The lay of creation was defined by the five elemental poles. In the middle of creation was the elemental pole of Earth, set in the middle of the giant continent known as the blessed isle. This was the land of the realm. It was aptly named, for by being in the center of creation it was in perfect balance to all the surrounding poles.

Around the blessed isle was the inland sea, although to the west of the isle was the great western ocean, for in the west was the elemental pole of Water. To the south of the inland sea were lands of endless sands, spices and mysteries, with the elemental pole of Fire. To the north of the inland sea was ice and cold, for the elemental pole of Air blew constant cold winds down over creation. This left the east with the elemental pole of Wood, meaning that most of the east was covered in dense jungles and forest.

Of more pertinent interest to Heart Speaker and Cash Charmer were the great rivers of the east, for they were the lifelines of this part of creation, facilitating trade and travel through land that otherwise grows over with shrubs and weeds twice the height of a pony in a year if not worked by farmers.

At roughly the ‘middle’ of the eastern shores of the inland sea the Yanaze river, almost as wide as an ocean to those who had never seen one, flowed into the inland sea. The river of tears came from the north and joined the Yanaze river about a 160 miles inland. The yellow and grey river existed further east, and joined together 400 miles east of the river of tears to form the Yanaze river.

“Okay, so we’re roughly here, a couple hundred miles east of the river of tears. Great Forks is on the left to the mouth of the rolling river, where it meets the yellow river. It’ll be a long journey up river, but I’m pretty sure I can get us up there if we can find a ship” Cash said confidently, looking at the map.

Looking at Cash for a moment, Speaker frowned: “Have you ever captained a ship?” for Cash did not look like a seasoned riverboat captain at all.

Cash blinked a few times, it dawning on him that he knew surprisingly large amounts of seafaring lore without ever really having stepped on a boat as anything other than a paying passenger: “Uhm… no, not really, but I know this, I just know I know! You have to trust me on this”

“Ah, okay, I think I know what’s happening here – you know how dragon-blooded always become really good at certain things depending on what element they exalt with?” Speaker explained, telling Cash that certain skills and abilities were divinely intertwined with the various forms of exalting.

This of course made Cash very curious about what other things he would suddenly become good at.
“Only one way to tell – show me your caste mark” Speaker said, saying the word caste mark as if it was the simplest thing ever. Cash had no idea what Speaker meant.

Speaker demonstrated how a solar pony could will his caste mark to appear, a golden sigil in the form of a circle, with its top half inner-area half-filled with golden light in Speaker’s case. Speaker then thanked Cash for confirming the appearance of his caste mark, as he’d been a little curious he remembered right with all his strange new memories.

“What, you aren’t sure you remember right? And why call them castes by the way?” Cash jokingly said, while willing his caste mark to appear.

“You’re eclipse caste, makes sense – and you’ll have to ask the gods about that. There’s five Solar castes in all, just like the dragon-blooded and their five elements. Eclipse caste are diplomats, heavenly messengers and, well, merchants. Sailing the seas, and riding other animals should come very easily to you, as well as doing business and understanding other languages. I’m a Twilight caste Solar, which I guess makes sense: Supernaturally good doctors and craftsmen, as well as scholars and sorcerers” Speaker explained, adding that the Dawn caste were superb warriors and generals, the Night caste masters of stealth and deception, and the Zenith caste being by default the priests and priestesses of Celestia, being gifted in song, prayer and the ways of words.

Nodding furiously, Cash found himself half-knowing most of what Speaker said in advance. It seemed to be so obvious, yet he’d never heard it before. This kind of instinctive knowledge felt almost unnatural. They both agreed that it was fairly weird.
With everything cleared up it was time to go. On Cash’s recommendation, Speaker refrained from completely looting the house of everything of value to sell for their journey: “It’ll only make us look suspicious. It’ll be far easier evading detection if we do not leave a trail of merchants and traders who bought stuff from here”

That said, the two set off to the west, towards the salty river of tears with light saddlebags – most of their gear magically stored elsewhere. Cash was already smiling at the prospect of how many goods he could traffic around like this, but Speaker shot that down quickly: “You can only store a few things at a time – and never anything heavier than you can’t lift comfortably with one hoof”

“But those sacks you spirited away were big, that doesn’t make sense” Cash retorted, looking confused as the small specks of light that filtered down through the bamboo trunks and leaves danced over his face.

Speaker adjusted his direction slightly so he bumped into Cash, then shoving him hard to the side: “I’m big and strong, that’s why”

“I could have sworn when I saw you first in the village that you looked a lot more old and weak” Cash noted.

“Exalting freshens you right up! I feel like I’m twenty again” Speaker replied, smiling like crazy and galloping off. How Speaker had the endurance for that was beyond Cash, who was already feeling winded.

Suddenly Speaker stopped hard in his tracks, causing Cash to crash into him. Speaker said that he just had a thought: “Your mercenaries – they’re the only ones who really know who you are here, right? Did you ever get time to introduce yourself properly to River Parter?”

“Nah, the princeling just came up with his samurai and demanded I hand over my silks. As for the mercenaries, yes, what about them?” Cash wondered as he got up from the ground, brushing dirt off his silks.

Speaker explained: “There’s no way to avoid having the Daimyo send word across the hundred kingdoms and river provinces of who and what I’ve become, they know me too well and now they’ll carry a grudge, but if we stop the mercenaries then your name won’t be sullied. If we double back we should be able to catch them! I doubt they’re going anywhere in a hurry”

It quickly dawned on Cash how difficult it would be to conduct business if his reputation from that point on could be summarized as “We’ve heard you’re a demon, let’s kill you just to be safe” – so it made sense to stop the mercenaries before it became an issue.

Now, Cash had already had trouble keeping up going west towards the river. Having to run back towards the village, while taking a detour to go around the hunting lodge, in case some of the Daimyo’s ponies had already gotten there, only made it even harder. Speaker had no trouble navigating the woods, on account of having lived there for a number of years combined with decades of roughing it in the field with the 7th legion.

Speaker could easily see that Cash was getting winded, but with a little encouragement Speaker found Cash galloping through the forest brush: “Cash, just imagine how much money you won’t make if the rest of creation thinks you’re a demon” – it was a little mean to appeal to Cash’s greed, but Speaker had seen enough merchants to figure out that their love of money was an easy button to push, plus he had dealt with countless stubborn Lookshyan legionnaires who ‘just wanted to be patched up and sent back to battle’ instead of waiting for proper treatment of injuries, and Heart Speaker had plenty of experience in talking them into accepting more lengthy and proper treatment.

By nightfall the two had cleared the village and were continuing on the trade road east. Speaker found the mercenaries’ tracks and the two were good to go – if not for Cash Charmer wanting to stop for the night: “I’m tired, I’m hungry and I’m still hurting from having lost all of my fortunes in silks, perfumes, scented oils and exotic wooden furniture. Please, I’m not an army pony”

“Look, the mercenaries probably set up camp hours ago – without wagons they’ll have to walk in their armor all day, so that’ll have slowed them down as well. If we walk all night we should catch them before dawn. You want to eat? I have a tote bag somewhere here if you want, but we shouldn’t stop” Speaker said. Cash was getting really tired of Speaker having all the right answers.

Taking out some salted pork from his saddlebags, Speaker gave some to Cash while he chewed the fat himself. Cash wanted to whip out his caste mark to light the way, but Speaker suggested they go by moonlight instead, lest they become easy targets to spot at a distance: “And those mercenaries of yours seemed to be good archers”

Again, Cash was getting tired of Speaker having all the right answers, of not stopping to sleep, of not having his nice soft cot to sleep in anymore and of being on the run. This was not how Cash Charmer had planned this day.

Several dark hours later the light of a campfire revealed the mercenaries and their camp. They had their tents up, and appeared to have gone to sleep, with two sentries keeping watch.

“Okay, how do you want to do this?” Speaker whispered to Cash, thinking that Cash knew the mercenaries better, and so would be better suited to make a plan to handle them.

Cash looked to the starlit sky for a moment. His father had always told him that a pony could not change his stars, but that didn’t seem the case anymore, did it? “I’ll go talk to them, if we surprise them with your death disc they’ll just wake up and grab their nearest weapon. I’ll go in soft and quiet and talk them out of spreading word of this”

Speaker wanted to agree with Cash’s plan, he really did. It had always been Lookshyan doctrine to never commit more forces than were necessary, for so said the eastern goddess of war Sunipa, and if this situation could be handled with words alone then that would be very nice. It just didn’t sit right with Speaker to fight when there was no need for it, but he still feared that these mercenaries wouldn’t listen.

Cash Charmer strode into the mercenary camp beaming with confidence and an air of authority informed by his sharp looks, his well-styled mane and his choice of words. The sentries saw him coming, but had not expected to see Cash walking towards them in a simple casual stride. The captain struggled to get up quickly, having gone to sleep in her armor, so Cash was easily able to get the first word in.

Speaker couldn’t hear it – but Cash instinctively used essence to both make his words sweet as honey and make his offer sound irresistible. Speaker’s guess that Cash had gotten a good read on the mercenaries had not been wrong, but while Speaker had previously only pushed a single of Cash’s buttons to get him to keep up, then with a glance enhanced by essence had Cash understood everything there was to know about this Captain Ironmane of the mercenaries known as The Merchanter’s Armory.

Cash appealed to what little sense of honor the captain had, reminded her that it was never good mercenary custom to assault a client, plus the fact that he had never missed a payment to them, nor skimped on bonuses on previous occasions when he had hired Merchanter’s Armory forces to protect his wagons. He also noted that it was the stupid dragon-blooded colt who had initiated hostilities, and if not for Cash and his friend, then the dragon-blooded colt would most certainly have attacked the mercenaries instead, so in fact Cash and Speaker had probably saved their lives.

Any other pony would probably not have been able to use such arguments and fuzzy logic to convince an apprehensive mercenary officer not to speak ill about a former client in a situation like this, but the heavens smiled on Cash, who got an uneasy nod from the captain.

“So you promise that you and your fine soldiers won’t tell anyone about what you saw today? Or come after me? I will surely suffer enough hardships because of your torching my little trade caravan, I had put every coin in my name to those goods, so I’m pretty much destitute now” Cash Charmer said, giving Captain Ironmane the saddest puppy dog eyes a grown stallion could get away with making, while at the same time committing no small amount of essence into the appeal of his words, making it very difficult to refuse his offer, even if it made his caste mark glow on his forehead: A golden circle with a second smaller golden disk inside, the symbol of the eclipse caste Solars.

With far more certainty than before, Captain Ironmane nodded sternly and offered her hoof to shake on it. This was all Cash had been waiting for, as almost instinctively he grabbed the captain's hoof with both of his front hooves and held on tight as his caste mark lit up brightly and golden bands of heavenly sigils fluttered around them for a moment. The captain was too tired to wrestle free in time, and the glowing sigils and glyphs disappeared a few seconds later.

“What was that?!” the captain demanded to know, now a good deal more awake.

“Oh that was simple. The heavens have sanctified your promise not to tell on me or my friend. Should any of you ponies blab about this the gods themselves will strike you down” Cash Charmer said, flashing a viciously confident smile as he started to walk about of the camp.

The mercenaries did not take lightly to this, but Cash was quick to remind them that the wording of the promise also included them not coming after him: “Raise arms against me and the heavens will strike you down”

“Oh, Yeddim drops to that!” one of the mercenaries shouted and drew a long knife. He managed to take exactly two steps before tripping a hoof over a tent corner and falling on his knife, stabbing himself in his right eye.

Cash casually strode off smiling to the sound of the cries of the now half-blind mercenary, returning to a confused Speaker who had only heard the final cry, but not what had lead up to it.

“Oh, it was nothing my handsome good looks couldn’t handle – could probably have made the captain sleep with me if I wanted to. By the way, you could have told me that I could sanctify oaths and deals. I almost didn’t know what I was doing back there, so do tell if there’s anything else I can do that you haven’t told me” Cash said, with a cheerful tone of jest. Speaker found it nice that Cash had finally found something he was good at.

It didn’t take any convincing to have Cash continue the night west again – his dealing with the mercenaries had apparently give the heavenly merchant pony new energy. Taking a road south of the forest allowed them to cover more ground faster, but Cash still worried that the Daimyo’s men would find him.

“By now, they’ll have ransacked and probably burnt down the hunting lodge, but they know I’m good at walking around in the forest. They probably think we’re hiding somewhere in there. Plus, the Daimyo isn’t an immaculate adherent, neither is River Parter; the little shit only learnt about it from a traveling immaculate monk who was passing through a couple years ago. The Daimyo and the people here worship local gods, not the immaculate dragons, so the Daimyo has little religious motivation for hunting us. Add to that River Parter’s reputation for starting fights with foreigners and his dislike of me, then the Daimyo might not even believe River Parter’s claim that we’re anathema” Speaker mused.

Cash was quick to point that all the Daimyo would have to do to verify River Parter’s story was to ask the villagers. So he might learn that River Parter and his samurai attacked first, but the villagers would probably only confirm that Speaker and Cash are anathema.

“But we’re not anathema – that’s just the immaculates’ lies told to denounce us” Speaker said begrudgingly.

Cash laughed: “Hey, tell the same lie for centuries and it’ll become the only truth anypony will ever know”

---

The next two weeks passed without much incident. Two lone travelers didn’t attract that much attention, and after Speaker fashioned two nice straw hats that hid most of their faces, nopony would be able to give good descriptions of them. Cash didn’t like wearing one of the conical straw hats: It was something rice farmers ran around in, not a… would-be wealthy merchant.

Staying at a few farms and roadside inns on the way, Speaker found that Cash was able to bend the ear of pretty much anypony he got to chat with. Cash got his and Speaker’s clothes washed, secured them room and board for free at most places, plus Cash managed to bed a new mare at almost every place they slept.

It was clear to Speaker that Cash had no qualms about using his powers for his own gain, although he didn’t hesitate to share the wealth either, which was comforting.

About halfway to the river of tears Cash started talking about the ‘death disc’ again. Up until that point the two had been spending most of their time talking about what Speaker remembered from the past. Speaker had been trying to set up a time-line in his head, to figure out just how long ago the usurpation had taken place, but without any history books that simply wasn’t possible. It didn’t help that he was fairly certain that his ‘new old’ memories spanned millennia.

As per the ‘death disc’ then Speaker proudly declared that he had finally remembered its name: “It is called Gift, and was given to me by a very special friend shortly after a terrible war. I remember I was humbled by it so greatly that I created a whole new martial arts style focused on the use of this, the gyroscopic chakram: The Thousand Wounds Gear Style. It was a few of those techniques I used to defend myself from River Parter and his samurai”

“Impressive, but that’s still nothing compared to my Hoof of the Daystar style” Cash Charmer said confidently, Speaker having enlightened him earlier on the name of the natural fighting style of the Solar exalted.

Speaker frowned: “The two are very different – and neither of us have mastered our respective styles. You need to develop your skills and I can only hope that I remember enough of the Thousand Wounds Gear Style, and then understand what I remember, to learn the style again. Also keep in mind, these are magical fighting styles, not just mortal pony hoof tricks and bucking techniques, so they require a lot more to learn and master”

“You sound like my father, timid and cautious. I’m a business stallion, you have to take risks with some investments in order to get big rewards. I fight like that as well, big risks, big rewards” Cash said, his choice of words betraying his obvious lack of practical combat experience.

Speaker shook his head and neighed: “Cash, you might talk like that now, but try to say that after a really hard fight when you’ve been cut up good and proper – then we’ll see how much risk you’re willing to take”

“Oh, like your disc fighting is any different?” Cash said defiantly. This was another ‘quality’ of Cash that Speaker had begun to notice, a stubborn streak, but not stubborn in the sense of great inner strength to carry on when tired or scared, but more the stubborn of ‘I know I’m right, so you’re wrong’ kind of annoying stubborn.

Spinning Gift on the top of his nose, Speaker smiled: “It is very different. This is a gyroscopic chakram, a marvel of magitechnical engineering and artifice. Made of pure orichalcum no less. Thousand Wounds Gear Style is informed by the certainty of geometric laws of movement, the brutal calculated nature of machines and grinding gears. Hoof of Daystar is an expression of the raw might of Solars. There is risk in both, you might hit, you might miss. I can at least stay at a distance and hope to strike again before a foe closes”

The two argued a bit more over the next few weeks, but for the most part they got along fairly well – so long as Cash didn’t abuse his powers too much, although Cash also learnt the hard way that there are simply some things you cannot talk a mare into doing… with another mare… and another mare, at the same time. Speaker found the triple barrage of angry mares yelling at Cash quite amusing, enough so to make up for the fact that they had to run out of the inn and sleep under the stars that night, something that seemed to bother Cash a lot more than it bothered Speaker, as it would dirty his precious silks.

Finally arriving at the eastern banks of the ever so salty and mile-wide river of tears, the two emerged onto its plantless banks and started looking for ships. Most of the shipping going up and down the river were in the form of barges that probably wouldn’t stop to pick up travellers, but after going south along the river for a while the two came across a cove with a nasty sight: River pirate ponies had rounded up a couple of fishing boats and had captured the fisherponies. They seemed to be in the process of putting the fisherponies in chains and taking them on board their junk.

“Well, they have a good boat, but I don’t think they’ll take us all the way to Great Forks willingly… and I don’t think these guys will just let me talk to them” Cash noted, trying to spot what kind of cargo the pirates might have up on deck. There were some crates and barrels, but nothing clearly visible beyond the wooden railing and patch-work canvas sails.

Heart Speaker laughed a little: “Oh, so the mighty Cash Charmer doesn’t want to go in hooves swinging? No big risk for a big reward?”

Cash’s face contorted in a foul grimace. Sure he was a headstrong pony, but he wasn’t any braver than your average pony either, being mostly talk and not all that much action – and he knew darn well that two ponies against a whole crew of pirate ponies weren’t good odds. Plus he really didn’t want to mess up his silks!

Speaker willed forth Gift and ‘attached’ the disc to the side of his right foreleg. Over the last few weeks, when camping out with nobody looking, they had sparred a little, and through that Speaker had found that the disc would ‘stick’ to his leg so he could run and jump around with it on, and it would slide forward to his hoof simply by raising the hoof, but only if he wanted to strike, throw Gift or use it for defense.

Just as Speaker was about to propose a plan, there was an explosion at the junk. Water, dirt and torn pony limbs flew far and wide in bloody arches. This was followed by short-lived screams of ponies and a powerful blast of water that silenced the screams.

“Well that makes things a lot easier” said Speaker, sounding almost relieved. Cash didn’t quite understand.
“It’s simple: If the pirates are led by a, from the looks of it water-aspected, dragon-blooded pony, I’ll just challenge him for the ship, the crew and the cargo. I remember my superior in the 7th legion doing that many times to avoid bloodshed. If they were all mortal ponies they would probably fight together, but like this I can just defeat their leader and that should be that” Speaker said, sounding a lot less confident than Cash would have liked.

Looking at his muddied hooves and then at Speaker, Cash bit his lip: “Are you sure that will work? What if they all jump you?”

Speaker sighed heavily and rubbed his temples with his left hoof and muttered “Just like a freshly-minted junior officer” under his breath, as he began trotting into the water. To Cash’s surprise Speaker didn’t just walk along the bank up to the pirates, but walked INTO the water… he didn’t even try to swim. Cash looked on in disbelief as Speaker’s straw hat floated off.

Walking just under the surface of the water would normally not be something ponies could do. However, over the last several weeks Speaker had become increasingly aware that he could channel essence to not just enhance his ability to spot and forage for berries or find shelter in the wild, but he could make the essence suffuse his body and resist the cold of night, or the sting of insects as he slept under the stars. This had led to some subtle experimentation, although it hadn’t been until Speaker had taken a quick morning bath in a stream that he had discovered that the same essence flows that inured him to the cold water, also allowed him to breathe in it. It was then that he recalled the name of this advanced technique, which had made him fully aware of its uses: The element-resisting Prana technique.

Walking in under the junk so he stood under the boats between the junk and river bank, Speaker detached Gift from his right foreleg, leaving it hidden in the river and strode up on the riverbank. The pirates were understandably shocked, as they certainly hadn’t expected company – especially not a pony that just walked out of the water.

The sight that Speaker was met with was an ugly one: The pirate captain was dragon-blooded, that was clear, and she was currently beating a fisherpony senseless, next to what were the bloody remains of another fisherpony who had been… made an example of, by being blasted apart by a bolt of tsunami-force water. There were scattered bits of limbs, flesh and guts everywhere, and head of the dead fisherpony had been completely scraped clean of flesh by the force of the elemental water blast, leaving it only barely attached to the rest of the torso by ragged sinew.

The pirate ponies quickly surrounded Speaker, but seemed unsure of what to think of him, giving him a mix of angry and fearful glances and snarls with enough rotten teeth to make Speaker want to retch. They were dressed in dirty clothes, and smelled like rot and cheap rice-wine. Their weapons of choice seemed to be short cutlasses and long knives, with a few of them wielding hatchets.

The captain didn’t seem to take much notice, simply continuing the beating while the other captive fisherponies watched on in shameful horror, painfully aware that they could do nothing to save their friend. But Speaker could do something:
“Captain, I challenge you for the crew and the ship!” Speaker shouted, trying his best to sound as intimidating as possible, standing all high and mighty in wet and muddy peasant clothes.

The captain was not impressed, but a challenge… well, there was no need to honor it, but the fisherpony the captain had been beating senseless wasn’t giving her any more satisfaction, so a new punching bag sounded nice: “Who’s the scum-sucker?”

Speaker was not a brave pony, nor did he now think that this was that good an idea – but his memories of an ancient time when things were better, had told him over and over that he had to get through this, that he had to persevere and that he had to overcome this challenge: “Beating up helpless fisherponies isn’t that much of a challenge - are you really that weak?”

Cash was too curious and anxious to stay back where Speaker had left him. He had snuck forward to get a glimpse of what was happening, allowing him to see the cerulean-colored unicorn mare charging at Speaker, with the fury of a raging river.
Speaker was caught off-guard at just how quickly the dragon-blooded mare was able to react to his taunt, and was thus knocked onto his back and into the water. The captain was quickly on him, holding Speaker down with strong hooves into the water to drown him.

The moment Speaker realized what the dragon-blooded pirate captain was trying to do, he stopped struggling and just waited. After a minute the captain judged him dead and let go. This was the opening Speaker had waited for, allowing him to buck the captain up over him and into the water.

Every foal is told by their mothers of the power of the dragon-blooded. The fire aspected dragon-blooded cannot be burnt, the earth aspected can freely dive into rock slides and come out unscathed, the air aspected can fall from any height and land safely, the wood aspected can handle any poison you can throw at them – but the water aspected, well… they can stand on water, as well as breathe in it.

Getting up quickly, Speaker turned to face the captain who stood, quiet on the murky river water, while he was almost up to his flanks in water. The captain glared him: “So, you can hold your breath – good for you, let’s see how you breathe when I cut off your nose!” and gestured for one of her pirates to throw her a blade.

As the captain caught and levitated over a cutlass that was already stained in blood and silt, Speaker dove into the water yelling: “Catch me if you can!”

The captain laughed and willed the water to let her drop in, splashing down into the river.

The visibility underwater wasn’t very good, but sound transmitted very well. Speaker had figured that the captain would just drop down, so he had a fairly good idea where the mare was. The dragon-blooded captain on the other hoof did not have that good an idea of where Speaker was, but she could hear something… a hellish noise unlike any other, a high pitched metallic whine dulled slightly by the water, which was approaching very quickly.

A mortal pony probably wouldn’t have been able to bring up a blade to parry the incoming gyroscopic chakram, but with her horn and the power to levitate things around, the dragon-blooded captain just barely made it. To her horror the sharp sound of metal snapping followed, as Gift was deflected by the blade at the cost of the cutlass being cut in half.

Speaker stood ready to catch Gift on his hoof when it returned – but it didn’t. The high-pitched machine sound circled around for another strike, at which point Speaker suddenly remembered that strange function of Gift: It would not return to him until it had hit its target properly, unless he wanted it to come back.

With his hooves thusly free, Speaker swam up behind the captain. Not being that deep in the water allowed light to be reflected from what remained of the captain’s cutlass, allowing Speaker see which way the mare was looking by judging where the broken blade was pointing. Gift came around for another run, with the captain again parrying with what was left of her blade, another part of it breaking off as the chainsaw-disc was deflected. This was Speaker’s opening, and he grabbed the dragon-blooded unicorn from behind, with a tight hold around her neck and right forehoof.

Up on the surface, the pirates and fisherponies watched with anticipation as murky shadows moved under the surface. They couldn’t hear Gift revving for a final go the captain. To Cash’s chagrin it was one of the fisherponies that spotted him who then called for Cash to help him, causing one of the pirates to look over and see him as well…

Down below Speaker held on tight as Gift came around for a final run, burying itself in the struggling captain’s chest with a horrible sound of metal against ribs and the captain briefly screaming, the mixed sound transmitting itself so excruciatingly well underwater that Speaker had to fight not to feel sick.

The murky water took on a nasty shade of red as Speaker swam to shore, finding a bloodied Cash Charmer battling pirates left and right.

It was a brutal sight: The twenty-some pirates were slowly being whittled down and flung left and right by Cash’s supernaturally mighty blows, but then Speaker recognized that Charmer had not only finally figured out the Hoof of the Daystar form, a powerful fighting stance that greatly magically improved the precision of all strikes that Cash landed, while also fortifying his skin and hooves so that he could parry blades with but a hoof and shrug off minor injuries.

Still, the pirates were outnumbering Cash twenty to one, and Cash didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, so while he could fight off the pirate ponies in front of him, he had been cut and lacerated many times over his back and flanks by pirate ponies he simply had no chance of seeing coming.

Speaker quickly flung Gift at the nearest pirate, cutting the pony with a deep gash from flank to shoulder. The pony screamed and dropped to the ground, feebly gushing blood from the wound, while Gift whirred and buzzed as it flew back to Speaker’s hoof.

When the pirates realized that their captain wasn’t the one who won the fight – and that Speaker obviously had some kind of magic weapon he was slicing them up with – their morale quickly began to falter. Cash equally began striking back with renewed vigor, his hoof-strikes not as much bludgeoning the pirates, but actually cutting into them via violent martial use of essence. It was a gruesome sight, as Cash’s bucks and punches sliced up pirates as if knives were tied to his hooves.

The pirates quickly surrendered, begging for mercy, some of them trying to appeal to Speaker by saying that now he was their captain, while others tried to attend to their wounded.
“Me, captain? Heavens no – that would be the blood-soaked pony in ruined silks over there” Speaker said, pointing at Cash Charmer.

Upon hearing Speaker’s words, Cash looked down at his previously very nice silk robes. They were completely ruined. There were dozens of cuts and bloodstains on the back alone, and his front sleeves were soaked in pirate blood. The sight of his beloved silks so torn hurt almost more than the dozens of cuts and injuries he had suffered in the fight: “Aww come on… you can't expect me to captain a junk dressed like this?”