The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The glorious dust stylist spins around at great speed, splashing all around him with soup - yet he eats comfortably.

…

Returning to Thorn, the circle drew quite a lot of amazed looks, as the flying yeddim trailing golden essence lit up the dead of night. Shimmer was waiting on the south-eastern city walls with her anima lit like a silver beacon, still woozy from her injuries – and Speaker dearly wanted to tend to her, but she understood the urgency of the situation, so she simply tossed the bag of malfean porcelain and shouted: “We can play doctor later!”

Finding Roseblack, her grandfather and Denoted Flame wasn’t difficult either – as they had ascended the southern city walls overseeing the southern gate into the city, hunkered down with their troops in anticipation of either victory or another undead siege.

It was not difficult talking Denny into coming along to help banish Juggernaut. Not surprisingly, Roseblack and Wind Dancer wanted in on that too, even if they couldn’t do much beyond standing guard: “We’re not missing out on this!”

“I’ll be honest – there’s not much to see… it’s just a really long bonfire, then Sunrise cast’s the spell and then Juggernaut will be gone” Speaker mused, not wanting Roseblack or Wind Dancer to get bored and potentially interrupt the ritual incineration.

That didn’t seem to matter. Neither Roseblack or her grandfather wanted to miss out on the bane of Thorns getting whisked away by sorcery – they knew this would be a grand occasion.

Thus, the porcelain miniature was presented, Speaker having effortlessly spun the shards of Malfean ceramics with essence into a model of juggernaut so perfect that it was quite eerie. Denny felt bad having to burn it, but he did it for Thorns, assuming a meditative stance next to it and wrapping it in fire essence that saw the ceramic model begin to heat up.

“You know… ceramics with that kind of emerald sheen…. I think I’ve seen some of that at your aunt What’s-her name… the one with the funny looking spear?” Wind Dancer commented to Roseblack.

The unicorn general groaned: “You’re kidding right? You realize what kind of scandal it would be if aunt Firin got caught with demonic contraband like that?”

Wind Dancer gestured for calm: “No, it’s on her trophy rack – makes sense now… she said she took it from a demon worshiping cult that had orchestrated an uprising she’d quashed eighty years ago”

The night progressed with a very controlled burn of the porcelain miniature, it collapsing bit by bit into white-hot cinders as Denoted Flame revealed that he was quite good at meditating on slow burns, a testament to his self-discipline.

“A fire-aspected unicorn who knows how to pace himself? Now I’ve seen that too” Fire Orchid chuckled, jostling the sausage on a stick she was holding over the toasty unicorn’s horn.

It had taken a bit of very careful experimentation to find out whether the burning demonic ceramics gave off anything dangerous to the food Sully had originally started roasting over the fire, but nothing detrimental had been detected by the martial culinarian. Of course, such peaceful experimentation and discussion wasn’t the only things that happened during the night, as three separate hit and run attacks from deathknights briefly demanded the attention from the circle.

Luckily only one of those attacked near Denny, and the unicorn managed to maintain his focus to keep the careful incineration going while the others fought a brief but bloody battle outside the walls.

Once the last of the zombie zappers that the last deathknight had brought along were dealt with, the circle returned to their quiet vigil.

“Say, Sully – where did you get this sausage from? It’s quite good” Sunrise wondered, enjoying her meal of not-quite-campfire-roasted veg and sausage.

Sullen Hoof tipped his jingasa straw hat up, his golden helmet somehow not preventing him from eating at all: “Same place I’ve gotten most of our food – the autocrat’s palace, only now I don’t have to sneak in and steal it”

“Wait, so that’s why Roseblack had to take a couple dozen soldiers to oversee food distribution from the palace larders? Poor girl needs to sleep at some point you know” Wind Dancer said, perking up a very bushy if not downright cloudy eyebrow.

Denoted Flame calmly chimed in, his fire never wavering on the half-incinerated ceramic miniature: “And here I thought I was the one meant to play sheriff”

“We can always poke fun at my granddaughter later, that she finally found her true calling as a mare managing a big kitchen” Wind Dancer joked, laughing heartily.

Fire Orchid chuckled along: “Good one – but has she always wanted to be a general?”

“Oh, heavens yes. We couldn’t keep her out of the House of Bells if we had wanted to – she’s wanted to be the finest officer that house Tepet has seen since… well… me. That’s why I tagged along with her to Cripple Creek and her detour here. Didn’t want to see any more of my grandchildren buried before I get my turn for a dirt nap” Wind Dancer remarked, sounding both protective but also proud of Roseblack.

It thus became Cash’s turn to raise an eyebrow: “But her coming here isn’t why you think she’d get killed, is it?”

Wind Dancer gave Cash a look that told the solar diplomancer far more than he could have with words, something that the old unicorn first picked up on a second or so later: “You aren’t easy keeping secrets from, are you?”

“Best way to do that is making sure its stuff he doesn’t want to know – then he’ll turn off the charms that let him detect unsaid things” Sullen Hoof commented in a way that clearly communicated to everyone that that’s what he’d been doing.

Giving Sully a look as if not quite sure if he was for real, then looking back at Cash who seemed to be pleased as punch, Wind Dancer haw’d and hmmm’d a bit, before saying: “So if I don’t mention what I got for my hundred- and fifty-year’s birthday he’ll stop looking into my memories?”

Cash suddenly made a retching sound, despite not having eaten another for a minute or so, as he choked on the unspoken nugget of information that Wind Dancer had circuitously remarked upon, relating to a certain set of the triplets who had graced Wind Dancer’s bed on said birthday and what Him and they had done together that long evening.

Everyone else – sans Denny who maintained his fiery focus – laughed.

“There we go – but Lord Cash was right: I never expected our sojourn here to Thorns to get truly dangerous. Of course, we had only planned on a recon mission, not seeing the whole place liberated in one go. This was meant to probe their forces to see if it would make sense to divert the Vermillion Legion from Cripple Creek to here. No, my fears for Roseblack’s life relates to her political ambitions” Wind Dancer elaborated, casually adding that she had ambitions for the imperial throne.

Fire Orchid found this rather interesting: “Really? Does she have the backing of all of house Tepet for a bid at the throne?”

Wind Dancer frowned: “House Tepet doesn’t have much influence or power ever since I lost all its legions at the battle of futile blood. Roseblack hasn’t made any public bid for the throne yet, but the instant she does she will have a massive target on her back – and while she has done an admirable job shaping up the vermillion legion… and she has never done anything in politics, so I fear that she is in for a shock there”

Cash, having finished retching and dry-heaving, joined the conversation again: “Well, Roseblack commands the vermillion legion, like you said – that has to count for something – and you never answered if she has the support of your house”

The old unicorn threw Cash a tired look and explained that with house Tepet’s small size and general lack of military might, then support from the house didn’t really count for much: “If I give my public support, she should be able to rally the the support of the five elder Tepet families – but it simply doesn’t count for much right now when Sesus and Cathak generals can throw around legions by the dozen, while we can’t anymore”

“So, her bid for throne is a pipe-dream?” Fire Orchid said, her voice cautious and clearly communicating that she understood that such a question was probably a bit uncomfortable to answer.

Denny chimed in, laughing: “Oh heavens no – I wouldn’t be here if she was that badly off. Roseblack represents a large minority of young unicorns who hate how corrupt, ossified and useless the empire has become. She wants reform, and there are a lot of us backing her… but secretly. Hell, what she’s doing with the vermillion legion is a perfect example of how she’s able to bring ponies together!”

Apparently, the vermillion legion, prior to Roseblack being assigned command to it by a political rival that had wanted to get rid of her, had been known as “the piss red legion” – reflecting the quality of its troops, their discipline, their equipment and the legion’s leadership. Denny told with wonderment in his eyes of how Roseblack had brought the legion up to code: “Stern but fair treatment got her the loyalty of her troops – as opposed to the unicorns who consider actually talking to commoners and conscripts to be an insult to their honor. Sure, we had to do a little house-cleaning with the officers, since a lot of them weren’t all that keen on actually treating the troops as ponies worthy of their time or really doing their jobs, but once that was over Roseblack did an amazing job of shaping up the legion, and ponies on the blessed isle who matter know this”

Denny kept on praising Roseblack’s seemingly revolutionary leadership style and firm anti-corruption stance, all the while keeping his magical flames slowly burning the ceramic figure. It seemed that the young unicorn had nothing but praise for his commander. Something he emphasized was the loyalty she had earned through hard work – not simply through nepotism or other underhanded means. This meant that the vermillion legion was led by unicorns from across the realm, from every major and minor house, all of them fed up with the idiocy and corruption that was otherwise rife in the realm. This gave the Roseblack a lot of reach and connections, for when the time was right to make her bid for the throne.

The circle, Denny and Wind Dancer spoke throughout the rest night of the intricacies of realm politics, only interrupted a few times by dark lightning in the sky from Juggernaut – or some other explosion on the now distant meat mountain. It seemed that Sully had left behind quite a few ‘gifts’ and other fun surprises for the deathlord to stumble upon during the night.

Come the first rays of morning, Sunrise finally cast her spell, pressing Juggernaut and the surrounding farmland it sat on beyond space and time. It was a strange and mystical sight, as flames of shadow consumed the entire area, leaving nothing behind – to the point that the surrounding lands simply shifted and rearranged as the shadow flames burned, as if the spot where Juggernaut has sat had never existed.

From across the city a roar sounded – cheers from every soul that had eyes to see, for while many in the city had not yet dared to hope or feel liberated, with Juggernaut still looming outside their gates, then this was undeniable.

“Wait… was that it?” Denny said, sounding quite incredulous as he looked at the others around him in confusion.

Fire Orchid nodded slowly, smiling as a great sense of elation washed over her: “I think it is – now we just have to handle turning the city over to you lot, then we’ll go home”

That was when fire and lightning lit up from juggernaut, illuminating great streams of blood flowing up into the air over the rotting flesh mountain to form some kind of eldritch symbol.

Sullen Hoof quickly appeared next to Speaker, shouting: “The shadow flames have stopped – Speaker, what am I looking at?”

Trying to look at Juggernaut with essence sight was tricky – there was so much necrotic essence already going around the place, so making out the distant essence patterns of this new strange icon of blood, was very difficult: “I have no clue – but if it’s stopping the shadow flames we have to end it! Let’s go!”

Leaping from the battlements, Speaker ignited his ruby pinions and flew at speed towards Juggernaut. Sully joined him moments later, using his mountain leap technique to cross the couple of miles to Juggernaut in a single massive leap, the two sailing through the air together – even if by different means.

It took a few minutes to get to Juggernaut, but this much closer and up in the air it was clear that the strange blood glyph above the black citadel was being continually fed quite a lot of blood and necrotic essence from within the decaying flesh mountain.

“Sully, where did you aim to land?” Speaker called out, as they approached.

The gold-masked pony singly gestured at the black citadel: “I aimed at the castle – once there we can find the source of the spell. You should turn off your wings and drop to the castle, otherwise they’ll see you on approach”

Speaker nodded. He didn’t have the same kind of vision-enhancing charms as Sully did, so his ability to see at night was quite limited, though with essence sight he could see in a different way, and thus he dove up and realigned his flight path, before turning off his ruby pinions.

Falling through the air towards the dread palace, Speaker detected a lot of faint essence reaching out in his direction – tracking spells and other attempts at targeting him and Sully, no doubt initiated by the undead defences of the palace having spotted Speaker’s flaming wings from far off. Luckily none of them were able to detect Speaker as his wings were off.

Near the palace, Speaker relit his wings, allowing him to avoid crashing into a castle wall, while Sully just landed on the wall and ran along it, essence making his hooves stick to the vertical surface.

Flying past countless ballistae and other defensive fortification, zombie archers lining every battlement, Speaker sought out the source of the spell hindering the shadow flame.

It wasn’t difficult: The tallest spire of the palace had all the lightning and blood coursing from it, up to the sanguine icon. Getting there was a bit trickier, as the zombies and ballistae were not slow to start shooting at Speaker – but luckily Cash snuck along, sabotaging ballistae and tricking zombies to look elsewhere, so not all of them were shooting at the solar healer.

Reaching the spire, Speaker first used his singing staff to thoroughly mess with the tower’s stone bricks, so that the stone pipes leading blood up were cut off at multiple points. The roar of undead rage from the top of the spire told the two solars everything they needed to know about what kind of effect that had had – but Speaker also quickly saw how the very bricks he had liquified and remade to block the pipes were being forced back into place and shape by dark sorcery…

“Shit, Sully – this won’t hold for long. We have to distract him long enough to make this hold!” Speaker cried out, as he felt his singing staff’s hold over the stonework slipping.

Sully sighed. He had clearly hoped that they could just sabotage a few things and then slip away in the night, like the elevator chains he had already severed so that no more zombie archers or siege weapons could get up to the top of the tower. A direct confrontation was so much riskier… but he followed Speaker up the spire, to the parapet where several dozen chanting ghosts each guided a stream of blood and necrotic essence skywards, led by The Mask of Winters.

“Mask – this ends h-“ Speaker began, but was interrupted quite forcefully as the Mask directed a massive tide of blood at him, all the while the few ballistae that had been moved up to the spire started to be turned to point in Speaker’s direction by their zombie crews and ghostly artillery officers.

Having effortlessly dodged the wave of blood, Sully leapt to the chanting ghosts, carving them up as quickly as he could. This instantly got the attention of the Mask, who managed to grab the streams of blood the slain ghosts had been guiding, merging them into the greater stream he was helming: “Damn you!”

Sully quickly found himself chased by the Mask’s seemingly sentient blade, as it zipped through the air to dog him at his every step – not that that stopped him from cutting down more ghosts, all of which seemed mindlessly focused on channelling whatever strange spell they were working on.

Speaker finally managed to get up and reorient himself from the tide of blood that had taken him. Even with his elemental immunity charm, he had still been knocked around and flushed down from the spire – but his wings of flame got him up again in no time, to aid Sully and distract the Mask more directly.

Throwing his twin orichalcum gyroscopic chakrams at the Mask, Speaker instantly got the deathlord’s attention away from Sully – he even made the Mask miss as the eldritch ghost reached for another couple of faltering blood streams no longer controlled by now destroyed chanting ghosts, which quickly made the blood icon up above shrink noticeably as the streams ceased.

“You insufferable pest!” the Mask roared, his very mask seeming to crack ever so slightly from the pressure of the fury welling up inside, as his soulsteel armor screamed with the voice of children after Gift and Homage had bounced off it.

As Speaker and the Mask did battle, Sully finished off the rest of the chanting ghosts and moved on to ghost and zombie crews manning the ballistae – Speaker making his gyroscopic chakrams bash and push the Mask around, so that more and more blood streams were dropped. Once the last chanting ghost’s sickly voice had fully faded, and the ballistae stood without crews, Sully looked to the river of blood streaming up to the tower… he knew that they couldn’t mess with the tower itself, but Sully had made ice-cream for the grand feast earlier that day… so he knew that his cooking charms could freeze liquids just fine.

Having learned the hard way during his last fight with the Mask, that the Mask’s dread blade could cut through even his essence shields, Speaker took great care to avoid getting hit. Wielding both Gift and Homage as shields, Speaker changed his fighting game into a defensive one – not that this meant that he wasn’t attacking either: The Mask only had one giant dread blade, while Speaker had two weapons, so if one was parrying, the other would be flung to batter the Mask around and disrupt his spellcasting.

Blows were traded back and forth like this for a few tense minutes – an eternity for one-on-one combat – but it seemed clear that the two opponents were eerily well matched, at least insofar that Speaker did not give the Mask time to cast any kind of advance sorcery or necromancer, while Speaker’s weapons couldn’t quite punch through the Mask’s thick soulsteel armor.

Of course, Speaker knew quite well that he didn’t need to defeat the Mask. He hadn’t needed to defeat the Barbate Arbiter either – he just had to stall for long enough… oh… there we go.

The Mask almost didn’t notice when the vertical bloodflow from the tower, about two thirds of it going up through the grasp of his armored hoof with the rest spilling on the tower floor, stopped. There was a slight gurgling from the drain, and then nothing. The Mask’s masks seemed to spin around his head, as he couldn’t quite settle on what kind of mood he was to present: “What is this!?”

A rather bloodsoaked Sullen Hoof jumped up from the circular opening in the stone floor that no longer flowed with blood: “We’re done here Speaker – exit!”

Feeling endlessly relieved, Speaker leapt back to distance himself from the Mask – not that the deathlord seemed all that keen on relenting, especially now that he was all the more enraged.

The arcane blood sigil high in the sky above them finally started to fail, blood raining and splashing down onto all of Juggernaut and the umbral palace, all of which Sully dodged expertly as he darted to the nearest ballista and heaved – moving it to aim at the mask. It wasn’t exactly a carefully aimed shot, but the mask was a very large target, and Sully wasn’t aiming to kill, but to pin.

As Speaker was leaping towards the of the tower, the loud thunk of a steel-tipped ballista bolt that struck the stone and buried itself almost went by un-noticed, at least until the Mask nearly tripped when his grand robes yanked him back. The ballista bolt had stuck the robes to the thick wooden floor, letting Speaker finally get some distance from the deathlord.

Throwing both Gift and Homage to distract the deathlord and hinder any efforts at freeing himself, Speaker leapt to the battlements at the edge of the tower, Sully joined him there: “Don’t dawdle – the shadow flames are burning again!”

Speaker barely had time to turn and see the shadowy fire licking up around the edges of the dark citadel, before Sully had performed his mountain-crossing leap technique and shot off into the sky.

The mask roared, struggling against his robe that was stuck to the ground – it seemed that the robes were more than just fabric, so simply cutting or ripping it wasn’t an option. This didn’t mean that the Mask was without options – or awareness of what was going on, now that the blood sigil was gone. With imperious and arcane motions, the Mask gestured at the stone making up the spire, the stone slabs and bricks shooting out of their places and flying up to him, to build a new tower around him, pushing him high into the sky.

Some very quick number-crunching, based on the speed at which the Mask was rising in elevation, compared to how fast the shadow flame was consuming the rest of juggernaut and the black citadel, Speaker realized to his greatest of dread that the Mask would clear the flames before they could get to him.

This could not happen. Thorns would without a doubt fall if the Mask got away to plot his revenge – and Sunhill would be next.

Leaping from the battlements of the spire, Speaker lit his wings of fire and raced towards the pillar of stone that the Mask was raising himself on – instead of flying away to safety. He slammed, hooves first, into the pillar and shattered it with his magical martial arts. The Mask instantly felt the ground give way under him, but with a new arcane gesture he had a new pillar rise up to catch him.

“No…” Speaker said despairingly, realizing that the only way to keep the Mask within the black citadel, to make sure that the Mask would be trapped outside of time and space, would be to stay there and keep him from fleeing.

Sullen Hoof landed back on the battlements near the rest of the circle, catching his breath and removing his golden mask. The others quickly approached him, Fire Orchid quickly asking: “Where is Speaker!?”

Looking back at where Juggernaut had been, the land around it having magically ‘flowed’ in to plug the gap left behind by the undead mountain disappearing, Sully simply shook his head: “He… I think he had to stay, or couldn’t get away fast enough”

Everyone was stunned. Messenger spells were sent to Speaker, but no reply came back – even after desperately waiting for hours for a response. Nobody wanted to imagine what kind of slow and painful death Speaker would get now that he was trapped with a vengeful deathlord.

There was no eye left dry, making for a very sombre goodbye party to Wind Dancer, Roseblack, Silverclaws and the rest of Thorns.