You’re right. I’m no champion of yours.
Lex’s response caused the goddess’s eyes to narrow, a telepathic snarl coming from her as she began to circle him. Despite the uneven ground, she moved sinuously and silently, gliding across the uneven terrain like a spider across a web. And always facing him.
My loyalty belongs to the goddess who gave me this, continued Lex, clenching the talons of his upraised left foreleg. Who gave me the chance to confront my own weakness, and purge it from myself. I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been, not because she made me so, but because she showed me how to make myself so. To her, I owe my fealty. But I owe nothing...
He hadn’t followed the goddess’s movements, not bothering to turn his head as she’d moved out of his line of sight, instead trying to confirm if there was any other way to track her position. But with his mystic senses all blinded, all he had to rely on was his terrestrial awareness, and it was coming up woefully short.
The so-called Night Mare was not only moving in complete silence – which made it clear that the scraping motion she’d been making before had been deliberate – but she had no scent either. More than that, the rocky ground wasn’t transmitting the slightest vibration from her movements. Even his foresight, the only supernatural awareness left to him, couldn’t detect her, though that was in line with Lex’s expectations.
...to her avatar.
A low, rasping sound that might have been a chuckle accompanied her reply. “Avatar”? Is that all you think I am?
I know that’s all you are.
That much Lex felt certain of. The goddess who had appeared front of him had all the same hallmarks as Vystalaran, possessing a divine aura without having multiple manifestations that had threatened to overload his perception of her. Between that, her warped voice, and her alien appearance, it had been easy to put the puzzle pieces together.
This was a lesser incarnation of the Night Mare, an independent aspect of herself that possessed only a fraction of her power, but still enough to be considered a goddess in her own right.
Of course, that flew in the face of what he’d read in the Auctoritas Caliginous. The Night Mare’s sacred text had stated that she had never created an avatar, and never would. Making a lesser – a weaker – incarnation of herself, the tome had declared, would have flown in the face of her tenets regarding strength. She would appear only in the whole of her power or not at all.
In hindsight, Lex knew that last part wasn’t true; in the many previous instances that he’d had personal contact with the Night Mare, she had quite clearly been holding back most of her presence. But it hadn’t been until he’d come face-to-face with Kryonex – encountering a god directly, in their entirety – that he’d witnessed what kind of power true deities commanded. By that point, however, he’d had too many other concerns to do anything except note that the book’s authors had made what had seemed like an altogether minor error of doctrine, one which had far less practical implications than the biases of the author of the Libram of Ineffable Damnation.
Now, however, the Auctoritas Caliginous’ error seemed much more profound.
This one doesn’t know anything at all, does he?
The avatar’s response made Lex frown, recognizing that it wasn’t directed at him.
He also recognized the one who answered her a moment later.
“You can’t really blame him.”
Unlike himself and the Night Mare’s avatar, Sanguine Disposition spoke out loud, waltzing out of the darkness with a debonair grin. “He didn’t see what happened to the rest of you.”
Lex grit his teeth as the vampire leaned against a stalagmite, looking as relaxed as if he were back in his manor at Eigengrau. “What are you talking about?”
Sanguine Disposition’s smile took on a patronizing cast. “I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you this, but the Night Mare – the Night Mare you know, I mean – is, how can I put this...indisposed.”
Lex didn’t reply to that, his facial expression remaining completely unchanged. But he doubted his mask of indifference was sufficient to conceal the anxiety that suddenly spread through him, all the clues he’d received suddenly falling into place.
He’d known that something was wrong with the Night Mare. Even before her unexpected reaction – the avatar’s unexpected reaction, he knew now – to his communion spell, she had been far too unresponsive. There had been more than one occasion when he’d known that her lack of response via the barbed wire that made up his leg was suspicious, but he’d overlooked what that meant, allowing concerns about Belligerence or the angels blockading Equestria or his own unfulfilled lust distract him.
“I don’t like to throw stones, but it’s kind of your fault, too,” continued Sanguine Disposition. “If you had just accepted my offer to start a new life together with me in Eigengrau, none of this would have happened. We could have grown that part of the realm, advanced our mutual concerns, and” – he licked his lips then, flashing his fangs – “deepened our relationship.”
“Tell me what happened to her.”
“But sadly, things are the way they are,” continued the vampire, as though he hadn’t heard Lex’s demand. “The good news is that the Night Mare has kept her avatar down here in secret for a very, very long time, just in case something like this ever-”
He stopped speaking abruptly as the avatar’s whiplike tail shot out from behind the stalagmite he was leaning against, curling around his throat.
She did not “keep me” anywhere, hissed the avatar, its hideous face emerging from the other side of the stone pillar a moment later, eyes slightly too wide as she brought her jaws close to Sanguine Disposition’s head. I existed before her, and will continue to do so without her now.
Despite his position, the vampire didn’t seem intimidated in the slightest, placing a hoof over his unbeating heart as he nodded his head toward the avatar. “My deepest apologies. I should have mentioned that you were the original manifestation of the Night Mare, before the Noctem happened and she underwent a reformation.”
For a moment it looked as though the avatar was considering eating him, but after a few seconds passed she removed her tail from his neck, withdrawing into the darkness so fast it was as though she’d teleported.
Long before the pony tribes built their first feeble dwellings out of sticks and rocks, I was the thing which lurked in the darkness, waiting to prey upon them. Every forager who couldn’t make it back before nighttime, every foal who ventured away from their campfire, every scout who explored a new cave. I was the reason they were never seen again.
Lex’s eyes narrowed. Unlike the Night Mare having an avatar, this had been in the Auctoritas Caliginous, recounting how the Night Mare had originally been a goddess of monsters, darkness, and fear. Ponies had recognized her as the divine will which made the wilderness so harsh and unforgiving, and hadn’t worshiped her so much as made offerings in hope of placating her.
Until...
Until that accursed nag ruined everything!
From deeper within the cavern – far from where the avatar had been a moment ago – came a screech that was like nothing that a pony’s vocal chords could have produced, the sound echoing with fury and the promise of death.
She convinced ponies everywhere that I was a goddess who uplifted the weak instead of culling them! Who gave them the courage to face the terrors of the wilderness rather than fearing them! Who ruled over the night as a queen, rather than a hunter!
Lex was only half-listening, trying to map the terrain in case this was all a prelude to a fight. But none of his information-gathering magicks were working. A spell to increase the range of his darkvision fizzled as soon as he cast it. So did another that would have let him follow how soundwaves bounced off of solid objects. The same thing happened to a third, which should have scanned his immediate surroundings and created a mental map of them.
The avatar’s divine aura apparently blocked more than just supernatural senses; it was negating all attempts to ascertain the layout of Mare Occultum.
Which meant that not only did the avatar have the additional power that came from being in her divine realm, but – if worse came to worst and he had to fight his way out – she’d have a powerful homefield advantage.
They called it the Noctem, she continued, her telepathic voice still giving no clue to her location, and it ruined me! Force-fed their worship, I grew fat and lazy on their piety! I clad myself in metal, used weapons procured from a rival, and began collecting servitors! Yes, I gained new strength, but at the cost of becoming dependent on the faith of those prey creatures!
Sanguine Disposition cast a spell then, and a moment later his whispered voice reached Lex’s ear. “Since she didn’t become a goddess of dreams until the Noctem, I prefer to call her the ‘Night Terror.’ It makes it less confusing than if we keep calling her and the Night Mare by the same name.”
“What is this?” hissed Lex in retort. “What happened to the Night Mare?! You said that this was my fault; was it because of what happened with Kryonex? Or was it Bellig-”
But even though their faith had corrupted me, it couldn’t make me forget who I had been. The Night Terror’s psychic ranting accompanied her sudden reappearance, darting between two nearby stalagmites like a wild animal moving between patches of cover. And since some of my new worshipers revered my original presence instead of my newer, adulterated self, I – now obsessed with the concept of “loyalty” – felt the need to reward them for their fidelity even though they venerated concepts I no longer perfectly embodied.
Lex could see where this was going, wanting her to finish the story so he could get some answers as to what had happened to his goddess. And so the Night Mare created you, an avatar that was a perfect replica of her original incarnation, so that you could receive worship from those ponies who refused to acknowledge how she’d changed.
Another rasping hiss came in response. Precisely. And so I remained here, in the deepest part of Darkest Night, waiting.
Waiting for what?
For the opportunity that you’ve brought me.
Sanguine Disposition pushed off from the stalagmite he’d been leaning against, rolling his shoulders as he straightened up. “The entire pantheon gathered together to watch your fight with Kryonex, including The Author, the creator goddess to whom the pony gods answer.”
“I know who she is,” replied Lex curtly.
The leather wing cocked a brow. “And do you know what she does to a god who defies her?”
Lex didn’t, but given what was happening, he knew that it couldn’t be good. “You’re implying that the Night Mare and The Author had some sort of falling out.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” snorted the vampire. “When that void monster ran out of control, all of the gods recognized what a threat it was, but were refused permission to do anything about it by The Author. All of them obediently stood down...except for the Night Mare.”
Putting aside his horror that Everglow’s creator deity had apparently been not only unwilling to confront a major threat to the world it had made, but had refused to let any of the deities under her authority do so either – and doing his best to ignore the sudden, expected sense of guilt he felt at knowing that the Night Mare had made what sounded like some sort of major sacrifice in answering his prayer for help – Lex focused on the most salient part of what he’d been told. “And what did The Author do to her in retaliation for that?”
Sanguine Disposition shrugged. “Let’s just say the Night Mare’s gone now.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?!” snarled Lex, taking a threatening step closer to the vampire. “Dead?”
“I mean gone,” came the maddeningly evasive reply.
Whereas I am still here, cut in the Night Terror. And now, at last, I can fix the mistake that was the Noctem!
“Are you mad?!” roared Lex. “If you undo the reforms that were made to the Night Mare’s church, ponies will desert it in droves! That will weaken her, and yourself by extension, since you’re just a piece of her! Worse, most of those ponies will turn to other gods, making their strength rise as your own falters!”
“You misunderstand. She’s not going to undo the Noctem.”
Buzzing with an electrical undertone, the new voice came from behind Lex, undetected by his foresight.
That alone was enough to let him know who’d spoken, since Sanguine Disposition had complained about that when mentioning the other person who’d be in attendance. The Night Mare had three champions, after all, and who else would have protections in place against having their future read?
Turning around, Lex beheld Steel Soul for the first time.
The pony behind him could barely be called a pony at all, having a body that entirely artificial. A metal framework served as an ersatz skeleton, each piece as sculpted and smooth as if it had come off of an assembly line. Servos, pistons, ball bearings, and wires connected the larger sections of his body, and those were just the parts Lex recognized. Scattered throughout Steel Soul’s constructed framework were numerous mechanical devices that, without his mystical senses, he couldn’t properly analyze, many of which glowed from within.
But none glowed brighter than the cold blue lights that were his eyes.
“She’s going to correct the Noctem,” continued Steel Soul. “To make it what it always should have been.”
He came to a stop only a few feet in front of Lex, the two of them locking gazes.
“And you’re going to help her do it.”