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// 227 - Unholy Communion 
// Story: Lateral Movement 
// by Alzrius 
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“You have no idea how badly you’ve disappointed me.”

For almost a year, Lex’s sleep had been plagued by relentless nightmares. Ever since the hasty, ill-considered ritual he’d performed during his early days on Everglow – trying to contact Princess Luna in a failed attempt to map the planar distance between that world and Equestria – he hadn’t known a single night’s rest. Instead, sleep now invariably resulted in his not only reliving the worst failures and humiliations from his past, but also vividly envisioning the worst possible outcomes of his hopes for the future. It was abject misery, made all the worse by the knowledge that it was always waiting for him every time he laid down to rest. 

Even the recent revelation that the tulpa that tormented him day and night could be theoretically controlled was no comfort.  Although he’d initially been hopeful at the prospect of being able to sleep peacefully again, nothing had come of his repeated attempts to master that rebellious aspect of his mind. Instead, his inability to bridge the gap between what he could theoretically do and what he could actually accomplish – as he couldn’t in so many other things, chief of which was social interaction – served to bring Lex only renewed anger and frustration.

But now…now there were no nightmares to be found. No images of his parents mournfully telling him how anguished his disappearance had made their final years. No visions of his ruling over an empty city, its ponies universally having abandoned him because of his incurable unfriendliness. No scene of Sonata laughing at his thinking she could ever have loved someone like him.

Instead there was blue fire in every direction, the flames rising in an unbroken ring around him to an incredible height, blocking out his ability to see anything save the full moon sitting directly overhead. But despite the encircling blaze, the area in which he found himself was shadowy, the fire seeming to absorb light rather than emit it. Even the ground couldn’t be properly seen, utterly black and lacking any sort of definition, as though he was standing on a starless patch of the night sky itself. And across from him…

The pronouncement of disappointment reached his ears then, and a moment later the Night Mare stepped from the shadows, her features twisted in derision as she gazed down at him.

So this is the new nightmare, thought Lex disdainfully. It was a surprisingly banal choice on his tulpa’s part; up until now, all of the torments it had arranged for him had been intensely personal. But this? This had no emotional component for him. A dream wherein he angered the goddess instead of reaching an accord with her would certainly be unpleasant – he knew full well that she had the power to end his life, or worse, in any of a thousand different ways – but he had faced down death too many times for that to be truly frighten-

“On the contrary,” hissed the Night Mare, her eyes narrowing dangerously, “what I do to you will be far worse than anything your tantabus has done up until now.”

There was no signal to accompany her words, but the barbed wire wrapped around his left foreleg suddenly clenched and began to writhe, digging bloody furrows into his skin. Lex gasped at the sensation, taken by surprise both by the sudden pain and the immediate lucidity that it brought. As much as this resembled his last encounter with the dark goddess, Lex knew right then that this was no mere memory.

The Night Mare was really here.

The barbed wire continued its bloody writhing as the goddess spoke next. “Not only will your agonies be unending, but so will your disgrace. You will be among the lowliest slaves in my realm, made to endure whatever humiliations my more accomplished faithful feel like inflicting upon you. You will be stripped of all power, shorn of all pride, forced to live with the memory of everything you’ve lost and the certainty that you will never regain it.” The look on her face was one of contempt then, her lip curling. “Such is the fate of those who fail me as spectacularly as you have.”

“We had a deal!” snarled Lex, forcing himself to keep the pain out of his voice. The wire was digging in deeper now, all but flensing his skin free from the muscle underneath. Lex tried to call upon his dark magic then, trying to turn into a bodiless shadow despite knowing that he had expended it all fighting Xiriel. Sure enough, the power failed to materialize, with the wire continuing to slice his leg to pieces unstoppably.

“You actually have the gall to speak to me of that,” she spat, her voice dripping with scorn. “I gave you power befitting my most faithful, and what have I received in return?” She raised a hoof and brought it down angrily, causing the ground to shudder and almost making Lex lose his balance. “Where are the followers you promised me? The prayers made in my name?”

“Keeping everypony alive comes first!” Lex had to struggle to make the words come out as a rebuke rather than a scream, glaring at the Night Mare defiantly, refusing to let her get the better of him. “I’ll promulgate your religion after I’ve destroyed the monsters infesting my city!”

The Night Mare flared her wings in response. “A poor excuse, considering how feeble your efforts up until now have been!”

That struck a nerve. “‘Feeble’?” he growled, rearing up on his hind legs, furious at how she was belittling him. The despair he’d so recently felt was gone now, swept away in the face of his renewed rage. “FEEBLE?! I have struggled and fought and suffered to bring Vanhoover and its ponies back from the brink of destruction! I’ve faced enemy after enemy after enemy and slain them all while doing everything I can to protect those under my care! I have spared nothing in terms of effort and intellect and power for my people, and you dare call what I’ve done ‘feeble’?!”

All of a sudden, he didn’t care that he was face-to-face with a goddess. He didn’t care that he had no chance of hurting her, much less defeating her, in a fight. All he cared about was the sheer indignity of what she’d said about everything he’d done up until now. Reaching out with his undamaged foreleg, he began to gesture at her, a chant spilling from his lips as he recited the strongest attack spell he had left. He knew it was futile – even if the magic affected her, all it would do would be to seal her in a prison of ice, and he was under no illusion that would do anything more than irritate her – but so what? If she was going to drag him down to her realm for an eternity of torment anyway, then he wouldn’t go quietly!

That was the plan, at least. But before he’d gotten through a dozen syllables a shudder ran through him, one powerful enough to throw off his chanting, causing the spell to fizzle. Alarmed, it took him a moment to realize what had happened: the pain in his left foreleg had stopped, the cessation of agony being so profound that it had interrupted his casting. Confused, he looked back at the Night Mare.

Folding her wings back at her sides, the goddess gave him a cool look, her earlier displeasure no longer apparent. “It’s feeble because you still think you can accomplish everything on your own,” she noted calmly. “That’s why you’ve missed or squandered every opportunity you’ve had to expand your power base.”

Uncertain how to react to the sudden change in her disposition, Lex eyed her warily. “I have missed nothing,” he insisted, his ire still roused. “I have utilized every available aspect of my surroundings and circumstances to restore order!”

“And yet you left those aranea in Tall Tale.”

That caught Lex off-guard, not having thought about Fireflower and his siblings in some time. “Of course I did! It would have been immoral to force them to come here with me, especially after what they’d been through!”

The Night Mare continued as though she hadn’t heard his protest. “You ignored your mate’s sister, rather than nurturing her interest in you, and haven’t even realized that she’s abandoned you.”

“What?!” Lex could only blink at that, taken completely by surprise. Aria had left the camp? When?! More importantly, why?! He was the only means for her to regain her voice! For her to have abandoned that prospect of her own free will was inconceivable! He’d need to track her down, before-

The Night Mare spoke again, breaking his train of thought. “And worst of all, you pushed yourself so hard creating food for everyone that you ended up crippled, which led to those others going into the city on your behalf and dying there.” She paused to let that sink in, and when Lex didn’t protest her assessment, she continued, letting some displeasure creep back into her voice. “Including my cleric, your only success at keeping your promise to me.”

“…get to the point,” spoke Lex through gritted teeth, suddenly sick of this entire exchange. “Are you here because I’m such a disappointment, or are you here to criticize my leadership?”

“I’m here,” answered the Night Mare, “because your complete and utter lack of leadership is the reason for my disappointment.” Her lip curled as she spoke. “You know how to govern, and maybe even how to rule, but any leadership that you might have demonstrated has been entirely accidental. As creditable as your accomplishments are, you should have found it easy to make the ponies of this place revere you, and in turn worship me. Instead, you only managed to convert a single pony, and you were so wrapped up in yourself that you let her die.” She leaned forward then, baring her teeth just a little as she lowered her head toward him. “I’m here to give you a warning: improve your efforts, or next time I’ll make good on my threats.”

Lex glared at her in undisguised enmity. “I’ll spread your religion. Until then, don’t appear in front of me again.”

The Night Mare snarled at that, and suddenly Lex felt like a mountain had been dropped on him, a sudden pressure falling onto his back that knocked him to the ground, preventing him from moving. “Don't think that because I wanted to see what remained of your spirit, you have free rein to address me in whatever manner pleases you!" she hissed. Lex didn't retort, unable to so much as draw breath beneath the incredible force weighing him down, and it was several seconds before the Night Mare released him, straightening up as she did so. When she spoke again, her voice was restrained once more. "Now, I'm not unaware of the hardships you've overcome, or of the difficulty you have in motivating others. So in recognition of what you have managed to accomplish, I'll give you two things." 

Lex had barely managed to pick himself up off the ground when she waved a hoof at him, and he felt his saddlebag shift. Giving the Night Mare a dark look, Lex nevertheless telekinetically reached into the bag on his right side, his eyebrows rising as he withdrew a ruby the size of his head. He had learned enough about gemstones from his mother to know that this wasn't like the ordinary gems that could be found throughout Equestria; its size alone made it significantly rare. But that wasn't what made his eyes linger on the gem's blood-red facets: there was a spell inside. A powerful one.

"Use it to bring Cloudbank back to life," instructed the Night Mare casually.

That was enough to make Lex's head whip around, looking at her with wide eyes. "What?!"

"Secondly, information," continued the Night Mare blithely. "The entirety of that city's ghouls will overrun your camp in a little over an hour."