The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The art of relentless persuasion stylist convinces the soup to become palatable and tasty, then consumes it wholly.

…

Thousands of ghosts in Thorns howled as their comfortable twilight existence was upended, the burning light of day bringing their undead nature to the forefront as nature itself rejected them. It was sad in some sense, many of the ghosts being previously living citizens of Thorns slain by the Mask who had risen in the shadowland, who had simply continued their unlife as if nothing had truly happened… but that was no longer an option.

Speaker came flying into the theatre square, finding the rest of the circle and Silverclaws embroiled in battle, though now that the shadowland had lifted the scores of zombies and hungry ghosts fighting them were noticeably weaker!

Quickly looking around to get a reading of everything and using a charm to make that happen instantly, Speaker realized that the removal of the shadowland had come at a very fortuitous point in time: Sunrise, Cash, Shimmer and Silverclaws were all engaged fighting hordes of zombies, ghosts and a not quite depleted number of Thornguard.

Judging where his skills would help the most, he flew overhead of the mob of hungry ghosts that Shimmer had tangled up with her essence webbing – something that he hadn’t even known that she could do – throwing Gift and Homage down into the throng of ghosts, each enhanced by the aptly named ghost-eating technique, each ghost that the orichalcum weapons cut apart exploding in a puff of essence that raced up into Speaker’s anima, refuelling him spiritually and giving him no small amount of reprieve: “When did the ghosts show up ?”

“Just after you flew off Lord Bright – I think they must have been hiding in the basement of the theatre like a garrison. Been wrangling them ever since and tossing them into the pile here” Shimmer replied, her voice strained as she had clearly been very busy.

Well, that made sense. Looking to Fire Orchid, Speaker saw her bloodied – but it did not appear to be her own: “What about the others? Who needs help?”

“I think Silverclaws and Cash could use help Lord Bright – they’ve been tussling with a pair of abyssals that came from the theatre” Shimmer noted, a flash from her anima pointing in their direction.

At first it struck Speaker as odd that he hadn’t noticed anything in that area of the plaza, for it was near Sunrise – but then he noticed that he wasn’t hearing anything from Sunrise either as she was clearly channelling vast amounts of essence through herself in a magical trance, purging more and more shadowland with every moment. Of course! She had to be using her silencing charm, so nobody could distract her through words or making other noise!

Flying over to Sunrise, Speaker found Silverclaws and Cash quite embattled, facing off against two deathknights who were both blazing with necrotic essence, their paths traced clearly on the cobble by thick coatings of blood left by their dark passing, their anima making even the stone weep.

Cash looked as he usually did – his self-repairing heavenly silks and his collar of dawns cleansing meaning that it wasn’t really possible to see if he was hurt, but he had his claws out on his shoes of distant of claws, and was making great use of them, while Silverclaws appeared to be positively plucked; her peacock-feather gown slashed, torn and stained red with her blood, though it had apparently managed to handle her warform just fine.

The two deathknights fighting them looked very martially inclined, one being a lithe stallion wielding a nasty whip of blood, which clearly spoke of him being a laughing wounds stylist, while the other abyssal looking like a burly mare with a nasty array of spiked soulsteel shoes on, combined with armor adorned with large spikes – it wasn’t quite obvious what her fighting game was, but judging from the amount of blood on her piked shoes, then she was certainly a dangerous one.

None of the two looked terribly keen on seeing Speaker join their fight, but they didn’t get much of a choice: Speaker threw Gift and Homage at the lithe whip-wielder, the abyssal quickly batting Gift aside, but Homage got a hit in that saw the abyssal flung high into the air – both abyssals looking a tad surprised at that.

The other deathknight was about to shout something at Speaker when Cash fired some more claws at her, drawing her attention. The twilight caste solar in turn swooped in and grabbed the tossed abyssal, flinging him even higher up in the air, where the blood-whip-wielder struggled mightily to right himself, and presenting an ultimatum: “Surrender and I’ll drop you down gently – if you don’t, you’re coming down hard”

The floating stallion did not appear to like his options – but then he saw something… something that made him both smile and chuckle: “How about you surrender instead?”

Briefly looking to see what the git was sniggering at, Speaker saw to his horror a gigantic yeddim-sized undead creature of some sort, one covered with great steel plates and spikes, battering down the northern city gate – and a horde of zombies rushing around the openings already made. Bloody hell – enemy reinforcements!

“Right, off with you then” Speaker said with a heavy heart, tossing Gift once more so that it struck the flailing abyssal stallion from beneath, flinging the deathknight high into the air – and this time the poor soul came down just fine, splattering on the cobble quite spectacular.

The other deathknight did not take having her buddy slain well – but Silverclaws was spitting venom at her eyes, and Cash was launching his claws at her just the same, locking the deathknight down into a very defensive posture: “Damn you!”

Speaker flew over to the two of them, evaluating the situation: “Need help with this one?”

“No, we’re good – but don’t get close to her or attack her up close, hurts really bad” Cash said, sounding more than a little happy that he only had to deal with a single foe at that point.

This of course made the news that enemy reinforcements were incoming all the touchier, plus Speaker didn’t want to give the abyssal any happy news. Flying up, Speaker could tell that the zombies were still a dozen or so blocks away – but that wouldn’t last long. The northern city gate was completely broken down by that strange necromantic construction, which was beelining towards the square, ploughing through factories and workshops – which was a lot slower than the zombies rushing through the streets, but it was much shorter too.

Checking the square, Speaker flew over and called upon Shimmer to finish up the ghosts quickly: “We’ve got incoming, lots of them”

“Oh great, what Lord Bright?” Shimmer said, as she tightened the knot on her webbing, the giant wiggling ball of hungry ghosts almost completely wrapped up.

It was not happy bird noises that Shimmer made as Speaker brought her up to speed, especially since it was clear that her webbing would be critical for corralling and wrangling all the zombies. On the plus side, Shimmer explaining that her plan was just to pick up and toss the web-ball full of ghosts and toss it into the ocean, which gave Speaker an idea just as she was about to patch the last gap in the sphere: “Hey, keep that hole open would you?

Flying back to Cash and Silverclaws, Speaker girded himself to defy the warnings of his comrades, as he tried to grab the deathknight – but she swatted him away, appearing to not want to suffer the same fate as her late peer: “Oh no you don’t!”

“Really? You think you’ll last long with a three on one?” Cash called out, clearly trying to get under the deathknight’s skin.

Despite her very aggressive martial posture, the abyssal appeared clever enough to know a bad situation when she saw it, as she tried to back away and avoid being encircled: “I will get you at some point!”

“You say that, but are you looking at what you’re backing up to” Silverclaws quickly noted, dropping from her fighting stance to just stand and point at something behind the deathknight.

Speaker had to chuckle. That was such a dirty trick, trying to make the abyssal look away – which would obvious make the deathknight vulnerable to a sneak attack – and the grim mare appeared to be well aware of it: “Oh screw this!”

With a single mighty leap the deathknight soared over the rooftops, heading south towards the palace and juggernaut – though not before Speaker tossed Gift to tilt the abyssal off course just enough, that the mighty leap became a lot of spinning, flailing and screaming into the side of a building. It wasn’t clear if that killed the deathknight, but it probably didn’t feel good.

All three exalts breathed heavy sighs of relief, when Shimmer called out: “Can I toss these yet?”

“Yes, please do!” Speaker replied, as he looked in Shimmer’s direction and saw a flagpole near her bent precariously.

A moment later Shimmer called out “Pull!” and used the bent over flagpole and her webbing as a makeshift catapult, launching the ball of wiggling and moaning ghosts high into the air towards the harbor. It left a clear trail of ash, as the sunlight scorched the ghosts – one of the clear indications that the shadowland had been undone.

As Shimmer approached the three, Fire Orchid joined in – having wiped the floor with the last of the zombies: “So, what’s next?”

“Big horde of zombies and necro-surgically made monsters coming down wall street towards us, led by the Physician – they’ll be here in a few minutes” Shimmer said, as she extended her senses outwards.

Silverclaws stomped the cobble hard: “Damnit… where do all these deathknights keep coming from!? We haven’t even seen the Physician or the Bloody Canoness yet – where did the Mask get this kind of backup!?”

“These two we just fought, the way they looked around this plaza when they teleported in – they were looking around as if they hadn’t seen this place before. They weren’t local” Cash pointed out; his charms of subtle social cue detection having run passively throughout the fight.

Fire Orchid groaned, wiping blood-stained hooves on her brow: “So he figured out that we’re pulling something and brought in backup – so what? We’re still winning”

“Sunrise has only been at it for about three minutes – she has to do this at least ten or it’ll all snap back. We haven’t won yet” Speaker said, as he bobbed up and down in the air.

Silverclaws let out a frustrated and very angry cat noise, her half-cat warform making it sound oddly cute, like a yawning kitten: “Ok that does it – no more nice-claws!”

Cash looked like he was about to make some snide quip at the lunar, when she withdrew a dirty great soulsteel scythe from elsewhere just as the dull roar of thousands of zombies came rolling in from the north-east. Cash instead opted to give the lunar an impressed nod: “Nice, you got that one from the abyssal we killed, right?”

“Yup – and my elder promised me a moonsilver weapon one day if I ever slew one hundred things in one day – I think I’ll get that now” Silverclaws said, her paws tightening around the nasty looking dark scythe with eerie faces pushing their way out of the metal.

Shimmer found that rather impressive: “Neat, what did your mentor teach you for using a scythe?”

“He taught me this for the spear, but a scythe synergizes with this too – White Reaper style” Silverclaws said, as she reared up and floated the scythe before her in a posture that left none in doubt that someone was about to reap what they had sown.

The zombies came rushing, and before Silverclaws the entire first wave was cut down like grass. The rest of the circle – sans Sunrise who was busy doing her sorcerous thing, and Sullen Hoof who was likely still off somewhere running interference – joined in, stemming the tide of undead.

While holding off the zombies – which quite honestly wasn’t very difficult, especially with how Silverclaws seemed quite adept at mowing down scores of them using her giant scythe – then both Speaker and Fire Orchid both voiced worries that tying all of them up with zombies left them vulnerable to attacks form the rear. To this end Shimmer disengaged and watched the rest of the plaza, using her webbing to block off the other access points and quickly ‘decorating’ them with various bits and bobs, mainly so that anyone breaking through would make enough noise to easily be heard.

A few precious minutes passed – Sunrise’s spell worked its magic every second, spreading the bright hole in the shadowland further around the city – and the mountain of rotting flesh that was Juggernaut began to stir. With thunderous steps it started to hobble away from Thorns, keeping itself within the shadowland, while moving in a southern direction.

This was when the circle heard the sound of cheers, sporadic at first, but the whole city seemed to feel the elation as Juggernaut moved away – as if the very buildings breathed heavy sighs of relief, seeing the ancient Maker of Rubble leave. It lifted everyone’s spirits, making a lot more ponies stick their head out of their windows to see what was going on.

With everyone glowing either brightly with gold or silver from how much essence they had spent, it was pretty obvious to anyone looking that it wasn’t the dragonblooded who were undoing their misery, but instead it was the kind of anathema that their local immaculate preachers used to warn against. It certainly made a lot of ponies do some serious double-takes.

This lull, if constant though leisurely fighting with zombies could be called that, ended with the arrival of the great necromantic monstrosity that had ploughed through the city towards the plaza. It broke through the buildings to the north-east of the square – and it was pretty obvious that it was too much for Shimmer to stop on her own.

“Go, I can hold them!” Silverclaws called out, the many layers of silvery glow that surrounded her making any zombies that got too close slip and slide away from her, a strange effect of her grim martial arts, right up until she would focus the light into her scythe to whirl into the zombies and kill scores of them and clear some space around her.

Everyone else killed their last zombie and galloped towards the giant monster, trying to figure out how to stop the enormous thing from smashing into Sunrise. Shimmer seemed to be swooping around the rider of the great beast, forcing whoever was controlling the creature to focus more on her than on goading the monster forward.

“Go for the rear legs of it – make it stop moving!” Fire Orchid called out, just as Speaker flew past her on wings of golden fire.

With Gift attached to his left hoof and using its blades to dig into the impossibly thick leathery flesh of the monster, Speaker used Homage to slowly burn a hole in through the same strange multi-layered skin. It appeared as if the monster was layered with multiple thick hides sewn around its limbs, with each a layer of dead flesh armor appearing to feel no pain. That, combined with the thick metal armor plating that also covered much of its front made it into a grand living battering ram, one able to rear up and stomp on anything smaller than itself.

Of course, the great unliving siege engine hadn’t come alone: Behind it, once it cleared the buildings it had stomped and crushed its way through, surged another swarm of zombies.

This forced Cash to split off from the monster to keep the rest of the circle clear of zombies, chiefly via wrangling zombies up, around, over and tossing them back into half a dozen other zombies, smashing them all apart in doing so: “We are so boned in anything else joins this fight!”

Speaker wanted to agree, but he was also trying to make sense of the strange anatomy of the monster he was cutting into. The outer layers had clearly been but dead dry hides stretched over the beast, but he had reached a depth where it actually bled – which meant that the thing was somehow alive, despite his medical diagnostic charms saying otherwise. It was very weird… and Cash was shouting something.

Turning to see what was going on, Speaker was surprised to see fire, lightning, swirling razor rose petals and… ok when did a bunch of unicorns join the fight?

It seemed that a group of unicorns and several dozens of soldiers had joined the fight, holding the tide of zombies back, holding the line so that Cash could leap back onto the back of the monster and have a go at the abyssal controlling it.

“Hey, I know you!” Cash said gleefully, as he zig-zagged along the back of the giant monster, running in and out of cover of the massive steel spikes bolted onto the armor of the beast, artfully dodging bolts of black lightning shot at him by The Seven-Degreed Physician of Black Maladies, who looked none too pleased that his zombie escorts weren’t guarding him properly.

The dozen war ghosts that manifested tried to – but weakened by having to manifest in Creation, not in a shadowland – meant that Cash carved his way through them while whistling a most annoying little tune, one fortified and supplemented hilariously by a combination of charms that made it impossible for the Physician to focus on controlling the monster: “Gah, will you stop that!”

“How about I stop you instead?” Cash quipped, bucking the Physician with his Heaven Thunder Hammer technique, which sent the necromancer flying off into the side of a building, which he impacted hard, falling down onto the plaza and struggling to get up. Meanwhile Cash did the dance of the six-bladed blender on the ‘controls’ of the monster, which were basically just a bunch of stylishly made ivory rods stuck into an opening into the monster’s brain at the back of its head.

Fire Orchid was the first to notice that the monster no longer trying to move forward, letting her heave and wrestle it over on its side – she didn’t trust that some other abyssal might leap in and try to make the thing move again.

This forced Speaker to leap away to avoid being crushed, leaving Homage inside the beast – though he was able to recall it though elsewhere. The idea of having to dig it out of the toppled monstrosity made him shudder… but only briefly, because the battle wasn’t over yet.

Were the unicorns that had joined the fray remnants of the city’s original armed forces? Their crackling elemental auras alone were ripping zombies apart left and right, and they had several dozen soldiers fighting with them – but that… that wasn’t like the old livery of Thorns that Speaker remembered from the battle of Mishaka. Red livery?

They certainly didn’t look like they needed help.

Flying up to get an idea of how many zombies they still had to contend with, Speaker also saw how Juggernaut was miles away from the city – not quite on the horizon, but it was obvious that it had been moved well away from the hole in the shadowland. The mass of zombies also seemed to shrinking, inspiring Speaker to soar higher and look further afield to check on the status of the whole city.

As he ascended, he saw what appeared to be thousands of ghosts beyond the southern city wall, locked in by the hidden salt barrier that was made up of Sullen Hoof’s painted salt blocks. He could see the essence burning away from them, as the noonday sunlight scorched them and simply dissolved the weakest of the ghosts, as they wailed and cried out for their dark lord to save them. Oh, it was glorious.

Speaker also saw something he hadn’t seen before in the few days he had been in Thorns: From high above, he saw ponies in the street. He was far too high up to see faces, but he could see the weary movement patterns of the crowds gathering in the streets: They weren’t rushing anywhere – they were just… looking.

It occurred to Speaker that they were probably looking at him, shining with golden light, with wings of fire, which would be in very sharp contrast to the dark and stormy sky. Was that a bad thing? Sunrise had said that with the immaculates they had rescued from the prison, then it stood to reason that their faith had been thoroughly shaken – so seeing what their preachers used to call those marked by unforgivable sin, a shining golden anathema, saving them from their dark lord… well… oh this was going to be something for Sunrise and Cash to sort out.

Still, there was something Speaker felt he could do: Flying down to the old autocrat’s palace in the middle of the city, Speaker circled the place and flew close to the great black banners of the Mask of Winters, that his wings of fire lit them aflame. Once all of them were on fire, Speaker swooped around and rammed the grim and looming statues of the Mask that had been set up at nearly every street corner, smashing each of them with hooves wreathed in golden essence.

Finally returning to the plaza before the twilight amphitheatre, Speaker found that the circle appeared to be at a bit of a standoff, with the brightly coloured animas of the unicorns on one side, and the golden and silver-blue animas of his friends on the other… oh boy.

Flying closer, Speaker heard the angry shouts being traded back and forth, with Silverclaws in the tattered remains of her peacock-feather dress and with her soulsteel grimscythe, screaming at the unicorns: “Well if you are so bloody brilliant, how come it wasn’t you who got rid of the shadowland and forced the Mask out of Thorns?”

Of the unicorns numbers there were about two dozen. Half of them wore clothes just marginally better than rags, looking very much like locals, while the rest had armor on – and in the case of their leaders, some very impressive and highly decorated green jade armor. The unicorn in charge appeared to be an auburn-maned mare in a bright green suit of jadesteel, which was adorned with flowery motifs, including inlays of black jade for petals. She seemed quite cheesed off at Silverclaws.

Speaker, coming in on his golden wings and still shining brightly from all his essence use, was hard to miss as he landed next to his friends. He was about to ask if introductions had been made, when another of the unicorns – a stallion clad in bright red jadesteel armor, with a coat as black as coal, but his mane was not just red like fire, it looked as if it was on fire – he leapt forth and pointed at Speaker accusatorily, speaking in a very heavily accented rivertongue: “You! What are you doing here!?”

This seemingly random utterance completely derailed the shouting match between the auburn-maned mare and Silverclaws, as everyone looked at the unicorn stallion and Speaker.

Thinking quickly, Speaker just barely managed to recall that he had met and spoken to a very pureblooded realm unicorn stallion back at Ledaal Asina’s party in An Teng, but he couldn’t quite remember the stallion’s name: “I’m saving the city – what does it look like?”

Cash quickly slid up next to Speaker and very quietly demanded a quick recap. Drawing a deep breath to buy himself a few seconds to compile his story, Speaker said: “Met him at a party in An Tang, told him and everyone else there a story about how I was a Thorns-born medic who’d signed up with Lookshy to fight at Deep Rot – they ate it raw”

“Filthy anathema – not only have you defiled Ledaal Asina’s house with your presence, but now you’re here- oww!” the stallion began, just as another of the unicorns, and old looking white-coated stallion with a very long grey beard, had whacked the firey unicorn over the back of his head with the flat side of his large blue jadesteel daiklaive.

The old stallion admonished the fire-maned unicorn: “Cynis Denoted Flame! You saw what they did – how dare you question their integrity!?”

Oh right, the hostess of the party Speaker had been to, she had called the fiery unicorn ‘Denny’! Speaker perked up: “Denny, I might have twisted the truth a little when I told you my story – but all the rest of it was quite true – plus, Asina knew”

Denny’s eyes went wide and his mane seemed to extinguish itself in a display of his deflating spirit: “No… impossible”

Pushing Denny aside, the auburn-maned unicorn mare shoved her way forward to face Speaker, speaking in a notable but none the less understandable rivertongue: “Right, can we take this somewhere a little more civil without the audience?”

As if he had waited for an opportunity to move the argument to somewhere more civil, Cash quickly stepped up: “Yes – lets! I’ve been made to understand that the theatre right over here has some perfectly serviceable meeting rooms. Let’s go in there, so we can avoid riling up a riot”

Looking around, Speaker recognized that the crowd of civilians around them had a lot of angry faces – on both the side of the crowd standing behind the unicorns, and the crowd standing behind the circle.

With Cash leading the way, using some kind of charm to make the crowd part ways around them, everyone else quickly followed suit – though Speaker quickly noted that several dozen soldiers in bright red livery were following the unicorns… lovely.

“Orchid, who are these unicorns? They’re clearly not from around here?!” Speaker quietly asked as they walked inside the theatre, past frightened looking staff as Silverclaws shapeshifted back into pony form and used another charm to somehow restore her peacock feather dress.

Fire Orchid shrugged: “No clue, I think Silverclaws might know – but I can tell from their accent that they’re clearly from the blessed isle”

The theatre manager, a morose looking mare clad in black garbs as if fresh from a funeral, complete with sunken eyes and a pale coat, tried to object to the occupation of her biggest meeting room – but Denny was on her in the blink of an eye, ‘politely’ telling the mare that she could lodge her complaint with the Mask if he ever returns to the city.

In the meeting room nervous servants manoeuvred around the many soldiers standing behind the unicorns to serve refreshments. It was clear that the unicorns thought the soldiers as a way for them to project power, but it quickly became equally obvious to the unicorns that the ponies before them were not at all intimidated by their grand display, all the while Shimmer stayed outside to guard the place and keep Sunrise safe.

“So… how about a round of introductions?” Silverclaws said, sounding just a tad too cheerful, with her smile a bit too forced.

The unicorns clearly wanted to speak up first, but Cash spoke first up as his caste mark lit up: “Indeed, lets. I am Cash Charmer, Chosen of Celestia, the Most High. I am of the eclipse caste, and like my fellows here I am a Lord of Sunhill, trusted advisor to the King of Chung Do, friend of Lookshy, foe of the Guild and master of the Street of Swords district of Stygia in the Underworld”

Quite a few eyebrows were raised upon hearing Cash’s impressive array of titles, and so Cash continued to introduce the rest of the circle, artfully painting a grand picture of words of the circle’s many great deeds and accomplishments, though he did leave out certain sensitive elements – like their connections to heaven, what they had done in Denansdor, and several other things that unicorns from the realm probably hadn’t heard of. Sullen Hoof even popped in and joined the table just before Cash was done, allowing him to wrap up his grand tale of the lords of Sunhill by regaling about Sully’s adventures: “…of the Night Caste. The Lord Spymaster and Culinarian Supreme of Sunhill, Master of Orichalcum Chef style martial arts, blessed and anointed by Robed in Velvet, the god of fine dining”

The unicorns shared some interesting looks and whispered amongst themselves. Sullen Hoof, wearing his orichalcum mask and helmet that completely wrapped around his head, nodded: “Indeed, I command food and make my enemies kneel and beg for it in same way that you command troops and see your enemies kneel and beg for mercy”

“I didn’t know Sully speaks high realm?” Fire Orchid whispered to Speaker, who could only shrug.

The auburn-maned unicorn mare seemed impressed: “Very well. Our turn?”

Cash nodded, giving the table to the unicorn side of the table.

Pushing back her chair and standing up, the same unicorn made put a jade-shod hoof on the table: “My name is Tepet Roseblack, general and lord of the Vermillion legion” – which was instantly followed by her vermillion-clad troops lining the back walls of the meeting room letting out a very well-disciplined shout and cheer in the form of a “Oora!”.

The circle, not being terribly in tune with realm politics, had no clue if this meant that she was anything special. Fire Orchid did raise an eyebrow.

Roseblack continued: “To my right is my grandfather, Tepet Wind Dancer, retired general of the Tepet legions”

This made Fire Orchid look completely dumbfounded, same as Silverclaws. Cash instantly noticed that the two seemed to know of the pony, inquiring why he was special.

Silverclaws struggled to compose herself: “I… he’s THE Wind Dancer! Up until a couple of years ago he was the most famous and lauded general in the realm. He retired after the Bull of North butchered the Tepet legions at Futile Blood – that was his command”

Ah, a realm celebrity of sorts, with his granddaughter who was a new general?

Nodding, Roseblack nodded: “Indeed, so you’ll forgive him if his attitude towards golden anathema is a bit hostile”

“Yes, the Bull can be a bit tough to deal with, but Sunhill is on good terms with him. We trade a lot of salt coming from his territory” Cash said with a wide grin, to hammer home the notion that someone who defeated these high esteemed unicorns are friends to Sunhill. It wasn’t exactly a nice thing to say, but for a pissing match to see was the most powerful then it was a very unsubtle way of establishing dominance. Both Roseblack and Wind Dancer frowned at Cash, but held their tongue beyond that, at least until Cash motioned for Roseblack to resume her introductions.

Shaking off her disdain, Roseblack continued: “Right – and finally to my left is my good friend Cynis Denoted Flame”

Now, everyone had heard of house Cynis of the realm, the house that runs pretty much all of the brothels in the realm, the house that produces most of the drugs that the realm exports to its satrapys to keep their populations docile, the house where all its scions are infamous for being hedonists. The fire aspected stallion looked dead serious, and bore no signs of drug-use or anything like that.

“House Cynis? Interesting. Why would a house Cynis unicorn be helping a pair of house Tepet generals?” Silverclaws inquired, having clearly caught on to the strange mix of unicorns before them.

Denoted Flame looked to Roseblack who nodded and answered the question for him: “For the same reason that I’ve got unicorns from all the major houses under my command. I don’t discriminate, I reward skill and loyalty to the chain of command – and a lot of unicorns like that kind of governance, because we’re all tired of the ossified institutions and corruption rife in the realm”

Everyone on the unicorn side of the table nodded in agreement.

“Interesting – but you’re clearly not here with an invasion force big enough to liberate the city – so what are you doing here?” Fire Orchid inquired, having crunched the numbers of the soldiery that the unicorns had snuck into the city.

Roseblack nodded, her expression turning into one of grim realism: “I’m here because its where I figured I could do the most good. The vermillion legion got its marching orders and is in transit, and won’t arrive where it’s sent for quite a while still. I took a wing of my best to scout Thorns out, to plan for its liberation”

“…because your legion has been sent somewhere that puts it in striking distance of Thorns. Not bad” Sullen Hoof added, his profiling charms having clued him on what Roseblack hadn’t said out loud.

A lot of raised eyebrows came from that statement, but in the few seconds where everyone tried to feel out how to respond to that, if at all, a silver-blue messenger spell came racing through a cracked window. It announced its message quickly, in a hurried tone of Shimmer’s voice: “There’s an emissary from the Mask at the southern gate – wants to talk, can’t cross the salt lines I put up”