//------------------------------// // 255 - Punishing the Disloyal // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// “It’s about time!” Blinking as his eyes adjusted to the bright light, Lex turned towards the angry voice – or rather, the angry whisper – that had assaulted him as soon as he’d exited his tent. Stopping in place, he turned to look toward where Aria was glowering at him from a few feet away. “I have better things to do than wait around all morning for you to wake up, you know,” she snapped. Lex’s brow furrowed, not understanding what she was complaining about, but Nosey spoke up before she had a chance to. “What’s your problem?” Despite shooting Aria an unhappy glare the words came out in a murmur, as though she couldn’t bring herself to say them more forcefully. Aria’s eyes slid over to the blonde mare, narrowing at the sight of her pressed against Lex. “My problem is that I can’t watch over him when he's asleep the way I’m supposed to if he’s hiding in one of those dinky little tents,” she snorted, before her lip curled in a leer. “But I guess I didn’t need to, since you were in there guarding his body all by yourself, up close and personal, huh?” Nosey instantly turned bright red. “No!” she blurted. “We didn’t-, I mean, it wasn’t like that!” She glanced over at Lex, but immediately looked away when he made eye contact, suddenly too embarrassed to look at him. “Tell her she’s got the wrong idea!” “What are you two talking about?” frowned Lex, a look of complete and total mystification on his face as he glanced back and forth between the two. The question was enough to dispel Nosey’s embarrassment, her head whipping around to look at him in disbelief. For her part, Aria wasn’t much better. You’ve got to be kidding me, she thought to herself, not sure whether to laugh or gawk. I knew he was dense about this sort of thing, but this is a whole new level of clueless! Unable to resist having some fun, especially after everything she’d had to put up with in the last few days, Aria plunged ahead. “I’m just congratulating blondie here on staying so quiet the whole time you two were together. I thought she’d be more of a screamer.” For a moment Lex didn’t know what Aria meant, but out of his peripheral vision he could see Nosey turning even redder, folding her ears back and cringing as though the Siren’s words had physically hurt, and the obvious answer dawned on him: she was teasing Nosey about the fact that she’d woken up screaming just before the battle with the ghouls. Although Aria hadn’t been there for that, she’d quite obviously found out about it somehow, probably from one of the gossipy camp ponies, and now she was using that information for her own spiteful amusement. It was enough to make Lex grit his teeth; he’d been on the receiving end of that sort of petty cruelty too many times in his youth to have any tolerance for it now, especially directed toward one of the extremely small number of ponies he thought of as a friend. But he knew exactly how to put her in her place. “Where were you last night?” “Huh?” Now it was Aria’s turn to be confused. “I just told you: I was right here, making sure no one else tried to bump you off in your sleep. Though honestly, after everything that happened I doubt-” “I meant before that,” cut in Lex coldly. “Prior to when you cast that fireball at the ghouls, where were you?” He knew part of the answer already, of course. The Night Mare had let it slip that Aria had left, although she hadn’t provided any details about why – other than his “failing to nurture her interest” in him, whatever that meant – or where she’d gone. “Sonata looked for you while we were preparing for the fight, and she said you weren’t anywhere.” “Oh please,” sneered Aria derisively, waving a hoof. “If you told Sonata to find her tail, she’d have to look around for it first. And then she’d make herself dizzy trying to catch it.” Lex’s response was an ice-cold stare. Normally, he didn’t care about Aria and Sonata sniping at each other; he’d never had any brothers or sisters, and what little research he’d done on the interpersonal dynamics between siblings was even less comprehensible than for unrelated ponies. But between his anger at Aria’s cruelty towards Nosey still being roused, and the warm moment he and Sonata had shared last night making him far less charitable toward criticism of his girlfriend, he was decidedly lacking in tolerance for Aria’s attitude. A number of choice words came to mind, but he pushed them away. First she’d left the camp without his leave, and now she’d insulted two of the ponies he cared about most; a stronger response was called for. Slowly, Lex raised his left foreleg, fighting to hide how difficult it was to remain standing on only three hooves, and pointed it at her. “Prostrate yourself.” The Night Mare’s power lashed out, curling around Aria and forcing her to obey as she immediately flopped onto her belly, touching her chin to the ground. “What’re you doing?!” she hissed, unable to so much as thrash. “Let me go!” Ignoring her demand, Lex lowered his hoof, slowly walking toward her. Alongside him, Nosey only barely managed to move with him, no longer blushing as her eyes darted between Lex and Aria. With her at his side, Lex moved forward until he was directly in front of the bound Siren, looking down on her both literally and figuratively. “Now, where were you last night?” “What does it matter?! I came back!” Despite the harsh tenor of Aria’s whisper, there was an undercurrent of nervousness to it. “You said it yourself: I saved everyone!” Lex’s lips curled back from his teeth, and he raised his wire-wrapped hoof again, this time only far enough to point directly at her face, less than a foot away. “I won’t ask you again.” That was all Aria could take. “Alright! Fine! I left! Are you happy?!” The fight went out of her then, and she heaved a sigh as she looked away in defeat. “I heard Cozy and her boy-toy stirring up trouble before they made a dash for it, and I went to go round them up. But they talked me into going with them.” “To the Crystal Empire?” interjected Nosey, unable to help but look incredulous at the thought. She’d been there when Cozy had said that she was going to walk back to her home, knowing that was completely ridiculous with how far away it was. “Why?” “They said their princess could fix my voice,” answered Aria, now sulking like a child forced to confess that she’d stolen a pack of bubblegum. Lex’s frown deepened. “I already promised you that. In another four days-” “Oh please,” snorted Aria bitterly. “In four more days, you were going to find some excuse to tell me why I’d need to wait longer.” Lex flared at the insinuation that his word was no good. “You’re wrong!” But Aria was unfazed. “After we beat the sahuagin, and you told me that normal healing magic couldn’t fix me, you said that you didn’t have the magic to regenerate my vocal chords.” “I also said that I had every intention of keeping my promise!” “Well good for you! In the meantime, I haven’t seen you do anything to make that happen! All day every day it’s some other new crisis, all of which are apparently more important than me! It’s Fencer and Pillowcase one day, then it’s feeding everypony here the next! Then it’s a bunch of your friends kicking the bucket!” She regained a little of her indignation then, glaring up at him. “Have you made any progress on making it so I can talk again?” Lex met her eyes without flinching, but didn’t answer. “Didn’t think so,” she whispered with a humorless laugh. “So yeah, I better-deal’d you and split. Sue me.” Silence reigned for a moment, until finally Nosey spoke up. “So why’d you come back?” Both of them looked at her then, and she kept talking. “I mean, you were already leaving, right? You’d decided that you’d have better luck with Princess Cadance. So why’d you come back when you did?” Aria hesitated then, but was saved from answering when Lex found his voice. “It doesn’t matter.” That earned him a surprised glance from Nosey. “Lex?” “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated, giving her a level look. “The moral dimension of an action is found in the action itself, not the motivation. It doesn’t matter why she came back. What matters is that she did…and that she left without my giving her permission in the first place, despite the fact that my promise to fix her voice was contingent on her working for me.” Aria tensed at that, though in her immobile state it was little more than a twitch. She could see where this was going; he was about to declare his entire promise null and void. Between that, and that treacherous tramp Cozy reneging on recommending her to Princess Cadance, she’d be left with nothing, no way to ever get her voice back. The thought hit her like a dull thud, and Aria found that she couldn’t even get mad about it, her tension bleeding away in favor of a sense of dejection that made her close her eyes. Everyone always betrays me. First Sonata, then Cozy, and now Le- “Aria. Look at me.” The words carried the weight of a command, and Aria had no choice but to open her eyes, raising her gaze to the stallion towering above her. “For disobeying me and leaving without my permission, you’re confined to the train station here. I’ll have Severance act as my guard in your place.” He glanced over at the western edge of the camp, where the scythe was still hovering. After it had completed its patrol with Aria the previous night, Lex had told the scythe to resume its lookout for any other undead ponies, not wanting to take even the slightest chance. “As soon as we procure some food, I’ll see to it that sufficient meals and water are brought to you, but you are not to leave the building under any circumstances that aren’t life-threatening. If you do, I’ll consider it to be an escape attempt on your part, and my response will be harsh. Is that understood?” Aria hesitated, hearing what he hadn’t said. “Wait, so does that mean-” “Is. That. Understood?” “…yeah…” Lex nodded, and withdrew the invisible power binding her in place. “Then go.” Swallowing nervously, Aria glanced at Nosey, and although the blonde mare caught the silent question in the Siren’s eyes, she shook her head, silently signaling that she didn’t know. Biting her lip, Aria slowly dragged herself past Lex, heading toward the train station. But she hadn’t made it more than a few dozen feet before the need to know overwhelmed her, and she glanced back at Lex, who hadn’t turned to look at her go. “Will you…I mean…” She couldn’t finish, anxiety reducing her whisper to a croak. “How long will…will I have to stay there?” It was all she could bring herself to ask, afraid of what he’d say if she made the question any more direct. Lex’s head turned just slightly, enough to let her know that he heard her even though he wasn’t looking at her. In the five seconds that it took him to answer, Aria could almost feel her heart beating its way out of her chest. Then he spoke. “Four days.” Aria let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, almost doubling over in relief. “O-okay!” Unable to help the smile that spread across her face then, she turned and quickly started toward the train station, wanting to get there before he could change his mind. As she hurried, she just barely caught the sound of his voice from behind her. “I always keep my promises.”