The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The Single Point Shining Into The Void stylist picks up his spoon from the napkin and manages to spoon the entire bowl of soup into his mouth in a single motion.

…

Seeing a lot of ships down at sea level, tiny dots down on the water considering his altitude, Speaker tried to figure out exactly how far west he had come. He knew from the maps he had read that he had a bit under two-thousand miles from the westernmost tip of the Blessed Isle before he reached the massive archipelago known as The Neck.

…and since he didn’t know exactly how fast he was going, he didn’t know how long it would take to get there.

Still, Speaker chose to tough it out – and for this he was rewarded: Flying through the night, Speaker saw the horizon fill with islands not that many hours after dawn the next day. Sure, he could only keep his eyes open by force of his essence at that point, but now he could land safely.

Activating the charm he knew – oh that charm… Shimmer had been so upset when he had learned it during her last incarnation, and Speaker had promised never to use it other than to find her in situations like this. A strong shiver ran down his back, all the way down Speaker’s tail as he sensed her general direction and distance to him: “By the bright one… she’s close”

Suddenly feeling very awake again, Speaker flew close to the nearest islands and scanned them essence sight for any sign of life or civilization. He knew that most of the islands in the neck were uninhabited, but he also knew from Shimmer’s own stories that her exaltation had a funny habit of always reincarnating as a kind of western tribal in the neck.

There! Speaker spotted a cobalt-blue flare of essence. Flying closer, Speaker saw… the smouldering remains of a sea-side village of what had once been a lot of small wooden sea-weed or palm frond thatched huts. Oh no.

Flying down, Speaker used his investigation charms to instantly get a read of the area – and it wasn’t pretty: The strange bite and claw-marks spoke of western changelings, and the remains of quite a few shattered changeling husks littered the sand at the beach. Torn nets and wrecked dug-out canoes were everywhere.

The only thing Speaker couldn’t find were surviving ponies. Had the changelings made off with everyone? Has Shimmer’s reincarnation been slain just before his arrival?

Tears in his eyes, as he read the desperate story that battle-damaged oars and broken harpoons told, Speaker walked through the village. The smouldering remains of huts were evenly spaced, with room for canoes and nets for everyone. This had been a fishing village, not unlike the countless thousands that dotted the untold rivers of the east.

With essence sight Speaker observed a subtle but simple essence flow of the village – it all pointed towards the one hut that hadn’t… no wait, there were burn marks on it, but it had been repaired. Oh, and behind it were almost two hundred freshly dug graves in the sand.

Solemnly making the celestial sign of endings towards the graves, Speaker hoped that the dead rested easy in this part of creation – he didn’t want to have to deal with hundreds of angry ghosts.

Turning away from the graveyard, Speaker beheld the remains of the village again: Where was Shimmer? With his charm he could feel her – she was close… very close…

Oh, how he felt stupid. Of course! She wouldn’t be a pony – and Speaker knew from Shimmer what her animal totem usually always was. He should be looking for seagulls!

It figured that she would stand watch over the remains of her village as a bird – it was easier to do that way. Still, Speaker checked the repaired hut first. The smell inside was… less than promising, but that turned out to be fish hung to dry inside the hut. Judging from the arrays of crude charms and talismans then it had been the hut of the village shaman: “I guess her exaltation really likes to repeat that theme… taking another shaman again, really?”

Exiting the hut, Speaker found himself standing before a seagull. Looking closely, for he knew what to look for – looking for the unique tell of a lunar, some not quite natural feature on the critter – Speaker saw the telltale purple feathers in the seagull’s plumage that wouldn’t normally be there.

He didn’t need essence sight to confirm that it was her. Oh, how elated he felt – he wanted to cry… he wanted to hug her – but as he approached the seagull, it simply flew up and perched on the shaman hut.

Thinking for a moment, Speaker considered the situation. Shimmer had told him that lunars had to learn special charms to understand intelligent speech while in the form of animals – and another charm to speak to other ponies while animals… and it made some level of sense that she didn’t know either as a freshly exalted lunar. It was here that another aspect of Speaker’s thorough preparation paid off. Months before leaving, knowing that he would likely have to engage with someone in animal form who couldn’t speak, Speaker had gotten Sunrise to teach him a simple but profound charm: The ability to speak to animals. He had also gotten Cash Charmer to teach him sea-tongue, the most common language of the west. Of course, being a tribal there was a chance that she didn’t speak any civilized language, but that was chance he was willing to take:

“I am Bright Machine Speaker, Lord of Sunhill – you know me. What do you call yourself? I knew your last incarnation as Last Shimmer”

The seagull was difficult to read – it turned its head a bit and just kept looking at him.

Right, time to signal in a slightly less subtle manner. Speaker flared his anima, displaying the light of a celestially augmented soul: A swirling burst of golden fire and light formed into the rotating image of a golden gear, from which three pairs of beautiful feathered golden wings unfurled. If that didn’t get her attention, then he’d have to double check to see if that bird really was Shimmer or not.

“That’s quite enough!” said a roaring voice in sea-tongue coming from the surf.

What?

Turning, as his anima began to fade, Speaker saw a very… lunar… sight: A pony covered in bright almost glowing moonsilver tattoos, flanked by a squad of broad-shouldered biped beast-ponies that appeared to have far quite a lot of aquatic mutations, including heads that were less pony and far more shark, with very noticeable blue-gray shark fins poking out of their backs. The beast-ponies wore beautifully made articulated armor that didn’t quite appear to be made of metal, yet Speaker got the distinct impression that most normal attacks would just bounce off them. First age materials for sure.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” Speaker wondered in his reply, looking at the procession marching up from the water towards him. The beast-ponies had their… oh ya, those were magical shock-pikes, lighting shooting spears, lowered at him.

The lunar struck Speaker as quite old – he could feel the potency of his protean essence, while that of the Shimmer-bird was barely detectable – though he was sure the essence he had seen while flying was not from this new unknown lunar.

Without appearing to have received any kind of commands what so ever – not even the subtlest of nods – the beast-pony troops fanned out and surrounded Speaker, the lunar simply saying: “You are to leave”

Well, at least that confirmed that this new lunar spoke sea-tongue, that was nice. Of course, the request itself was rather silly: “No. I’m here for my lunar mate, and I’m quite sure I’ve found her. I have no plans of leaving without her. My name is Bright Machine Speaker by the way”

“You will have to make new and disappointing plans, Bright one” the lunar stated firmly, his voice strangely undeniable.

Luckily Speaker knew how to recognize mind control charms – and thus quickly brought up his own defensive charm, rendering him quite immune to such tricks: “I will do no such thing. I swore an oath to Shimmer before she died, that I would come find her and bring her home to her friends. I intend to honor that. You have no right to make me an oathbreaker – I don’t even know who you are”

Speaker carefully observed the lunar’s reaction, clearly remembering what Shimmer had told him about how much value lunar’s tended to put on oaths and the importance of keeping them. The lunar ‘rippled’ slightly, clearly some manner of subtle shapeshifting taking place, but it wasn’t clear what he had done: “Of course you would have…”

The lunar’s displeasure was clear to see – though Speaker could not pick up the more subtle inflections and micro-expressions that accompanied it. That the lunar wasn’t telling him his name really annoyed Speaker: “What can I say? I’m a nice pony – I promised to bring her back. I might not have carved a ring in my flesh to mark the oath like she would have, but I swore it to her none the less”

The seagull flew down from the shaman hut and melted into a pool of moonsilver that began to reshape itself into a pony. A few seconds later Speaker was struck by how uncannily Shimmer looked like… well… Shimmer. She had the same grey coat, the same purple dreadlocked mane. Even her eyes were the same shade of deep blue. Was it an effect of her exaltation that had changed her? Was it a shapeshifting trick? Why wasn’t she talking to him…

“Shimmer…” Speaker said, taking a tentative step towards her.

Looking at Speaker, Shimmer didn’t react – though she didn’t recoil in horror or anything negative either. What was going on?

“What have you done to her?” Speaker said, his voice clearly communicating his rising anger.

The beast-pony shark creatures around Speaker looked somewhat worried at Speaker’s raised voice, and the lunar himself actually took a single step backwards. His voice too sounded a tad less confident as Speaker glared at him: “I… I have sworn her to serve me during her training. Lunars do not have the advantage solars have by starting out knowing all you need to know. I am simply training her as she once did me. Right now, she is under orders not to speak to you, and I know that she would very much like to, but I cannot release her until her training is done”

“She doesn’t have her tattoos yet” Speaker said, not thinking much of the lunar’s explanation. Not allowing her to talk to him? What a load of road apples.

It was difficult for Speaker to tell if the lunar’s expression was sad or angry – but he did recognize that the lunar was running out of excuses. Of course, that didn’t mean that the lunar had any intention of releasing Shimmer from whatever strange bonds he had on her. With a brief but deep sigh, as the surf washed around his hooves in the sand, the lunar replied: “Once her training is done, she will be free to do as she wishes – whether that’s staying here, going with you, or anything else”

Speaker nodded, listening as the lunar elaborated:

“She has to finish her training and earn her tattoos – plus she had stated to me that the first thing she wants to do once trained is to free her people”

Throwing a quick glance towards the graveyard: “Her people look’s dead”

It turned out that there were others. As the lunar explained, then Shimmer’s tribe had been attacked by slavers from Coral who had taken most of the able-bodied ponies of the tripe, leaving only the sick and the elderly: “This was a little over five months ago. It was while fighting the slavers that she exalted, running away and hiding the tribe’s foals in the jungles on this island. She helped rebuild, then I came and took her away. Changelings then attacked a few days ago, wiping out the rest. She came here to bury them, finished last night before the crabs would come with the tide”

Ok… so Shimmer’s exaltation hadn’t come about exactly like her last one. Interesting: “Right, so I can speed this up if I go free her tribe?”

The lunar briefly looked to Shimmer, who nodded eagerly with a big smile: “That will be acceptable – we will continue her training in the waters around this island. Once her tribe returns, we will know that you have done as promised”

“…right… uhm, where are they?”

The directions Speaker got were rudimentary, but serviceable. With that, the lunar bid Speaker leave. Drawing in essence from their surroundings, Speakers shaped the sorcerous spell that formed into his magical cloud. Before mounting the cloud, Speaker looked to Shimmer: “I cannot put into words how happy I am to see you again Last Shimmer. Stay safe – I will be back soon”

It struck Speaker that he didn’t actually know if the name she went by was Last Shimmer for this incarnation – but she had told him that she had used that name many times before, so it stood to reason. She certainly looked happy, her face brightening up as she waved at him while he mounted his cloud and flew off.

Once they were out of sight, Speaker sighed deeply. That had not been how he had planned on things going… but then again, as he thought it through, he did recall Shimmer having talked about how elder lunars trained fledgeling lunars. It gave them far better odds for survival, and usually set them up with a network of peers and maybe even friends.

Recalling how lost and alone he had felt when he had exalted, Speaker couldn’t help but feel a little envious. Sure, he had exalted along with Cash Charmer, but neither of them had really known what to do, knowing only that they were hunted by those who wished to kill anathema.

Lost in thought, Speaker barely even noticed as he began to nod off – sleep catching up to him as his body finally reminded him that he hadn’t slept for a very long time, the surprise and excitement of having found Shimmer having finally worn off.

This meant that his cloud evaporated into whiffs of essence and water vapor – and Speaker falling to the ocean.

It was a sleeping pony that impacted the water – Speaker slipping into the waves like a diving fisher-bird, barely making any kind of splash, as he unconsciously assumed his elemental immunity charm.

This did not go unnoticed, local water elementals spotting the magical pony sinking into the depths but not dying – such a strange abnormality… it had to be reported.

Speaker woke up a while later, in complete darkness. Flaring his caste mark, the light from the symbol of a setting sun in a golden circle – a ‘blind smiley face’ in common vulgar parlance – he looked around and wondered how he had ended up in a… wooden room?

Feeling around for a moment, Speaker quickly concluded that the room was moving side to side – he was on a ship. Listening carefully, he heard no steps or sounds outside his room – none of the usual hustle and bustle sounds of a ship with a full crew, of which he had heard plenty while on the Wing of Wing of Daana’d.

“Hello?” he called out, not really shouting, but feeling weirded out by how desolate the place felt.

Getting up from his cot, opening the wooden door and stepping out into the ship, Speaker found it… abandoned? There were no other ponies going about. This made no sense. Was it a ghost ship?

Quickly looking around with essence sight, Speaker found that the ship itself was magical – no doubt about it. He saw traces of moonsilver in the wood that made up the ship, and essence markers of blue and black jade within the walls. How very strange… but he saw no ghosts or spirits.

Finally getting up on deck, Speaker found a single pony who appeared to have been waiting for him.

“You’re finally awake – took you long enough” the mare with the short-cropped mouse-brown mane stated, her black and blue-stripped garb standing in stark contrast to muted wooden colors of the ship. There was something familiar about her.

Speaker squinted at the mare, the light from the dawning sun quite strong in his eyes as he had briefly gotten used to being in the relative darkness of the lower decks: “I… don’t I know you?”

“It certainly would have been a lot easier if you didn’t – would have been even easier if you didn’t have that bloody writ with you. No wonder Siakal refused to even touch you” the mare said, getting up and sauntering over towards Speaker.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, Speaker recognized the stars in her eyes and the azure headband she wore: “Iron Siaka – what are you doing here? And better yet, what exactly am I doing here?”

The sidereal frowned at Speaker, crossing her hooves as she leaned against the portside railings: “I fished you out of the water, after ‘talking’ half a dozen sharks out of not eating you. Your turn”

Noticing that Iron Siaka’s large blue maul had several fresh shark teeth imbedded in it, Speaker raised an eyebrow: “Talking them out of it? Must have been an interesting exchange of words – but thank you”

“No problem – but do tell me how far you are in your quest to find your lunar mate. The faster you’re out of here, the faster you’re not my problem”

Speaker explained that he had sort of found her – but that her training by elder lunars wasn’t done yet – so he was on a quest to wrap up her business here in the west. Iron Siaka nodded, noting that then the wording of celestial writ was still covering him: “…but the moment you do get her back, you will need to leave, quickly”

Agreeing, noting that he had little interest in western issues: “I can help a lot more ponies in the east, so that’s where I want to get back to. By the way, can you help me get to where this group of slaves are kept?”

As Speaker explained where he had to go, Iron Siaka quickly cut to the chase and divined the exact location of the slaves – an extinct volcanic island north of Wavecrest. Once they had nailed that down, she pulled out a scroll and an ink-well. Speaker laughed as he saw the sidereal scream and shout at the scroll, the ink darting out of the well and splashing onto the scroll to form some rather interesting looking old realm calligraphy: “Alright, once I pop this, you’ll get a temporary fate rewrite as a marooned pony destined to be picked up by slavers and sold to that specific island’s slave operation – you should get there very quickly”

“Thank you. If you’re ever in the scavenger lands, feel free to come by Sunhill – I’ll have Sully cook you dinner” Speaker said, packing his clothes away into elsewhere, as wearing eastern garb wouldn’t fit his new temporary cover story.

Iron Siaka dropped Speaker off at a small island not far from Wavecrest, activating the heavenly prayer scroll she had produced earlier just before leaving. Speaker didn’t feel any different, but as far local reality was concerned, a lot of things had actually changed: Speaker no longer appeared to have the glorious solar destiny – or potential for one. Instead, he was but a mere mortal earth pony, destined to be enslaved and sold and worked to death in the iron mines of the Five-Fang Island.

Retrieving his hearthstone amulet, Speaker reported his progress to Sunhill. He was certain that Cash and Sully found the idea of him having to play a naked marooned pony… again, would be funny. At least this time, with Iron Siaka’s fate alteration, he wouldn’t have to wait very long.

This of course did not mean that Speaker simply wanted to wait. Exploring the island quickly revealed an abandoned – or at least un-manned – depot full of cargo. None it was all that dusty, and some of the scuffmarks on the floor from the crates looked reasonably fresh. Probably something used by smugglers, or as a pirate cache for stolen goods.

At least the place had reasonably pleasant beds to sleep in, and a fair bit of dried foodstuffs.

The next day Speaker collected a very large amount of seaweed, leaving it to dry in the sun. A quick prayer to the local weather gods ensured that it wouldn’t rain for a while, and so a few days later the seaweed was dry enough to burn. Collecting it all, Speaker set up several large bonfires on the beaches around the island. Lighting them in sequence, he made sure that the still moist seaweed sent huge plumes of smoke high into the sky, one after the other, so that any passing ships would have the best odds of seeing it.

Just after lighting the third bonfire, Speaker saw sails on the horizon. A short while later the ship came close to the island, deploying a rowboat to come to shore.

“Alright, time to play my role” Speaker thought to himself, approaching the half dozen ponies in the rowboat as they got close enough to wade to shore.

Galloping out to meet the ponies, Speaker greeted them warmly in his heavily accented sea-tongue: “Hi! Oh, I am so happy to see you – I was marooned here a week ago. Can you help me?”

The ponies from the boat exchanged looks, not really saying anything. The pony in charge, a gruff looking mare, finally nodded – and they all drew clubs, knives and picked up their oars as weapons: “Not sure if you’ll call it help – but you’re coming with us, that’s for sure”

And thus, Speaker was enslaved, put in chains, and brought out to the slave-ship where he was briefly interrogated – where it seemed that the slavers bought Speaker’s story: “I’m telling you – it was that bastard realm captain. She was pissed that I didn’t pray to their idiot dragons enough”

The slavers didn’t seem to care much about why Speaker had been on the island. They chiefly wanted to know who Speaker was, to which end he simply said that he was an old and retired army medic from the east, out looking for an old friend. It was fairly obvious that the slavers wanted to know if Speaker was worth ransoming – which Speaker convinced them that he wasn’t, since he had no family to speak of nor any wealth back home – resulting in them just tossing him in with the rest of their live cargo.

The cargo-hold of the slave ship had the most unholy of foul stench. With how everyone were chained down, there was no room for anyone to go toilet anywhere, so everyone just sat in their own filth. Many were sick from a mix of malnutrition, bed-sores, infections from several weeks of sleeping in piss and shit. Speaker learned that the slavers did seem to check for anyone dead about once a day – usually before the one daily meal was given.

“So… how did you end up here? You don’t sound like you’re from these islands. Coral?” a tribal pony slave who could speak sea-tongue, who was next to him, asked, after Speaker had done his best without using essence to drain and clean the pony’s wounds.

Shaking his head, Speaker spun his yarn once more. He knew from his own experience that he wasn’t really that good a liar – not any worse than your average mortal, but by no means better than regular ponies either. It had to be the magical fate that Iron Siaka had spun that convinced everyone.

Being the stubborn git that he was, Speaker managed to talk the slavers into suppling the slave hold with buckets of ocean water to wash themselves in – if for nothing else, then so fewer of them would die, so the slavers had more product to sell. That he had to appeal to their greed was sad enough – but at least his efforts meant that only three other slaves died before they were unloaded at their new home: Five-Fang Island and its merciless iron mines.

Seeing daylight for the first time in over a week was hard enough, trudging along the docks among a few armed and armored pony guards that watched them like hawks. The island itself seemed pretty normal, for an island formed around an extinct volcano: It looked like the volcano had exploded and collapsed completely at some point, with the island having grown up around the rich and fertile volcanic soil. Speaker’s chain gang was marched past several plantations, until they reached the iron mines in the mountain foothills. Enroute, it struck Speaker a bit odd that there seemed to be very few guards. Perhaps the place operated on the idea that a chain-gang of slaves wouldn’t be able to run away very effectively… plus it looked like the whole island was under control of whoever ran the place, so there truly was nowhere to run, unless you wanted to feed the sharks that circled the island.

As they were herded into what looked like an area where large crates of cargo were being loaded onto slave-pulled wagons – iron ore? Iron bars? Steel? – a pony who appeared oddly well dressed for how dirty the mine was, stepped up in front of the twelve rows of chain-gangs and addressed them, loudly, in a sea-tongue that came with an accent Speaker recognized from Chanos on the Blessed Isle: “I am Overseer Pushed Pencils. I have been informed that there are enough of you that speak sea-tongue that you can actually be given direct orders for once. You will be shown to the bunkhouses, there you will find a place to sleep. Tomorrow you will be taken to the mines. You will not get anything to eat, if you did not produce six bushels of iron ore the previous day. The same rule will apply to tomorrow, so I suggest you work quickly unless you like going hungry for the rest of your stay here. Any attempts to escape or cause trouble will result in you being fed to your minders”

Speaker looked around in confusion. With the chain-gangs they were somewhere around two hundred ponies in chains – and there was a total of six armed guards. Being fed to the minders? It seemed logical that this overseer was referring to something else… but what? The sharks?

This was quickly revealed, as one of the guards struck the hard rocky ground with the steel-capped end of his polearm, the sharp and loud sound ringing out in the massive courtyard…

A few seconds passed, then they appeared out of thin air.

With rippling muscle and bright red fur, a crown of horn growing around their brow, standing twice the height of a pony and almost three times the width of one. Bloodhounds. Erymanthoi demons. No wonder they didn’t need that many pony guards for the place… if there were dematerialized demons all over the place.

Oh, this didn’t change anything – Iron Siaka had said that Speaker’s altered fate would help obscure his essence as long as it held up. Of course, she had also said that it would revert to his normal fate the moment he started using enough essence to flare his anima. To this end Speaker began planning how to either take control of the place, or at least free the slaves, as the chain-gangs were herded to the bunkhouses by the guards and the massive blood red demon who kept looking at them all hungrily.

At the bunkhouse Speaker was met by a wall of misery. From the groans of overworked slaves, to the stench of infected wounds and disease. This was clearly not a place where slaves were treated very well – or where slaves were expected to last very long.

To Speaker’s surprise their chains were taken off at the bunkhouse – of course, now that they had been told that there were demons about, the implied threat did wonders to keep almost everyone in line.

Almost everyone.

A young tribal mare, looking battered and bruised from the rough ocean voyage and lack of proper food, made a run for it the instant her chains were off. The guards just laughed.

She made it roughly fifteen yards before she floated up in the air, squirming as an unseen force lifted her up in the air. The bloodhound that materialized with her locked in a massive clawed paw, gave her a single hungry and happy look – then it bit her screaming head off and went about drinking every last drop of blood in her, to the point that it even wrung out her corpse as if it was a dish-rag, to get the last few drops.

“That’s what’ll happen to the rest of you if you run – now go sleep. Tomorrow, you work!” one of the guards called out, the other guards laughing.

Everyone quickly distributed themselves among the bunkhouses – too frightened to speak initially. When choosing a place to sleep, it struck Speaker that he didn’t really know what Shimmer’s tribe had been called: “I guess I’ll have to ask…”

Speaker’s first challenge was finding tribal slaves that could speak sea-tongue, or at least had someone still alive among them who could speak it. By the time he poked his head into the third bunkhouse, he spotted the ‘friend’ he had helped on the slave ship – and it turned out that he had spoken with the ponies in that bunkhouse already, to get a feel for who was there and how bad the work was: “Good to see you again medicine-pony. There are many in here who could use your help”

“And I will gladly help them – but I also need your help: I need to find ponies from a specific tribe who were brought here. They lived on an island with a crescent cove, with a circle of five palms growing on the beach in the middle of their village”

The skinny stallion thought for a moment: “The five-palm tribe… I have heard some of the ponies over in the corner over there pray to a five-palm god”

“Thank you. The ponies who need medical attention, if you could gather them up, I’ll look at them once I’ve spoken to the five-palm ponies”

The five-palm tribals were apparently scattered over three of the bunkhouses, but Speaker was able to learn that most of them were still alive – apparently there had been recent a cave-in that had killed most of the slaves before that, which was why the island was taking in so many new slaves at the moment. Speaker had to wonder if Iron Siaka’s fate alteration had caused that, as a method to get slavers to come by him and bring him to the island. Beyond that, the three five-palm tribals he spoke to were quite happy to hear that Last Shimmer were alive – to Speaker’s surprise they all knew the name, confirming Shimmer’s name. Apparently, she had been their shaman’s apprentice… another similarity to her last incarnation.

With all that somewhat cleared up, Speaker turned to the sick and injured ponies that had been assembled. While examining them, Speaker figured that he would have to get to the other bunkhouses to speak to all of the five-palm ponies… but then again, none of the ponies there wanted to stick around. His compassion bid him to rescue every single one of them.

The question was how. While carefully examining a badly sprained and swollen hoof, Speaker wondered whether he should simply try to sneak all the slaves away – or pick a fight with the demons and take control of the place. Considering the number of slaves on the island, then getting all of them away to safety simply wouldn’t be possible without being noticed. This left conquest as the only viable option – and whoever ran the place probably wasn’t going to release the slaves if he asked nicely.