With the tunnel dug into the manse thoroughly blocked, to the point that it wasn’t even possible to get from the ledge with the chest to the hole into the room, the circle gazed into the darkness.

Everyone channeled a smidge of essence to activate their caste marks to give them enough light to see, as there were no other light sources in the room – there might once have been, but if so it wasn’t working any more. The tunnel into the manse had been lit with foul-smelling smoke-less torches and oil lamps that had made the air hard to breathe, but they had allowed for ponies to see where they were going.

“Give me some room” Red said, stepping out on the bridge to the doorway that led out of the room. Suddenly a suit of red lamellar armor, made of small overlapping steel plates woven together with tough leather string. Red then bit on to the armor and flung it into the air, activating a charm that caused the armor to split apart into its component pieces, each glowing faintly with a golden-white hue.

It was spectacular to see as the pieces flew down around Red, reconnecting themselves. Ten or so seconds later Red was suited up completely, without the need for any other pony to help her tighten or adjust any straps.

“Ok, I want to know how to do that” Speaker bluntly stated, shaking his head in disbelief.

Shimmer, still in seagull form, flew up from the chest and landed on Speaker’s back: “Leave it to solars make putting on armor look spectacular”

Red then led the circle over the four or so yard long bridge. Speaker noted that Red’s lamellar armor was simple but functional, clearly made for and by mercenaries, as there were no crests or insignia stamped, painted or etched into the armor. Square spaulders covered her shoulders, while long lamellar sections covered her flanks, but would also allow for Red to rear up and perform martial arts properly. Her shins were equally protected by greaves made from long lamellar plating. A curious detail that Speaker noted was a black body-suit under her armor, made of black wax-treated cloth; Speaker recognized it as a very professional detail, as it would keep Red dry, if not warm, while wearing armor even in rainy weather, something that was normally the bane of any armor-wearing pony.

Then there was a sudden and horrible grinding noise and a split second later Red suddenly flew backwards over the rest of the circle and smashed into the wall in the back of the room, above the platform with the chest, Red never even getting the chance to scream before impacting hard. It sounded like a sack of potatoes covered in tightly connecting metal bits hitting something a surface that gave off no echo, followed by a whimper as Red fell from the wall down on the chest.
There was a flurry of activity as the circle tried to maneuver around to allow Speaker to get to Red, while everypony tried to back away from the… the doorway across the bridge wasn’t there anymore – instead there was a large section of beige stone wall that jutted out from the doorway, fully the size of the doorway.

It slowly began retracting, like some kind of piston reloading, it grinding against the stone bridge, revealing that it really was a big solid stone block, or at least the outer surface of it was of stone.

Suddenly Speaker shouted: “Shimmer, Sully, help me get Red in through the door before the piston resets!”

Shimmer quickly flew up on Red’s body, Red groaning as Shimmer turned back into her adult pony form, picking Red up – armor and all – in one swooping motion, while her Caste Mark flared and body momentarily rippled with unnatural muscle-growth.

“Wha- what’s going on here?” Cash finally managed say, everything having happened so quickly.

Speaker watched with no small amount of pride swelling in his heart from seeing Shimmer’s swift actions, then frantically gestured for everypony else to get through the doorway the moment the wall-section had retracted enough to make a hole: “This place is one big deathtrap – it was made to train young exalted ponies!”

That was all Cash needed to hear. Shimmer was through first with Red, followed by Cash, Sunrise and Speaker. Then there was a loud click as the wall section slid back completely – leaving Sullen Hoof halfway over the bridge, the stallion quickly stopping in his tracks.

Speaker looked back at Sullen Hoof with dread in his eyes.

“Do you remember how the trap is activated?” Sullen Hoof asked, staying calm and collected as he peered up from under his straw hat.

Speaker thought for a moment. He hadn’t pieced together that the place had traps or training facilities until after having seen the trap – and there wasn’t much beyond that he was remembering at that moment. Looking at the bridge and the wall sections, which didn’t even show any grooves or signs that it could separate from the wall, Speaker guessed that the trap was triggered by walking on the bridge near the doorway, even though there were no visible pressure plates… the whole manse appearing to have been made from one hollowed out stone.

“Probably with your singing staff – but that’s ok, I can get through this” Sullen Hoof said, making an impressive leap from having just stood still, landing on the wall section in front of the doorway, then leaping to the left away from the trap.
Speaker breathed a heavy sigh of relief, then turned to go down the right side of the doorway – which turned out to end at a corner almost immediately, Sullen Hoof rounding another corner to come around to face him. It struck both of them quite amazing how several yards of stone wall could project out of what turned out to be a wide column in a larger room – clearly there was magic involved. There was another open doorway leading out, away from the trap room. The sound of hooves on stone could be heard beyond the opening.

“Speaker, come on – Red isn’t breathing right” Shimmer voice called out from beyond the doorway.

Speaker and Sullen Hoof ran out the doorway, their Caste Marks emitting a dim light that revealed a curving hallway with other doorways, some closed with solid stone doors. Shimmer and Sunrise was sitting next to Red, who was lying on the ground and twitching slightly.

Speaker quickly ran up and willed forth a swirl of essence to aid him. First he gently rolled Red onto her back and poured essence into the mare to end her pain, to which she breathed a labored sigh of relief. Five now non-painful minutes of poking and prodding later Speaker confirmed that Red’s armor very much saved her life, having taken most of the impact: “All you’ve got is a hoof-ful of broken ribs, a punctured lung, and enough bruising to knock out any normal pony from the pain alone… how many ox-body techniques do you know?”

Red half-laughed up at Speaker and the others and recounted the ox-body techniques she knew, the special ways in which a pony could toughen oneself by rechanneling internal vital essence flows and thus withstand otherwise lethal injury: “Three, one for blood loss, one for flesh wounds and one for organ damage… also I can’t breathe right”

Speaker reminded Red of her punctured lung, saying that it was probably one of her broken ribs that had lodged itself into a lung.

“Well fix it then mister medicine – we’ve got a manse to explore!” Red said, sitting down – her facial expression revealing that she still expected moving to hurt, but to her surprise nothing happened.

Looking at Shimmer, Speaker smiled and shook his head. This was exactly like treating young Lookshyan troops: They were always so eager to get back into the fight. Red banished her armor back into elsewhere, allowing Speaker to have a go at her chest to fix her ribs.

Cash and Sullen Hoof both nearly vomited – well, Cash didn’t just nearly vomit, but was polite enough to run far enough down the curving hallway to be out of sight of the others, as Speaker used a scalpel from his medical gear to cut open Red’s chest.

Red was lying on her back, as naked as a pony could be, Speaker having already ‘disinfected’ her using essence, trying to look away as Speaker held the small sharp blade-on-a-stick his mouth and cut her open, peeling open her a big sheet of her skin like the front cover of a book. Red didn’t feel much of anything, Speaker’s anesthetic charm having left her in a sleepy opium-like haze, but it still wasn’t that fun seeing a bloody-hoofed pony poking around in your insides whenever you accidentally looked down.

The broken ribs were easy to spot, and a good hour of cutting out the pieces, cleaning them off with essence, patching up the hole in Red’s lung, putting the bits of ribs back in place, using strands of essence in lieu sutures patch everything up later left Red whole once more, although still in need of recovery. Speaker explained to Sunrise and Shimmer who looked on in silence, Shimmer occasionally lending a hoof to hold bit of rib, that with his charms he could ensure that there would be absolutely no scaring, so he wasn’t afraid of doing things in a bit more invasive style: “Usually we’d try to just cut open a tiny hole bit enough to fit forceps or maybe a single hoof in to root around, not bare a quarter of the patients ribcage – but this way I’m absolutely sure that I fix everything, and Red deserves nothing short of that”

Red appreciated the gesture, to which Speaker quickly told her to not speak as it would disturb the sutures on her lung.
With everything done Shimmer suddenly shrieked and leapt up into the air, turning into her seagull totem animal. Cash stood behind her, sniggering.

“This tunnel we’re in – it doesn’t just curve, its circular. Oh, and there’s some old realm writing and a door etched into the inner wall on the other side, and seven other doors on the outer wall, but all the doors are closed” Cash smugly noted, a few purple tipped white feathers hanging from his mouth revealing that he’d bitten down and tugged on Shimmer’s tail to surprise her.

Over the next hour the circle explored the circular corridor while Speaker and Sullen Hoof waxed nostalgic. Shimmer and Cash uncovered more script in old realm and started to read up on it. Red wasn’t worth much, but Sunrise stayed with her and kept the wounded warrior-mare’s spirits up.

Together with Cash and Shimmer’s translations, especially since it turned out that Sullen Hoof couldn’t read, Speaker sketched a map of the manse. It really was an old first age training facility, and according to Speaker there was a way to open the roof to let in sunlight for a ballroom up at the top level of the manse.

They managed to force the door to the central elevator shaft open, Cash using the same Sledgehammer Hoof Blow technique that Red had used a variation of to buck through the wall into the manse, smashing down the solid stone slab that was the door after several great blows.

With the central shaft open, Speaker could see that the lower levels of the shaft were full of rubble, blocking any access to the lower levels without spending weeks excavating the place. Speaker suspected that the entire lower half of the manse was completely demolished: “A shame really – the light airship hangar was on the lowest level. Arrow had all kinds of toys down there”

“Arrow?” Sullen Hoof wondered.

Speaker apologized. Apparently Sullen Hoof’s name as a solar in the first age had been Gold-Shadowed Arrow. Speaker added that they were on one of the middle levels of the manse, the tougher of the training rooms.

Sullen Hoof and Cash both agreed that the one ‘training’ room they’d endured so far seemed more like a deathtrap meant to push ponies into an abyss or smash them against walls.

“Well, you weren’t looking for traps or prepared to dodge any – I’m sure back then it was safe enough to play around with” Speaker said, shrugging.

There were eight rooms in total on that level, with four rooms that were either caved in or where neither Red nor Cash could smash open the doors. One even had old realm glyphs on it that read “This is a door. It cannot be opened or broken down”

Of the four doors that could be opened, one of which having done so seemingly automatically to allow the circle to exit the room they had tunneled into, the circle decided to heed Speaker’s suggestion to check them out: “Yes they’re all basically death traps, but Arrow had a wonderful habit of rewarding ponies who completed a level. There’d be a chest like in the first room in all of the rooms – and in one of there’d be some simple little throw-away artifact, a reward for surviving. It wouldn’t be much by first age standards, but if we can find a suit of magical armor, or a demon-cleaving blade, then I’m sure we’ll all be satisfied”

“Any idea which room the prize is in – and that it’s not in any of the rooms we can’t access?” Sullen Hoof wondered.

Speaker couldn’t tell, but pointed out that as long as they were careful and worked together then the three other available rooms should be a breeze to run through, seeing as they were made for only one pony to go through them at a time, and they weren’t really trying to run the gauntlet here, so cheating or bypassing obvious obstacles should make things easier - and if they were anything like the first room, with just one big trap, they just had to find that and they’d be safe.

Of course, Speaker didn’t know that in the room they had entered the central doorway piston was the only one left enough essence left in its capacitors, while the six other wall-section pistons that were made to squish, throw or otherwise smash trainees had run out of power centuries ago.

The first room that the circle tried their luck with was the first to the left of the one they had come in through, if one faced the door to the ‘first’ room. Speaker recalled the rooms being set up in a geomantically appropriate pattern, forming a sun-burst with the corridor around the elevator shaft. By that logic the room they had come in by was the east-most room, while they were now going into the north-eastern room.

The room itself was clearly of the same stone that the rest of the manse was made of, appearing to have either been cast or magically shaped into its current form, there being not a single chisel mark or groove to indicate that separate slabs or bricks of stone had been used. The surface of the stone, just as in the outside corridor and the first room, was rough but not uncomfortably so, allowing for good traction and the potential for nasty bruises and scrapes if you fell on it.

The layout of the room was deceptively simple: At the door there was a one yard wide section of floor, which then gave way to a five yard long pit, both of which spanned the four yard width of the room. Then the pit ended, a foot-wide stone wall rising the three yards that were the depth of the pit, followed by a wooly looking carpeted area the size of the pit, and finally a half-circle of stone floor around a chest at the end of the room, the half circle being built into the carpet, rising like a small platform.

The pit was full of very sharp looking spikes, and everypony agreed that it would be a bad idea to fall down on them. The skeletal remains of ponies down amongst the spikes were a testament to this. Above the center of the pit a thick rope hung, it coming out of a hole in the ceiling. It wasn’t possible to tell how secure the rope was to swing from, but it was obvious that such was the intention – whether or not that was a trap… well… considering that nopony had seen the wall-piston in the first room coming, then nopony wanted to take any chances.

“Sully, you can run on walls – why not skip the rope and go check the carpet” Cash suggested.

Sullen Hoof shrugged, saying that he could do that – but why not have Shimmer go into a bird form and fly over instead.

When Cash taunted him Sullen Hoof instantly accepted the challenge, taking a few tentative steps back, then running fully gallop at the wall running the length of the room, all the way to the end, coming to a halt at the chest: “Its empty!”

With everypony disappointed, Sullen Hoof walked onto the carpeting to go and use the rope to swing back to the others – with no prize he almost felt cheated, as did the rest of the circle.

…but on Sullen Hoof’s first step into the carpeting he sank in, and shouted helplessly as yard long strands of wooly threads enveloped him as if he had falled into a giant pit of yarn! Struggling or even trying to ‘swim’ in it only entangled him even more, and Shimmer quickly noted that Sully was too far from the chest platform for her to have any useful leverage to stand on or hold against – she couldn’t pull Sullen Hoof up as a small bird.

Looking at Cash who seemed too afraid to brave the pit of spikes, then Red who was still too hurt to make the jump to the rope, Speaker quickly nodded at Shimmer: “Fly over, I’ll jump – we’ll form a chain and pull him up, like if it was quick-sand”

Shimmer had to admit that was a good idea, and so she transformed to a seagull and was two thirds the way over the pit when Speaker suddenly yelled out in pain. Looking back she saw the serated metal blades hidden in the rope shining off the light from Speaker’s caste mark, and equally saw that Speaker’s Mouth and cheeks were bleeding from where he’d bitten on to the trap-rope… and Speaker had let go, and was falling into the pit of spikes.

Flaring with pale cobalt-blue flames of moonlight as the lunar surged with essence, Shimmer turned into a big ugly octopus that lashed out and grabbed Speaker – but she didn’t have enough leverage to prevent him from falling down on the spikes, so instead she shielded him with her own squid arms, placing two of them under Speaker both to pull him up and also be skewered by the spike as Speaker fell down.

The wounded Red, the frightened Cash and Sunrise Glow who by no means had the physical strength or abilities to help in situation looked on as the Shimmer-squid made some weird but definitely pained bubbly noises, then pulled Speaker up and changed back into the form of a deceptively petite mare, forgoing her usual normal-sized adult mare form, now with two bleeding but rapidly healing wounds on one of her legs.

“Thank you, oh thank you so much” Speaker tried to say. It didn’t come out right since his tongue had been injured a little. It wasn’t much, but it hurt like hell – even if his wounds had already closed, one of the benefits of exaltation: The ability to shrug off minor flesh-wounds, like what you get from biting on to what was essentially disguised razor-wire.

“Speaker – get sully!” Shimmer said frantically, nodding wildly towards the pit of fluff that by now had completely swallowed Sullen Hoof.

Looking desperately down at the mess of filtered fibres, Speaker could see the filtered clumps jiggle and move slightly in the dim light from his caste mark – so Sullen Hoof hadn’t stopped fighting yet. Thinking quickly, Speaker considered his options: It was woolen fibers from the feel of it, so it wouldn’t burn very well. Cutting into the stuff ran the risk of cutting Sully.

“Sully – can you hear me? Flare you anima so we can see you!” Speaker shouted, remembering that Sullen Hoof knew sense-enhancing charms… Speaker hoping that Sullen Hoof could hear him despite being buried in thick wool.

Nothing happened – but then he thought of Shimmer: “Can you swim in this?”

Shimmer said that she’d suffocate if there wasn’t water to breathe in while in the form of a fish.

“Just cut the stuff! You can patch up any wounds he get” Red shouted from the end of the room.

Speaker took a deep breath and slowly willed forth Gift, while Shimmer changed into her beastpony form and flew up above the wool pit, her talons several inches longer than usual and being put to good use slashing wildly at the stringy mess.

Gift appeared half a minute later, Speaker feeling that this was much too slow. Red appeared to agree, shouting angrily: “Oh come on Speaker, you don’t know how to summon a blade properly? What would you do in a fight?!”

While Sunrise Glow gave Red a stern talking to about not helping the situation, Speaker began throwing Gift into the wool.

He knew he could save Sullen Hoof. With the fury of a frantic surgeon scrambling to save a live, Speaker threw so Gift so quickly that it was mere seconds before it started coming back bloody… revealing in what direction Sullen Hoof was buried.

Shimmer refocused where she was slashing down, and Speaker made the hard choice to throw Gift into the fray a few more times to triangulate where exactly Sullen Hoof was buried.

As gift whirled out of the wool, again bloodied, Speaker knew exactly what to do: “Shimmer, move, grab my rear legs!”
“I can’t… ok, hurry!” Shimmer said, wondering how she’d ever lift two adult ponies.

Leaping into the pile directly above where Sullen Hoof was, holding Gift out to dig down for him, Speaker quickly got down to Sullen Hoof – Gift instantly deactivating with a sputtering of steam as Speaker saw a now bloody and cut up ear. Up above Shimmer howled as essence rippled under her feathers, her skin splitting in long bloody gashes as her body couldn’t contain the bulk growth, granting her enough strength to pull both ponies up and fling them to the platform with the empty chest, leaving her bloody and reeling on the coffin as she used charms to close her own wounds.

“Well that went well” Speaker said, panting slightly, while Sullen Hoof heaved to catch his breath after nearly suffocating.
Shimmer slowly flew Speaker back to Red, Cash and Sunrise, Sullen Hoof running along the walls.

Outside the room the circle discussed if they should even bother trying the two remaining rooms. Cash had to admit that no reward was worth their lives if one of the traps ended up killing some of them, while Sullen Hoof appeared more shaken about the fact that his past self had even dared to call such death-traps ‘training rooms’, as had been written on the walls in old realm glyphs in the circular hallway – Speaker equally perplexed. Even Red wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to continue.

Sunrise Glow was the only of the ponies who didn’t want to give up: “The changeling that led us here seemed sure enough that this would worth our time – otherwise I can’t imagine that it would have done so”

“Oh so you’re saying that there’s chance that the CHANGELING didn’t just want to send us to our death?” Cash wondered out loud, being surprisingly direct and accusatory.

Looking unimpressed, Shimmer walked up to Cash and yanked him down by his goatee so the stallion was looking the young almost-mare straight in the eyes: “We are solars – we have a solar healer among us – so far none of the traps we’ve encountered would kill any of us immediately. Certainly, these training rooms were made to challenge and possibly even maim, but so far we’ve charged into these rooms blindly. Let us be thorough and not just accept what our first glance tells us… because riddle me this Speaker, don’t think you that’s probably the lesson of this level in this training facility?”

Sunrise Glow’s impassioned speech had its effect. Sure, the rest of the circle couldn’t detect Sunrise’s use of charms to forcibly impose feelings of courage and gumption, but it was all for a noble goal – right? It did however tell Sunrise Glow two things: Both that she could use mind-control charms on her fellow solars – and that it could work.

With their willingness to continue restored, the circle pressed forward. There were two rooms left on the level.

The first of the two remaining rooms, the third of the four rooms, faced west. It had a very simple layout and appeared far more obvious in where its trap element was built in: The room was similar to the previous one, starting with a one-yard wide landing that gave way to a pit, only this pit spanned all of the room save for a half-circle shaped platform at the end with a chest on it at the other end of the room. A simple and decidedly rickety looking bridge of wooden planks bound together with frayed and worn rope spanned the pit, which seemed so deep that it just continued into an endless darkness, like the first room the circle had entered the manse through.

“Ok, so… something is bound to happen to the bridge, there’s no other option” Red quickly stated.

Sullen Hoof wasn’t convinced: “Don’t be sure of that, the first room we came in through had a section of the walls thrust out – the walls on the side of the pit are just as in the rest of the manse, no telling if something might jut out and push you off here”

Nodding, Speaker mentioned that he did remember something about traps that worked like that being built into the manse somewhere – but he wasn’t sure it was here.

“Might I suggest we use this?” Shimmer said, suddenly holding a large ten foot pole of dark wood in one off. The rest of the circle didn’t even bother asking where she’d kept it, as it was clear it was obvious that it had been stored in elsewhere, instead Red and Speaker, being the two strongest ponies in the circle, went about forcefully poking and whacking the bridge – both to see if it wouldn’t just collapse due to being ancient, but also to see if it would trigger any traps.

The bridge held – although a lot of dust was shaken loose, which slowly descended into the darkness below. The circle then started arguing whether it would be wise to try to brave the bridge or not. Sullen Hoof wanted to take to the wall and bypass the bridge, while Shimmer suggested she fly over as a bird instead.

Reaching down and biting on to the rope that tied the left side of o the bridge to their end, giving it a good tug, Speaker suggested that they get out some rope, tie it around him and let him walk out on the bridge instead. If something happened, he reasoned that the rest of the circle could yank him back: “Can’t have Sullen Hoof being the only one to risk his life here”
Rope was fetched from saddlebags stored in elsewhere and Speaker slowly stepped out on the planks. The sound of hoof on wood echoed dimly in the chamber, with nothing connecting to the wood to stop the bridge from acting as a giant xylophone. Speaker wasn’t sure, but he was sure that the tune the bridge seemed to ‘play’ as he walked over it was off… because it ‘ended’ at the middle. Oh dear.

“Pull me back! N-“ Speaker barely managed to shout, as the bridge snapped in half, him dropping down for a split second. Then a giant fan hidden in the darkness below triggered, blowing speaker up towards the stone ceiling while making an ungodly amount of noise. The circle heaved and got him out of the fan’s range, although thick clouds of dust were being whirled up by the fan, making it hard to see where Speaker was.

Finally being hauled back up to the landing to the rest of the circle, Speaker wanted to breathe a sigh of relief – but the high amounts of dust in the air was making everypony cough, so he resisted the temptation. The fan was making far too much noise for anypony to say anything.

When the fan stopped a minute later and the dust slowly settled the bridge had somehow reassembled itself.
“Well, that was a sneaky one” Cash noted, nodding to himself.

Speaker looked down into the pit under the bridge, pouring a little more essence into his anima to make all him glow, not just make his caste mark manifest. The large steel fan, now clear of the thick layer of dust that had previously prevented it from reflecting light, revealed itself: “That’s not all of it – if I hadn’t been tied down I would have hit the ceiling. That would have reversed the fan… sucking me in and slicing me to pieces”

“Didn’t you say that this place would only try to maim you if you failed to avoid a trap – not kill you?” Cash said accusingly to Sunrise, who just ignored the comment.

Having figured out the trap, Sullen Hoof raced along the wall and opened the chest at the other end of the room. The circle collectively held its breath as Sullen Hoof opened the chest, which was followed by a confused: “What?”

Sullen hoof held four nice looking horse-shoes up, the sort that ponies who wanted to dress to impress wore. This was not the kind of prize Sullen Hoof had expected.

Running along the wall back to the circle, Speaker and Shimmer Glow both quickly concluded that there was something odd about the horse shoes – Shimmer could sense moonsilver in them and Speaker could sense that it was essence-reactive. Cash said that if nothing else he wouldn’t mind wearing them: “Hey, they look nice”

Having found the ‘reward’ of this particular level of the manse, the circle exited into the circular hallway and discussed if they needed to check out the last of the rooms they could access. Sullen Hoof said he wouldn’t mind giving it a look, just out of curiosity now that the pressure to explore the place had abated. Speaker agreed, stating he’d like just quick examination so could write down some notes in his book about the room.

The last of the four rooms appeared simple enough. Again there was a one yard landing just inside the room, followed by a five yard deep pit. This time the pit didn’t reach all the way across the room, which otherwise appeared to be of the same dimensions as all the others. The pit ended a few inches before the leftside wall, when looking from the doorway into the room to the other end. This left a very narrow ledge to walk along on, around the pit, to a doorway on the other side, with stairs being visible just inside to the right of the doorway. The pit itself seemed oddly unremarkable. There were no spikes or anything, just a bare stone floor and some unicorn pony bones, including a telltale unicorn pony skull.

Shimmer brought out her pole, which while not long enough to reach the bottom from the top of the pit, worked just fine by being dropped into the pit. This had a very spectacular effect: As the pole struck the bottom, five obviously demonic spiders the size of large wolves appeared and reduced the pole to splinters in a matter of seconds.

Sunrise Glow and Last Shimmer both instantly began forming the ancient mudra of victory over primordials with their hooves, the rapid hoof-gestures the gods used to seal their beaten foes away with. Both then howled triumphantly as their animas flares to the point that both were enveloped in respectively silvery and golden flames – two of the spiders equally shrieking and then winking out of existence, having been quite thoroughly banished back to where they had been summoned from.

The remaining three spiders took no time to start scaling the walls of the pit, their grotesque spider-feet hooking into the stone. Red instantly called her large saber from elsewhere and proceeded to smite each of the three spiders in a most spectacular way: Even though the spiders were several yards away, Red swung her blade three times and each time from the edge of the saber a brilliant arc of energy blasted down, hitting each spider. Two fell down to floor of the pit, their heads having been cleaved in half by the cutting force projected down onto them, their bodies twitching as they faded into nothingness.

The last of the remaining demon spiders managed to climb up to the landing, its hideous head chitterling something decidedly impolite in old realm – with its fanged mandibles held open to strike and bite. Its chitinous exoskeleton was mottled blue and purple, covered in razor spines and light fuzz. Its eight eyes were dark orbs that seemed to look at everything at once – but that didn’t last long, as Cash punched the thing with a hoof blazing with golden essence, knocking the demon spiders down and into the wall on the opposite side of the pit where a loud wet cracking sound confirmed that its carapace had cracked, allowing Red to deal a final blow with her saber, at range, cutting the giant spider in half. Purple blood and viscera sprayed all over the floor of the pit, the blood hissing as if acid upon contact with the stone, while the body faded back into the demon realm.

Red caught her breath while Sunrise and Shimmer exchanged glances of approval towards each other – as sorceresses should.

“Well, now we know what happens if you end up in the pit” Sullen Hoof noted: “…let’s not fall in the pit”

Using his perfect balance charm, Sullen Hoof quickly made it around the narrow ledge around the pit. He revealed to the circle that it was a spiral staircase that turned to the right of the doorway on the other side of the pit – and it led up to another landing with a chest. Suddenly, from up the stairs, was a quiet thump. Seconds later a previously unseen hatch at the top of the far wall in the pit revealed itself, letting a trickle of dust fall down. Much to the relief of all the ponies present, the dust did not trigger another demon summoning.

Sullen Hoof emerged a few moments later down the stairs, saying that the landing with the chest had been trapped – a trap door right in front of the chest, which of course was empty, having triggered the moment he had opened the chest: “I was lucky I still had a hoof on the last stair when I opened the chest…”

Finished with the training area, the circle decided to wrap things up. The venture to the manse had so far not yielded any loot or rewards worth mention, aside from snazzy horse-shoes that Cash were now wearing, but as pretty as they were they wouldn’t fetch that much if sold.

The central elevator shaft was blocked for passage down, and the elevator platform was a few levels up. Much to the relief of everypony the platform slowly began descending to their level when the appropriate glyph on a dusty crystal display was pressed.

Going up to the top level, the ballroom, Speaker explained that he remembered the ballroom ceiling opening up to let in sunlight. Assuming that this still worked, it would be their way out. None of the doors to the two levels between their point of departure and top level would open, even with Red and Cash each having a got at beating them down. Speaker suspected that they still had enough essence in them to prevent damage.

The sight that met the circle when they emerged at the top level was a gruesome one. The ballroom was strewn with the dusty skeletons of unicorns, along with ragged remains of what might once have been banners, clothing, or tablecloths. It certainly appeared as if the manse had been in use up, until the great contagion had changed the geomancy of creation enough to deprive the high flying manse of its power source, causing it to crash with all of its inhabitants trapped inside of it – at least those who for some reason didn’t make it to the hangar on the lowest level.

One of the unicorn did have something that stood out from the others: It was a very nice looking white silk jacket. It’s style was that of a sharp cut and with a wide stiff colar. It wasn’t tang-zhuang style like Cash’s silks, but Sullen Hoof quickly ran over to it and shook the bones out of it, shouting: “It’s real! It really exists! Ha!”

It turned out to have been an article of clothing that Sullen Hoof had dreamt about for weeks: His old first age chef uniform. Speaker noted that the make of it, its texture, and the sown in white jade revealed it to be a lot more than just a chef’s garb from the first age: “This is silken armor”

Speaker quickly demonstrated by trying to stab at it with the jagged end of a broken bone. There wasn’t a single torn seam or loose thread.

Sullen Hoof hugged the garb as Speaker explained that it would turn most small blades be fairly handy in hoof to hoof combat as well, not unlike chainmail barding – although the arguably best feature was that its essence flows allowed for additional armor to be worn on top of it.

With the mood of the circle raised by the discovery of a prized position from a past life, the hunt was on to find the switch to open the sunroof. Speaker recalled it being hidden somewhere – or that there certainly was a hidden switch, so everypony looked around.

The ballroom itself had very obvious dragonblood-themed motifs. The walls were covered in elaborate if not dusty and dilapidated murals depicting writhing elemental dragons defeating golden demons, and the ceiling had even been painted to depict the five immaculate dragons as bringers of the sun.

About an hour into scouring the ballroom, the circle having covered about a third of it – leaving no bone or stone unturned – Cash suddenly shrieked and toppled over.

Everypony else turned to look, finding – to their great amazement –that the new horse shoes Cash were wearing had projected long sharp metal claws, although only on Cash’s right forehoof, but it had happened suddenly and forcefully enough to tip Cash over before he could react.

Speaker instantly recognized the effect: “That there are shoes of distant claws, I’ve seen them in use in Lookshy – you must have attuned to them without even knowing. You can retract the claws with a thought, or shoot one from your forehoofs at stuff, reel back them back in, pull stuff, pull yourself up, do all kinds of things. Your hind-hooves should also be able to project claws, but not fire them. Great for climbing”

Cash Charmer looked at his hooves in amazement. He admitted that he’d put essence into the shoes to make them feel warmer. Red commented that the shoes should harmonize with Cash’s Hoof of the Daystar martial arts, allowing him to deal even deadlier blows, to which Sullen Hoof wondered why Red didn’t ask to have them instead.

“I use my blade more than I fight hoof to hoof – although I can already think of a lot of fun stuff to do with those things” Red noted, nodding her head back and forth as she momentarily lost herself to daydreams of martial glory and hilarious combat moves.

While Red zoned out Shimmer found a button at the bar area – it didn’t seem to do anything. Pressing it a few more times just for kicks ultimately did yield a result: The wall next to the bar burst from the wall near the bar, raining plaster and stone chips all over what might once have been a bar that served fluids of intoxicating natures for which there aren’t words anymore.

Rushing to help Shimmer, Speaker found her dusting herself off while admiring the box that had ejected itself from the wall.
Seeing as Shimmer didn’t need any help the circle began looking into the box that had popped out of the wall. Speaker wondered why it had been built over; Cash wanted to know what was in it and Shimmer found it very odd that button hadn’t been removed.

It turned out that Cash was the one who felt the most vindicated, as the box contained six exquisite jewel bracelets, made of some kind of solid diamond – not just gems set in precious metals, but six bands of solid diamond, etched with arcane runes of impossible detail and cut with impossible facets that reflected the golden and silver light of the caste marks around in hypnotic patterns. Everypony could see the endless rain of coin in Cash’s eyes… first age jewelry! You couldn’t just name your price with these things, this was the kind of treasures that wars were fought for. The paltry immaculate jewelry looted from the monk Shimmer had killed outside of Great Forks seemed like muddy pebbles compared to this.

“Why yes Cash, they’re worth a lot – and we’re not selling them” Speaker noted, sensing the latent essence stored in the items, all the while smiling like a foal at hearths warming eve because he knew what he wanted to do with them…

Suffice to say that Cash Charmer’s reaction to hearing this was not a pleasant one, but it did allow Cash to exercise his exaltation’s grand linguistic powers – as Cash very clearly, in many different languages, swore at Speaker for even daring to think that they could stop him for making a fortune off these priceless diamond bracelets. How could they even think of keeping these? The kind of money the sale of these could bring would allow them to buy off every immaculate monk in the east! They could buy kingdoms for this! Armies! No immaculate Wyld hunt would ever be able to touch them!

Cash would probably have continued his tirade if Red hadn’t smacked him over the head. “Quiet you – just listen for a moment, I’m sure that Speaker has good reason for us keeping these – and no need to shout” Red said, looking somewhat accusingly over at Speaker, who nodded furiously.

“I do – these aren’t just jewelry. They’re ‘spiritual equilibrium enhancing modulator-emitters’ – they protect your mind!” Speaker enthusiastically said, as if that was enough to explain the potential Speaker saw in the devices.

Cash obviously wasn’t convinced by this, but Speaker elaborated: The bracelets, when worn around a hoof and activated using the proper thought pattern and a little bit of essence, would shield one’s mind from ambient mind control effects: “It makes perfect sense… the changeling, Hahn-Hanar… if changelings were brought here for parties, this would be the kind of devices that would protect you from succumbing to subtle manipulation caused by their presence”

“Right, but what about more direct shaping attacks?” Shimmer wondered.

Speaker digressed that these devices weren’t made to protect against such – but for a changeling to attack a solar in his own manse would be very stupid, so that probably wasn’t going to happen anyway.

Cash still wasn’t convinced – and again reasoned that if they were this useless they should still sell them.

To this Speaker seemed down right disappointed: “Cash, what is the largest and best known persistent ambient mind control effect known in the scavenger lands?”

Cash’s lack of general education beyond reading and writing betrayed the would-be merchant prince once more, as Cash had to admit that he had no idea what Speaker was talking about. Sunrise Glow on the other hoof seemed very intriqued:

“Are you certain that this will counteract the miasma?”

Speaker shrugged: “No clue, plus they aren’t meant to work for extended periods of time outside solar aspected manses – they’ll only work once activated for twenty-four hours outside and I don’t know where to recharge them – but this is far too big an opportunity!”

“Ok, so you think they’re useful – I get it – useful for what? What are you two talking about?” Cash shouted, terribly annoyed that the two ponies weren’t getting to the point.

Red patted Cash on his right shoulder: “Easy now champ – what are you so upset over?”

Turning to Red, Cash quickly stated: “We’ve been through this whole place without finding anything of value beyond these fancy claw-shooting shoes, and while they’re nice, then I was hoping for real riches – like what we could get selling these things. I do business, I don’t do ancient mysteries, or slave emancipation, or monster hunting, I do business. I can’t do business without something to buy or sell”

“Well how about selling whatever we find in Denansdor?” Speaker suggested.