The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The celestial horse practitioner kicks soup so hard it becomes good soup

…

Returning to Sunhill was done in silence. Only the occasional deep rumbling groans from Nah the yeddim came from the golden comet that zipped across the sky that day. With City Father of Thorns nursed somewhat back to health, at least well enough that the god was no longer in danger of dying and resting easily back in his sanctum, and the city state under new leadership that looked to rebuild and restore Thorns to its former glory without repeating the mistakes of the past, the presence of the circle was simply no longer needed – and with their immediate peace of mind restored, rumblings against the ‘new golden anathema’ had also begun, making an exit all the more salient.

This of course didn’t mean that everything was ok. Shimmer was inconsolable, alternating between crying and sulking – only having stayed quiet during the trip back to the Sunhill by spending most of that in the form of a seagull, because birds can’t weep.

Landing in Sunhill, in driving rain, in one of the covered landing zones that had been set up long ago, the circle quickly disembarked and handed Nah over to the landing crew. The crew was quick notice that someone was missing… and the implications of that. News of Speaker not returning would spread on its own through the city.

Still, Cash and Sunrise agreed that they would author a public statement about Speaker, while Sully disappeared of to somewhere unknown to sulk. Shimmer was similarly about to fly off, when Fire Orchid perked up: “Heads up – we’ve got incoming”

At one of the far doors to the barn/hangar, a young stallion came running. His uniform was that of Sunhill internal security, its plain white with black arm-bands being quite unmistakable at a distance – which was by design. He quickly ran up to the circle, gasping for air: “Your lordships… I… we have a situation in the hospital, office level!”

While Sully was already gone, then Cash, Sunrise, Fire Orchid and Shimmer all followed along, the security officer explaining that it was a code blue-five. Anything code blue meant it was relating to ghosts, while a code five meant it was an apparently non-hostile ghost.

“Where on the office level? Who reported this?” Shimmer asked, her tone as harsh as her willingness and eagerness to vent some righteous fury on whatever ghost was haunting them.

The young officer, in between ragged breaths, explained: “It came in from the personal secretary of Lord Bright a few hours ago – we have cordoned off the area and deployed salt to contain it”

Shimmer shifted into her warform mid-stride, her now avian eyes glowing with a mean streak of blue moonlight. Losing Speaker was one thing, but a ghost desecrating his office? Oh, this would not stand: “Up on me!”

Skidding to a halt, the young security officer watched as Sunrise, Fire Orchid and Cash all got up on Shimmer’s back and how she launched herself up into the air – the mighty flapping of her wings nearly pushing the young pony over.

Flying up to the office level of the manse was a little faster than taking the internal manse elevator, plus it meant not having to cross through the hospital – much less of a crowd to navigate. Entering in through a window, surprising Cash’s staff of secretaries quite a lot, the circle quickly moved to Speaker’s office, finding the cordon and the troops there.

“Report, what is going on?” Fire Orchid bellowed, her armor forming around her as it was retrieved from elsewhere, one piece at a time in rapid succession.

The officer in charge, Berry Petal, nodded to her old commander: “Good to see you Sangui- I mean, Fire Orchid, ma’am. It’s some kind of ghost-looking through, but the usual wards and things aren’t working on it – and it’s talking all kinds of gibberish”

“Very well – where is the secretary, the one who reported this?” Fire Orchid asked, quietly noting that despite the strange situation, then none of the other troops seemed all that agitated or worried.

Berry Petal, simply happy to see her old commander again, pointed Fire Orchid over to an old mare sitting on a bench further down the hall at the waiting area for visitors to the lord. Sunrise and Shimmer were already talking to her, to which Fire Orchid opted not to bother with her, instead opting to take the bull by the horns.

Walking over to the office door, the soldiers there quickly stepped aside to let her through: “Has anyone been in here since the secretary left?”

The soldiers shook their heads: “None ma’am – lockdown protocol from the moment Miss Aria called for alarm”

Nodding, Fire Orchid wondered exactly what kind of ghost it could be that had gotten into Speaker’s office. Blue-five meant it wasn’t directly hostile, so it hadn’t attacked anyone – but… could it be a messenger? Maybe a messenger from another deathlord, one seeking to negotiate a secret non-aggression pact? Not that the deathlords should expect any such peace – seeing as the circle was two for two at this point when it came to dealing with deathlords.

Taking a deep breath and activating a slew of charms, Fire Orchid stepped into the office…

The sight that met her was indeed a strange one: A semi-transparent image of a monochrome pony was floating in the area, but… only for an instant? It was flittering in and out of place, appearing and reappearing all over the officer seemingly at random – though the moment she set hoof in the office it honed in on her, appearing and flickering in front of her, only for the blink of an eye each time, as if performing all ten thousand mudras of inner peace and heavenly enlightenment from the immaculate scriptures, in such rapid succession that it all blurred together. It was impossible to make out a face, and the very brief sounds it was making were similarly strangely garbled and impossible to understand…

“What in the jellied dragon shits is this…” Fire Orchid said in bewilderment, as she stepped further into the office.

Nothing else in the office was disturbed – which was strange. If it was a ghostly intruder, or a haunt, then the ghosts should have tossed the office. A messenger would wait politely, not spout gibbering insanity at you… so what was this?

“Hey, Cash, Shimmer, Sunrise – come check this out!”

The rest of the gang joined up momentarily, all of them finding the strange flickering ghast quite strange. Shimmer, in her warform, with its automatic essence sight via its third eye, quickly pointed out the obvious: “That thing… whatever it is… it’s not here”

“I’m sorry what?” Cash said, finding that statement quite confusing.

Shimmer shrank back into her normal pony self, her eyes glowing with blue moonlight along with her caste mark, as she maintained her essence sight: “It’s not a ghost – no necrotic essence. In fact, there’s no essence at all. I mean, I can see it, but there’s no foreign essence there at all”

The strange apparition kept flittering around between all four of them, making for a wonderfully distractive sight – while the rest of the circle tried to examine the office to find the source of the thing.

Cash went straight to Speaker’s desk, being quite at home with paperwork – though he found that he had to employ some of his more heavy-duty translation charms in order to understand the medical jargon that Speaker used in his notes: “Ok, we have got to teach his next reincarnation how to do better notes so…“

It was quite rare to see Cash suddenly be at a loss for words – so everyone stopped what they were doing to focus on the eclipse caste pony, as he froze mid-sentence.

It turned out that the translation and perception-enhancement charms that Cash had activated let him understand the apparition: “It’s Speaker!”

Not at all seeing what Cash was seeing, Shimmer and the others didn’t find that funny at all: “Please don’t joke about that”

Shaking his head at Shimmer, Cash gestured at the flickering apparition: “No, it is him – but he’s like really slow … like… almost frozen in time. He’s talking so slowly I can barely make out a word of what he’s saying – and it doesn’t look like he can talk to us very long at a time, probably being chased”

It was difficult to absorb this strange and shocking news – but Shimmer quickly intuited a new problem: “Wait, that means that to him we’re basically moving around so fast he can’t make heads or tails of us!”

“Stands to reason - but why?” Cash wondered, his sorcerous knowledge being able to fit into a very small space.

Sunrise appeared to have an idea, quickly scrambling over to Speaker’s desk and looking around through the papers there: “Cash, quickly – help me with his copy of the book of three rings”

“He took that with him to Thorns” Shimmer noted, having kept tabs on what Speaker had where.

This resulted in a somewhat agonizing wait, as Sunrise quickly sat down and meditated for the twenty or so minutes needed to recall something she had stored elsewhere – namely her own copy of the book of three rings. Once it was back in creation, she quickly looked up the description of the spell they had cast on juggernaut: “Here it is – it reads that time passes very slowly in the pocket of elsewhere he’s been sent. This explains everything…”

“Neat – does it say how we can rescue Speaker, or must we wait a hundred years for Juggernaut to reappear?” Shimmer said, sounding unsure of whether she cry for joy of knowing that Speaker was still alive, or weep that he might be trapped for a century.

Quickly reading through the quite thorough descriptions of the spell, Sunrise nodded: “We can get him out – but we will need to get a pendant or hoof-ring of malfean porcelain for that fits him”

“He can make that himself if we get the raw materials to him – question is, Shimmer, you got the porcelain last time – can you get more?” Cash said.

Shimmer sighed, deeply, and sat down with a slump: “Not happening – I had to call in a few really big favors from my last incarnations notebook, plus burn a few bridges, to get that stuff”

“Maybe we don’t have to – I saw some of the Mask’s sorcerous workshops in the black citadel while I was pretending to be a deathknight. I’m pretty sure he has a little of everything stocked in those” Sullen Hoof noted, drawing on his experiences from having snuck around the twisty corridors of the Mask’s lairs earlier.

There was one issue with this idea for a rescue attempt: It had to be coordinated with Speaker – and how do you talk to someone who is perceiving Creation’s reality at a rate so slow, that it appears frozen? Cash already had an answer to this, having given this a great deal of thought while the others had talked about demonic ceramics and where to get it: “I need paper! Sunrise, meet me at the hangar barn – I’ll be right there. The rest of you, return to your usual duties and quell any rumors that Speaker is dead. Instead tell everyone that I and Sunrise will go to pick him up from Thorns shortly. Officially he just stayed behind to heal the sick and injured”

Nodding, Fire Orchid was the first out the door, ordering the security cordon around the office to stand down and giving Speaker’s secretary the day off, though in trying to explain that it was actually Speaker himself who had been appearing in the office via his hearthstone-granted remote viewing and illusory power, the solar general found herself stumped when the secretary appeared confused over who even what Speaker was.

“Hey gang, I think we have an issue here…” Fire Orchid said, poking her head back into the office, finding that Sunrise and Shimmer were already gone.

Cash was setting up large sheets of paper on hastily made easels and other stands, whirling an ink brush around to write instructions and information on the paper. It was clear what he was doing: Writing a message that stood quite still to Speaker, so that the slowed down solar wouldn’t just perceive a blur of motion and sound. The instructions read: “The pocket dimension Juggernaut is in has a slowed down time. Sunrise and I are coming to get you out once we are well rested and ready to fight again – find malfean porcelain, make a pendant or hoof ring for yourself, it’s your key out”

Looking up from his little writing project, Cash shot Fire Orchid a curious look: “What kind of issue?”

“It’s Speaker’s secretary, Ink Aria – she can’t remember Speaker at all. I even pointed at the painting of his portrait in the hall, and she didn’t recognize him as her boss” Fire Orchid said, sounding quite worried.

Satisfied with his message for Speaker, and now just waiting until the flittering images of Speaker would spot the message, Cash joined Fire Orchid out in the hall.

“Miss Ink Aria, how do you feel?” Cash inquired, his caste mark lighting up as a whole host of various charms of social and mental deduction were activated.

The old mare, looking not quite like anyone’s grandmother just yet, but old enough for her children to have move out, smiled at Cash and Fire Orchid: “Oh Lord Charmer and Lord Orchid, I’m so confused… you say it’s not a ghost in the office, but then what is it?”

A little back and forth ensued, Cash quickly piecing together exactly what was going on: “It’s quite alright Miss Aria, you haven’t done anything wrong – but do tell me, exactly what is your work here?”

“Oh Lord Charmer, you know that. I’m the personal secretary for the Sunhill Manse Chief of Medicine” the mare cheerfully replied.

Cash nodded: “True, and who is the chief of medicine here then?”

At first the old mare got a very stupefied and fearful look in her eyes, as it dawned on her that she didn’t know the name of who she worked for – even more so as that paradoxical fact clashed mightily with the simple question of how she could serve as the secretary for someone she didn’t know. Fire Orchid looked unsure of what to do as the mare broke down in tears, but Cash was quick to console her, and then explain the situation: “It’s Speaker’s magical martial arts – he told us about this. It makes ponies forget him, completely”

“Completely… good heavens… so that’s why she couldn’t even remember Speaker as one of the founders of Sunhill? Or recognize that its him in there” Fire Orchid said, pointing towards the painting of Speaker on the wall near them, which was titled as exactly that.

Cash could only nod with a sorrowful look in his eyes: “I’ll ask our sidereal friends if they can help her recover her memory – but beyond that, I don’t know if we can do much for her other than let her learn everything about Speaker again. Now, I have to help Sunrise get Speaker back, but we’ll talk about this later”

Fire Orchid shook her head at Cash’s quick exit, for she knew damn well that she wasn’t terribly well equipped to explain to Ink Aria what was going to happen now. The old secretary looked at the general with hope in her eyes, Cash’s reassurance about… the something something… still fresh in everyone’s memory, even though nobody other than Fire Orchid could remember that it was sidereals that had been mentioned as a possible solution.

“I.. Look, Aria – go home, take a few days of paid vacation. You’ll be summoned once your services are needed again. Rest easy” Fire Orchid said.

The old mare nodded slowly, getting up and leaving. Berry Petal came over to Fire Orchid, having heard everything: “How in Malfeas could she forget Lord Bright?”

“It’s that cursed martial art he uses – it makes ponies forget… could even affect us. Scary to think about”

Berry Petal could only nod.

Meanwhile, Cash Charmer had reached the hangar with a freshly prepared yeddim for him to race away on, Sunrise already up on the enclosed howdah. Few words if any were exchanged as they flew back to Thorns, though Cash did inquire about any kind of contingency options in case Sunrise found herself stuck in the Juggernaut-dimension.

“The book of three rings describes the spell working akin to how Malfeas was banished from Creation – and like that banishment and the treaty of limbs, then there is a backdoor to the pocket dimension – we just have to find that” Sunrise explained.

Cash nodded: “Sounds easy – but I assume this backdoor doesn’t open to anyone, otherwise the Mask would be out already”

“Malfean ceramics. Wear a pendant or a ring of that, and you’ll be able to pass through the backdoor portal leading to the banished place – anyone can do that. I don’t need one, since I cast the spell. Of course, with time moving slower there, I have no idea how long it’ll be here before we come out. I think you should return to Sunhill in the meantime, await a signal via Speaker’s hearthstone power before you come pick us up” Sunrise said, her voice showing Cash something he had never quite heard from the young mare before.

She sounded legitimately worried.

Of course, being worried made sense: Sunrise had no idea where the portal leading to that place beyond time and space would open up within that dimension. Perhaps under one of Juggernaut’s immobilized feet?

Finding the gateway turned out to be easy enough, Sunrise using essence sight to observe the terrain that had flowed in to fill the gap left behind by Juggernaut. The local essence flows were not subtle about their unnatural arrangement, and at the centre of all that stood a ruined stone wall with a single empty door opening. Approaching this doorway revealed a terrible stench, the smell of death wafting through the portal to the banished dimension.

As far as Cash was concerned, Sunrise just walked through the doorway and disappeared into thin air. He couldn’t follow, even though he tried.

It was with a deep breath that Cash sent a magical message back to Sunhill, reporting that Sunrise had made entry. Flying back, what was left of the circle held a quiet vigil that evening, praying to all the gods that might listen that their friends would return.

As if their prayers were answered, a report came in from Speaker’s office – a new thing had manifested: Glowing text. It was a response from Speaker, a static illusion that spelled out a simple message that he had read what Cash had written for him, and that he was looking for Sunrise – and most importantly, that he would update the text once him and Sunrise made contact. The text itself seemed oddly distorted, but not beyond what was possible to read – likely a result of the time dilation or sorcerous interference between the two realities.

Thus Cash, Sully, Shimmer and Fire Orchid waited, knowing now that time passed much slower in the magical realm that Juggernaut had been banished to.

It took three weeks before a new message appeared in Speaker’s office. It was not a happy message though: “We have searched the Mask’s laboratories. No viable pottery found. Will try something stupid”

This didn’t exactly instil hope in the rest of the circle, but they couldn’t know what the conditions were in Juggernaut.

The deep rumbling and trembling ground were nothing new. The tunnel through the large bone was moist with remains of marrows, and there was all manner of carrion eating insects everywhere, gnawing at the scraps. They were easy enough to ignore, due to the poor lighting of the tunnel – and they were quick enough to shy away from the ponies running through, to avoid getting stepped on.

“Quickly, she’s gaining on us!” Speaker shouted, his caste mark just barely lighting the way.

A quick throw of Homage melted a hole in the wall for the two to escape through, and Speaker’s repair charm quickly mended the hole so it looked pristine. It was the best they could do to buy themselves some time.

“That child is a menace. Who would be mad enough to exalt someone that deranged?” Sunrise wondered out loud, confused about the nature of their foe.

Speaker barely managed to hush Sunrise as the sound of maniacal laughter, in the voice of a young filly, rang out through the tunnel: “Come out and play”

Sullen Hoof had tried to warn Speaker of her. The Shoat of the Mire – the one single deathknight in the service of the Deathlord known as The Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils.

Once the mad giggling had passed, Speaker allowed himself to breathe again, sighing deeply: “Honestly, she wasn’t that nuts when I first fought her in here”

“You told me already - you took away her ability to dream, turning her into an increasingly deranged insomniac. Why not just give her a nap so she’ll leave us alone?” Sunrise griped, finding their situation rather frustrating.

Speaker shook his head while carving a new hole for them to exit back into the tunnel via: “I took away her dreams for a reason. The first few times I fought her all nearly ended with my death. She is a true monster in combat, using some kind of magical martial art I’ve never seen before. Without sleep, her will drained away, leaving her unable to use her most potent of charms…”

“It also made her a driven and maniacal huntress out for blood – Speaker, if she’s asleep she cannot fight us” Sunrise retorted, not at all convinced.

As they crawled out into the tunnel again, Speaker reviewed his map of Juggernaut’s fifth left foot’s seventh’s toe: “I’m not arguing this with you – and we’re not killing her either. Doing that would just free her exaltation and send it back to Creation”

“You’re sacrificing our short-term goal of getting out of here, for a long term goal that will not be relevant, if we can’t leave here. Be realistic!” Sunrise said, her own castemark briefly lighting up as she put a charm or two into her words, making it impossible for Speaker to idly dismiss them.

With a defeated sigh, Speaker finally agreed – but said that he would need some time to come up with a new plan to incorporate this change in tactics: “Remember, the Mask caught on to my dream-based martial arts a while ago. He has ghosts everywhere sniffing out anyone dreaming, so granting her that would reveal our position – and we still haven’t found a way to get by the forces the Mask stationed around your entry point”

“Then use that brilliant head of yours – come on Speaker, this shouldn’t be impossible for you”

“Sunrise, one thing at a time. We can barely find a safe haven to sit and think – especially not with you here too, let alone make battle plans on how to handle the Shoat and then dealing with the lockdown on the entry point and then find a way for me to pass through it without a demonic medallion. I mean, come on, the only way I’ve been able to get any rest is by jumping into someone’s sleeping mind for some peace and quiet – but that’s why the Mask is hunting anyone asleep now!“

Of all the responses, Speaker had not expected Sunrise to slap him. Looking at the young priestess with a mix of confusion and fright, the old Lookshyan stallion grimaced as if about to say something, when Sunrise cut him off: “You are compartmentalizing your problems too much here. I can already see a way to resolve all of this at once”

Knowing damn well that his abilities as a wordsmith paled in comparison to Sunrise, Speaker simply sat down and shot Sunrise a grumpy look: “Well go ahead, tell me your brilliant plan that also factors in that you’re not respiring any essence here, and I’m only gaining a trickle thanks to my hearthstones and the time-difference to Creation”

He hadn’t quite expected Sunrise to keep her confident smile: “We’ve been running around here for hours since we found each other, trying to dodge the Shoat and the Mask’s patrols. You say you’ve eroded her will, correct? This would leave her vulnerable to my mind control charms. So let her catch up to us, I’ll wrangle her”

It took no small amount of swallowed pride to admit that his plans hadn’t really factored in Sunrise using mind control charms on the Shoat – but Speaker quickly saw a flaw in this idea: “You do realize that she won’t just stop and listen to you talk. She is like a ravenous beast – she will attack the instant she senses us”

“Not if she doesn’t have the willpower to commit to such an assault – my charms will keep her at bay” Sunrise stated with the greatest of certainty.

Furrowing his brows, Speaker quickly tried to listen if there were the sounds of nearby ghosts. Upon hearing none, he commented: “Since when have you been able to do that?”

“Since the very beginning. It’s not a charm I’ve had to use often, since I usually had the rest of you to defend me – but it has served me well against mortal assassins and beasts alike”

Consulting his map once more, Speaker guided the two towards an abscess near a toe join. The puss there was fresh and recently excavated, meaning that it didn’t smell nearly as bad there as everywhere else. This was probably why the Mask’s forces had set up a waystation and guard post there, to monitor traffic going up the foot towards the body of Juggernaut.

Assaulting the garrison there was swift and done without mercy, Sunrise using her musical martial arts to utterly demoralize the ghostly officers there, all the while also ensuring that no sound escaped the place – thus no messengers heard the cries of alarm or sounds of fighting until it was too late. The two solars ‘ate’ well on ghostly essence, filling their souls once more and leaving them prepared for conflict, as they finally released a couple of the ghost slave messengers – but only after Sunrise had thoroughly dominated their minds to ensure that the ‘correct’ message was sent forth.

“So… what are they going to tell the Shoat?” Sunrise wondered, as she looked on while the messenger ghosts sped off, carrying Speaker’s messages.

Speaker began pacing about the tunnel in front of the waystation: “They’re not for her – well not officially. None of the ghost officers here had clearance to send messages straight to an abyssal, so I’ve had them go to the criers at the nearest larger garrisons with hints that should ideally lead her here… real question is how many reinforcements she’ll bring with her”

“I guess alerting all the nearby garrisons of our locations could result in that… do you have a plan for dealing with a small army of the undead?” Sunrise wondered, only to see Speaker looking quite intently at her, to which end she realized that he meant for her to deal with any massed undead formations.

They didn’t have to wait long. Whatever forces that were coming for them sent in zombies first, though not many. They were cut down effortlessly – but that was their point just the same: To force a reaction, to reveal if Speaker and Sunrise were stilled holed up in the fortified waystation.

Next up came the war ghosts, but only two or three squads at a time – just enough that Sunrise and Speaker couldn’t kill all of them in one go, meaning that their numbers quickly started to mount.

It was during this brutal melee that the Shoat arrived, barrelling down a tunnel – slaying every ghost she came near like a savage animal, ripping each ghost apart with her bare hooves and consuming their essence as if her thirst was endless.

As she came out before the waystation, Speaker and Sunrise holding their ground just fine at the gate into the courtyard of the station, the old station nodded towards the Shoat: “Sunrise, meet The Shoat of the Mire. She doesn’t like me very much. Shoat, meet Sunrise”

The little filly that stood before the gates of the waystation was an absolute mess. Her cream mane was caked in blood and filth, appearing stiff and only worth shearing off. Her eyes were bloodshot, with a look of absolute hatred in them – both staring daggers at Speaker. That she wasn’t reacting also seemed quite off. The bloody and torn rags she was wearing only made her look worse, over her light green coat, though her slight twitching and what looked like drooling just… looked weird.

“What in all of the heavens did you do to her Speaker?” Sunrise wondered, never before having witnessed a deathknight that hadn’t been fully in control of her own body.

Maintaining a carefully guarded stance, Speaker gave the Shoat a quick once-over with his medical diagnostic charms: “Not much. Like I told you, I took away her ability to sleep – didn’t expect her to go quite that insane so quickly from it. Stands to reason that her mind was already broken long before she got her black exaltation, and without the ability to recover her willpower her mind just deteriorated. The partial catatonia is new though”

Sunrise had originally expected Speaker to set up some kind of trap to nail down the deathknight, before she could begin using her mind control charms to set up their escape. Oh well, the solar Zenith caste wasn’t going to look a gift deathknight pony in the mouth, which end Sunrise trotted out of the gates while whistling a simple tune.

The sound of her music smote the ruin of all the ghosts and few remaining zombies in earshot, incinerating all of them in bright blue holy flame. Even the Shoat got a lick of the holy fire, which finally seemed to snap her out of her catatonia.

Like a rabid weasel, the Shoat leapt at Speaker, horrible barbs and blades of bone growing out of all of her hooves as she tore into him. It was quite difficult for Speaker to even catch her, as her small frame let her dart in and around him, all the while pummelling him mercilessly.

“Speaker, brace yourself” Sunrise called out, Speaker using his crafting charms to not as much dig in each of his hooves into the coble, but to socket them in.

Sunrise drew in a heavy breath, and unleashed a war cry at the two which tore the Shoat away and slammed her up against a nearby wall.

The young foal snarled and ripped herself from the cracked stone wall, leaping at Speaker again in a fit of blind rage – but Sunrise stood to block her… and from her glowed a terrible apparition of glory, one that assailed the Shoat’s mind and demanded a great mental toll to be paid for passing… a toll that the Shoat could not pay.

With this briefest of lull in the fighting, Sunrise quickly began to speak to the Shoat. Her mind-control charms were used both overtly and subtly, utterly wringing out the Shoat’s mind, but not in a way that Speaker had expected: “Behold young one. The stallion before you is a shared enemy. In a moment I will fight him on your behalf, and defeat him utterly, at great cost. For this, you will deliver me through the portal leading back to creation”

Speaker had to actually put on his own mental defence charm, to avoid actually believing Sunrise’s words – so seductive were they… but he could also clearly see the frazzled Shoat as her mind was basically melting out her ears from Sunrise’s verbal onslaught.

In the end, Sunrise and Speaker performed their mock fight, trading pretend blows until Speaker got one in that let him do two things at once via his dream based martial arts: He put Sunrise to sleep, and then jumped into her dream – but he also made it look as if he was being somehow ‘banished’ as he faded away into dreamy wisps of silvery essence.

The Shoat, having been thoroughly entranced and hypnotized, happily scooped the now sleeping Sunrise up using hooked blood-chain tentacles springing from her back, carrying Sunrise to the fortifications set up around the portal back to Creation. The Mask knew that he couldn’t pass through it – but after Sunrise had appeared and left a trail of ashes and holy flame in wake, he had sent teams of necromancers to detect the entry point and then ordered a large force of troops and necro-surgical monsters stationed there to prevent her escape.

The ghostly commander of the portal garrison did not look pleased when the Shoat approached – she knew of the Shoat’s savage madness – and now the little filly was… smiling? Perhaps it was that captive she was bringing along which had improved her mood? Either way the commander ordered her troops to stand aside, mainly for their own safety, as the Shoat approached the portal.

It had been such a simple but brilliant trick Sunrise had come with up: Hide within Sunrise’s dream, then have her go through the portal. Exiting the dream again should make Speaker appear next to Sunrise… back in Creation. Of course, he was only dimly aware of what was happening around Sunrise while hiding inside her dreams, so for all he knew the Shoat could be tossing her into a dungeon.

The elation and relief Speaker felt, as he exited Sunrise and felt damp grass under his hooves… oh how his eyes teared up. Quickly releasing Sunrise from his dream-charm and thus waking her, the two both confirmed that they were back in Creation – which also quickly made them aware of the strange pounding sound they could hear.

It was from the portal. They couldn’t hear anything the Shoat was saying to begin with – but stepping near it, Speaker could hear her desperate screams: “You promised! I want to sleep again!”

Pounding desperately on the portal which simply would not permit her passage, the Shoat smacked both her hooves and her head against the invisible portal surface, tears rolling down her eyes.

Speaker couldn’t help but feel just a little bad, as he saw the unbridled desperation in her eyes – but he could only put a fellow hoof up on the portal surface, showing how he too couldn’t pass through it…

As the grim realization washed over the Shoat’s face, she briefly recoiled in absolute despair – then she resumed her pounding on the portal, beating her hooves bloody, and leaving her face bloody and half-caved in from repeatedly bashing it against the portal.

“It seems that she has chosen not to die a slow death of sleep-deprived madness – a pity we’ll have to deal with her reincarnation now” Sunrise said coldly, as the Shoat finally slumped lifelessly to the ground, appearing to have killed herself by bashing her own head in on the portal.

Speaker sighed and bowed his head: “No, no pity – she was an abomination. That girl had a mind so warped by her deathlord mistress that there wasn’t a single shred of mercy or goodness left in her… and to exalt a pony that young? A travesty. Let’s go home”

Sunrise conjured a magical cloud for the two to fly back to Sunhill on, Speaker sending a message that they were on their way.