A deal was struck with the changeling in the freehold. It would keep the mare it had ravaged safe, not alter her any further, nor use her in any way, only keep her in a form of stasis so she wouldn’t suffer another second of her current state of being – until the circle would return to take her away. The changeling was reluctant at first, but then Sunrise yelled at it…

“You will agree to the terms, or face the holy fire of the heavens and iron so cold one might think it was brought here from the underworld!” the would-be mare’s voice boomed, sounding almost as loud as the changeling had, her eyes blazing with holy fire and her anima flaring to the point that the young pony appeared to be wreathed in golden flames of solar essence.

The changeling unceremoniously agreed to the terms, Cash sanctifying the oath.

The circle then left, noticing that giant wolves of living wood had appeared around the mound.

“I guess Hahn-Lee took his new role as protector of the mutant mare seriously” Cash said in jest.

Shimmer sighed: “Do you realize how powerful an eclipse oath is to a changeling? They don’t work like they do on ponies. A changeling who swears to do something builds that into his assumption – it literally becomes part of his being, to the point that he can’t violate it even if he tried. You basically changed the way he thinks – please don’t be so casual about doing things like that, otherwise you’ll have endless legions of changelings coming after you to prevent you from doing it again”

Cash got a lot quieter after that, as the circle discussed what to do next. Speaker wanted to update the farmers, while Red pointed out that until they had a nice healthy mare to show they had nothing: “Better to tell them she is dead than to show her as is – do you have any idea what is done to mutants in the hundred kingdoms?”

“The same as is done in Lookshy I assume? Killed, chased off, left in the woods to die?” Speaker listed. “I didn’t mean that we should tell the farmers what had happened to her – perhaps just that we had found her, but that we couldn’t get her yet until we find something to ‘combat’ the changeling to secure her safe return”

Nodding, Red agreed that a little lie to make the farmers leave the freehold alone while still assuring them of progress wouldn’t be that bad an idea: “Plus, it won’t really be a lie. That changeling will pay for what it’s done”

Walking to the farmstead, Cash questioned Sunrise Glow about what charms she had used to get the changeling to cooperate. Sunrise told him of the essence patterns that one had to will forth to execute what she called an enemy-castigating solar judgment, for in the baleful glow of the sun no changeling, demon, ghost or other foul thing could resist the will of the solars, such was the will of heaven.

“Ok, really? I’m sorry, but I have to ask – because no filly your age, even if you are just one growth spurt away from being a mare, should be talking like that” Speaker burst out, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Sunrise gave Speaker a dirty look as her anima lit up again, golden flames of essence briefly erupting around her before fading again: “Don’t ask questions you do not want answered”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want an answer” Speaker stubbornly pointed out. His medical background had allowed him to experience far too many young fillies and colts that had been blunted, jaded and hardened by experiencing the terrors of war up close and personal at a far too early age, and Sunrise Glow was simply too clear a match for these symptoms to dismiss them.

Sunrise stopped walking and sat down, ordering Red to go to the farmstead and deliver the ‘news’ to the farmers, then return so Shimmer could fly them back to Great Forks. As Red walked away Sunrise told Speaker what he wanted to know: “Do you know why Great Forks is also known as Decadence, or the city of ten thousand vices?”

It had begun four years ago, when Sunrise Glow’s parents had died in a fire. Some god’s party had gotten out of hand and somepony had knocked over a brazier full of burning coals, setting light to the tenement they had lived in. Sunrise Glow and her two younger brothers had survived, but faced a life without parents. While young, Sunrise’s beauty and singing talents had already begun to manifest, allowing her to sell her services to cults and temples – but it was hard to make ends meet without having to sell just more than ones singing voice.

Looking at Cash, Sunrise asked if he knew why gods so coveted personal cults and direct worship. Cash, knowing nothing of the occult mechanics that informed how worship actually worked, couldn’t answer. Sunrise nodded and explained: “Its will. When a pony sleeps at night, her soul recovers and regains power. It is by this power, your will, that all ponies rise above mere animals – because we can choose instead of constantly being slaves of our baser instincts. We even punish those who steal, rape or murder for not repressing those instincts”

“Right, and this has to do with your foalhood how?” Cash wondered, Speaker and Shimmer both remaining silent. Speaker had an idea about what Sunrise was talking, and he suspected that Shimmer knew as well.

“I will get to that – but you must understand this first” Sunrise explained, saying that gods did not benefit from sleep at all. Instead, their will to choose for themselves was only bolstered when they did what they had been made to do. So a god of rain could only regain the power to choose for itself if it performed the same mind-numbing labors every day that it probably wished it could choose not to do at all: “…and this is where cults and worship come in, for these empower the gods in exactly the same way, but without the gods having to work for it”

“Oh, so if you’re a bored god you just run off to Great Forks, start a pleasure cult and you never have to work again? Sweet deal – but again, what does this have to do with you?” Cash said, him obviously wondering if he could aspire to a similar goal.

Without showing anger in her voice, only revealing it in her stern expression and choice of words, Sunrise said that this meant that Great Forks was built around laziness, luxurious lifestyles and an escape from ones duties at the expense of the ponies who had to work to maintain those lifestyles: “Tens of thousands of slaves toil every day in hemp and poppy fields, so that the gods that live in Great Forks can watch in amusement as their anointed whores get high and flop around in stupors, while the things that the gods are meant to regulate and monitor go unattended – causing even more suffering and mayhem for ponies. That’s where I came in. I was the new pretty filly with tasty blank flanks. It was obvious that I’d grow up to be a beautiful mare, which made it all the more important for the cults to ‘buy’ me before my price rose…”

Sunrise grimly retold of how dozens of cults had attempted to offer her petty sums of silver bits to join them, hinting that they might even take care of her younger brothers if she joined, but Sunrise didn’t want her brothers to grow up watching her getting ravaged on a daily basis in pleasure cults while they would be made to sing the praises of whatever god who’s high priest was rutting her.

When she had turned down the initial offers the more underhanded attempts came – city officials were ‘made aware’ of her status as orphan, and were bribed to try to seize her and turn her over to ‘charitable orphanages’, all of which were fronts for cults and temples using them as early recruiting and indoctrination services. When that failed, because Sunrise would usually either be able to hide with her brothers or pay off the officials to go away at the cost of going hungry for a few days, the cults and temples started to try and kidnap her.

It had been at that point that she was found by the illuminates, which offered a different option: Instead of becoming a servant to some god that simply wanted to have fun, using vague promises of enlightenment and blessings as lures, she and her brothers could join a cult that actively believed in a better life in this lifetime, instead of merely praying that one might reincarnate into a better family with more wealth or power in the next life.

“So, Speaker, the reason that I act so jaded – and that think so poorly of Cash running around wasting time in brothels, not doing what he was meant to do – is because I genuinely hate these things, for to me they have caused me so much misery. When I get the power to do so, I will clean up both Great Forks and Yu-Shan of the corrupt and lazy gods, so help me Celestia” Sunrise Glow said with furious passion, her anima again sputtering to life briefly with licks of holy flame bleaching the grass around her until it was all white.

Speaker could do nothing but feel sorry for the teenage filly, while at the same time admiring her ability to resist the temptations that had been offered to her. Her hate of indolence certainly made a lot more sense now.

Red returned shortly after, with a radish the size of half a pony strapped to her back – saying that it was a gift from the farmers for having done so well. Shimmer quickly reminded Red how the ponies that ate those wyld-tainted veggies had been affected by it, to which Red said that she didn’t want to eat it… but maybe keep it as a trophy? “If nothing else I can keep it around to beat somepony with”

Shimmer summoned her cloud and the circle returned to Great Forks, setting down out of sight of the city wall – no reason to alert the enforcers or anypony else who might ask questions why a cloud descended from the sky all of a sudden, even if weirder things did happen on a daily basis in Great Forks, especially if the god of farts or the god of social awkwardness deigned to visit.

Hahn-Hanar was sad to hear of his apprentice’s madness. The changeling, who appeared as a beautiful if not stylized living obsidian sculpture of a pony, with hair made of colored bands of silk and eyes of infinitely regressing rings of brass, said that he had ‘made’ his apprentice in an attempt to reproduce as ponies did, teaching the newly formed changeling of the glorious past of the changelings, as well as teaching him of the fun things in ordinary pony life: “Like food, food is fun to try – and ponies make food, Hahn-Lee obvisouly didn’t understand just how”

“Yes, we found that Hahn-Lee had an interesting perception of how that worked – and we are still trying to find a way to cure a mare he dream-ate and reshaped into something that isn’t quite a pony anymore but a pulsating growth-vessel for flesh” Sunrise Glow stated, her voice sounding perfectly calm and neutral, yet with poisonous hate in each word.

The changeling shrugged uncaringly, saying that he would alert the enforcers in case Hahn-Lee ever returned, and equally write him off as an educational but failed experiment. With the pennants delivered over the changeling gave the circle the information he had promised. Apparently, then two seasons ago a scavenger lord came by Hahn-Hanar’s store and had a map of his enhanced with a simple glamour, making it glow it in the dark and the ink on it never face.

The whole circle paid close attention as the changeling described the scavenger lord. The title alone meant a lot: The river provinces, the central part of the east of creation, were known as the scavenger lands for a reason – for after every rainy season in spring new wonders would be found, and the scavenger lords were the ponies with either wealth or sponsor who oversaw the exploration and looting of such places, as many of the old lost first age ruins were riddles with traps or monstrous leftovers from a bygone era.

Hahn-Hanar said that such glamours were usually ordered by explorers going into the south-eastern jungles, where the ever-present humidity and heat rots paper very quickly. The map detailed the location of a ‘crashed’ manse not far from the grey river, several hundred miles south of a city called Jades. The changeling also noted that this particular scavenger lord had been somewhat stingy with payment for the service rendered, so Hahn-Hanar felt no qualms giving the circle a copy of the map he had made.

The crashed manse, as the scavenger lord had bragged, fit the description of a manse that Sullen Hoof had once owned, something that Hahn-Hanar knew because him and Sullen Hoof had been great friends in Sullen Hoof’s past life as a solar – or so the changeling said. Whether this was true or just another delusional changeling thinking too greatly of itself was beyond the circle’s ability to discern.

The circle left quickly, walking in the streets of the southern district of Great Forks as they discussed what to do next. Hahn-Hanar having given them a copy of the map, so they could essentially leave at once. Shimmer objected to this, stating that shaping up the powerful sorcery that produced her traveling cloud tired the mind, to the point that she wouldn’t be fun to be around if she had to do so again without resting first.

Staying the night at Sunrise Glow’s flat, the circle discussed what to bring for their little expedition. Red had Cash do their shopping, as well as check up on the status for the medical relief caravan going to the Chung lands. The caravan turned out to be getting ready ahead of schedule, looking to be ready in two weeks’ time instead of four, supposedly due to the alchemist workshops producing medicine being surprisingly productive.

The next the day the circle left Great Forks with a few extra supplies, rope, grappling hooks, torches, lamp oil and enough field rations to last them a week, all stored away in elsewhere in sacks and saddlebags – although Shimmer was adamant that she’d rather hunt and forage wherever they camp than eat the dry tasteless bread and salted meat of their traveling rations, saying that the stuff upset her stomach.

Speaker couldn’t help but notice that Shimmer was acting a little different that morning as they walked out the west gate of Great Forks. She was playful, impulsive – not childish – but up until now she had always had a sage and calm demeanor to her, like some sweet old grandmother… who was in love with you.

Confronted with this observation, albeit indirectly thanks to Speaker’s wondrous inability to veil his intentions or in any way be subtle, Shimmer quickly apologized: “It’s the sorcery – sapphire circle spells work hard on your head, and with two big clouds yesterday… you just don’t have the power left to control yourself. I put that in the spells, that’s how they work – soften reality with essence, reshape it with your will”

“You up for making another one?” Speaker said, thinking hard about such abstract concepts as will and the essence patterns that inform them, while the rest of the circle looked around to check if they were far enough from Great Forks to be out of sight.

Shimmer gave Speaker a kiss: “For you, always”

The circle continued away from Great Forks to where they had landed the day before.

Speaker was so wrapped up in recollecting essence theory to somehow help Shimmer that he didn’t notice where he was walking, resulting in him bumping him into a pony clad in azure robes. This pony also had a horn. And everypony worth their salt knew that azure robes meant immaculate monk.

Some ponies might have wondered what an immaculate was doing near Great Forks, but nopony got the chance to ask as Shimmer suddenly shifted into her half-pony half-bird form and in the same instance ripped the unicorn monk’s head clean off, emitting a savage birdlike shriek in the process, leaving an arcing spray of blood sailing through the air.

Red deftly stepped aside to avoid getting hit by the thick blood-spray. Sullen Hoof ducked under the spray in a single elegant maneuver. Cash, with a new not-burnt silk jacket, watched in horror as his new silks got hosed down with blood.

“Oh come on!” Cash said, dumbstruck at the sight of his expensive clothing ruined, apparently not caring at all that another pony had just been murdered right next to him.

Having been sufficiently shocked back into the present, away from his deep thoughts, Speaker looked at the scene in horror. He hadn’t ever imagined that Shimmer was able to do such a thing. Such was Speaker’s shock that he wasn’t even thinking as he trotted up to Cash Charmer, who was half-way in tears, and struck the stallion’s new blue silk jacket with a wash of essence from his hoof that stripped the blood off in nearly an instant.

Sullen Hoof, who’d been hoof deep in the dead monk’s pockets, saw this and dropped the folded cloth he’d found, it landing with a wet sound on the ground: “How did you do that?”

Speaker blinked a few times, looking at his hooves as the last of the golden essence dripped from them along with the last of Cash’s silk’s stains disappearing. He then tried to explain the idea that solar essence could replace any tool imaginable, such as a wonderous device Speaker called a ‘washing machine’ from the first age, which could remove any stain from whatever was placed in it through purifying essence processes.

Sullen Hoof and Speaker ended up talking for the next half hour while Red and Shimmer got rid of the body, Shimmer in her bird-form using her long talons to quickly dig a shallow grave behind some bushes. Cash had fun evaluating the immaculate jewelry that the monk had, while Sunrise appeared strangely captivated by the ornate folded cloth that the monk had carried.
Shimmer, strangely pleased and revitalized by her stint of pony-slaughter, ultimately excusing her actions with a seemingly astute observation: “Look at these travel papers he had, he’s from Nexus – going to Grey Falls. That means that he’d know about you Speaker, he’d warn every pony he’d come across, plus give descriptions of the rest of us to anypony who’d want to hunt us down”

“Hold on – he’s on hoof, no transportation or anything – he would have left Nexus a long time ago if he’s trotted all the way to Great Forks from Nexus, so he couldn’t possible have known about me” Speaker said, having used a little math to add up how long it would take to get from Nexus to Great Forks – a trek of almost six-hundred miles, which would even out to at least twenty days on hoof, probably more if the monk stopped to preach every now and then, which was quite likely.

Realizing that the monk couldn’t possibly have known about Speaker, and thus hadn’t really posed a threat, Shimmer felt greatly ashamed of her actions. She tried to apologize, but Speaker didn’t want to hear it. Cash asked that Shimmer get on with conjuring that cloud, which Shimmer did, although the cloud had an unmistakable darker shade to itself, like that of a rain cloud.

Traveling across the sky Shimmer guided the circle right around the shadowland south-west of Great Forks known as the Walker’s Realm, while the cloud brightened as it silently shed her tears for having upset Speaker. Sunrise entertained the rest of the circle by retelling the story of how the three lord gods of Great Forks had bested the undead master of that shadowland, saving Great Forks:

“It was said to be a powerful ghost of a pony called The Black Heron, who had built a mighty fortress of bone and steel called the Ebon Spires of Pyrron, lit with ten thousand fires stolen from funeral pyres. The dreamweaver, talespiner and dayshield conspired to create a story, part fiction, part destiny, about a mighty pony rising to find an overlooked weakness in the Black Heron’s defences, laying the ghost to rest for good…” Sunrise described, as the sun approached its zenith.

Red was curious if this story meant that this Black Heron had finally been slain, but Sunrise explained: “The mere rumor that such a magical story was being made frightened off the Black Heron. To my knowledge only the three know the story, and for they hold on to it, keeping it as a guarantee that the Black Heron will never return to threaten their lands”

Sunrise told more stories as night fell and the moon rose. Shimmer guessed that it would be another week or so before it’d be another full moon.

“Why’s that important?” Cash inquired, having enjoyed the view but equally noticing how worried Shimmer had sounded when she made that observation.

Shimmer darted a glance at Speaker who’d returned to his deep thoughts on will and essence theory, then returned her gaze to the horizon as she maintained control of the cloud and the direction it was going in: “Luna blesses us with the moon each night, gifting every pony with dreams via moonlight. Lunars are… sensitive… to this, but only on the first night of each full moon. I’ve seen lunars do strange things on full moons, be it weep uncontrollably for past sins, mindlessly break into a gallop towards their nearest enemy no matter how far away that enemy was only stopping the next morning. Some dig a hole and hide in it until dawn… nothing bad, it’s just that the moon is sacred to us and our reverence of it gets the better of us every now and then, sometimes not more than once a decade, others every year or so”

“So… you’re worried that you might do something weird around Speaker?” Cash said, having caught Shimmer’s drift perfectly.

Shimmer nodded shamefully. In the west dealing with immaculates was simple enough: You killed them, especially if they were trying to convert anypony under your protection. That was how Shimmer had been trained. With Speaker around, her lunar bond to his exaltation made her want to protect him so very much.

Looking east to the desolate wastes around the empty city of Denansdor, Shimmer shrugged: “I doubt I’m the only lunar who’s been thinking about this, especially ones with strong spirit bonds to their solar mates. I’ve been told I get… possessive, usually of whatever pony I’m sweet for at the time when the silver chariot rides in full splender”

“So what, you’ll lavish him with kisses and show him how western ponies rut? This is the east my dear, we’ve got kingdoms ruled by mares here that mandate that all unmarried stalions must submit to a mare of age who chooses them” Cash chuckled, recalling some of the strange places in the hundred kingdoms he’d heard of while traveling as a merchant.

Shimmer laughed, suggesting that they go visit that place after they finish with the plague affair in the Chung lands, then fondly recalling: “I once came across this little tribe on an island back west. They had plenty of fruits growing there to sustain them, but it came at a price. Something in the fruit made the stallions barren shortly after they reached adulthood, barely enough time to sire any foals. The mares there would organize into raiding parties on their boats, and sail out and ‘rape’ all stallions they came across… and then mark any stallion ‘done’ by biting off their eyelids – hilarious!”

Cash forced out a chuckle, but really didn’t like how realistically Shimmer able to mimic the eyelid-biting maneuver without… batting an eyelash, and smiling while doing so. It was just another reminder that Shimmer was born a tribal; no doubt about that.

Shimmer flew the cloud through the night, the circle sleeping on the cloud, waking up to find a slightly tired but resolute Shimmer still controlling the cloud in the morning. By noon the cloud linked up with the Grey River, which fit the map the changeling had given them, only question was how far down the river they were. A few hours later the cloud passed over a city on the side of the river that matched the description they had been given of Jades.

There was of course a big difference: This Jades was burning, its wooden palisades toppled and almost every wood hut either knocked over or lit on fire. There was no movement visible from high up on the cloud, but Sullen Hoof had a charm for that. The hillside leading down the river that the city was built on was a mess of things that had been tossed down the side of the hill, as well as huts and the odd stone building that had been knocked over and tumbled down the hill in pieces.

With a whiff of essence he gazed down over the side of the cloud, muttering something about his vision now being augmented. He quickly concluded that there was no movement down below. There were plenty of dead ponies lying around, but no movement visible. No apparent survivors, and no conquerors setting up shop in the castle on the top of the hill, only fire taking away the last marks of civilization down below.

Cash proposed that they touch down to see if there was any salvage to grab, but Shimmer was adamant that she wasn’t setting the cloud down until they found Sullen Hoof’s old manse.

A few hours later, with Sunrise having said an earnest prayer for the dead ponies in Jades, a strange sight emerged on the east side of the river: A gigantic cube-like stone structure, overgrown with jungle vegetation, at the end of a wide bay, poked out of the ground.

A curious detail was that when looked at from above it was obvious that the bay wasn’t as much bay… as it was an elongated impact crater that had filled with water: This very much looked like where Sullen Hoof’s flying manse had struck down. It was a miracle that the tapered cube-shaped manse had landed in an upright position, not tipping over. It was also clear that it was far enough in land from the river, along with how high the jungle grew around the river, that it wouldn’t be possible to see the towering overgrown structure if you just sailed by on the river.

Speaker briefly wondered why the manse had been knocked off the demesne that usually powered it – but then realized that when the Great Contagion had hit, with so many ponies dying, that the very dragon lines of essence that form the demesnes in creation would have changed… so the manse simply lost its power supply.

Another thing clearly visible from the sky, especially in the noon sun, was the camp set up on the north side of the crashed manse and the two sail ships – a small schooner and a big junk from what Cash could tell, plus what looked like several barges being constructed – anchored in the cove. That would be the scavenger lord’s expedition.

“Ok, so how do we get in to this thing? Scavenger lords aren’t famous for sharing – and there’s no honor in slaughtering innocent ponies to get at something like this” Red noted.

Sullen Hoof suggested that they land on the top of the manse, approaching from the south side to avoid detection, but he quickly recanted that – spotting ponies clearing vegetation on the top of the manse.

Shimmer put down the cloud on the side river out of sight of the manse. Going down to ground level was tough: Up in the sky the air was cool and while the spell that made the cloud kept the winds rushing past the cloud, not through it, then there was a constant comfortable breeze.

Descending hit everypony with the tropical heat of the area hard. The circle had traveled almost two thousand miles south, putting them a lot closer to the elemental pole of fire. The air was hot, and because of the river it was humid to the point that it almost impossible to breathe. The proximity to the elemental pole of wood didn’t help either: The jungle around the river extended for thousands of miles in every direction, and it was so dense that you could hardly see three feet into the undergrowth before your view was obscured by vines, bushes, shrubs, tree trunks and dark shade.

Red retrieved a well-made dadao, a big three-foot saber that she wielded with expert skill as she floated it around, clearing brush and vines to allow the circle passage through the jungle towards the manse: “I have to admit, this makes using this so much easier! Holding weapons in your hooves or mouth seem silly now”

Speaker agreed, stating that this was the primary reason why exaltations came with enlightened essence.

Shimmer changed into a rat and scurried into the jungle, scouting, while Cash flailed wildly to keep the hoof-sized bugs away, occasionally shrieking as one would fly by him or try to land on him, with Sunrise in her cloak shushing him every time.

“Oh come on Cash, you think this is bad? I once spent three weeks up at the Nechara redoubt, up the end of Maruto river. It’s so close to the pole of wood that the bugs there are the size of foals and the bamboo grows up to three yards a day.” Speaker fondly recalled, adding: “ It was impossible to keep wounds from festering, but there was so much ambient wood essence that you could just hold a wound together and it’d heal on its own” with a far more somber voice.

Sunrise stoically ignored the buzzing insects around her as she asked: “You don’t sound happy that wounds healed that easily, why?”

Speaker explained that any broken limb was sure to heal in a wrong position, forcing him and his medical team to re-break limbs to set them right before they healed. This meant that they often had to break limbs repeatedly, as they would begin to heal before they even got to reposition them. Some of the ponies who had to go through that recovered physically, but the scars it left on their minds would never heal: “I wish I could find some of those ponies now – I can help them with my powers, couldn’t back then – plus, with all that ambient wood essence, any pony living there for too long would end up looking like the ponies back at the farm we visited yesterday”

Shimmer returned a short time later, guiding Red as the two of them, with Shimmer in her birdlike ‘cunning beastpony form’ as she called it, cut a path to a spot near the manse. They ended near where the scavenger lord’s camp was, at the edge of the clearing made around the camp.

Hiding just beyond the treeline, it was clear that this was a big and well organized operation. There were at least a hundred ponies in dirty and rough cloth working hard at forges, a make-shift lumber-mill and tables where food was being prepared. Other ponies were chopping down trees to supply the lumber mill or make wooden stakes for a palisade that was being set up around the part of the camp with the tents in it.

Most of the ponies appeared to be working on chipping away at the manse’s outer wall, trying to tunnel into it. This made it clear that there wasn’t any readily available entrance, because otherwise the scavenger lord’s ponies would have already entered through that to loot anything of value.

A big and particularly colorfully outfitted tent, with a frilly curtain decorated with glass beads, in the middle of the off-white sail-cloth tents at the west end of the camp marked the scavenger lord’s headquarters. Sullen Hoof suggested that he or Shimmer sneak in and get an idea of what the lord knew, before they did anything else.

“Ok, Shimmer should do that – she’s better equipped to decipher any schematics or sketches of the place she might find, especially if they’re in code. Sully, you go disguise yourself as one of the workers tunneling into the manse, to see how far they are there. Red, you clear out a spot for us to sleep a bit further back, far enough away so nopony in the camp here might hear us at night. Cash… you… look pale, sit still for a moment” Speaker said, having thought carefully at what each of his circle-mates should do.

Speaker slowly walked over and swatted off the blood-sucker bug that was sitting on Cash’s back, its swollen abdomen popping like a blood filled balloon the size of a big apple – no wonder Cash looked pale. Blood-suckers were mosquito-like insects the size of small oranges, and a single one could drain a foal to the point that it’d faint, while several could drain a stallion completely. They were very common in the eastern jungles, and made for a crunchy snack if roasted, assuming that you could stomach the taste. Shimmer said she preferred them raw.

Cash felt… tired, and now he at least knew why. To everypony‘s relief Cash was too tired to complain that his silks were once again ruined, but having seen Speaker’s little cleaning trick once he didn’t worry too much about the stains drying into the silk.

Everypony dispersed, Speaker taking Cash back the path to where Red was clearing a space for them to sleep. Cash noted that they shouldn’t sleep on the ground, as the bugs would clearly eat them alive – they should make a shelter up the trees if possible. Speaker was thinking up designs for a nice little tree house and how to make it without nails when Shimmer and Sullen Hoof returned.

Shimmer was the first to report: “The scavenger lord is called Jewel Dancer, a mare with the Guild – they’ve been at this for months, but the manse is armored, made out of a mix of stone and jade, so there’s no way in yet – at least none mentioned in her journal. That’s why they’re making raft-barges, to ferry all the jade-infused rock back to Nexus so they can refine the jade out of it. Jewel Dancer seems to believe that the profit from the jade-stone alone will pay for all of this, once the entire manse has been strip-mined away, so they aren’t afraid of breaking anything inside by destroying it completely”

Speaker wasn’t happy to hear what was being done to the manse, but then again it was crashed and probably damaged beyond repair, so salvaging it wasn’t that unreasonable.

Sullen Hoof said that there was a point at the end of the tunnel dug into the side of the manse that had opened up a few weeks ago, but the ponies working the rock were wearing out picks faster than they could be repaired, or melted down to make new ones – and the hole into the manse was the size of a foal’s hoof: “Oh, and over half the ponies here are slaves – and wild animals attack them at night, killing at least one pony a week, so everypony is terrified”

“We can’t waste time helping these ponies – we need to get inside before they do” Cash said, having regained his strength since being drained by the blood-sucker bug.

Speaker reluctantly agreed, but pointed out that that until they found a way inside they might as well find whatever was eating ponies.

Shimmer went back to the scavenger camp in the form of a common eastern song-bird, keeping a lookout for any progress in the tunneling operation. Speaker and Red made a make-shift platform out of cleaved logs lashed together with vines up in the trees, well out of sight and earshot from the scavenger camp. Sunrise tried to help where she was able, ultimately resigning herself to picking edible fruits and berries for them to eat.

When night fell Shimmer came back for a brief report, saying that the scavenger camp perimeter was lit up by torches, set up all around the tree-line. It would be almost impossible to sneak into the camp on hoof without casting long and easy to spot shadows. Sullen Hoof, as sneaky as he was, agreed that it would be hard getting to the tunnel dug into the manse unseen with that up.

“What about a diversion? Wait for the thing eating them to come at them, and while they’re looking for it or panicking we make our move… and uhm… what is our move?” Cash said, while chewing softly on some tasty fruit that Sunrise had found, occasionally stopping to spit out small black seeds.

Speaker said that he had talked to Red, and the two had agreed that a few good bucks enhanced by a little Hoof of the Daystar style martial arts should break open a hole into the manse at the end of the deepest tunnel, if they struck at the tiny opening already made. The trick was indeed a diversion.

The whole circle moved to the treeline, only to find the torches that surrounded the camp completely obscured everything in the camp, due to the glare. On the other hand, the same applied to the circle, so they were able to leave the tree line and walk along the row of torches without being seen by the very obviously twitchy sentries.

At the manse the tunnel leading inside was flanked by two guard ponies with spears, plus there was a constant stream of slaves going in with new sharp picks in their mouths and out with buckets full of orange jade-stone and bent and blunt picks in their mouths.

“You shouldn’t happen to know how to transform into some beast that has a really scary roar?” Cash asked Shimmer, sporting a mean grin.

Shimmer looked down and shook her head: “Sorry, I can do sharks and all kinds of other spooky sea creatures – but I don’t have much in land animals beyond bilge rats and a cow”

“You… hunted a cow? That’s barbaric. I know they’re always kept as slaves for the milk, but really?” Speaker blurted out.
Shimmer shrugged: “It was a bull leading a slave rebellion who was massacring ponies left and right, not some tied up milk-squirter. I did what I had to do to keep ponies safe”

Suddenly there were screams at the other end of the camp, near the tents. A loud feline roar sounded, followed by dozens of panicky shouts from ponies. It sounded like a tiger if Speaker heard it right.

The ponies around the tunnel to the manse quickly rushed inside, the two guards holding their spears out at anything that might approach the tunnel entrance.

“Great, now how are we going to get in unseen” Red frowned.

Cash whispered something into Shimmer right ear. Shimmer nodded and Sullen Hoof smirked. Cash then whispered some more to Shimmer. Speaker didn’t know what was being planned, but Shimmer walked confidently through the torch-line as she snuck up next to the tunnel entrance. She then let out an impossibly loud tiger-roar, followed by her shouting: “I am Tin Than, spirit of tiger fury! This is my domain and my manse! I will eat all ponies who trespass in it and defile it!”

Shimmer then quickly turned into a rat and scurried back into the treeline, out of sight. At the same time all the ponies in the tunnel came rushing out, fearing for their lives.

The circle quickly made its move, rushing back into the tunnel – the torches set in front of the tunnel entrance obscuring the circle as they galloped inside. The shouts from outside slowly faded as the circle slowed to a trot, quickly reaching the end of the tunnel.

The tunnel dug into the manse was roughly five yards deep, a testament to how thickly armored the manse was. At the end of the tunnel was a small hole that seemed to lead into a bigger room.

“I really wish we could do something to help the ponies being attacked out there” Sullen Hoof noted as rock chips crunched under his hooves.

Speaker nodded: “When we’re done in here we’ll make a pass at whatever is hunting them, Shimmer – you have any idea what kind of animal that was?”

“A tiger of some sort, why do you think I said I was a tiger spirit? But you know… tiger’s normally wouldn’t attack a place like this, too risky. But I should be able to track it once we’re out of here” Shimmer noted, stepping aside to let Red get up the end of the tunnel.

Red lined up for a mighty buck at the tunnel end, coils of sparkling essence gathering around her hooves as she focused her mind to form the essence patterns that made up the Pillar-Breaking Buck technique, Speaker ushering everypony further back. As Red released the might of her hind legs and rear hooves on the jade-stone there was an ear-piercing crack, as the stone was blasted away by the buck, showering everypony in pebbles and filling the tunnel with dust.

As the dust settled it was clear that the hole in the manse was now big enough for a pony to fit his or her head through, which Sullen Hoof was quick to do to have a look around.

Pulling his head out a few seconds later, he said that the room was quite dark, which explained why Sully had flared his caste mark, but beyond that it was a long room with a bottomless pit, with a bridge spanning over it. The hole was next to a platform with a wooden chest that the bridge connected to an open door at the far end of the room: “If Red bucks the stone again she’ll probably knock a hole big enough for us to fit through, but she risks knocking the chest down into the abyss”
Speaker was trying his best to remember what the room was for, why it was there, and where in the manse that would put them. He didn’t notice as Shimmer changed into a colorful coral snake and slithered through the hole, then changed into a bird on the other side and flew over to the chest, then changed back into a pony.

Speaker did notice when Shimmer suddenly called out from the other side of the hole: “Chest is empty – just buck your way in Red!”

Red did as suggested, but this time it wasn’t just an ear-piercing crack that came out of the buck. Large cracks in the stone radiated out from where Red had hit, the rock quickly falling into the room and down into the abyss. However, cracks also radiated up into the tunnel roof, floor and walls and further back towards the entrance… and large rocks began falling from the ceiling as the tunnel began collapsing. Everypony quickly scrambled to get inside, making the quick little skip and jump to get over on the platform with the empty chest that barely had enough room for three ponies, let alone five – Shimmer sitting on the chest in the form of a seagull to save space.

“Damnit, now we’re trapped here” Sullen Hoof muttered.

Speaker took a deep breath, the musty mix of stale air mixing with the humidity leaking in from the outside making for a smelly mix that seemed to stick to your nose: “Hold on – I remember there’s a roof access, we just have to get to the central elevator once we’re done exploring”

And with those words the quest to explore the manse and get out of it alive began.