//------------------------------//
// 205 - Struggling Against Futility 
// Story: Lateral Movement 
// by Alzrius 
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Lex had no intention of waiting for the creature to act on its anger.

Murmuring a rapid-fire chant as he waved tendrils of shadow, he unleashed a spell at the creature, firing a pitch-black ray of negative energy at it. The spell would suppress part of the creature’s life force, and while that probably wouldn’t be enough to kill it, it would weaken not only its vitality but its magical strength as well. If what he’d felt when he’d forced it out of Nosey was accurate, then that was an edge he was going to need. He watched as the beam lanced out directly at the thing’s center of mass…and then blinked out of existence just before making contact with it.

Although he didn’t have a physical body at the moment, Lex felt a shudder run through him as he realized what just happened. It’s the same as that dragon I fought, he knew. It has some sort of aura that passively resists spells! Which meant that, so long as he tried to use magic on it directly, he’d have to punch through the thing’s aura to have any chance of hurting it, even before taking into account that it would actively struggle against any hostile magic that reached it.

His odds of defeating this thing, Lex knew, had just shrunk dramatically.

“I think I’ll start,” mused the monster's middle head, “by showing you the difference between your strength and mine.” It gave Lex no time to process that, immediately flying toward him as soon as the words left its mouth. In an instant, it covered the distance between them, moving with incredible speed, and Lex felt its magical energy swirl around it again. He had just enough time to process that it was using the same dispelling magic that it had used to destroy his astral construct, and then the magic slammed into him. For an instant, he struggled to fight off the thing’s magic, but it was like a mountain had been dropped on him, and an instant later he was corporeal again, only barely managing to keep his hooves under him as he fell to the ground.

Nor did the thing’s magic stop there. While Lex’s dispelling spell had only ever been able to undo a single spell at a time, he felt this one keep going after it had undone the dark magic of his shadow-form. Once that was gone, it tore through the defensive spells he’d cast on himself, and Lex was helpless to stop it as he felt both his speed-enhancing spell and the luck-boosting spell he’d used on himself crumble away to nothing. Nor was it done then, knocking out one of the defensive enchantments he’d built into his body so long ago, causing the minor deflection field surrounding him to wink out. Only then did the creature’s dispelling magic come to an end.

Horrified at just how vulnerable he’d been rendered, Lex instinctively threw himself backward, but once again the monster was faster. The tongue from its middle head snaked outward with so much force that it was almost a blur, striking his left foreleg with enough force that the bone shattered under the blow, causing Lex to scream as agony radiated out from his now-broken leg. But the pain grew worse a moment later as the creature’s tongue, still moving with the arc of its swing, wrapped around the mangled limb and squeezed it tight before hoisting him into the air by it. “Pain, of course, is the next stage of your punishment,” the left head announced blithely, its voice as relaxed as though it were discussing the weather. “And by all means, feel free to keep screaming as much as you like.”

It was all Lex could do not to oblige the creature, the white-hot agony in his leg overwhelming his senses so completely that for a moment he could think of nothing else. It was only a lifetime’s worth of personal discipline, of training his thoughts to form in the manner that he wanted and maintaining that mental structure regardless of what happened, that allowed him to push it back, only barely regaining his control over himself. This is…nowhere near as bad…as conjuring all that food! he raged internally, remembering what had happened when his enhancement spell had gone wrong while he was creating food for everypony. Even so, the thoughts that filled his mind now were of retreat, of putting some distance between himself and this monster, if for no other reason than to make the pain stop. But Lex knew that it would make little difference if he did; with the thing’s speed and ability to use dispelling magic repeatedly, it would be on him again in moments.

Instead, he forced himself to go on the attack.

Pointing his right foreleg at the thing, Lex began to gesture, choking out the words to another spell. Knowing that a single mispronunciation or flawed gesticulation would cause the spell to fizzle, he focused everything he had on getting the spell right, fighting back against a renewed wave of pain as the thing squeezed his broken foreleg tighter. He knew there was no guarantee that this would work, that the spell might simply be negated, but there was no viable alternative. Besides, spell resistance wasn’t an all-powerful defense; the dragon had demonstrated that. He just had to keep attacking and hope that some of his magic would be able to force its way through.

A second later, he managed to complete his spell, and despite the torment emanating from his maimed limb, Lex managed a small smile as he swung his free foreleg around to point at the thing’s middle head, the one currently grabbing him. A microsecond later, the green ray of his disintegration spell shot forth. Lex had prepared this particular spell twice over, and although trying to pull in additional magic while simultaneously casting the spell and holding fast against the pain he was in had been too much, even the unenhanced version of the spell had considerable power. If he could just disintegrate the monster’s middle head, it would not only deal it significant damage, it would free him at the same time!

But just like last time, the spell fizzled out before it struck the creature.

Lex had barely registered that his last-ditch effort to fight back had failed when the thing’s other tongues snaked out. The right head’s gruesome organ wrapped around his neck, squeezing tightly and cutting off his air supply, as the left head’s tongue struck his right foreleg. Miraculously, the bone didn’t break this time, but that was small comfort as the creature entangled that limb as well, yanking it wide. “How truly impressive,” cooed the right head, its feminine voice filled with mockery.

“To persist with such futile struggles in the face of overwhelming evidence about how helpless you are is a rare level of stupidity,” laughed the middle head, bending his broken foreleg further in the wrong direction.

“Nosey gushed about your vaunted intelligence,” sneered the right head. “But it seems that she was sorely mistaken to hold you in such a high regard.”

“aLloW mE To bETteR iLLuStrATe tHE pOInT iN a WaY yoUR PuNy mINd CAn cOMprEHenD,” screeched the fang-filled orifice that composed the monster’s other end.

Lex only barely heard the words. The level of pain he was in had escalated, and with no air going to his lungs he could feel his consciousness starting to ebb. Dimly, he felt himself being dragged forward, and then the monster’s leech-like maw filled his vision. His eyes widening as he comprehended what was about to happen, Lex reactivated the minor deflection field around his body with a thought. The enchantment, being one that he’d woven into his person long ago, immediately sprang back into existence…but it might as well not have been there at all, the creature’s ring of fangs puckering before it yanked him closer. An instant later he spasmed as he felt its teeth sink deep into his belly. Instantly, the thing’s orifice contracted as it started to suck the blood from his wounds. A surge of panic filled Lex then, and his eyes glowed as he called on his horn’s dark magic to return him to shadow-form, knowing that attacking was no longer an option; he had to retreat immediately if he wanted to live.

“Oh no you don’t!” barked the creature’s middle head, its tongue unfolding from Lex’s broken leg and lashing towards his horn. Lex tilted his head back as much as he could to try and avoid the strike, and the whip-like blow crashed into him at the exact moment that his body turned immaterial. It wasn’t fast enough to connect, but just barely managed to cut the straps on his haversack and saddlebag before they could follow his body into incorporeality, letting them fall to the ground even as Lex’s now-insubstantial body slipped through the creature’s tongues. 

Almost dizzy from the sudden cessation of pain, Lex only barely registered the loss. There was nothing among his belongings that could help him now anyway; the haversack contained a variety of mundane sundries, treatises that he’d written, and gems filled with spells that were useless in this situation. The saddlebag was even less useful, containing only the now-empty portable hole that he’d borrowed from Sonata. There was nothing helpful in either…either…

Suddenly, Lex knew how he could win.

“Just make sure that, whatever you do, you never put that thing in my pack, and vice-versa,” warned Lex. “Layering extradimensional spaces on top of each other can put a severe strain on the dimensional fabric in the local area.” That had been what he had told Sonata back when Fireflower had given them the extradimensional receptacle that contained the dragon’s hoard. Although he’d tweaked the haversack to stabilize being taken into the small pocket dimension that he’d often conjured for them to sleep in, it took only a thought to undo that alteration as he grabbed it and the saddlebag in his telekinesis, allowing its original settings to snap back into place. He hurled himself backwards then, simultaneously thrusting both objects right in front of the creature’s ugly faces, the haversack’s main flap falling open. “How’s this for futile?!” he snarled, shoving the saddlebag containing the portable hole into the haversack.

Lex immediately lost his grip on the two objects as the haversack suddenly imploded, collapsing in on itself until it was nothing but a dot the size of a pinprick, hanging in the air. A moment later a cracking sound filled the air, as though a thousand boards were snapped in half all at once…and then it was like looking at a whirlpool in a funhouse mirror, as everything around the dot – the air, the ground, and the monster – suddenly distorted, swirling and folding in on themselves as they fell into it, a fierce wind picking up as the rent in space pulled everything toward itself. A shrill chorus of screams reached Lex’s ears as he saw the creature fall into the tiny dimensional rift, its body elongating and thinning as it was sucked into the hole and disappeared, and he had just enough time to feel a burst of hateful satisfaction before wondering what would happen if the tear in space was perman-

And then it was over.

The sudden silence as the wind died down was deafening. The pinprick-sized dot that had been the dimensional rip he’d caused was gone. So was the creature. And a fair amount of the ground near where it had been, for that matter.

Lex wasted an entire two seconds hoping that the creature had been torn apart by the planar fissure he’d caught it in, before turning his attention to more important things. “Nosey,” he called, floating toward where she was sprawled out on the ground, unmoving. “Nosey, if you can hear me, respond.” But no response came, and he hurried to reach her.

Her eyes were closed, and for a moment Lex feared the worst, but then he saw her chest rising and falling, a surge of relief going through him. She’s just unconscious, he realized, quickly looking her over for wounds. Other than a large number of bruises around her neck where the thing had choked her, the only thing he could see was a bump on her head, probably sustained in the fall she’d taken when the astral construct had been dispelled. Overall, her injuries seemed comparatively light.

But that’s no reason not to get her medical attention, he knew, looking at the distant camp. Knowing that she was too heavy for him to carry with his telekinesis, he braced himself as he returned to corporeal form. He immediately staggered, lifting his broken foreleg off the ground even as he felt blood rain down from the injuries on his abdomen. He was hurt far worse than she was, he knew, but he’d just have to bear with it until they made it back. He could still walk, so if he draped her over his back he-

“Extremely futile,” came a chorus of voices from behind him.

Then a tongue as sharp as a spear pierced his chest.