’s the plan… don’t die? We could use some walls to funnel the units into chokepoints – do that for all the entry points” Fire Orchid mused, looking around at the rain slick cobble covering the square.

Speaker found the plan quite reasonable, so he quickly withdrew his singing staff from elsewhere and played up several earth-walls through the coble. It didn’t take many seconds before much of the plaza was replete in simple walls, much to the great sorrow of any nearby stone-layer or roadworker. It was at that point that the first unit of Thornguard arrived, the commanding officer quite loudly demanding to know what was going on, her voice barely carrying in the stormy weather.

Fire Orchid didn’t answer the question in any way that the officer expected – she instead punched the officer so hard she flew back into her unit, splattering her across her unit and probably killing or maiming several of her troops – followed by Fire Orchid jumping into the fray, serving up bucks and headbutts freely, Thornguard flying left and right.

Speaker watched the fighting with a smile on his face, even more so as the first rays of bright golden light pierced the heavy storm clouds to illuminate Sunrise, shining warmth and color upon her and the cobblestone around the flattened soulsteel spike. It was wonderous to see what appeared to be golden thunder accumulate in the clouds above her, and with some quick math he figured that in the first ten minutes of the spells effect the entire city should be cleared of the shadowland… at a rate of one mile every two and a half minutes, as an expanding circle. That would be roughly fifty yards every one and a half seconds? Oh, this was going to happen so quickly once Sunrise let it rip…

Not wanting to miss anything, Speaker ignited his ruby pinions and flew up above the buildings surrounding the plaza – he wanted to see this!

From up above, soon joined by Shimmer, the melee that Fire Orchid was in looked positively comical, with mortal Thornguard troops being flung around like ragdolls: Some went high, some went far, but very few of them got up again.

That was when the first proper counter-attack came in: A dirty great gout of black lightning streaming out from the palace in the middle of the city down into the square, hitting a building near Sunrise, who kept working on her magic undaunted.

Shimmer quickly flew into position to shield Sunrise, growing her bone-armor out to cover her wings – her body straining to stay aloft from the added weight, though that too was quickly alleviated via another bit of shapeshifting that grew her strength and endurance, leaving her glowing brightly with silvery flames around her, like a bright moon knight defending her sacred charge.

Speaker in turn flew out from the square over the city to seek the source of the attack, finding a deathknight atop a clocktower in the direction of the palace. Throwing Gift, he was able to force the dread archer from aiming correctly, making the next arrow of black lightning go wide, striking somewhere in the harbour, if not outright simply hitting the water.

“What the… who dares?!” shouted the deathknight, glaring angrily at Speaker from a face that quite frankly… wasn’t really there anymore, looking more like the kind of burnt skeletal remains one would see from someone caught in a housefire, one oddly decked out in decorative belts and straps tied around his bony limbs. How was this pony even talking without a tongue, cheeks or lungs?

Speaker pitied the deathknight, and brought Homage to bear, diving in for a full on attack as the archer frantically tugged at the massive soulsteel bow – but Speaker was faster than the abyssal’s draw, and his entire dive was a feint anyway, throwing both of his gyroscopic chakrams just before tackling the archer and trying to grab it… him… her… it was really hard to tell since the abyssal appeared to naught but a loosely clothed charred skeleton, though the dusk caste caste-mark was quite clear on its brow.

Unfortunately for Speaker, then the abyssal artfully dodged Speaker’s bullrush, as well as the two chakrams: “Fool – you will die a screaming death, and I will mould our ghost into a spittoon!”

“Can you even spit!?” Speaker retorted, not really sure how a skeletal abyssal like that work.

The abyssal didn’t bother explaining himself, instead it held its magical bow high drew it repeatedly at great speed, unleashing three arrows of black essence at great speed, each of which flew up and then homed in on Speaker unerringly, like a fly homing in on a piece of rotten flesh.

Now, mere arrows weren’t any issue for Speaker – his shield charms more than capable of deflecting such pathetic threats… except each arrow hit with the force of a void boulder, not in any way piercing the shields, but smacking Speaker wildly off course with one hit, down on a rooftop with another, and with the third he was struck down through the roof, landing him in a pile of rubble, his vision clouded in dust, though luckily he was unscathed thanks to his shield charms.

Ok, that was not how Speaker had envisioned that – but, same procedure as with the abyssal that Silverclaws had called ‘Happy’: Using his ephemeral presence technique to make him next to impossible to detect, his elemental immunity charm to make the brick dust be a non-issue for him to breathe, and his deconstruction charm to create even more dust. Hmm… Speaker did reason that it would be a good idea to have Sully teach him a charm or two to enhance his senses and general awareness, for while his dream-charm made his senses keener, he still found it quite difficult to detect anything in the collapsed house.

From the hole up going up through the… third floor? Oh, he was on the second floor of a three story building, no wonder he still felt the place creaking and straining from the broken structural beams – anywho, Speaker was hearing what sounded like annoyed shouting from up above, as well as the buzz of Gift flying around. Ah, the sounds of a foe who had discovered that Gift and Homage wouldn’t stop until it hit you, good times.

“Oh, screw this!” Speaker heard the abyssal cry out, followed by the deathknight jumping down the hole to not very far from where he was. Gift and Homage both followed along, much to the annoyance of the skeletal abyssal, at which point Speaker reviewed his options – because he was also hearing noises in adjacent rooms that indicated that there were probably terrified ponies living in the place.

The abyssal probably had a slightly different take on the situation, but he didn’t get much time to ponder that, as the two golden disks kept whirling about him and only narrowly missing thanks to his dodging charms that had left him awash in black soul-fire, his anima staining the rubble around him bright red with blood: “You little shit, where are you?!”

Seeing the abyssal waving his bladed bow around, Speaker carefully considered his options. He didn’t want to be bogged down fighting this one foe to a standstill – he just needed to get rid of the abyssal’s bow…

Recalling Homage, all the while Gift kept making a lovely amount of noise and bladed danger for the deathknight, Speaker took careful aim and after a few seconds hurled Homage so that it passed the deathknight, came around and then tried to bash the bow out of his bony grip.

Coming in silently, and cloaked by the dust, Homage struck the bow and flung it towards Speaker. The abyssal cried out in anger, lunging for the bow but having to divert to dodge Gift once more, all the while Speaker beat a hasty retreat out a window, igniting his ruby pinions once outside so that the wings of flame wouldn’t set the building alight.

Quickly gaining distance from the abyssal, though the undead horror’s shouts of fury were still carried clearly in the wind, Speaker struggled to force the bow away into elsewhere using the same charm he’d normally use to quickly stash and recall his own weapons. This left him almost distracted enough to miss the glorious sight that unfolded before him as he flew back over the rooftops of Thorns to the plaza in front of the twilight amphitheatre: With a piercing cry that pulsed out from Sunrise, followed an instant later by the greatly engorged thundercloud high above unloading its full fury of golden lightning down into her, and through her into the ground, the shadowland erupted, peeling away like dead skin.

It was the most beautiful thing Speaker had ever seen. It was the kind of sight, seeing color and warmth return to this patch of Creation as it blossomed outwards, that poets and artists could spend a lifetime painting or composing poetry to honor and exalt.

As the pulse moved outwards, and Speaker flew in towards it, the instant the two met he drew a deep breath, savouring the renewed feeling of respiring the cleansed essence of Creation. Oh, how glorious it felt!