//------------------------------// // 69 - Fear and Loathing // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// Drifting past the barricade, Lex paused at the landing between floors, glancing up the stairwell. It was as dark and empty as the rest of the building, and he slowly ventured up onto the second floor, emerging in the middle of a hallway nearly identical to the one below it. Glances in each direction showed rows of doors that were likewise no different from what was downstairs. Lex paused, wondering if he should announce himself again, but discarded the idea. He had already given whoever or whatever was lurking here the chance to come out peacefully. Without knowing the nature and numbers of this building’s inhabitants, prudence remained the wiser option in light of the death-traps that littered the downstairs. Drifting through the nearest door, Lex continued his explorations. At first glance, the rooms on this floor seemed no different from those downstairs, having been torn apart. But there was one crucial difference: each room was missing the deadly traps that had characterized their first-floor counterparts. It was in the fourth room that he was searching that Lex stopped, hearing a soft sound. Voices. Listening intently, he realized that they were coming from the next room over. Cautiously, Lex moved closer to the wall separating the two rooms, trying to make out the words that were being spoken. “…telling you, we should try talking to him! He said he has food and medicine!” The voice was male, speaking in low and furtive tones. “These oats aren’t going to last much longer, and I’m really getting worried about Drafty! This might be our chance!” “I think so too,” said a female voice, similarly hushed. “If we can get her to a doctor now, she might be okay. And maybe…maybe he’s seen Pillow! Maybe he’ll tell us that he’s at the shelter right now!” “I can’t believe you two!” hissed a third voice, also female. “How can you not see that he’s lying?! One pony showing up completely alone, all by himself out of nowhere, and just announces that he’s here to fix all of our problems? He might as well have written ‘it’s a trap’ on a sign and waved it around!” “But-” the softer female voice tried to speak again, only to be cut off before it could. “I’m telling you, he’s bad news! I got a clear look at him downstairs, and he doesn’t look right! His shadow’s all messed up, and his horn doesn’t match his coat.” “You think he’s one of those things?” asked the male voice. “With our luck, he’s something even worse,” replied the harsher female voice. “I just hope that one of the traps on the first floor got him, or at least convinced him to pull whatever he’s trying to pull somewhere else.” “On the contrary,” replied Lex as he slid through the wall and into the room. “My announcement was entirely sincere.” Three heads whipped around to face him, all of them ponies. The stallion was an earth pony, his coat a light grass-green, with a mane and tail of darker brown, and a cutie mark of a scale weighing what looked like cabbage. One of the mares was a pegasus, having a white coat and a pink mane and tail, her cutie mark showing a house made out of clouds. And the other mare… An earth pony, her coat was a soft turquoise, with a mane and tail of darker blue. Her cutie mark depicted a heart-shaped bed. But her most notable feature was how her entire body was translucent, sparkling softly even in the dim light. Lex recognized immediately that she was a crystal pony, and before he had any further time to act, her eyes widened and she began screaming at the top of her lungs. Her companions, who had begun to draw back in alarm at the sight of the formless black mass with glowing green-and-purple eyes that had emerged from the wall, were visibly shocked by her reaction, jerking back from her reflexively. Even Lex was momentarily taken aback at her unexpected display of fear. As he watched, she threw herself away from him, still wailing in terror, until she had her back pressed up against the wall, her hooves sliding across the floor in a futile attempt to continue distancing herself from him. Lex’s moment of surprise was enough to let the other two regroup, and the stallion dived for a makeshift spear, constructed from a piece of piping with a kitchen knife tied to the end. Snatching it up, he immediately hurled it at Lex, the missile sailing through his incorporeal form uselessly before hitting the wall behind him and falling to the floor with a clatter. Seeing how useless his attack had been, the stallion turned pale. “We gotta go!” he yelled, trying to make himself heard over the screams of the crystal mare. “Right now!” The pegasus mare was already moving. Charging across the room, she flung aside a blanket that Lex hadn’t noticed, revealing a fourth pony underneath. Another pegasus mare, this one was brown, with a black mane and tail, her cutie mark showing a group of whorls that looked vaguely, to Lex’s eyes, like the wind. “Drafty, get up!” yelled the white pegasus to her friend, and it was inconceivable to Lex that the crystal pony’s screams hadn’t woken her already. “Please, get up!” Receiving no response from her friend, the white pegasus bodily threw the comatose mare over her shoulders, glancing back at the stallion. “I’ll get Drafty out of here! You get Cozy and meet us at the rendezvous point!” She didn’t wait for an answer before running towards the door at full speed, intent on escape. But Lex had recovered by then. “No one leaves,” he hissed softly, and it took only a thought to cause black crystals to grow in front of the door. He didn’t raise them very high, wanting to conserve power, but the visible hinges made it clear that the door opened inward, so even a few inches of black crystals jutting up from the floor was enough to prevent it from being opened. The white pegasus mare demonstrated that a moment later, as she grabbed the doorknob in her mouth and yanked on it, to no effect. With that settled, Lex turned his attention back to the crystal pony. Her screaming was beginning to grate on his nerves, and he drifted closer to her. “Be silent!” he snapped. If there were dangerous creatures out there, her cries were likely to bring them running. The room’s windows were both boarded up, but Lex had little hope that that would adequately muffle the noise she was making. Unfortunately, his warning had no effect on her. If anything, his approach seemed to drive her deeper into hysteria, and her wailing reached an even higher pitch as a result. “Get away from her!” yelled the stallion, placing himself between Lex and the crystal mare. He’d grabbed a broom, of all things, in his mouth and started swinging it through Lex’s umbral body, accomplishing absolutely nothing. Despite this, he seemed undaunted, falling back only a step as he glanced over his shoulder at his wailing companion. “Cozy! Snap out of it! You have to get out of here!” “It’s sealed the door! We’re trapped!” yelled the white pegasus from the other side of the room, panic clearly audible in her voice. Lex was getting irritated, mostly because he wasn’t sure what to do to take control of the situation. Should he turn back to normal and try and talk them down? Or would a show of power do a better job of making them stand down? He didn’t know; this was the sort of area where he had never been able to adequately judge what sort of action was called for. Deciding to try and split the difference, Lex remained in his umbral form, speaking to them again. “Listen to me. I know that my appearance is unsettling to you, but I’m here to h-” “Don’t listen to him!” yelled the stallion, slashing at him with the broom again. “Cloudbank, kick out the windows and go that way!” “But what about you?!” yelled the white pegasus. “I’ll figure it out! Just go!” That was it. Lex felt what was left of his patience come to an end. As the white pegasus started to run towards the boarded windows with her unconscious friend, Lex chanted a spell. Instantly, a small tornado, no bigger than a pony, came into existence. With a thought, Lex moved it around to intercept the white pegasus, who didn’t have a chance to do more than blanch before it collided with her. Instantly, she and her friend went flying back, hitting the floor hard and rolling for several feet before coming to a stop. “No!” yelled the stallion, before turning his attention back to Lex. Fear and desperation were clouding his features, and Lex could see him trying to think of a way to turn the situation around. But all he did was keep swinging his broom, tears of frustration pooling in the corners of his eyes as he realized that there was nothing he could do. With a snort, Lex redirected the miniature tornado to strike the stallion, and a moment later he went flying, hitting a wall hard before falling to the floor with a groan. The sight of her friends being so easily dispatched seemed to snap the crystal mare out of her panic. Her screaming cut off abruptly as she raised a hoof to her neck, fumbling with a necklace that Lex hadn’t noticed that she was wearing. Hanging from the front of it was an image of two small hearts next to each other, bound by silver wire. “L-Lashtada!” she sobbed, her voice sounding like she was barely in control of herself. “Lashtada, please! Help us!” Lex had just enough time to be surprised at her saying that name when a visible wave of light radiated out from her in all directions. It filled the small room, impossible to avoid, and Lex gasped in pain as it washed over him. It didn’t hurt very badly at all – it was little more than a sharp stinging – but after her screaming fit this was the second time in as many minutes that she’d given him an unpleasant surprise. There would not be a third. Returning to corporeal form, Lex yanked at her necklace as hard as he could with his telekinesis, pulling it off of her neck and flinging it across the room. The crystal mare shook like a leaf, a despairing expression crossing her features, and for a moment it looked like she was going to start screaming again. But Lex was faster. “You will be silent!” he snarled, a deep purple aura surrounding his horn as he pointed it at her. The crystal mare worked her jaw, but no sound came out, and a hoof went to her throat in panic. Lex let out a breath; he hadn’t been sure that would work. While becoming a shadow and crystallizing darkness were the primary powers that he’d gained from claiming King Sombra’s horn as his own, they weren’t the only ones. Laying curses was another, and though Lex had nowhere near King Sombra’s proficiency with maledictions – being able to place an entire city into stasis for a millennium was far, far beyond anything he could currently do – he could still bestow curses of moderate power. Luckily that included sealing somepony’s voice. On the opposite sides of the room, the earth pony stallion and the white pegasus mare were groaning and starting to get to their hooves…though, Lex noticed, the other pegasus mare still hadn’t moved, despite having been thrown around quite a bit. If not for the fact that she was breathing, he’d have suspected that she wasn’t alive at all. And the crystal mare was still cowering, looking like she was ready to burst into tears at any moment. “Now,” said Lex cordially, “let’s try this once again. My name is Lex Legis, and I am here to rescue you.”