Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
Keeping her eyes closed and her posture relaxed, Aria tried to make it as obvious as she could that she was ignoring the ponies a stone’s throw away from her. She knew that Sonata was among them, having seen her when they’d left a little while ago, and now that they were back she wanted it to be as clear as possible just how much she didn’t care that she was there. For a moment she wished that whatshisname was with her so that she’d have been able to flirt with him just to watch Sonata’s reaction, but since he wasn’t this would have to do.
Unfortunately, her ploy didn’t seem to be working. Although she’d been gawked at quite a bit by the group when they’d departed – she’d found that rather amusing, even if their expressions of amazement and fear hadn’t been nearly as good as the adoration she craved – they didn’t seem to be talking about her at all now. Instead, their conversations were about…the weather?
From what she could overhear, it was raining outside, and it took Aria a few seconds to remember that unlike on Earth or Everglow, that didn’t happen on its own here. Which meant that someone was making it rain, and to hear them talk it couldn’t possibly have been another pony. But while they seemed completely bamboozled by what was going on, Aria felt reasonably confident that she knew what was happening, and that was enough to make her forget about provoking those idiots, looking up at the ceiling in worry.
It had started.
“Lex!”
Jolting awake as his name was called, Lex immediately leapt to his hooves, feeling the pain from doing so catch up to him an instant later. For a split-second he thought that it was Sonata that had been calling him, but that notion was immediately dispelled as he saw C. Shells looking at him from a few feet away. She didn’t seem to be in imminent danger or otherwise overly panicked, and that was enough to make Lex’s tension ease slightly. “What’s going on?”
C. Shells gave him an apologetic look, knowing that she’d roused him in a rather unpleasant manner, but nothing else had worked; she’d called his name several times, but he’d been too deeply asleep to hear her. Raising a hoof, she pointed at the now-repaired door. “We got the door fixed, but as soon as it was repaired it slammed shut.”
Lex glanced at the door, then back at her. “And?” he asked tersely. That the door had immediately sealed itself was not unexpected, since his warding was still active. So why was she bothering him to tell him what he already knew?
“And the ponies who went outside to fix the outer doors are knocking to be let back in,” C. Shells replied simply.
“…right,” Lex admitted, a disgusted look crossing his face as he silently berated himself for not having come to that conclusion already. Turning to look at the door again, he telekinetically opened it. Sure enough, ponies began to rush back in. First inside was Cloudbank, who whipped her head around before her eyes settled on Lex.
“It’s raining!” she blurted out, rushing over to him.
“What?” Lex’s brow furrowed in confusion as he tried to parse what he’d just been told. If the doors had just been repaired, then he hadn’t been asleep very long at all, which meant that there was no way that Vanhoover’s weather services had been restarted when the city was still in such bad shape.
“It’s true,” said Aisle as he and several other ponies walked towards him. “We all heard it.”
Lex’s eyes looked over the rest of the group, noting that several of them were nodding, and his frown grew deeper. Unable to help himself, he looked for Sonata, and finally found her near the back of them, talking to Nosey. She’s deliberately avoiding you, came the voiceless words in his mind, causing Lex to narrow his eyes, sure that the hateful statement was correct. “I’m going to go see what’s happening,” he announced, making sure his voice was loud enough to reach Sonata.
He felt a burst of spiteful satisfaction as she glanced at him with a frown of her own, and he distinctly heard her mutter “of course you are” under her breath.
Fighting down the urge to give her a superior smirk, he instead looked up at Severance, which had returned with the others. “Come with me,” he ordered, not bothering to see if it was moving to obey before he started for the door. Just that much movement set off an explosion of aches in his body, but he refused to let it show, forcing himself to stride forward without flinching.
He made it halfway there before Nosey moved alongside him. “Lex, I don’t think y-”
“Shut up,” he snapped, not bothering to slow his pace. Ignoring her hurt look, he marched outside of the shelter, letting the door close behind him of its own accord. It was only then that he sagged, taking several deep breaths as he fought to steady himself. If the short amount of time he’d been asleep had done anything for his condition, he couldn’t tell.
“I didn’t get a chance to say this before, but you look terrible,” came a whisper, causing Lex to look over at Aria with a glare. “What? I meant with the bandages and all,” she smirked.
Refusing to rise to her baiting, Lex instead glanced backward, grabbing Severance in his telekinetic grip and moving it in front of him. Closing his eyes, he started to chant, trying to draw in the enormous magical energy that the scythe radiated so he could replenish his magic…but stopped before he’d gotten two syllables out. It was futile; the energy was there, but he was in no shape to draw upon it. It wasn’t that he was too hurt to do so, but rather that the act of drawing energy into his thoughts was such a grueling process that his mind couldn’t do so unless he’d gotten a full night’s rest first, rather than the short nap he’d just had.
He’d known that, of course. But he hadn’t been able to resist making the attempt; he’d spent most of his life being unable to replenish his primary magic except under rare circumstances. Having a battery that allowed him to do so with regularity was such a welcome change that he couldn’t help but try to use it now, when he was once again critically low on magic and in a situation where he needed it badly.
Unable to help but sigh as he put Severance onto his back, Lex started walking. “Follow me,” he ordered Aria curtly.
Scowling at the imperious treatment, Aria nevertheless did as she was told, her hooves clopping against the ground as her lower half swished over the floor in a side-to-side motion to help propel her forward. The sight was odd enough that Lex glanced back at her. “I thought you could fly.”
“My spell to do that wore off,” rasped Aria, fighting down the urge to curse at him. Her natural body was moderately proficient on land, but nowhere near as much as it was in the water. Worse, she knew that she looked ridiculous having to pull herself along like this. Glaring at him, she silently dared him to comment about how she was moving. She took it as a minor victory when he turned away without saying anything else and kept moving.
It took only a few moments to clear the fog-filled passages and come into view of the outer doors, but in that time Lex had ceased to have any doubts about what the others had said about the weather. The sound of rain hitting the warehouse roof was now clearly audible, and a moment later a bright flash of light could be seen around the doors, followed by a loud clap of thunder. Regarding the doors silently for a moment, Lex started towards them, then stopped, considering, before turning to face Aria. “Do you have any ideas what’s going on?”
“How should I know?” She crossed her hooves, looking away from him. “I’ve been here the whole time, remember?”
“Aria.” He said her name softly, in the same cool manner that he’d used when pressing her to work for him, and she flinched without quite knowing why. “We have a deal,” he continued. “I protect you, in exchange for your service. That means that if you know anything about what’s happening, you tell me when I ask. Otherwise,” his eyes narrowed, “I’ll declare our agreement to be null and void, and you’ll be left to fend for yourself.” He paused to let that sink in. “Now, do you have any idea what’s going on?”
For a moment, she grit her teeth, still refusing to look at him. She hadn’t held back because she had anything to hide, but rather because she wanted to mess with him a little. That he’d take it so seriously, to the point of threatening her, was not only unexpected but also humiliating. Did he really need to rub her face in the fact that he was her best chance to survive, let alone get her voice back?
“I don’t know anything for sure,” she muttered, sulking.
“Anything is better than nothing.”
Aria turned to Lex with a sigh. “After I was captured, Sitkra – one of the sahuagin priestesses – was trying to scare me by telling me about the Great Lord of the Deep. She said something about how he’d destroyed a ship that had come here before, and that when several ponies tried to fly away, he’d ‘moved the above-water currents’ to stop them.” She hunched over, looking rather miserable for having remembered that. “The point being that there was no escape.”
Lex narrowed his eyes in thought, glancing back at the door. “Above-water currents” sounded like the wind, and if this so-called Great Lord of the Deep could affect the wind, then he could in all likelihood summon a storm from out of nowhere. What he found more disturbing was the confirmation that another ship had come here, and had been destroyed for it. He hadn’t heard anything about that when he’d been back in Tall Tale!
It had to have come from Las Pegasus, he decided. Tall Tale had received news of Vanhoover’s flooding early, and it would have known not to send any ships towards a flood zone for fear of potential current manipulations making them run aground. But Las Pegasus was much further away, and so had doubtlessly gotten the news too late…and the ponies on that ship had paid the price for it.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before, when I told you to tell me what you knew about the aquatic monsters?” he hissed, trying to control his fury at the thought of even more pony lives having been lost.
Aria shrugged. “Like I said, it wasn’t something I knew for sure, just something I’d been told.”
Lex opened his mouth to rebuke her, but before he could say anything a crash so loud that it was almost an explosion came from the outside. Both Lex and Aria tensed, looking toward the doors as if expecting they were about to be knocked inward at any moment. But instead, the only sound were more crashes coming from outside, each one sounding as though a building were being stepped on, or something equally cataclysmic.
Knowing he needed to see what was happening, but not being willing to risk drawing attention to their location by opening the doors, Lex transformed into a shadow, not caring that his reserves of dark magic were now running perilously low. “Stay here!” he yelled at both Aria and Severance, before moving towards the doors. Passing through them, he looked outside...
The scene that was waiting for him looked like Tartarus itself had been unleashed.
Lex continues to be a rude jerk to everypony, but that's not as much of a problem as the fact that the attack has begun.
What will he do now?
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Give his broken spell focus to the cleric of Lashtada for a Mending so that he can call for help?
8089986 You know, Cozy might very well have that spell prepared. But even if Lex was willing to accept help from a cleric of Lashtada, there's a bit of a problem there. While your average mirror only weighs a half-pound, it's also only worth 10 gp. As such, I'm going to postulate that a silver mirror worth 1,000 gp - the focus for the scrying spell he has prepared - weighs more than 1 lb.
Why do I bring that up? Because Cozy is a 1st-level cleric, and the mending spell can only repair an object of 1 lb./caster level. So even if he was willing to have her help out, she wouldn't be able to.
As a note, I've made sure to track Cozy's spells used to make sure she hasn't gone over her daily allotment. She used a magic stone spell against Lex in chapter 70, a bless spell in chapter 74 (it didn't affect Lex, because he can't benefit from morale bonuses) - which was also her domain spell, since she has the Community domain (which is one of Lashtada's domains, though Cozy did not take the Connections subdomain) - and offered to convert a third spell into a cure light wounds in chapter 88 (she can use three 1st-level spells at 1st level due to having a high enough Wisdom score to get one bonus spell). Insofar as I recall, her only 0-level spell used so far is light, used in chapter 74, so there are two more she has prepped.
8090030 Ouch. I forgot it was that expensive. Although most of that 1000gp value can't be in the material or it would weigh 200 lbs. O.O
Maybe it's supposed to weigh 200 lbs? Like, a giant full length mirror instead of a little hand mirror or whatever.
If Lex Legis was voiced, what would he sound like?
8090036 Personally, I'm inclined to agree that such a thing wouldn't be entirely due to the simple cost of the materials involved. An average mirror, as noted before, is only 1/2 lbs., but is worth 10 gp. We don't have a basic price-per-pound for steel itself, but iron is only 1 silver piece per pound, so it seems likely that the value there isn't based solely on the amount of metal used. More likely - and quite plausibly - it's that mirrors are things that have additional value due to their utility, plus the craftsmanship involved.
Besides, Lex's handy haversack couldn't hold a 200-pound mirror anyway!
8090046 I imagine Lex as having a slightly deeper voice than most early-twenties stallions, simply because that fits my mental image of not only someone who spends a lot of time chanting and invoking magic via spoken words, which has probably put some mild strain on his vocal chords, but also because that seems more suitable for someone so dour. It wouldn't be sepulchral, but would come across as..."heavy," I want to say?
Well, guess the whole 'wood door being different' isn't going to matter if the Kraken and his minions find a bunch of ponies pounding on said door. Though the lack of their presence when Lex came through is odd. Either Lex didn't notice them(most likely or they had scattered when they saw what was happening. Let's hope it's the former cause it would be a disaster to lose some of the ponies he brought to Vanhoover in the attack.
8090078 The crashes weren't the sound of something hitting the doors; Lex and Aria just tensed because the first crash was so incredibly loud they thought it must be some sort of nearby impact so heavy that the shockwave alone was going to blow the doors inward.
8090087 Umm, I wasn't talking about the crashes.
I merely assumed that the ponies outside the door would either be pounding on the door looking to seek shelter with their friends from whatever caused the crash, or they scattered at it.
Though now that I look back at my previous comment, I guess how you thought that, whoopsie.
8090148 Sorry, I'm still slightly confused. If you mean Lex's group, all of them are back in the shelter, in the interior room of the warehouse. Likewise, other pony survivors hiding out somewhere in Vanhoover probably don't even know that Lex is there, and so wouldn't have much basis to come seeking his protection.
8090175 Huh, guess the meds haven't worn off yet cause my brain was stuck on this line
“And the ponies who went outside to fix the outer doors are knocking to be let back in,” C. Shells replied simply.
and completely forgot about Lex letting them in.
Note to self:Don't read stories when you're on meds, no matter how much you want to read it.
Youre out of resources, out of options, and out of time, cos Godzilla has come Stompin.
And the rain is flushing out the sewers, so theres your tactical withdrawal a wash out.
Currently only Sonata can be classed as a heavy hitter, and she only has a couple slots left?
This is why I dont write stories.. I havent a clue how you are going to pull survuval for the next hour off here, never mind Lex win overall. For a given value of win.
8090189 Hah, I'm just glad I wasn't making some sort of egregious oversight.
Get better soon!
8090230
The next few chapters are going to be quite the ride, I can assure you. Sit back and enjoy.
I like the smell of roasted typo, don't you?
What is the stone here throwing? Unless that is actually the correct way to say that phrase.
I read this as "feeling the pain from doing so catch up to him an instant later." I believe the tense is already past, so you don't need to make it past again.
Time to start kraken some skulls!
I'm not sorry.
8374709
It smells like victory.
"A stone's throw" is a colloquialism referring to a short distance. In this case, the genitive form isn't meant to be indicative of possession, despite that being its most common usage. The use of it here does not mean that the stone "owns" the throw, but rather that it undergoes the actions and so changes its state.
I'm fairly sure you're right about this. Change made.
Now I know how my friends all feel when I make a terrible pun.
...not that I'm going to stop or anything.