The Tome of Exalted Ponies

It is known that the Dagger Wing stylists are quiet and glide above their soup, using wings to manipulate both foes and soup.

…

It was among towers of glass and steel, in a filthy back alley, that a sudden hole in reality tore open. Rats fled from their trash-bags, to scurry into hidey holes. Several local magi in the area sensed a small anomaly, but honestly that was probably just another mega-corporation flushing some failed experiment down the sewers. It would probably come crawling back out of a drain somewhere, but that would – hopefully – be in someone else’s neighbourhood where it would wreak havoc.

Speaker and Shimmer staggered up, trying to orient themselves. To his great relief Speaker’s harness had worked, leaving him with both his mind and body intact: “It worked! You ok Shimmer?”

Fighting the urge to vomit from the stench around her, from heady mix of rat shit, rotting refuse and what was probably a decomposing corpse in a corner of the alley, Shimmer simply struggled to keep herself standing, but nodded none the less.

Leaving the alley, the duo found themselves absolutely bombarded by neon-lit adverts and holographic projections along the many steel and glass building facades. Speaker found it quite overwhelming, while Shimmer – after having breathed some slightly fresher air – noted that it reminded her of being among deep sea fish all their bio-fluorescence.

“Well, one thing is for certain, it seems that we’re not quite in the same kind of reality as before… I’m sensing some very good ambient essence flows” Speaker said, once his eyes had adjusted to the onslaught of lights around the two.

Taking another deep breath, and wrinkling her nose at the mish-mash of synthetic perfumes, many flavours of sweat, and industrial chemicals in the air, Shimmer found herself agreeing – but at the same time she threw a keen eye around to the beings walking the sidewalks: “Sure, but… it’s definitely not that similar. Look at the strange beings walking around – this place looks like something you’d see out in the wyld”

Speaker had to agree. He recognized what appeared to be humans walking about, as well as… shorter stockier humans, and more lithe humans with pointy ears – but there were also strange green-skinned beings that walked on two legs, and sort of looked like gruff and more fang-endowed humans. Finaly there were the huge and monstrous bipeds, their heads adorned with great horns, the least of which had the appearance of very muscular and fat humans, the largest of which towered over everyone else while being at least just as wide.

The strange thing was that despite being two pastel-coloured horses, then nobody was really paying any attention to the duo – they were not the strangest things in the streets, not by a long shot.

Suddenly several loud bangs and screams from down the street caught the duo’s attention. Everyone else on the street scattered and sought cover. A large van with rusty panelling and quite a few bullet holes screeched around a corner, leaving thick skid marks as it pulled a very hard right turn. In hot pursuit came several other vehicles in identical bright blue coloration, mounted weapons atop each car blasting the van with bursts of automatic fire.

The exchange reminded Speaker of when the duo’s previous hosts had properly introduced their firearms to them – they had been so very loud – and this was more of it. Ugh, so noisy.

The van rocketed down the street, the pursuit vehicles trying to keep up while also spraying bullets everywhere. Shimmer quickly got in front of Speaker and used her horn-shell armor charm to shrug off what few rounds that struck them.

Once the cars rounded the next corner all the other pedestrians emerged again – as if nothing had happened: The talismongers dusted off their stalls, the food vendors plugged the holes in their stands, and life just… continued. Sure, a minute or so later a few medevac response teams showed up, taking away the few people injured who had insurance – the rest of the wounded bystanders… were not helped.

Shimmer saw Speaker’s compassion get the better of him, as he rushed over to a grey-skinned not-quite-human next to a shot up talisman stand, who was bleeding out from several bullet wounds to the chest. Poor soul looked quite confused as the teal-coated horse in a red military uniform magically healed him – Speaker was just happy that the strange being’s anatomy had turned out to be quite similar to that of humans, assuming that his diagnostic charms had been able to read the person correctly.

Shimmer was able to pull Speaker away as people were starting to look – though from what she was hearing, then it seemed that the people around them were speaking the same language as what they had learned in the previous world they had been in. Still, why were people quietly talking about whether the two of them were shamans that had gotten too close to their totem animals? Shimmer wanted to correct them and say that her animal totem was a seagull, but it wasn’t difficult to reason that doing so would be a waste of time.

Getting Speaker down an alley that didn’t smell of rot and decay, the two tried to lay a plan for what to do. There clearly wasn’t a conveniently accessible secret government research facility to build a new trans-dimensional teleporter in – plus they had to find out where their friends were… assuming that anyone from their circle actually was in this reality.

“Oh, I think we’ve got one here Lord Bright – look. I’d recognize that smarmy smile anywhere” Shimmer said, pointing towards a towering holographic advert, proclaiming the glory of the new CEO of Horizon, an ostensibly human looking blond man that the advert claimed that he was the new golden boy of the mega-corporate world. He even had Cash’s blue heavenly silks on.

This of course meant that the duo would have to make contact with this person – and hope that they could get an opportunity for Shimmer to undo the reality-warping that Cash had been subjected to. A plan had to be made…

Also, there was the twitchy hobo behind the duo brandishing a knife, who wanted all their ‘cred-chips’ and ‘portables’.

Speaker looked up at the poor soul, instantly identifying some kind of narcotics withdrawal. With a frown, he jumped up in a lightning-fast move, slapping the would-be robber with a combination of medical charms to cure the addictions, purge the man’s body of toxins and disease, plus a bit of dream-based martial arts to put him soundly to sleep without actually physically harming the poor soul.

“Ok, where were we? We need to find someone to explain to us how this place works… this place clearly isn’t as well organized or peaceful as our previous host world” Speaker said, frowning.

A tapping on an aluminium panel over by the alley corner alerted the duo to that strange looking grey-skinned fellow with tusks, who Speaker had healed earlier. He was standing there with another person who looked similar to him, the former patient gesturing towards the duo: “That’s the one who saved me, I told you”

The other fellow stepped forth politely, smirking at the sleeping hobo with a knife in his hand lying on the ground behind the duo: “My name is Liam O’Kirg, my brother tells me you just saved him after the knights errant hosed the street down with lead. I wanted to thank you”

Shimmer eyed the two suspiciously, whispering to Speaker that these two strangers look a bit like some fair folk that Sage told her about. Speaker shook his head: “I’m not sensing a shred of wyld essence here – and when I patched up that vendor he seemed perfectly mortal, all blood and bones, no gossamer or anything”

Turning to the stranger who had introduced himself, Speaker nodded polity: “My name is Bright Machine Speaker, and this is my good friend Last Shimmer – I am a healer by trade, so it was no problem at all”

Liam nodded, adjusting his jeans and nice ironed shirt and suspenders: “In my business charity like that simply must be rewarded. Good street-docs, regardless of what shape they come in, are not to taken lightly this close to the barrens. Please, the least I can do is offer you lunch or an early dinner”

Speaker and Shimmer exchanged knowing looks, after which Speaker addressed this Liam fellow: “Thank you for the kind offer – we’ll gladly take lunch. We would also really like to… well… know where we are – we just arrived here from another world”

Liam’s brother quickly pulled out a handful of small magical items, some glowing, some of carved bone, some of other strange materials, and waved them in the direction of the duo. Some of the talismans buzzed, some rattled, some glowed much brighter: “I told you! I fucking told you!”

With a hesitant step back, Liam quickly communicated that this wasn’t necessarily a good thing – whatever his brother had told him, which was followed up by Liam asking: “Are you two spirits or… something else?”

“Spirits? What? No, we’re ponies – flesh and blood. But I understand the confusion, why don’t we go have lunch and try to talk things over?” Speaker suggested, clearly seeing the confusion and fear in the eyes of the two locals.

The two locals ushered the duo to a well-stocked public house not far from where they were, where Liam guided them to a surprisingly well-fortified back room, through two separate thick steel doors, and past a number of other individuals of various shapes and sizes, all which exuded an aura of plausible deniability and a great willingness to commit various forms of violence or crime if you paid them enough.

It turned out that Liam was what the locals called a ‘fixer’ – a man who connected interested clients with available criminals, called runners. He was also a mid-ranking officer in a local crime syndicate belonging to what the duo understood was a tribe called the ‘Irish’. These were of course facts that were simple enough to digest – the more difficult topics were things like how it was apparently quite common in this world to hack off part of your body and have it replaced with mechanical ‘cyber’ limbs, even things like eyes, your very face – all to make you stronger, smarter, or more beautiful.

The duo in turn tried to explain their situation and origin, repeatedly having to explain that they weren’t awakened horses that had escaped some strange magical animal laboratory. It didn’t surprise the duo that nobody had heard of the exalted – or if they had meant it in a very different way to what the locals had understood. What the locals did understand was that the duo thought that the new CEO of the Horizon mega-corp was actually one of them, albeit shapeshifted and perhaps even without memory of what he had been before.

“Bloody hell… the new golden boy of the corporate world, secretly a magic horse? Well at least he’s not a dragon” Liam noted, as he nursed his fifth pint, seemingly without it affecting him.

Speaker shrugged, enjoying the local beer quite well, though to the surprise of the locals then neither he nor Shimmer seemed to be affected by alcohol what so ever – exalted constitution being quite hardy so such mild poisons: “Back home I am good friends with several dragons – even met the five prime elemental dragons not that long ago”

Liam and the few other locals that had joined looked at Speaker once more as if their eyes were about to roll out of their heads. A runner who had seen the duo arrive, who had struggled enough to reconcile the notion that these two magic horses said that they could refine and empower the essence so easily… and now they said they were friends with dragons back home?

“Honestly, at this point it would be a lot easier to understand you two if you’d just said you’re just spirits…” the mage noted, typing away like mad on his phone.

Shimmer found the locals being so confused about their spiritual potency amusing, while greatly enjoying the deep-fried rat meat and soy products they were being served – though she had found quite a lot of the other foods they had to taste horribly of strange alchemical flavouring agents, not even their water tasting clean: “Well it would help explain how Changing Goldstein rose to power so quickly, wouldn’t it? He has powers like me and Speaker – but his powers are geared towards making people do what he wants, and running large organizations or countries with supernatural ease”

“That sure fits – he came out of nowhere… talked his way into money, every business he touches turns to gold, and somehow he’s actually been able to make the entire board of Horizon obey him – I mean, he fucking dethroned god damn Gary Cline and squeezed him out as the CEO of Pathfinder… and made him bloody like it!” Liam bemoaned, clearly knowing a lot more about how the world worked than the duo.

From what Speaker and Shimmer had been able to understand, then the world they were in worked a lot like a world-spanning version of Nexus. Money didn’t just talk, it wrote the laws, and there were several large corporations that operated like the Guild which each held sovereign territory, and sometimes even waged wars against each other – or against internal parts of themselves, between their own departments.

“…but mostly they just send runners at each other. Kidnapping talent, sabotaging projects from other corps, assassinating managers, stealing hardware or goods – open warfare is bad for business, but with us running around in the shadows, it can all be hidden away” Liam explained, sounding dangerously comfortable with that particular state of affairs.

It was not a kind state of being – and Speaker understood that countless millions laboured under uncaring corporate tyrants, risking firing if they ever complained, which would instantly make them foreign intruders likely to be shot on the spot.

That Cash had managed to get to the top of such a system didn’t surprise Speaker or Shimmer much – the question was how to get to him.

“He’s a triple-A mega-corp CEO and majority shareholder. People down on our level do not exist as far as his like are concerned. He would have multiple layers of corporate runners, corporate security and bureaucracy to make sure we never get near him” Liam explained, not sounding too optimistic.

“That just makes it difficult. Let’s take our time to plan this out and raise the funds needed – If you don’t think it’s possible, me and Shimmer will just go somewhere else and find someone who is willing to try” Speaker pointed out, not willing to give up any time soon.

Liam nodded, appreciating Speaker’s sensible approach – even if he still found the whole gambit way out of his league: “True… and if what you say about your healing abilities are true, then Shiawaze corp will probably pay quite well for a demo – but then they’d also kidnap you afterwards to keep and study you. And this run will require a lot of money”

“Right… the guild would probably love to the same back home. But ok, and I assume that the silver dinars I’ve got from back home won’t work here… Shimmer, could you fetch my bag?”

Shimmer applied her many-pocket meditation, retrieving Speaker’s doctor bag from elsewhere. The leather bag, appearing to Liam and the other people present out of nowhere – which on its own raised all of the questions – contained a lot of things, mainly some backup medical supplies, and a repair kit for Gift and Homage. It was this kit which Speaker wanted to nab some spare parts from, namely some small orichalcum gears and other magical materials he would normally use to maintain Gift and Homage.

Seeing what Speaker was whipping out, Liam quickly summoned his brother. The talismonger quickly confirmed that what Speaker was offering wasn’t just shiny trinkets… it was a small gear made of pure refined orichalcum. The talismonger started getting very giddy when this became apparent. It seemed that precision made orichalcum bits were just as valuable in this world as they were in creation.

The talismonger and Liam whispered a bit, Shimmer using her charms to listen in: “They’re talking about how the gear and the other magical materials you’re offering are worth a lot more than they can pay – they’re considering killing us and keeping it, and then go look for a corporate buyer”

Sighing, Speaker wondered just how difficult it would be to find someone who would cooperate – but that was when the not very distant sound of explosions rumbled through the walls, and several locals came running into the room the duo was in, shouting that they were under attack.

Now, Speaker and Shimmer had both figured out that Liam was actually the guy in charge of this particular Irish mob stronghold – or at the very least one of the guys in charge of it – so he quickly bolted upright: “Who the bloody hell is it?”

“Looks like halloweeners boss” the stout barkeep said, showing a scuffed and burnt brick that had been painted with black with orange flames. He said had had rained down the block, along with a number of impact grenades.

Liam whipped out his phone and poked it a few times, activating alarms and sending out call to arms: “You know the drill – a hundred nuyen per dead clown corpse, open contract!”

That statement apparently wasn’t for the duo, or the barkeep, but for everyone listening in on the phone – namely all the local mercenaries known colloquially as shadow-runners. Turning to the two pastel-coloured horses, Liam apologized as he pulled out a heavy handgun: “Terribly sorry to halt our negotiations – but if you’re looking for a little seed money, then go clip these clowns”

Shimmer looked at Speaker, seeing him carefully evaluating if they should join the fight or not, and Liam was out the door. This left the short and stout barkeep looking somewhat apprehensive, giving her someone to ask: “What are these halloweeners?”

“Rival gang – loves to light everything and everyone on fire. They must have pushed the other local gangs out to get here… mean’s they’re trouble” the barkeep said, sounding quite fearful.

That was enough for Shimmer. She got up and made for the streets outside, shapeshifting mid-stride so that her bulky warform coalesced as she came out the back door.

Speaker took a deep breath, appreciating that Shimmer had made the choice for them, as he pulled his ruby pinions out of the doctor’s bag and attached them to the uniform clips on his shoulders. Following the same path Shimmer had taken out, Speaker found himself in a warzone.

The pub evidently had magic enchantments, greatly dampening outside noise on it.

Several black vans with orange flame paint-jobs had rolled up, and several dozen halloweeners were laying covering fire, quite a lot of them were tossing what the local defenders were crying out warnings for as ‘molotovs’ which on impact splashed burning liquid everywhere, and several of the halloweeners were also armed with weapons that simply sprayed some kind of burning fuel all over – and it was quite obvious that these halloweeners were not afraid to kill indiscriminately, seeing as they were targeting not just those who fought back, but also civilians running for cover.

At least it was easy enough to see the attackers apart from the locals: The halloweeners all had black and orange clothes on, plus they all had variations of garishly coloured black and orange dyed hair and war paint on.

Quickly recognizing that the attacking force seemed to be relying mainly on ranged weapons, Speaker leapt forth with his shield charms blazing, throwing Gift and Homage left and right to cut up and destroy the guns his foes were using.

The shrill cry of a very large bird of prey announced Shimmer’s presence on the battlefield just the same, her warform flying overhead with her essence-webbing tangling up foes left and right, as if she was a cruel puppet master picking up wayward toys. Her bone armor soaked the bullets that her foes fired at her, and her dagger-long claws carved a long and bloody path through the few foes that somehow managed to leap up and try to attack her.

Speaker in turn also cut his way through his foes, using Gift and Homage to repeatedly smack molotovs back to their senders, while also exploiting his suite of magical martial arts to slap halloweeners around left and right, leaving dozens of foes soundly asleep with but the slightest of touch.

It also turned out that Homage, with its energy-bladed cutting edge, was able to quite thoroughly destroy the engines of the vans that the assault force had arrived in, as well as ignite and explode their power source. Doing so scattered the halloweeners and seemed to break their morale, at least until a large troll – that was the name that the locals had for that kind of meta-human – came thundering into the street turned battlefield.

The troll in question was massive. Easily two and half yards tall, with arms and legs of metal, much of it painted with glossy orange and blacks. Even his face, his tusks, and his body were replete with metal components – and he came barrelling in through a building wall, hauling two half-pulped Irish mob enforces that he threw mockingly towards the nearest Irish mob barricade.

This appeared to rally the halloweeners, who formed up behind the troll – gunfire doing seemingly nothing to him and his heavy cyber-body armor.

Speaker quickly galloped up in front of the troll, stopping at a safe distance in front of the beast, assuming a clearly martial stance before this great towering foe who simply pointed at the little horse in front of him and laughed loudly: “Oh that’s adorable… I want it as a pet! No, skinned and stuffed!”

Taking a quick breath, Speaker simply flipped his two gyroscopic chakrams around so they stuck to the side of his hooves: “Why do you attack this place? You are burning down people’s homes!”

“We want the turf – they can join us or die” the troll said, sounding very satisfied as he slowly moved towards Speaker… but that was when Speaker punched the air in front of him once, his hoof sizzling with golden essence.

The troll laughed at the silly display, but that quickly stopped as the punch somehow connected – despite the distance between the two – and the troll suddenly flew backwards, all the halloweeners behind him being flung out of cover.

The scattered halloweeners were easy pickings for the local runners and irish mob enforcers with their firearms, while the troll appeared to have become quite enraged by Speaker having ruined his one-man advance.

The troll’s cybernetic arms and legs whirred and began sprouting all manner of metal blades, spikes and claws, while his mechanical eyes spun up and glowed bright red. This was when the troll’s wired reflexes kicked in, letting him close the distance to Speaker in almost an instant – meanwhile Speaker’s own magical martial arts lent him the speed needed to react accordingly, defending from the troll’s blows effortlessly, though he did find that the troll seemed worryingly immune to his sleep charm… and his medical diagnostic charm told him exactly what: The troll’s skull implants weren’t working right, constantly shocking him a little bit, which worked perfectly for keeping the troll alert and on edge, but also woke up him up if need be.

Gift’s blades sparked against the trolls’ cyberblades, and Homage left glowing streaks over the troll’s cyber limbs, but weren’t able to melt through the strange heat-resistant alloys. It was almost as if a large enforcer from a gang that had a penchant for pyromania had built-in cyber systems that made being set on fire, or other exposure to high heat, a non-issue.

With the fighting at a stalemate – the troll either unable to hit Speaker well enough to hurt him, or punch through his shield charms, and Speaker unable to meaningfully harm the troll – it was the arrival of Shimmer that turned the tide: Appearing from on high, her bone armor replete with the marks of bullets and grenades, she swooped down and webbed the troll to briefly confuse him.

The troll’s many cyberblades quickly sliced up the webbing, but the few precious seconds it took was all Speaker needed to throw Gift and Homage in such a way that they struck the troll from opposite sides – this saw the troll fall over.

Jumping onto the troll, Speaker struck at the troll’s cranial cyberware with a hoof of the daystar charm he had learned from Fire Orchid; The armor shattering strike. Rivets and welds burst left and right, as cyber armor was stripped with each blow – leaving the troll’s inner cyberwear exposed. A quick touch with a disassembly charm finally got the malfunctioning bit of brain-chrome disabled… and a second touch finally put the troll to sleep.

With the trolls frantic flailing finally coming to an end, so did the rest of the dust settle. The few remaining halloweeners managed to boost a car and drove off, the local runners and irish mob enforcers giving them plenty of lead as a send-off.

As the wounded and dead were collected, plenty of injured halloweeners got captured in the process. Speaker and Shimmer helped triage and heal any local who wanted medical aid, the people in the area quickly starting to cheer the two on as Speaker healed through his golden charms and Shimmer via her flesh-sculpting art, a charm Sage had taught her for its usefulness in quickly staunching wounds, removing unwanted scars (or make ones to facilitate a disguise) and then some.

Speaker had found her use of the charm rather funny: “You know, the first thing you did to me when we met last time around – in your last incarnation – was that you used that charm to grow my beard out”

“Why would I do that?” Shimmer wondered, finding that to be a very odd way to greet someone.

Shrugging as he patched up his next patient: “I think it was to make me look more like how I had in the first age… your past incarnation had found images of me from the first age, and so sought to make me look like that”

Once the healing was done, many a bullet-wound done away with, and quite a few cyber-limbs that had broken in the battle were also replaced by regrowing their organic originals, the irish mob announced that they were going to host a grand party to celebrate the victory and everyone being ok.

Speaker and Shimmer accepted being the guests of honor – though Speaker was quite worried about the captured halloweeners. Liam didn’t want to go into the details, but a Shimmer in warform was apparently sufficiently intimidating to make the mobster talk: “Alright… christ – we’re screening them for warrants and bounties. Anyone with a price on their head will get sold off, and the rest we’ll see if can’t either ransom back or otherwise see if I can’t turn a profit from them”

“Turn a profit from them? Like what, selling them into slavery?” Shimmer quickly asked, sensing that Speaker wasn’t happy to hear that explanation, but wanting to spare him from having to ask for it.

Liam gestured for calm: “Slavery? No, the corpos have plenty of wageslaves – no we’ll just pick them over for cyberparts and sell their bits to street docs, then dump ‘em back on their own turf. They’ll be more of a burden for their kin than any use that way, keeps them busy so they won’t come here again anytime soon”

Speaker found this acceptable, and was about to ask something when an enforcer came running in: “Boss, the troll woke up – he’s demanding to parlay”

It turned out that the troll was indeed a ranking lieutenant among the Halloweeners, and he wanted to negotiate for his release and that of his fellow gang members. He had plenty to offer, knowledge of stashes of stolen goods, he had access to gang accounts he could transfer money from, knew of weapon caches – but Liam wasn’t buying, because the one thing that apparently did interest the Irish mob, more territory, wasn’t something that Spark Fang the troll could offer.

“I would much rather just send your corpse back to the rest of your clown buddies as a warning” Liam said, his right hand moving towards his gun holster.

A compassionate hoof from Speaker stopped Liam: “I told you I won’t permit executing prisoners”

“Hah! Is the irish mob now taking orders from silly painted horsies? That’s rich” Spark Fang laughed, revealing that one of his tusks did indeed have a lip-activatable lighter implant in it.

With furrowed brows Liam took a step back: “No mate, this here is Bright Machine Speaker – and considering that he one-manned three dozen clowns, including you, then I am at least inclined to listen to him… and if just half of what he’s told me of his abilities are true, then he’s a grim bloody fable as far as you’re concerned. A regular ol’ kelpie”

An idea crossed Shimmer’s mind, her quickly whispering it to Speaker. He nodded, then looked to Liam: “If you want to return Spark Fang to his gang as a warning – then I think I know just what to do… did a thing to an undead little girl a while ago that might work here”

It was thus that a few days later a hacked carryall cargo drone zipped in over Halloweener barrens territory and dropped its load. The massive steel cargo crate deployed its bright green parachute, curious halloweneers quickly rushing out to catch and bust open the crate – only to find Spark Fang inside, swearing up a storm.

Liam reclined in his chair, looking at the remote video feed from the camera drone monitoring the delivery: “You sure this’ll work – I would hate giving those bastards a fully functional street samurai like that back to the clowns”

“You saw how he was screaming last light – Speaker took away his ability to sleep. He’ll go insane within a week from sleep deprivation. No amount of drugs or alcohol will give him true rest. You wanted him to be both a warning and a burden to his gang… just wait until he pops and then watch the fireworks” Shimmer said, sounding quite certain in her understanding of Speaker’s powers.

The mob lieutenant nodded, agreeing that if it did work, then it was a wonderfully underhanded and sneaky way to mess with someone – he also noted that the preliminary reports he had gotten from the runners he had sniffing around Horizon’s matrixes (that was apparently the local term for their information networks) and then some, had finally started yielding some interesting information: “It seems that Horizon has started a new initiative. They’re not being very secretive about it, though they’re keeping the facility where they’re doing it quite secure”

“Neat – what are they doing and how is it relevant to us?” Shimmer wondered, poking at her soy-based noodles. All the synthetic soy foods had been novel to begin with, but it had worn off quickly.

On a wall-mounted trid display Liam brought up what looked like a corporate memo, which detailed a “Project Equestrian Portal” – a project to scry the outer planes to seek spirits and planar creatures the corporation could summon, capture and exploit as living cartoon characters for their shows for children.

Speaker found the notion rather amusing: “Well at least they’re not looking for diseases…”

“Oh, it gets better. They’re looking for a specific kind of spirits… pastel coloured horse spirits” Liam said, looking at the two pastel-coloured ponies in the room with him.

Shimmer nearly fell over: “Don’t tell me this project was started by the new CEO?”

“The very one – It proves that he’s looking for you, and he has god knows how many thousands of corpo mages scrying the outer planes looking for his kind – and if they’re trying to grab someone from there, that’ll also show them how to send stuff back there” Liam said, beaming with pride that his runners not only got info they could use, but did it quickly and efficiently. He didn’t mention anything about the kidnapping of Horizon staff to torture them for passwords, the shootouts at the server farm, or the other things that the runners stole as part of the heist – but that was part and parcel for the life of a fixer.

With this information, it was resolved that Liam would send out a call for mages who had contacts within Horizon. The plan was simply to present the duo as exactly what Horizon was looking for, and since it appeared that the CEO was directly overseeing the project, that would put them into contact with their guy… in theory.

“Ya… once they close the door behind you, they might strap you to a surgery table and dissect you just the same. But that is the kind of risks you have to take to meet a megacorp CEO in the sixth world these days” Liam lamented.

Speaker found the comment odd: “Sixth world? What? We’re from the second age, the age of sorrows – what are you talking about?”

Liam and the couple of mages he had called in all got some very strange looks on their faces, demanding a quick detour to the bar for some fresh pints to sooth their nerves. It seemed that the locals, while accepting that the duo weren’t spirits, then now they thought that Speaker and Shimmer might be time-travelers – which was supposedly even more impossible, though the mages at the table quickly started talking about things like being “time-lost in the outer planes” or perhaps some kind of extra-planar time stasis?

“Look, does it matter where we’re from? We’re here now, and we know where we have to go – can we get a move on?” Shimmer said, finding the endless bickering of the locals increasingly annoying.

The fixer gave Shimmer and Speaker an apologetic smile – it looked a bit forced all things considered – but the orcish mob lieutenant ultimately nodded: “You’re absolutely right. You’ve paid well for our services, so let’s get this show on the road”