The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The celestial dragon stylist intimidates the soup, then savages it the elemental fury of all dragons. No soup survives such encounters.

…

Following their battles in Thorns, and in defeating Juggernaut, Cash would pen several books in a vain attempt at trying to put into words just how bad the inside of Juggernaut’s bowels smelled. The funk was beyond death, beyond stink, nose-meltingly fetid to the point that one could only laugh and weep, seeking refuge in madness, drug-use, or leaping into oblivion.

Many a god of melancholic poetry and sad songs, as well as the ghosts of ancient poets, would be consulted in the writing of these books, as Cash would seek council from both high and low in order to put into words the horrors he huffed.

Melodrama aside, flying up Juggernaut’s ass was neither pleasant nor an experience any of the involved would describe as smelling of roses. Speaker couldn’t quite remember if Juggernaut actually ate anything, but he also saw that much of the gargantuan creature’s large intestine seemed quite atrophied and withered – and like everything in Juggernaut, giant maggots were feasting on the soft tissue, racing with Juggernaut’s regenerative powers to maintain the flesh caverns.

Flying around mounds of shit the size of hills, the circle occasionally had to struggle through bits of intestines filled with gas. Well, filled with farts. It made breathing impossible, Cash in particular struggling to not pass out from the lack of breathable air. Getting through to flesh caverns with ‘fresh’ air felt like deliverance from on high – but any gasping for air had to be done quietly, to avoid being spotted or heard by undead patrols.

Fire Orchid had to leap into action quite a few times to carve up zombie patrols quickly, with Cash using his shoes of distance claws to nail ghosts and pull them up to the cloud for interrogation. The information granted from these unwilling informants guided the circle closer to the base Juggernaut’s spine.

“That… is one hell of a bone” Cash remarked, as the circle flew along an exposed section of Juggernaut’s enormous hip bone.

With its dozens of legs, Juggernaut had a very strange bone structure – if any real structure all. It was all supported by primordial magic and tissues unique to Juggernaut’s strange design. It also meant that attacking the base of the spine wouldn’t do – to disable all the legs at once the circle had to find the right spinal vertebrae to assault… on the right spine no less.

“Oh, I don’t like the look of that…” Fire Orchid said, pointing towards what looked like a large dark stone structure poking down through Juggernaut’s hide from the inside of its back.

His attention mostly focused on piloting the magical cloud, Speaker was only able to briefly glance at the strange brickwork: “Looks like the foundation of the Mask’s palace. Those large stone blocks there, the ones locked into that vertebra, they look like they’re supporting the rest of the structure. We’re probably seeing the lowest levels”

“So much for avoiding getting anywhere near the Mask’s palace” Cash said, sounding all kinds of not interested in getting into a fight with the Mask.

So close to the Mask’s palace, it quickly became impossible to avoid detection. Sunrise mitigated part of this via subtle mind control charms that had the ghost patrols arguing among each other, breaking out in fights – but it was clear that the spine was heavily guarded, to the point that it wouldn’t be possible to not have alarms raised.

With that in mind, a much less subtle final approach method was chosen, Speaker blasting their way into the flesh cavern that exposed the connection between the fifth and sixth vertebrae of the fourth spine. Fire Orchid instantly leapt from the cloud and charged the nearest ghost patrol, felling ghosts with every swing.

Speaker continued on the cloud a bit further, seeking out a spot where they could get into the spinal column.

“There, that cave is leaking a river of goop!” Cash pointed out, spotting the gaping mouth of another flesh cavern from which a strange slow-flowing cloudy fluid poured, with several dozen zombies working on scooping the stuff into buckets and pails, hauling it off to who knows where.

Getting close to the flesh-cave, Speaker struggled to put words to exactly what the strange goo-river could be called. It turned out that it wasn’t Juggernaut’s spinal fluid, though why the Mask was tapping and ‘mining’ the stuff… he simply couldn’t fathom why – but it probably wasn’t good.

Cash quickly saw the exposed bit of spine cleared of ghosts, telling the ghosts present an essence enhanced lie that they were all ordered to report to the lower fortifications on the fifth knee of Juggernaut, which would take them hours to reach.

This left the circle to figure out how to best sever Juggernaut’s spine at that junction. Speaker quickly had to admonish Cash: “No! Don’t touch that – we have no idea what kind of spasms or movement you might cause if you touch the exposed spinal nerves – it would reveal that we’re messing with the spine in an instant”

“Well, we have to break it – that’ll reveal us anyway” Cash replied, not really seeing the problem.

Fire Orchid popped her head into the flesh cave, adding: “Cash you twit – he wants to destroy it in one go, not fiddle with it first”

“Right, ok then – what about you, are things clear out there?” Cash said, switching the subject to avoid having to talk any more about what he had done wrong.

The old mare’s wrinkles twisted into a not all that happy expression: “Well… it is clear, but not in a good way”

It turned out that many of the ghosts had run off, and Fire Orchid was certain that reinforcements would show up sooner rather than later, so she had come to the flesh cave to fetch help holding them off. Cash joined her, leaving Speaker and Sunrise to mess with the spine.

Speaker had been carefully examining the exposed spinal nerves, trying to keep the yard-thick cable of braided nerves clear of the ever-oozing spinal fluid that kept trying to cover it – but it had turned out that touching the stuff had some strange magical effects on you: The spinal fluid seemed to powerfully transmit Juggernaut’s wish to move as much as the spinal nerves, meaning that touching the fluid meant that one temporarily lost control of that limb.

Sunrise found that with her much stronger mental defence charms she could resist this effect, allowing the two to work together to expose the spinal nerves. As part of this, Sunrise cautiously gauged the sonic resonance of the large braid of nerves, ultimately letting her use her musical martial arts to obliterate the thing with a mighty shout.

All of Juggernaut instantly slumped as connection to the lower half of the gargantuan monster was lost, a dozen or so limbs crashing limply to the ground.

Speaker worked quickly to follow up the sabotage: Using medical charms, he purged the vertebrae of necrotic essence, restoring them to a semblance of their living glory. The effect was quite pronounced and rapid: They instantly began to regenerate!

Of course, Speaker had anticipated this, and had lodged quite a lot of debris – namely the remains of zombies and their metal tools – into the spinal column, so that when they regenerated the regrowth was snarled and polluted by the rotting zombie flesh and jagged edges of their tools.

“Do you think that’ll be enough to immobilize Juggernaut?” Sunrise wondered, looking on as healthy muscle tissue and membranes sprouted around the healed vertebrae like a flower blossoming.

Nodding his head side to side, Speaker used his medical charms to judge how badly the signals going down the now healed spine were – they weren’t corrupted enough: “Not quite – but I left a few more things inside the spine, watch”

Gift and Homage sprung to life as Speaker willed it, Gift extending its many razor-sharp blades around itself and Homage projecting its cutting edge of heat and force. Both had been left with the zombies and the tools inside the spine… and once activated, they began to zip around cutting everything up into a nice boiling soup of shredded nerves and spinal fluid, before Speaker had them return to him through elsewhere: “That’ll heal again – but now it won’t heal right… they’ll have to remove the entire vertebrae and replace the spinal nerves… and I don’t think they’ll never be able to do that properly, at least not any time soon”

“Impressive my good friend. Now, how about we get out of here?” Sunrise said, nodding respectfully to Speaker’s work.

Agreeing, the two climbed out of the flesh cavern, emerging into another gallery where they found Fire Orchid and Cash resting among mounds of zombies and skeletons on a soft patch of bio-luminescent mushrooms. Calling them over, Speaker had to supress a chuckle at the start contrast of Cash – who looked immaculately clean thanks to his self-cleaning artifact – and Fire Orchid in her armor who looked drenched in gore, her orange coat now more a dark shade of drying blood.

None of them found the idea of busting out via the topside palace good, but both Cash and Fire Orchid seemed well aware that more enemy forces were gathering around them, both from the sides and even from below, so going up honestly seemed to be the only viable option since it at least opened up the option of flying away.

The worst thing about their situation was that conjuring a new cloud… couldn’t be done, which came as quite a nasty surprise to Speaker, as the spell fizzled and sputtered out in his hooves: “Uhm… what?!”

“That did not look… or sound… proper – I trust you shaped the spell correctly?” Sunrise said, the not at all distant sound of scores zombies and skeletons being smacked around by Fire Orchid and Cash getting closer and closer to the flesh-cavern they were in.

Speaker carefully observed Sunrise’s attempt at shaping a magical cloud into being, using essence sight, and he quickly saw how the ambient essence flows in the area seemed to prevent the complex essence patterns from forming: “Oh crap…”

“What is it? Can we counter this?” Sunrise asked, perplexed as she saw the essence patterns she had woven unravel right before her eyes.

Shaking his head, Speaker slumped down: “I haven’t seen effects like this since the first age. The palace up top… it’s like a manse, but it’s really subtle – It’s not drawing power off a demesne like a normal manse, its powered by juggernaut – that’s why we can’t simply feel it like a normal manse. It’s somehow suppressing sorcery! We only made war manses that did that during the primordial war, to defend against yozi reality-warping attacks!”

“Sounds like a great way to secure your fortress against sorcerous attacks” Sunrise noted, looking up at the dark brickwork of the palace foundations.

This meant that an alternate way out had to be found. Going up was still the fastest option – but how? The basement foundation of the palace was at least fifteen or yards up – a bit out of reach of… everyone, and while Speaker’s jumping charm could get him up there, then the smooth stone had nothing to hold on to… and being a manse fortified the stone so that he couldn’t even carve Gift or Homage into the stone to make something to hang on to.

“Cash, what’s the range of our claws when you shoot them?” Fire Orchid wondered, just as an unnatural howl sounded from down a tunnel that connected to the flesh-cave they were in.

Cash looked at his shoes of distant claws, then looked up: “Not that long – about eight or so yards – we’d need just under double that to get up there. Speaker, can’t you use your singing staff to have the stone bricks up there turn into a ladder or staircase for us?”

“No can’t do – a manse shields itself with its essence flows. We wo-“ Speaker said, when he was interrupted by Cash screaming as Fire Orchid tossed the diplomat and business-pony up into the air: “Shoot a claw now!”

It took three more tosses before a very sore Cash managed to get a claw stuck in the stone brickwork of the palace foundation, all the while Sunrise kept the latest wave of undead at bay. Extending his claw chain to its maximum length, and then shooting a claw down to the ground, Speaker quickly climbed up the claw chain, up over Cash, and up the second claw chain to the palace foundations. There he used his deconstruction charm to methodically drive a gap into the manse essence flows, to allow him to open up a hole for them.

With a hole and Cash acting as a living rope-ladder, the circle quickly got up, leaving the furious undead down in the flesh cavern, as their decaying claws and skeletal limbs were unable to grip the chain going up.

Inside the palace, at the very lowest level, the circle’s first priority was catching someone and extracting information to sketch out a map. Cash did them one better, snatching a ghost and mind-controlling it into guiding them up to the outside.

It was a long trek – and it quickly turned into a running battle, with Fire Orchid on point with her great blade to bash aside any undead in their way, and Sunrise and Cash using their charms to mess with the minds of any ghosts they came upon, Speaker pulling up the rear with his singing staff, using the essence fluctuations that his foundation hole had caused – along with the singing staff – to mess even more with the internal structure of the manse simply in order to destabilize it.

Anyone familiar with damaged manses know that essence build-up from disrupted essence could be extremely explosive. The circle certainly left a trail of destruction as they made their way up from the lower levels.

The ghost finally led them to actual honest daylight – oh the glory – except… it wasn’t what the circle had wanted.

Having stormed out, ready to leap off so that they could form a cloud mid-fall to fly away on, the circle hadn’t checked what was behind the gate first, only confirmed the sunlight that was shining in under the gate. It was a fully walled courtyard, and the ghost guide was laughing maniacally… right until Fire Orchid cut it in half, it giggling madly as it disintegrated into ectoplasmic splatter.

The gate slamming shut behind them didn’t help.

“Alright, shit – Speaker, can you see if we’re near the outer walls of the palace or not?” Fire Orchid said, as she circled around trying to spot all the enemies around them up on the walls, not at all liking what she saw: The walls around the courtyard were lined with skeleton archers, zombie soldiers and war ghosts. This was so very much a trap.

Opposite the circle, a steel banded gate of pale timber swung out as ghost slaves from within pushed them open. A pony clad in heavy soulsteel armor stepped out, with every plate featuring a tortured face trying to push its way out over great spikes that covered the armor, dragging a dirty great spiked chain. With a clear and stern voice, and a local Thornese accent, the mare called out “What pathetic god will you pray to, before I kill you?”

The circle took one look at the abyssal… and laughed.

The deathknight did not appear to have expected that kind of reaction, but remained stoic as he approached the circle, a host of war ghosts trailing after him: “Do you seek refuge in madness? I can understand that… allow me to prove your fears right”

Nope – the circle was still chuckling at her.

Perplexed and quite insulted, the abyssal reared up and flared her black anima: Her armor gushed with blood that sprayed out and formed a bloody mandala in the air around her, as the armor faded into some kind of transparent ghost metal. Spinning around and likely using essence to speed up the chain, the abyssal launched a whip-like attack with the spiked chain, a skull of some kind with glowing eyes fitted around the end-piece of the chain coming right at the circle.

The chain bounced harmlessly off Speaker’s shield charms. Looking at the abyssal, Speaker raised the abyssal mare a single eyebrow: “Do you mind? We were having a discussion?”

Sunrise briefly flared her anima as she shaped up a quick messenger spell, but frowned as it fizzled: “Damnit…”

“I told you – the palace is clearly suppressing sorcery” Speaker said to Sunrise.

The two nodding at each other in silent agreement that this place clearly had some strange arcane trickery going on, everyone finally turned to face the deathknight who suddenly found that she really did NOT like how her opponents were looking at her…

Seeing the abyssal stop in her track and even start to backpedal a bit, it just made it funnier. Sunrise stepped forth, standing glorious and resplendent in her white robes – bloodstained and soiled as they were from the sojourn inside Juggernaut: “I would know your title young one”

“Young one? You’re the young one! What are you talking about!?” The abyssal mare angrily shouted back, though her continued backpedalling spoke volumes of her fear in the face of the young mare before her.

Her eyes briefly flashing golden, and her caste mark lit up: “We can see your essence. Yours is very weak. It can’t be more than a few days since you exalted. Now, your title please”

“I… I am the Arbiter of Bloodstained Veils that Sees Endless Torment Tome to the Foes of Darkness! And you will surrender yourselves or die!” The abyssal mare stated, catching her breath, her now ghostly armor clattering and shifting as if it had a mind of its own as she dug in her hooves and forced herself not to step back any further.

Sunrise nodded, drawing back her hood and revealing her beautiful features and lush orange mane and putting on a kind and understanding smile: “Good. We can help you Arbiter. Your bravery and resolve in the face of us speaks well of you – we can help you redeem yourself and cleanse your black exaltation. We have helped many others like you, who have broken away from their deathlord masters. Chose life – the alternative is not pleasant”

“I… no… I’m not…” the abyssal said, clearly wavering in the face of the mind-altering charms Sunrise were blasting at her, drilling doubt into her mind.

Reaching out gently with a hoof, Sunrise smiled as she sensed that her social charms were quickly and efficiently breaking down the abyssal’s resolve but also building up her desire to live and be free. She could see it in the Arbiter’s eyes – there was a connection: “Show us a way out of here and you can come with us. Nobody has t-“

The absolutely massive blade suddenly thrust through the Arbiter, from her back, through her armored chest, digging into the grey cobble, came out of nowhere. The Arbiter only managed to give Sunrise a single pained look before her soul was sucked into the soulsteel edge of the weapon, her eyes instantly losing their color and life, her body going limp.

“I do hate it when my minions turn traitor” sounded the rumbling and monstrous voice of the Mask of Winters, as he stepped out of the gate behind the corpse of the arbiter.

Pulling his absolutely huge blade out of the dead abyssal, though the enormous size of the dark lord of Juggernaut made it look oddly well-proportioned as a single-hoofed blade.

The Mask of Winters stood at least four yards tall from hoof to head, with a physical bulk to match, clad in black robes replete in in crimson embroidery that spelled out strange and arcane secrets written in old realm. His icy mask was absolutely terrifying to look at, horrifying far beyond what its mere physical appearance should permit: “You four have set me back decades! I will have to spend at least that much time figuring out fitting ways to torture you all!”

Now, such dire threats, from such a towering foe, would have sent the common pony into a fit of absolute terror. The circle… this wasn’t their first dance.

“Fire Orchid, throw me” Sunrise quietly said, having shaped up another spell – a sphere of iridescent blue that she was wrapping around her hooves, whatever it was.

With a swift spinning move, Fire Orchid grabbed Sunrise and hurled her at the Mask.

Now, with the Mask – because of his mask – it was not possible to see where he was looking, but he appeared to track Sunrise as she sailed through the air to him. He also appeared to spot her hooves glowing with bright blue light, and upon seeing that he screeched and leapt high into the air, revealing limbs with a pale coat and bone-white hooves under his robes.

Sunrise could only follow the ballistic arc she was on, sending her right into the large group of warghosts that had followed the Arbiter into the courtyard. The seemed to spread out, letting her land among them – but in doing so, as her hooves landed on the cobble, the blue light on her hooves exploded outwards, enveloping all the warghosts and making them fade into nothing – for her ghost-banishing spell was quite potent.

Speaker briefly found himself a bit confused – wasn’t sorcery being suppressed by the palace manse? “Sunrise, how?”

“They’re only blocking emerald circle sorcery!” Sunrise called out, before having to leap and dodge as the Mask came down again.

So… only low level sorcery was blocked. Made sense if Juggernaut was built to primarily withstand attack from unicorns. Warstrider time? No… a place like this was like quite god-forsaken, and Speaker needed enough lesser gods within reach to do that.

“Fire, Cash, find us a way out of here – break some walls, make us a hole!” Speaker said, as he advanced towards the Mask to stall for time.

The towering dark lord, his mask of terror so horrible to look at that it would curdle the blood of lesser mortals, floated his grand soulsteel daiklaive as if it was a nimble sabre: “Foolish pony – do you think you can defeat me?”

“I defeated Rakshi… I defeated the Barbate Arbiter – you’re nothing new” Speaker said, the charm that rendered him fearless giving him great clarity of mind.

While the Mask of Winters were many things, then stupid was not one of them. He instantly recognized that intimidating Speaker wouldn’t work, so he drew his blade up into a posture that allowed for both offense and defence – of course, that didn’t mean that he gave up on the mind games, just that he changed his approach slightly, speaking with a booming and menacing voice that shook the very ground he stood on: “So you have defeated fools and wastrels – I actually produce results… I wield true power! Fear me, and submit or die”

Recalling Gift and Homage, Speaker shook his head: “You wield power granted to you by your masters, the neverborn. Without them, you would only be a bitter and resentful solar ghost. I will not fear you; I pity you – and I offer you peace”

“You dare talk back me? Die!” The Mask snarled, his unmoving face mask not in any way hiding the anger that his voice betrayed. Raising a bony hoof and making a single imperious gesture in Speaker’s direction, invisible essence radiated out from the hoof. Nothing seemed to happen, for a moment, but then a veritable forest of razor-sharp bone spines erupted from the coble in Speaker’s direction, fanning out and also catching Cash – who effortlessly dodged the spines – and Fire Orchid who let the spines bounce harmlessly off her armor. For Speaker, he stood his ground, letting the spines break on his essence shields: “Aww that’s cute”

The Mask did not respond with words at first, instead directing his massive blade to swing at Speaker with great force: “Frigid Razor, end this puke!”

Bringing up Gift and Homage in defence, Speaker weathered one soul-crushing blow after the other, until the ice-cold blade managed to pummel a gap in his defences and cut a gash through his essence shields, touching Speaker with the chill of the grave and leeching no small amount of essence from him: “Did you really think you sneak in here and attack me without me knowing?!”

Quickly using his anaesthetic charm on himself, Speaker struggled to bring his weapons up again to re-establish his defences. Thousand-wounds gear style was good for a lot of things, but it wasn’t all that good in melee defence, preferring to deal with foes at distance: “We didn’t come up here to attack you – we were leaving”

“You didn’t? Then… then you were doing things to Juggernaut! Turner, where are you!?” The Mask roared, taking a large step back as he had the war ghosts behind him surge forward to engage Speaker.

Speaker didn’t mind switching up who he was fighting again – and ghosts meant ghost-eating – no, what he was more worried about was this ‘Turner’, whoever that was.

Up on the battlements above the courtyard a bombastically dressed abyssal revealed himself, loudly announcing himself – even though his colorful outfit spoke volumes on its own: “The Turner Rending Acidic Incitement to Old Regimes reporting for duty my lord!” while a big old heavily scarred brown bear replete in moonsilver tattoos trundled up next to the deathnight, its fangs bared and its claws long and cruel, its fur matted in crusty blood.

Wait… that title. Speaker had to do a double take. That title… and a lunar? No, could it be? The Mask turned to look at the abyssal: “Track down where they came from – they probably sabotaged Juggernaut!”

Turner, clad in a torn but oddly flashy coat, while wearing a bandolier on which a dozen vials filled with ominous looking liquids – some glowing, some appearing to suck in light – nodded, but then craned his neck a bit at his master: “We can do that later – right now we need to find the rest of them. They are only four here, and we saw that they are six in total, remember?”

“What? Where is the rest of your circle you little shit!” The Mask bellowed, turning to Speaker and once more glaring at him through his dread mask.

Speaker could only shrug as he cut down a few more war ghosts and sucked in their essence: “They’re exactly where they’re supposed to be”

A distant explosion rocked the palace, the Mask instantly turning to look in its direction. Grabbing a nearby ghost and somehow turning it into a spectral eye connected to a long cord in an instant, then flinging it high into the air, the Mask howled: “No! The control tower! Turner, you and your pet deal with these fools – I have to see the damages!”

“That’s going to be a problem my lord…” Turner replied, his voice haughty and arrogant as he petted the large murder-bear next to him, staying quite put.

The Mask seemed unsure where to look – whether to angrily glare at Speaker, or to shoot Turner a vitriolic glare for his insubordination. Of course, the Mask of winters had two masks… so by drawing back the hood of his dark robes he revealed that his mask had two faces, letting him look in two directions at once, somehow: “Explain yourself!”

“You never questioned, when a powerful abyssal showed up out of nowhere, pledging you loyalty? You were so desperate for good minions… honestly, this was too easy” Turner proclaimed, his form shimmering as his illusory disguise started to fade: A black coat became brown and cream, his lush crimson tail faded into a short-cropped pink one, and his face only got uglier, right up until a golden helmet materialized around his head.

Turning both masks at the revealed solar, the Mask shrieked “You!” and launched Frigid Whisper at Sullen Hoof, but the enormous blade was expertly dodged as it instead cleaved a huge section of stone wall.

Galloping down the length of the Mask’s grand dailklaive, Sully threw aside most of his disguise, though the vials with various strange liquids seemed quite legit, even more so as Sully tossed many of the vials at the Mask. The Mask was just too big to dodge, so the vials exploded in colorful puffs of smoke that seemed to either hurt or at least distract the Mask greatly.

While Sully did all that, the bear lunar rippled and melted into moonsilver, turning into Silverclaws who quickly jumped down and started to run around the Mask at essence-fuelled speed. Speaker was too busy fighting off the last dozen war ghosts to see that she was trailing salt from her saddlebags.

The Mask roared and swung at Sully with Frigid Whisper, the icy blade trailing snow in the air as it froze the ambient moisture. Dissolving into shadows, Sullen Hoof proved to be a very difficult target to hit, and moments later the Mask found that he had very little room to swing his weapon about, let alone move… because Silverclaws had encircled him in salt: “That’s for Thorns!”

Striking down the last of the war ghosts, Speaker finally managed to look up and respond to Sully’s surprise return: “You been having fun here?”

“Managed to convince most of the rest of the Mask’s abyssals to jump ship – had him think I was the only true loyalist he had left” Sully proudly stated, his voice fully back to normal.

The Mask pounded on the mystic barrier that the ring of salt around him projected, howling with impotent fury: “Minions! At-“

At first Speaker thought that Sunrise had used her silence charm, but he found that he could talk himself – despite the Mask clearly having been silenced. Looking around, he saw Sunrise looking suspiciously as if she had just flung a spell at the Mask. Looking at her with inquisitive eyes, she quickly explained: “Can’t you feel it? After the distant explosion the spell-jamming effect is down. This manse is broken. I cast my cone of silence spell on the salt ring – nobody outside can hear the Mask, so he can’t call his minions over to break the salt ring!”

“Brilliant – but wait, that means we can conjure a cloud!” Speaker said, realizing mid-sentence that they now had a quick way out.

Speaker quickly began to shape up a flying cloud. Fire Orchid and Cash came up to him and Sunrise. Silverclaws was beaming with pride: “Oh this was so much fun! I got to maul so many abyssals and zombies! This will be such a great story to tell at the next silver pact meetup”

With the courtyard strewn with butchered zombies, the bubbling ectoplasmic remains of war ghosts, the circle mounted up on Speaker’s cloud – Silverclaws assuming the form of a large raiton, the smarter and larger cousins of ravens so she wouldn’t take up space, and Sully simply leaping high into the air towards Thorns, as the cloud could only seat four ponies, and Sunrise, Speaker, Fire Orchid and Cash did that already.

Speaker couldn’t express how relieved he was of getting away from that horrible place enough. His deep wound from the Mask’s grim blade helped sell this message quite well – but Cash had a far more curious observation: “Speaker, you said that Iron Siaka would move Juggernaut… look!”

It turned out that Juggernaut had already been moved quite a distance away from Thorns – yet the circle hadn’t felt a thing. Speaker had to struggle to actually see that it had moved… no… it was still moving – bloody hell! What kind of Sidereal dickery was this?

“What do you mean still moving?” Fire Orchid wondered, only taking short peeks down over the cloud because… great heights.

Shrugging, Speaker could only describe what he had observed: “It’s still moving, like a floating island in a stream… except it’s like its flowing through the landscape”

“Damn… last time I saw things switch around like that, was back in my youth when I had eaten some really fun mushrooms while out on a field op… my commanding officer was so pissed” Fire Orchid mused, idly picking bits of zombie gore of her armor.

Shaking his head at the casual mention of youthful drug-use, not because he disapproved but because he had done the exact same thing back during a few particularly memorable field trips while in medical school when he had to learn the properties of various medical herbs, mushrooms and frog poisons, Speaker shook off a chuckle: “Sounds about right – but Fire Orchid, when we get back to Sunhill, I want you to drop off your new armor at my workshop. It might have protected you well, but it’s still clearly broken and not working right. The field repairs I made on it before you put it on aren’t going to hold for much longer”

“Wait, we’re not going home just yet, right? We’ve got a yeddim parked outside of town to pick up, and it’s loaded with salt we need to distribute here first” Cash said.

Flying them to the farm where the yeddim was located, the circle found it devoid of pony life. The livestock was still locked in their pens, looking rather hungry and not fed for days – Sunrise and Sully tended to that – Cash fetching the yeddim, while Speaker found signs of ghosts and zombies having raided the farm and dragged off the poor folks who had lived there. There were no bodies to be found… likely new ‘recruits’ added to the Mask’s zombie forces, and not very long ago.

It was a sombre reminder for the circle that the lands of Thorns would take a long time heal, and that ponies were still getting hurt.

Returning to Thorns on the yeddim, which took no time at all, Cash guided the enormous flying beast of burden to circle around Juggernat – which was now located several miles from the city - to ring it with salt.

“Perfect, now we just need to find Shimmer, get the malfean ceramics, I’ll crank out the model and you can cast the spell overnight” Speaker said to Sunrise, her nodding in return.

Fire Orchid was quick to comment: “We need that fire-aspected hothead of a unicorn to help along too – the model has to be burned with magic fire all night”

“True… its either that or wrangling up a local fire elemental – and I don’t think there are that many of those around here” Speaker acknowledged, as he began casting a messenger spell aimed at Shimmer.