The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The gallant shadow stylist, being a gentleman thief, looks amazing as he consumes soup, but runs from the bill!

…

Thousands of citizens of Thorns looking on with wonder as the gold-fire wreathed warrior that was Speaker fought the killer blazing with darkness. Sunrise seized the moment and narrated artistically as Speaker fought the deathknight at the far end of the plaza: “Behold! The lords of Sunhill have battled the undead many times, and we have yet to meet a foe among their dread host who can truly best us. They fear us, for we can take away their shadowlands, and they hate us, for we have even taken in refugees among their dark champions, and redeemed their blackened souls, returning them to the light by the grace of the gods!”

With hooves blazing with essence, blows were traded in rapid succession, the explosions and shockwaves from the mighty blows looking quite spectacular – even from a distance, at least right up until Speaker finally managed to connect a blow that sent the abyssal flying towards the stage.

Landing quite gracefully, flipping around like a blood-soaked ninja, the deathknight quickly found himself under fire from nearby citizens as they vented their anger at him, throwing mugs, plates and anything else they could pick up – but he dodged it all effortlessly, all the while glaring at them with murderous eyes as he pulled from the bleeding soles of his hooves more bone shurikens to kill them all.

He was about to start flinging his razorshap bone shuriken at the crowd when Sullen Hoof swooped in from seemingly out of nowhere, causing the deathknight to toss his weapons at him instead, spraying the dinner table on the table as the bone munitions went wide and missed Sully by a mile, but hurt no-one.

“There you are! My master will reward me endlessly if I can finally show him your torn off head” the abyssal proudly declared, all manner of killing intent in his eyes.

Sullen Hoof offered no banter in return, his golden orichalcum mask around his head making him appear both silent and stoic. The only move he made was ready his twin orichalcum cleavers, and gesture mockingly for the deathknight to come hither.

With a bloodthirsty howl, the deathknight launched himself at Sully – his seemingly everflowing coating of blood spraying everywhere, except Sullen Hoof revealed a large set of dinner plates which he flung around the abyssal, catching every drop of blood before it could splash on anyone.

That Sullen Hoof didn’t appear to have put any real effort into defending himself, instead only trying to prevent that the food he had served was sullied seemed to endlessly infuriate the abyssal – even more so as the deathknight’s hooves, wreathed in void essence, struck at the air with every swing, failing completely to hit Sully even once: “What? How is this possible!?”

Instead of answering, Sullen Hoof stepped into the deathknight’s reach, and then brought the swarm of food flying around him to bear, making it impossible for the deathknight to dodge the cloud of plate shards, forks, cooking knives and other pointy or sharp things that flew around him.

Crying out in pain as he was cut time and time again by razor soup and steely carrots, all of the food flying around Sully hardened by his essence, the abyssal tried to leap away, but Sullen Hoof pushed his advantage and grappled with the deathknight, forcing his foe to remain within the maelstrom of meat mallets and cleavers.

In a final act of desperation, as it was clear that the deathknight was being torn to shreds before a cheering audience, the abyssal finally managed to free himself and tumble away, only to land before Sunrise. Struggling to get up, Sunrise looked down at the pitiful deathknight: “Surrender and we will help you”

Half-choking on his own blood, the deathknight tried to spit at her – but he did not have the strength, resulting in a rather pathetic display that just stained the stage. Seeing this and frowning, Sunrise floated the torn up deathknight up before her and pressed a hoof his chest: “This is the only mercy I will grant you”

Pursing her lips and flaring her golden caste mark on her brow, it briefly looked as if Sunrise was going to kiss her foe, but instead she whistled a single tone. For a second it appeared to be anyone’s guess what she was going to do, then for a split second she whistled harder… much harder… as if launching an arrow of air through the abyssal’s head at point blank from the sonic pulse, killing him instantly with what sounded like a brief thundercrack, while her anima blazed with gold soul-fire.

To the stupefied amazement of the crowd, the deathknight instantly crumbled into dust, as Sunrise used her powers as a solar of the priest caste to instantly cremate the abyssal’s body and perhaps even save his soul from the eternal torment of the neverborn.

“Impressive – so that is your musical martial art?” Wind Dancer commended Sunrise from the table, his plates thoroughly licked clean.

Sunrise nodded, turning to the unicorns at the table: “It is a part of it – now if you’ll excuse me, I need to teach a crowd of ponies some songs”

The citizens of thorns were at first quite stunned to see a deathknight slain by shining golden pony, but as Sunrise stepped off the stage and called out “Who would like to learn to sing my song of victory?” tens of thousands cheered, as thousands rose from their seats to join her.

Wind Dancer leaned over to Roseblack: “You’re going to have to learn some better speeches if you expect to win over the realm deliberative like that”

It didn’t take long before ponies started leaving the feast, full to the point of bursting for the first time in years, happily lining up before Speaker who used his hospital-honed medical charm to diagnose, and if need be, heal the masses. While his original suite of medical charms had been geared towards treatment of individuals with great power and certainty of recovery, then the medical charms he had developed over the last year at Sunhill permitted treatment and medical services for vast numbers of patients, letting him spend the last few hours before the arrival of twilight healing the masses quite efficiently, when the first alarm bells started ringing from the walls.

It was time to do battle for the fate of Thorns.

A lot of the ponies that Speaker had treated had joined Sunrise for her impromptu song class. This resulted in her marching to the southern city gate with thousands of followers, each with fire in their belly and a prayer on their lip. Her charms had given them courage to stand against the Mask, and now her martial arts would have to keep them safe as they were to hold the line.

Speaker in turn wrapped up the last few stragglers who sought his aid for medical services – quite a few who seemed shy, or worried what others might say if they were seen receiving healing from the golden anathema. When done, Speaker lit up his wings of fire and flew to the northern city wall, to the grim sight of three dozen bone striders standing a mile from the wall, being readied for battle.

“Is it ready?” Speaker called out to nearest group of laborers in earshot.

The workers were busy extinguishing the fires in their forges, so that if anything broke during the battle then a fire wouldn’t spread. The nearest foreman replied: “It’s not pretty, but it’s there – not really sure what you want to do with things like that though”

“Don’t you worry about that – but tell everyone to get away from the walls unless you’re joining the fight!”

Along the northern wall were scattered groups of ponies, armed only with the tools of their trades stood ready: Hammers, knives, a few rolling pins here and there. Without direct leadership they would likely break and flee at the first encounter with the undead. Of course, from what Speaker could tell then there weren’t many zombies being fielded north of the wall: It seemed clear that most of those had been funnelled into the city during the day’s earlier battle, where they had been trapped in bottlenecks and slowly destroyed, both by blade and by the scorching rays of the cleansing sun.

Indeed, Speaker could tell that the bonestriders were smouldering. What looked like zombie work crews (which were also falling apart) were hauling water around to douse the flames of the undead war-machines, as their ashen and crackling flesh caught fire in the sunlight.

This fit perfectly with Speaker’s strategy for the northern wall: Stall them, and let the enemy burn to a crisp on their own without him having to do much of anything.

Suddenly black lighting split the sky, coming from the south. The thunderous rumble of Juggernaut moving sounded, and from atop the corpse mountain radiated a grim projection of the Mask of Winters, in all his illustrious darkness and might with a beautiful and entrancing mask of ice, as he announced with a grand and magnanimous voice: “Ponies of Thorns. You disappoint me. I have given you order and peace, yet this is how you reward me? For this afront, a punishment is needed: From every pony in Thorns, I would have one pint of blood, one tooth, one eye and one hoof. Whether this is given me, or taken by my forces, this I care not for. Now go forth my host, and collect my sanguine tribute!”

The visage of the mask was not pleasant – and yet… the shimmering crystalline ice mask of the deathlord wasn’t ugly either. Calling it beautiful was probably a stretch, but his voice… it was like a stern and disappointed parent speaking slowly and calmly to an unruly child just before a thorough caning, assuming that the parent in question had the deep and gravelly voice of an ancient ghost.

With the Mask’s signal, the warstriders north of the city began moving towards Thorns. Starting from about a mile out, well out of range of any archer – not that there really were any on the walls – the first half of the warstriders made it a bit under halfways to the walls before the ground gave way under their, Speaker having riddled the grounds between the encampment and the walls with hidden underground pits. Now, the pits were between ten or fifteen feet deep – not all that much for a twenty-foot tall bonestrider, but it was plenty to leave them stuck for the moment as they tried to get out, a couple of them straight up faceplanting and damaging themselves substantially as their own massive weight crushed them.

With many of his targets sitting ducks, Speaker flew up on his wings of fire and headed out, landing on the wiggling warstriders where they couldn’t reach him and simply using his deconstruction charm, primarily on their legs. They broke apart just fine, breaking just enough to be rendered immobile. Going from one to the other, Speaker had half of the warstriders fully neutralized in minutes.

Of course, this left the final six bonestriders that hadn’t fallen into any traps – and whatever piloted them seemed aware enough to check the ground before them at that point, all of them but one dodging the pit traps before them as they carefully advanced. Disabling the one that hadn’t quite managed to detect the ground giving way under it, Speaker turned to the last five: “Right… let’s do this”

Flying high up into the air near the city gate, Speaker recalled the spell he had learned through his latest and most powerful educational charm and having read the book of three rings. Loudly announcing several of the arcane Five Hundred Words of War and using his hooves to trace an essence lattice around himself, the very sunlight around him began to flow into that lattice in the form of sunfire that saw the lattice erupt into bright flame.

Through this powerful sorcery, hundreds of least gods from all kinds of nearby things, be it the least gods of blades of grass, rocks, dirt, a few from the city wall, all rose from their stations as they sang an ancient war chant. This included the least gods from all the crude blades and shields Speaker had gotten the metalworkers to hammer out and line near the walls.

The ponies on the wall looked on with wonder, as the many lesser gods floated towards Speaker and his glowing lattice, the sunfire forging them into orichalcum plates as the rays of the setting sun kissed the lesser gods.

All in all it took about ten seconds – and as Speaker floated back down to the ground, it was not his hooves that touched the ground: He was mounted inside a giant pony-form orichalcum warstrider, wielding a pair of orichalcum warstrider-sized chakrams, designed to look like giant gears.

On the northern city wall the ponies in view cheered as much as they could, not necessarily understanding what Speaker had done, but having enough wherewithal to recognize that he had summoned a mighty weapon to their defence.

As a mighty god-forged champion of war, Speaker strode across the battlefield, standing eighteen feet tall and shining like a giant golden statue. Of course, like a statue, pushing and pulling at the controls to make the thing move quickly turned out to be fairly difficult – but with a charm Speaker knew to make suits of armor fit him more gently and easily, that became a lot easier – allowing him to move a lot faster and more smoothly.

The other bonestriders quickly changed course, seeing that a new foe had appeared on the battlefield – one as tall as them, one that challenged them by its mere presence.

Now, a war or bonestrider did not make one faster – but it was a giant suit of magical armor that made one a lot stronger, and by virtue of it being armor, it also protected you quite well. Speaker knew this well, and even if a bone-strider wasn’t as heavily armored as a warstrider wrought of pure orichalcum, then they still required quite the pummelling before they broke.

Indeed, Speaker quickly realized that instead of wasting essence to rip and tear into the alchemically toughened sinews and bone plates that protected the pilot and softer innards of the bonestriders, then it was far more effective to simply wrestle them to the ground, use his rearing crane release technique to throw them into the air and then combine that with a swift buck to send them even further – for when they came down their bulk saw them crushed, or at least saw enough of their giant limbs crippled that they could no longer move.

This quickly saw a number of the remaining bonestriders attempt to flee – but as noted previously: Being in a strider did not make one faster, so they were caught as they were tripped up by tossed warstrider-sized chakrams.

To Speaker’s great elation, this saw the northern front quickly calm down. Of course, the battle wasn’t over yet – so he quickly surveyed the landscape around him, confirming that no other foes were coming out of the enemy encampment. With that peace of mind, Speaker made his way towards the harbour of Thorns, thundering down past the piers in his conjured warstrider.

Approaching the southern city wall, Speaker found himself hearing… a song. A beautiful and sad song, yet its lyrics spoke of boundless optimism and hope, pride in one’s achievements – such as staying alive in the face of tremendous hardship – and thousands of ponies were singing it, following the deep thrumming beat coming from Sunrise as she danced up front, along with all the other ponies up in front.

…and while many a philosopher have over and over compared martial arts and dance, then what Sunrise was doing truly blurred the difference between the two, as her musical martial arts was allowing completely untrained troops to hold their own against what appeared to be a seemingly endless tide of undead. From beyond the frontline, it was nothing but an endless sea of death and undeath spilling out of Juggernaut… good heavens.

One thing Speaker did notice was the distinct lack of any concentrations of necrotic essence as he gazed across the battlefield with essence sight, the magical eye-lenses of his warstrider giving him a magical sight. Was the Mask holding his deathknights back? Had the abyssals of the other deathlords fled along with their masters, abandoning the Mask?

With what he had seen so far, Speaker came up with a battle plan: Sunrise was holding the line – but only holding the line – she appeared to have designed her song and dance to be of a magically defensive nature. An offensive element was needed. Thus, in all its simplicity, Speaker galloped into the enemy ranks and leapt high into the air – the magical strength from the limbs of the warstrider letting him jump quite high into the air – and then bellyflopping down into the enemy forces, crushing as many zombies and skeletons as he could. He then began stomping on anything that got close.

Using his ghost-eating technique, Speaker quickly replenished all of his essence, as he smote the ruin of hundreds – if not thousands – of densely packed war-ghosts that seemed to mindless march towards the city, crying out for blood.

To this end, Speaker remained vigilant – especially in the direction of the slowly approaching Juggernaut. It would definitely require getting rid of, ideally moved to somewhere relatively uninhabited further away from the city. His attentiveness quickly paid off, for about twenty minutes into his stomping spree a great gout of dark lighting shot out from the grim palace atop Juggernaut, vaporizing hundreds of undead as Speaker parried the lighting with his chakrams and sent it arching wildly around him into the remains of stomped zombies.

Maintaining his guard in case more lightning was to follow, Speaker saw a faint purple light approaching fast – but it was too slow to be a projectile… it was someone or something flying in.

Stomping out a few ghosts and skeleton-constructs milling about confused on the ground, Speaker counted the seconds and tried to estimate the speed of whatever was coming at him. It was going several hundred miles per hour… and there we go, it dove to the ground, landing about half a mile from Speaker.

Approaching the new potential foe, Speaker quickly spotted the sudden vortex of necrotic essence sucking in ghosts and the few sparks of unlife that kept nearby skeletons and zombies animated. Someone was shaping a spell, a big one.

Breaking into a gallop, his warstrider’s giant orichalcum hooves ploughing through the mindless undead, Speaker just barely got to his foe as he saw a vague silhouette of a pony in the last few rays of light from the setting sun, the pony being encased in blood-stained metal forming out of the void-essence vortex around the pony, with an ablative cocoon of zombies and skeletons forming around the pony to prevent Speaker from interrupting the spell.

Speaker pounded, slashed and bucked at the swarming pile of undead that had formed around the sorcerer, but it was to no avail, for upon trying to strike again he found himself parried by a blood-red metal hoof that shot out of the pile, one equal to his warstrider’s metal hooves.

The pile fell away revealing a warstrider that rose from a crouching stance. Like Speaker’s warstrider it was in the form of a pony, but not wrought of orichalcum. It gleamed with blood red metal of an indeterminate make, standing a bit taller than Speaker’s ‘strider. It wielded a quite simply enormous ‘strider sized grand soulsteel dailklaive that hummed quite audibly as it seemed to annihilate the very air around it.

The red ‘strider’s mouth was set with the usual kind of communication gem, not unlike what was in Speaker’s. From it, the haughty voice of a mare rang out: “Foolish Solar – you think you’re the only one who can summon great magical suits of armor? Let me show you just how wrong you a-argh!”

Having taken his sweet time carefully aiming his oversized chakrams at his new foe, Speaker hurled them just before his foe finished talking, the enormous orichalcum disks crashing into the blood-red warstrider with thunderous explosions, sparks flying everywhere, even more so as Speaker’s solar anima flared up around his magical warstrider, and from that golden anima two copies of the oversized chakrams formed and struck the blood-red void construct, two for each chakram. The six impacts, happening in very rapid succession, rang out like thunderclaps – each booming pulse of ear-rending sound pulping the nearest zombies and pulverizing the nearest skeletons.

As the dust settled, Speaker saw through the vision crystals that his foe still stood – and stood seemingly unharmed… which didn’t quite surprise him: It hadn’t been his plan… well… it would have been nice if the thing had exploded, but it had more been to frazzle the pony inside.

Indeed, for as loud as the impacts had been outside, Speaker hoped that it had left the enemy ‘strider pilot completely stunned, if only for a short while.

Approaching the stunned ‘strider, Speaker heaved and repeated the same trick he’d done with the bonestriders: Tossing it high into the air and letting its own weight crush it when it came down… except it didn’t come down.

At the peak of its trajectory up in the air, vents all over the blood-red strider opened up, blasting out black fire. This stabilized the strider, letting it float in the air – and moments later it shook its head: “Ow… oh that does it!”

With a mighty stomp Speaker had his two giant chakrams bounce up into the air, catching one each on either forehoof of his ‘strider, and quickly adopting a defensive posture with both: “Give me your best shot!”

The blood-red ‘strider hovered up in the air for a brief moment, completely still. Speaker figured that the pilot was thinking, planning… and indeed, a few moments later the abyssal strider jerked into action, raising its enormous grand daiklaive to strike…

Girding himself, Speaker worried that unless he could successfully parry such a massive blade, his ‘strider might well get cleaved in twain. Of course, when the enemy strider came down with its giant daiklaive, it missed by a hilariously wide margin… stumbling to avoid falling over, as the weight and momentum of the giant blade only made things worse.

Laughing, Speaker found it difficult to take his foe seriously: “Really? It’s plain to see that you’re a mighty sorcerer, summoning a warstrider like that – but do you even know how to wield a blade?”

While taunting was all good fun, Speaker also knew the import of keeping one’s foe distracted – and he also knew that he was still mostly topped off on essence, while his foe had to have spent quite a lot of essence to conjure such a strider… he just had to disarm her and goad her into blowing the rest of her essence in some act of desperation - then he could peel the thing open like a banana and do away with the abyssal inside.

Roaring in quite obvious frustration, the blood-red ‘strider swung its enormous blade – the length of the grand daiklaive being longer than the ‘strider was tall – in a wild arc, Speaker barely even having to try to dodge out of the way, laughing all the way.

What made the situation even more funny was that with every step either of the two were taking more undead were being stomped – and with every swing of the comically oversized daiklaive several dozen more undead were simply erased as it touched them.

The blood-red ‘strider and its pilot did not appear to find it all that funny, a long and frustrated snarl coming from the giant thing as it made a series of frantic gestures that seemed to reroute where a lot of nearby undead where going – making them pile into a wall around her again.

Recognizing that his foes was clearly trying to buy time for something that could be dangerous, Speaker chose not to indulge her, using his jumping charm on his ‘strider to leap over the corpse wall around her, going for a grapple to prevent the dread ‘strider from doing whatever it was trying to achieve.

This actually worked – for the most part – for as Speaker’s ‘strider leapt over the circular wall of the dead around his foe, he saw that it appeared to be attempting some kind of strange… was it trying to rip open its own metallic chest? What?

Coming down on his foe in a bit of a tumble, Speaker managed to wrestle the blood-red ‘strider into a firm multi-leg lock: “No you don’t”

The quite angry – if not down right agitated – female voice of the blood-red ‘strider pilot howled against Speaker: “You dare?! I will… I will crush you like a bug!”

Taking a quick moment to orient himself, Speaker noticed that the wall of undead around them was… holding? The undead making up the wall weren’t turning to aid their mistress, nor were they attacking him or letting any other undead from the outside in… wait, this meant he actually had time to think!

OK… how to dismantle a strange magic blood-soaked necromantic warframe that he just couldn’t rip apart?

That was when he heard the shriek – not from his pinned foe, but from this sky – and it was a shriek he had heard before. It was Shimmer’s warform!

Looking up, Speaker saw Shimmer’s half-pony half-bird warform, her talons that of foot-long moonsilver daggers, and even her beak looking extra curvy and sharp and with that distinct metal-blue glow: “Move Lord Bright!”

More than willing to tag-team his foe, Speaker released the blood-red ‘strider at the last second and rolled his ‘strider away. Before the abyssal warstrider and its pilot could react, Shimmer completely covered the thing’s limbs in her essence webbing, landing on its chest, as the webbing seemed to creep and crawl across the dark warstrider, seeping into every joint and under various armor plates to gum everything inside up.

“I thought you were in trouble Lord Bright … couldn’t see you behind this crazy zombie wall!” Shimmer said, all the while very carefully inspecting the magically summoned necromantic warstrider.

It struck Speaker just how tiny Shimmer, even in her warform, was compared to the warstrider she was stomping around on… so what was she going to do?

Why, she started barfing on the blood-red ‘strider, which just struggled against the webbing that was not just locking its limbs down, but gumming up the thing’s joints.

“You… ok there?” Speaker wondered, his speech transmitting through the magical sound-crystal set in his ‘strider’s mouth.

Shimmer finally looked up as she finished barfing around the helmet of the blood-red strider, bright green slime-like barf dripping from her beak: “Oh I’m fine Lord Bright – this is corrosive poison… going to melt the helmet on this thing off!”

The blood-red warstrider struggled frantically as the green goop covering much of its helmet began to bubble, eating away at the metal quite clearly at an essence-accelerated rate, while new seemingly motile webbing appeared to be working as intended, completely immobilizing the thing.

It occurred to Speaker that this meant that the blood-red necro-strider wasn’t made out of soulsteel… oh how he wanted to just dispel his own ‘strider and whip out Homage to cut into the thing himself!

It took a bit more corrosive barf, but soon the ‘head’ of the blood-red strider was damaged enough to reveal the head of the thing’s pilot: A near skeletal mare’s head, looking burned to a crisp, but with long fang-like teeth and very unburnt eyes. She was also snarling and glaring angrily at the two of them, swearing up a storm – oh, and she was firing necrotic fireballs from her eyes, forcing Shimmer to move back to the ‘strider’s chest to get out of the line of fire.

“Quit it! Surrender or I’ll smush your head – you only get one choice here!” Speaker said firmly, with a giant orichalcum hoof poised to strike.

The scorched-looking abyssal, who quite frankly did not look like a mare – more like a skeleton – writhed in her pilot seat, but in doing so Speaker saw why she couldn’t get out…

Black tendrils from her blood-red ‘strider connected to the back of her head and what little of her spine he could see. She was truly connected to the warstrider, though much more physically than Speaker’s purely magical controls. Soon her rage seemed to be replaced by tears, as she cried out for… a lover?

“I did this for you! I will never forget your touch! Never forget your kiss! My dearest lover, may your reign end the world!” the abyssal howled, bloody tears rolling down her crispy cheeks as her eyes began to glow rather intensely and menacingly.

Speaker had long since lowered his hoof, finding the abyssal’s display far more pathetic than anything else. Whoever this was, she hadn’t been trained by anyone with proper strategic skills. Where was her backup? Where were the other deathknights? Yes, where were there other deathknights?

Shimmer suddenly slammed into Speaker, well, into the head of the head of his ‘strider and howled: “Lord Bright - She’s gonna blow!!!!”

The briefest of glance at the abyssal with essence sight showed everything Speaker had to see: The essence within the abyssal was inverting, conflagrating into umbral fire.

She was committing suicide, explosively – and doing that from the inside of a warstrider? Oh, that was not going to be good. Heaving at his controls, Speaker leapt with all the might of the magical muscles he were connected to. The ground quickly left the duo behind, but the abyssal became pure fire of black essence, like a piece of howling firework stuck into a metal tin… or a fuse burning down – and the fuse burnt quickly.

Too quickly.

The explosions from the necromantic warstrider was… not really an explosion. It didn’t sound loud, nor was it one of rapidly expanding fire and flame. It was a darkness that made the post-sunset twilight come off as positively bright, a void that expanded outward to eat everything it touched.

It swallowed the zombie and skeleton wall, the black sphere expanding further out – and closing rapidly on the duo… it caught them as the arc of Speaker’s jump reached its peak, sending them plummeting into the expanding umbral sphere beneath them. Shimmer shrieked in horror as they went in.

Being magically connected to his ‘strider, Speaker could feel the strange and quite uncomfortable attempted un-making that the ‘strider was subjected to – and it was over as quickly as it started, leaving him in a deep crater of dust and ash, with no visible remains of the undead... except the mindless zombie shuffling into the crater as they moved towards the city.

It was while looking around to get his bearings that a bright coating of blood started to run down over one of Speaker’s vision crystals… followed shortly by Shimmer falling down. With a quick motion, Speaker caught her, and made a running jump up the wall of the crater to get out, beelining towards the city walls. All he could see was that Shimmer was bleeding profusely, and he couldn’t use his medical charms on her while in his armor.

Stomping through the undead, Speaker galloped towards the battle line where Sunrise and her grand choir were keeping the undead from swarming and scaling the city wall. Leaping over them, Speaker landed in the southside slums of Legacy, crushing several houses. Turning around, he put Shimmer down on the city wall, for it was the only elevated platform high enough to put her near his vision crystals. Carefully using his medical diagnostic charms, he instantly got a read on just how grievously wounded she was.

The term ‘near death’ was a good descriptor: Under her blood-soaked feathers and cracked armor shell segments, Speaker detected not lacerations or shrapnel wounds… no, he simply found that there were bits of her… missing, as if strips of skin, flesh and bone had been erased, leaving bloody gaps across her rag-dol body.

At this point Speaker found himself in a rather ironic position… Indeed, he too now felt trapped within his ‘strider, much like the now late abyssal he had fought previously, for he had no means of getting out of his magical strider until the spell had run its course, which wouldn’t be for another couple of hours – and yet there was Shimmer, before him, bleeding to death!

“There he is – told you!” Speaker faintly heard a voice from up on the ramparts of the wall.

It was the Doctor and his companion, the blond-mane’d cross-eyed mare leading the way.

“You two – I need your help! Shimmer needs to be stabilized, quickly!” Speaker implored, torn between wanting to help Shimmer and help defeat the undead horde at the walls.

With calming gestures, the Doctor nodded at the frantic warstrider: “Calm yourself. Sunrise is holding the line just fine – and Shimmer here will be fine too, once you heal her”

“Doctor, a battlefield is not the time or place for vague sidereal bullshit. I’m stuck in this thing and Shimmer is dying – do something!” Speaker almost shouted, finding the sidereal’s statement rather infuriating.

The two sidereals quickly nodded at each other, the cross-eyed one quickly walking up to the edge of the battlements and swiping at Speaker’s warstrider. Speaker heard the tap of her hoof on the armor, thinking noting of it, but that was when the magical strider began to disintegrate at a very rapid pace, the orichalcum armor plates and internal supports reverting into the form of lesser gods that zipped back to their domains the instant they were free.

This left Speaker to drop to the ground, among the crushed slum hovels – but he quickly leapt up to Shimmer, using his charms to stop her bleeding – and while she was still unconscious, he saw that she instantly began to slowly heal the moment her body sensed that new equilibrium. Right, the lunar warform had powerful healing aspects to it! Great!

Turning to the two sidereals, Speaker wanted to thank them – and ask them exactly what they had done to unmake his warstrider – but he found that they had left, spotting them a fair distance away on the wall, appearing to be setting up for something.