As Lex passed through the warehouse doors, another bolt of lightning shot through the sky, illuminating his surroundings for the briefest of moments. Although the exact shapes were blurred by the heavy rainfall, for a split-second he could see everything around him.
What he beheld shook him to his core.
The ship that they’d arrived on had been torn apart, the pieces now clutched in tentacles so gargantuan that even a single one of them could have easily ensnared the dragon he’d fought. And now four of them were curling around the broken pieces of his ship, holding them aloft as though they weighed nothing at all. Numbly, Lex realized that this was the source of the loud crash that he’d heard a few seconds ago: it had been the sound of the vessel being destroyed.
But that wasn’t the only horrific sight that the lightning had made visible.
The waterfront was swarming with monsters. Large numbers of what looked like sahuagin were crawling out of the water, many of them holding weapons as they began to advance towards the city. Scuttling among them were foal-sized creatures that looked like some misshapen fusion of eel and lobster. Several manta ray-like things were whirling overhead, moving through the air as easily as they would through water. And he was sure that there were other monsters there as well…
The scenery plunging back into darkness as the lightning expired, the snapshot the oncoming horde ending as suddenly as it had begun. With the rainclouds blotting out what little illumination the crescent moon and stars had been providing, the lack of light was total. Lex could still see thanks to the darkvision that his incorporeal form granted him, but the sixty-foot limit to its range of vision was enough to cloak the gigantic tentacles and the wreckage of his ship from view, as well as most of the incoming monster army.
For a moment, Lex just stared forward, utterly overwhelmed by what he’d seen. Why was this happening?! Why were the sum total of the horrors that Aria had described suddenly emerging from the sea all at once?! It was as though her simply talking about them had somehow summoned them! Trying to get ahold of himself, Lex drifted back into the warehouse, barely noticing as he resumed corporeal form out of habit. His mind whirling with just how bad their situation was, he started to stumble back towards the shelter, only to stop as a pretty face suddenly blocked his path.
“What’s…” Aria’s question died on her lips as she saw his expression. Although she’d known what the sudden rainstorm had likely meant, she’d nevertheless hoped that there had been some other explanation. But the stricken look on Lex’s face confirmed what she’d feared: that the Great Lord of the Deep had personally come to put an end to them.
“Alright…alright…” Trying to fight down a rising sense of panic, Aria tried to weigh their options. “We have to run! We can go out the back and head inland!”
“That won’t work,” murmured Lex distantly.
“It might! If we can get far enough away from the water, then-”
“That won’t work!” repeated Lex, his voice rising. A moment later he shut his eyes tightly and shook his head, as though trying to physically throwing off his distress. Amazingly, it seemed to work, since when he looked at her a moment later his gaze contained its usual mixture of condescension and disapproval. “Even if we could shepherd everypony out of here and away from that thing, we’d never be able to protect them from the undead ponies infesting this city, let alone the other monsters crawling their way out of the water right now.”
“Forget them!” rasped Aria, clearly starting to panic. “You swore you would protect me! You…wait, ‘other monsters’?” She paused as she processed the rest of what he just said. “He brought the sahuagin with him? Or some of his other minions?”
“From what I saw, both.”
Aria felt the blood drain from her face. “And you’re worried about saving everyone else?! We need to leave immediately if we’re going to save ourselves!” She looked at the warehouse doors in fright, backing away from them as though expecting them to be breached at any moment.
“I am NOT forsaking anyone!” snarled Lex, his exclamation punctuated by another burst of thunder and lightning. Despite the imminent danger, he could feel his equanimity recovering more and more with each moment. Having someone to argue with gave him something to focus on, allowing him to order his thoughts and try and figure out what response he should take.
Aria, by contrast, was clearly struggling to hold onto any semblance of calm. “Well then you better think of something fast!” Biting her lip, she looked around frantically for a few moments before her eyes settled on a grate in the floor. “Th-that’s it! We can take the sewers and slip out that way!”
“No,” replied Lex immediately. “In this rain, the sewers will overflow in short order. Going down there now would only result in everypony drowning.”
“Yeah, well, sucks to be them, but I can breathe underwater!” Aria was already moving for the grate as she spoke, but what Lex said next stopped her in her tracks.
“Also, I suspect that at least some of the undead ponies are lairing down there, which means that you’ll be eaten alive before you get very far.”
She shot him a hateful look in response, and then turned to eye the grate again, as though evaluating her chances, but finally turned away from it with a whispered curse. “Then what about magic? Do you have a spell that could get us out of here?” She could hear the pleading tone in her sibilant words and hated it, but she hated the thought of dying a lot more.
“I have a teleportation spell prepared,” admitted Lex. Aria had just enough time for her eyes to widen in hope before he continued. “But its range is only a thousand feet or so, and can only take two or three others with me anyway.”
“Wonderful!” she hissed sarcastically. “That’s just wonderful!” Overcome with the urge to hit something, Aria looked around. Spotting a twisted piece of metal that might have once been a trash can nearby, she dragged herself over to it before whacking it with her tail, sending it flying into a nearby wall, where it clanged loudly.
Lex considered berating her, since under ordinary circumstances such an act would likely have drawn their enemies’ attention, but with the rain falling outside it seemed unlikely that the noise would reach anything nearby. As it was… He glanced back towards the doors. The wards he’d put up kept them hidden, as well as closed, but according to what Aria had told him before, several of those monsters were spellcasters. If they knew to check for magical emanations, they’d likely notice his protections quickly, and Lex had no confidence that his wards would stand up to any kind of dedicated assault, magical or otherwise.
And of course, that “Great Lord of the Deep” creature would have no trouble smashing the entire building if it wanted. Which meant that their current hideout offered no real protection at all. Whatever they were going to do would need to happen fast, one way or another. Aria seemed to have reached the same conclusion, because she turned to Lex again, and this time naked desperation was written all over her face. “What’re we gonna do?!”
“I’m thinking!” snapped Lex.
“Well think faster!”
“That will be easier to do if you shut up!” Lex telekinetically grabbed Severance – which had remained floating exactly where he had left it before he’d gone outside – to wave at Aria again, but stopped as he took hold of the weapon, looking at it thoughtfully. For a brief instant, he wondered if it might be their way out, but then remembered the scythe’s ominous warning from earlier. Although he still wasn’t sure exactly what constituted being “dependent” on the weapon, he had little doubt that telling it to go out there and kill the assembled monsters while he remained hidden in here would qualify, causing it to abandon him.
But if he couldn’t use Severance, what other resources did he have at his disposal? He had little doubt that Aria was, like himself, running low on magic as a result of their battle earlier. The other ponies in the shelter had some modest combat ability, demonstrated by surviving earlier monster attacks, but nothing that would give them any real chance of overcoming their current enemies. Sonata was the only one with any significant reserves of power left, but Lex refused to even consider sending her into battle all by herself. No matter how bad their circumstances were, such a thing was completely unacceptable!
All of those factors, alongside his own mostly-depleted abilities, and no way to call for help, meant that their available courses of action were…
Nothing.
There was no way to escape from the attack that was about to happen. No way to hide from it or avoid it. No way to effectively defend themselves, let alone fight back, against it. Even negotiating was a nonstarter, as the sahuagin had made it clear how they felt about “poh-nees,” especially “maa-jik” ones, and that had been before he’d slaughtered a number of them. Lex had no doubt that any sort of surrender would mean death for all of them.
Another bright flash and accompanying peal of thunder shook the air, and the sound of the rain grew louder, causing Lex to grit his teeth. As though their current array of problems wasn’t enough, the storm that the kraken had conjured was a threat unto itself! If it kept gaining in intensity like this, Vanhoover would be in severe danger of being flooded again! And if that happened…if…if that…happened…
Something suddenly occurred to him.
Silently sitting there, her tension mounting with every passing moment, Aria was about to yell at Lex again when she noticed a sudden change in his demeanor. His face had gone slack, but unlike before it wasn’t with worry or hopelessness. Instead, he looked almost…amazed? Blinking, she moved closer to him, but he didn’t seem to notice, instead muttering something too low for her to hear. A moment later, he frowned and turned to regard the doors again, his expression changing to a look of consideration, as though not sure what to make of them.
“Hey,” she called, but no response came. Instead, he had pulled his magic scythe off of his back and was glancing between it and the doors, still looking like they were puzzle pieces he hadn’t figured out how to work with. “Hey!” she called again, louder this time.
When he still didn’t respond, her patience snapped. By her reckoning, they had been talking for maybe two minutes since he’d come back inside, and her nerves were completely frayed. She doubted that the sahuagin and the others would start tearing things apart willy-nilly – they were intelligent hunters, and by now they’d all have heard that some of their best fighters hadn’t come back – but if they were already coming ashore then there wasn’t much time left. Raising a hoof, she cuffed him across the shoulder.
That seemed to do the trick, and he stumbled, blinking his eyes rapidly as he focused on her. “What do you think you’re…you’re…” His voice trailed off as he looked at her, and his gaze again turned into one of surprised consideration, as though the sight of her had made him realize something that he couldn’t believe was true.
“You had better be having a brainstorm!” she hissed, not sure if she should interrupt him again or not.
He muttered something again, this time loud enough for her to hear. “That’s it…”
“What? What’s it?”
Coming out of his reverie, he looked her dead in the eye…and smiled. “I have a plan.”
A look of guarded hope blossomed on her features. “A plan? To get us out of here?”
He shook his head, still grinning. It wasn’t a look of happiness, nor mirth, nor even the malicious anticipation she’d seen from him during their fight. Rather, the look on his face was one of complete and total confidence.
“We’re going to take the fight to them. And we’re going to win.”