The sun was hanging low in the sky by the time Lex began to explore Vanhoover.
It had taken just over two hours to finish making his preparations to set out, the vast majority of which had been spent utilizing Severance to replenish the spells he’d expended during the battle on the ship. It was fortunate, Lex knew, that he hadn’t needed to use much magic during that fight. While he could renew his primary spellcasting at will now that he possessed a major magical artifact, his full complement of spells typically took upwards of twelve hours to prepare, and Lex was impatient to begin reclaiming the city.
Resuming corporeal form – Lex had turned into shadow so that he could exit the warehouse without breaking the illusion hiding the doors, but knew that he couldn’t remain in that form without frightening off any surviving ponies – Lex glanced at the sky. It was late summer, which meant that he still had a few hours before night fell. Not enough time to do a thorough sweep of the area.
I’ll just have to continue exploring after dark, he decided. There was no reason why he needed to retreat after the sun went down, after all. He could enhance his senses to compensate for the loss of light, and if there were any more dangerous creatures residing in Vanhoover that felt emboldened by the night, then all the better to encounter such things now so that he could dispatch them before they wreaked any further mayhem.
The thought made Lex glance at the docks, eyeing the water suspiciously. There was no guarantee that those monsters that he’d slain had been the totality of their kind, but he had no way of investigating that further. Although he could move beneath the water without difficulty while in shadow-form, the bay alone was large enough to make any attempt to search it a severely daunting task. And if those things were lairing outside of the bay, in the ocean proper…then there’d be nothing he could do about it. Not unless he invented or obtained divinatory magic beyond what he currently possessed.
Putting the matter out of his thoughts for now, Lex turned away from the water, heading into the city. Despite everything that had occurred in the last twenty-four hours, his current goals hadn’t changed. Vanhoover’s surviving population needed to be rescued. Any impediments to that would just have to be dealt with as they happened.
Right now, it was time to begin rescuing his city.
The sun had set by the time Lex realized that he was going to need to change his approach.
Knowing that a methodical search of the entire city was beyond what one pony could readily accomplish, Lex had instead moved across it in a relatively straight line, trying to at least get a basic overview of the extent of the damage that the flooding had inflicted. What he’d discovered had not been encouraging.
Lex had initially hoped that the devastation had been contained to the areas closest to the waterfront, but had quickly found that not to be the case; signs of water damage could be seen everywhere. That made sense; as a seaside town, Vanhoover was barely above the water level. And since the city was just north of the bay, with the already-saturated marshlands to the south having no margin to absorb any further moisture, there was nowhere for the excess water to go but through the whole of the city.
But it wasn’t the extent of the damage that worried Lex the most; it was emptiness. Over the last few hours, he hadn’t come across a single other pony. It was as though the entire city had been depopulated, except that couldn’t be right, because he had seen lights shining from the city the previous night. They had been scattered, and far too few for his liking, but they had still been there. Which meant that there had to be some ponies still living in Vanhoover.
So where were they? And what had happened to everypony else?
Entering a large plaza, Lex looked around. It appeared the same as everywhere else that he’d seen so far, with garbage strewn around and stains on the walls of the buildings marking where the water had come through. Walking to the center, Lex stopped and slowly turned around, examining the area, looking for any evidence of recent habitation. But there was nothing, not even the slightest-
Lex’s head whipped around as he sensed motion out of his periphery. There had been something moving behind one of the windows in a nearby building. Between the fading light and the filth covering the window, it was impossible to say what, but he was sure that he’d seen something.
He stared at the window for a moment, but no further motion caught his eye. Whatever was there had either left, or was holding very still. Lex’s eyes flickered over the rest of the structure; it was an apartment building, several stories tall with no remarkable features. Could somepony still be living there?
Lex was about to call out and ask if anypony was there, but stopped. That would have sounded like he was uncertain, or even afraid; both were too reminiscent of weakness to be allowed. This was his city now, and he needed to act like it. “If anypony is in there, come out,” he yelled, making sure that there was steel in his voice. “I’m here on a rescue mission. I have a shelter set up nearby with food and medical supplies. Show yourself, and I will take you there immediately.”
Direct and to the point, it should have been enough, in his opinion, to bring out any ponies that heard him. But there was no response to his declaration, and within seconds silence had enveloped the plaza again. Frowning, Lex considered his next move for a moment, before striding towards the building. Standing around would earn him no answers; if whoever or whatever that was wouldn’t come out there, then he would go to it.
The entrance into the apartment building was slightly ajar. Lex started to push it open, and then immediately jerked backward as a carefully-balanced cinderblock fell where his head had been a fraction of a second before, hitting the ground in front of him with a heavy crash. For a moment, Lex just stared at it, feeling a shudder going down his spine. That had been no accident; somepony had deliberately rigged such a dangerous trap.
Narrowing his eyes at the implications, Lex abandoned any thoughts of this being a peaceful encounter, which meant that he didn’t need to be worried about first impressions. With a thought, his body dissolved into shadows, and he slid through the door and into the building. Whatever that trap’s architect had in store, it was unlikely that it accounted for incorporeal beings.
Entering the building’s lobby, Lex’s enhanced sight showed him that it was in little better condition than its exterior. Filth and debris were everywhere, but there was one feature that was particularly conspicuous: the staircase leading to the upper floors had been barricaded. Drifting closer to it, Lex could see that a couch, a cabinet, and several other pieces of furniture had been haphazardly stacked on top of each other almost to the ceiling.
For a moment, Lex considered heading through the makeshift barrier and going upstairs immediately, but instead decided to check the remainder of the ground floor, just to be safe. This had been where he’d seen the shape moving, after all. Gliding silently down the hallway, he looked over the doors before selecting the one that seemed to most closely match the location of the movement he’d seen earlier, and slid through the door.
He had been right to become immaterial, he realized immediately. Several feet inside the door, lying on the ground was a small board which had a series of spikes attached to it. Made from broken pipes and bent utensils, they were all pointing directly upward, as though waiting for someone to fall on them. Moving his gaze closer to the door, sure enough there was a thin tripwire just ahead of it. Anypony that entered recklessly would certainly fall and impale themselves.
It was a devious trap, but more disconcerting was that the spikes had dark grime encrusted on them, as though they’d been put to good use already.
Turning his attention to the rest of the small apartment, Lex quickly checked it over, but there was no sign of whatever he’d seen. Indeed, it looked like nopony had been there for some time; the various cupboards were all opened and their contents scattered about, as though the place had been ransacked. The refrigerator hung open, completely empty.
Each subsequent apartment was in a similar state, having been thoroughly tossed. Each was also trapped, ranging from rugs covering holes filled with broken glass to an elaborately-rigged makeshift crossbow designed to launch a paring knife at whoever opened the door. More grimly, more than half of the traps showed signs of having claimed previous victims, being coated with dried gore.
It was enough to make Lex wary, but not because of the evidence of violence that he’d found. Rather, it was because the sum total of what he’d seen painted an ominous picture. All of these traps were defensive in nature, meant to deal severe harm to intruders…which meant that whoever had rigged them had been afraid, apparently severely, for their personal safety. You didn’t set lethal traps unless you thought that your own life was at risk if something got past them, Lex knew.
Almost as bad was how each room had been so thoroughly rooted through. It hadn’t just been refrigerators and cupboards; every cabinet, bureau, and trunk had been opened and their contents haphazardly scattered about. To Lex, it reeked of desperation, as though the culprit had been searching for anything that could possibly be of use, regardless of what it was. By itself that wasn’t too surprising – given what the flood had likely done, it was downright expected – but combined with the traps scattered around, those echoes of desperation took on a much darker edge.
This is worse than a mere breakdown of social order, Lex realized. This is a siege. No matter how bad Vanhoover’s situation had gotten, Lex couldn’t imagine that its citizens would turn on each other to such an extent that defenses like this became necessary. Maybe the ponies of Everglow – who lived in a world where violence was often a common fact of life – could be capable of such savagery, but among Equestrian ponies? No. Even after two months of living in a disaster zone, this kind of violence wouldn’t be in their nature.
The more plausible explanation was that the ponies that had done this were scared of something else…something much worse. But what? Those fish-monsters he’d killed last night were the obvious answer, but Lex had walked away from the waterfront for over three hours, and somehow he couldn’t see those creatures venturing that far inland so blithely. Of course, that was just a guess, but if he was right, then Vanhoover’s problems were even worse than he knew.
Then I’ll just have to ask somepony that does, Lex decided, heading back to the apartment’s lobby. For a moment he debated simply floating directly upward through the ceiling, emerging directly onto the second floor. But he reluctantly decided against it. He still hadn’t found whatever it was that he’d seen, and although it seemed likely that it was a pony resident, that was just a guess. Better to enter the second floor in a way that let him see what was ahead of him, rather than going in completely blind. Anything that was limited to constructing such low-grade traps was unlikely to have any defenses that could seriously threaten him in this form, but there was no reason to take unnecessary chances.
Floating forward, Lex slowly passed through the barricade and went up to the second floor.