//------------------------------// // 80 - A Tense Situation // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// Lex cast a spell as the pair rushed towards him. Immediately, a geyser of air formed under the pudgy one’s body, and although Lex had seen it move impossibly fast before, its momentum gave it no time to avoid his latest attack. The sudden wind propelled it upward with terrific force, striking the ceiling hard enough to cause an impact crater before the spell terminated, letting it fall to the ground, landing hard on its belly. Lex could already see it starting to get back up, however, but couldn’t spare it any further attention as by that point the other creature reached him. The sahuagin’s trident stabbed at him from below. Although Lex was still hovering near the ceiling, that only put him barely ten feet off the ground, which was close enough to be within the reach of someone with sufficient athleticism or a long enough weapon, things which his enemies possessed. Managing to pull himself around the strike in time, Lex moved upward, passing through the ceiling and out of their easy reach. He didn’t retreat any further, though, knowing that if he fled now he’d just be waiting for them to regroup and attack again later. Even taking a few seconds to prepare more defensive spells was time he potentially couldn’t afford, since that would allow their spellcaster more time to try and find a way out of the prison he’d trapped it in. Instead, he moved along the room’s outer wall, until he was facing the opposite side from where he’d been, preparing to move in and attack his foes from behind. But even as he started to pass through the wall, he heard the blurred creature hiss “There!” and realized that even within the force field it was still tracking him somehow, relaying his position to its allies and negating his tactical advantage. Briefly considering pulling back, Lex discarded the notion, knowing that it wouldn’t change no matter where he attacked from. Instead, he reentered the room, only to find that the pair were already rushing towards him. Worse, their advanced warning meant that they made it before he could even begin to cast the spell he’d prepared. Lex ducked under another kick from the one fish-creature, only for the other’s trident to punch directly through the center of his shadowy form, causing him to groan with pain. But he forced it aside as he cast his next spell, conjuring a sudden blast of extremely pressurized water. He directed it at the unarmed creature, trying to knock it backward into the acid-filled pit that he’d created previously – the caustic trap’s existence was inherently temporary, and would vanish in less than thirty seconds by his count, which meant that he needed to put it to good use before it did – but although the hydraulic spray struck the thing dead-center, it moved only a few feet back before digging its finned extremities into the ground, resisting being knocked any further back. A moment later the torrent of water ceased to flow as the spell ended, and Lex knew that his gambit had failed. The sahuagin didn’t miss its opportunity, jabbing at him with its trident again. This time two blows slipped past his guard, and Lex barely had time to register the renewed damage before the unarmed fish-thing closed the distance he’d opened up and launched into a barrage of blows, raining two punches and a kick on him before he managed to break away from them, trying desperately to regroup. His head was starting to swim from the sensation of multiple injuries, having to struggle to push them aside and keep thinking clearly, and Lex finally realized that he might be in serious trouble. Worse, although he still had more than half of his full complement of spells, the ones that he’d dedicated to attacking were beginning to run low. He was going to need to finish this quickly, or he’d have no choice but to retreat. It was with growing desperation that Lex rushed behind the bar at the far end of the room and returned to solid form. Whenever he became a shadow, all of his carried equipment – save for Severance – changed with him, but doing so rendered it inaccessible. In order to retrieve the focus for his next spell, a small dagger that was part of conjuring a force-based replica that could attack on its own, he needed to resume his corporeal form. Moving through a wall to do so wouldn’t work, since the conjured force-dagger wouldn’t be able to pass through a solid barrier, and so wouldn’t have been able to make the return trip with him. Instead, he just had to cast the spell and then change back into shadow-form before they reached him… But even as he started to telekinetically open his pack, the unarmed fish-monster was already there, having hopped the bar with its uncanny speed and landed right in front of him. Lex had just enough time to grimace in horror at the realization of just how badly he’d erred before it spun in place to build up momentum and lashed out with a kick to his face so powerful that it drove him through the bar itself, wood exploding outward as he went skidding across the floor before coming to rest in a heap. Dazed, Lex fumbled to get his hooves back under him, knowing that to be incapacitated right now was to die. He had almost succeeded when he felt the points of a trident sink into his side, piercing deeply as its barbs dug into him. The agony was incredible, but it became far worse a moment later. Gripping its trident in all four claws, the sahuagin grunted with effort as it lifted it into the air – with Lex still speared on the end of it – until it was pointing straight up, leaving him impaled on it by his own body weight. The pain was so great that Lex couldn’t even scream, simply twitching reflexively for a moment before passing out. But he regained consciousness a moment later as the sahuagin warrior, with a guttural roar of triumph, swung its trident down in a heavy arc, smashing him against the ground head-first. It was only because he’d gone limp that his head turned slightly to the side, preventing his horn from being crushed by the impact. His ears ringing from having taken a second heavy strike to the head in the span of a few seconds, Lex only dimly heard a sibilant voice whispering the words to a spell, and managed to look up just in time to see his force field spell – the one containing the flying, spellcasting creature – wink out of existence, freeing it. You’re going to die here, slid voiceless words across his mind, brimming with scorn. You’ll be killed, your body devoured, and then the same thing will happen to all of the other ponies that you brought here with you. Lex’s current state was such that he barely registered the words, let alone appreciated them. Instead, they served only to remind him of how the Night Mare had told him that the psychic fragment of his own mind could potentially be controlled. He had made several attempts to do so; trying to concentrate on his happiest memories before falling asleep one time, attempting to strengthen his mental defense magic another. He’d even made a brief, abortive attempt to meditate, an action he normally found unpalatable for its ridiculousness. Nothing had worked. Just like this fight…everything he’d tried had proven to be insufficient for the task. For a moment he wondered if he should turn back into shadow, but the rational part of his mind informed him that it would do little good; that he was already hurt so badly that the ameliorative effects of incorporeality against magical attacks wouldn’t make much of a difference. But then, he couldn’t think of an option that would make much of a difference. Didn’t he still have a short-range teleport spell prepared? That sounded right…but they had some way of finding him wherever he went, so that wasn’t any good. But he had to do something, otherwise Sonata was going to be so mad at him. He had promised her…something. He couldn’t seem to remember what, but he knew he had promised her something and that he wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping it. The sahuagin was saying something, but the words seemed to be coming from a great distance. Lex vaguely wondered if he should turn his head to look at the thing, but lifting it off of the ground seemed like an impossibly difficult task. Just drawing breath seemed to require an enormous amount of effort. And even the pain of the trident suddenly being wrenched from his side seemed to be muted, like when a limb had fallen asleep. In fact, sleep didn’t sound so bad all of a sudden; it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. But he forced himself to do so, staring straight ahead at the writing on the ground… Writing on the ground…? Blinking, Lex slowly realized that he was looking at a scroll...that it was one of a number of items that were scattered across the floor. But why were they...? Oh. His pack had been open when he’d taken that last hit, and the magic that kept its contents from being jostled only functioned so long as it was closed. It must have gotten dislodged and scattered its contents then. So this was one of the scrolls that he’d had in there. But which one? He had no idea why, but he suddenly wanted to know, trying to concentrate on the words… His brow creased slightly. He didn’t recognize them. This wasn’t one of the scrolls he’d written, wasn’t one of his treatises on politics or philosophy or magic. Magic…right. This was a spell scroll; the kind that had a pre-cast spell in it that just needed to be read to be activated. But where had he gotten that? He stored magic like that in gems, not in paper. The only spell scrolls he had were those two from the dragon’s hoard. But this wasn’t the one he’d read before, the illusion-breaking spell. So then…it was the other one? But he hadn’t ever gotten around to reading it, so what spell did it have? As his eyes swept over the words, his brain struggling to untangle their meaning, the nature of the spell suddenly became clear to him…and Lex realized that it was his only chance, not just to survive the next few seconds, but to turn everything around. Without hesitating, he began to read the words out loud, calling on the same discipline that had led him to reorder his very thoughts when he was just a colt to make him pronounce each word correctly, even though his mouth felt like it was full of cotton. His only hope now was that he could finish reciting it before his enemies realized what he was doing. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. He was peripherally aware that the monsters around him were moving. That the trident that had wounded him was descending in a slow arc, its owner determined not to let his kill manage a miraculous escape a third time. The unarmed monster that had battered him was skating towards him as well, apparently not willing to leave the coup de grace to its ally this time. And above him, the spellcasting creature, its true nature still hidden behind its blur enchantment, was swooping closer to him, no doubt with some lethal spell at the ready. They had almost reached him when Lex finished reading the scroll.