//------------------------------// // 366 - Conjoining and Disruption // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// “He did it!” breathed Fruit Crunch softly, watching with wide eyes as Princess Luna fell to the ground. “Lex did it! He won!” The sight was electrifying, enough so that he momentarily forgot how much it had hurt to lose Lyden, the wolf having been buried under several members of the Royal Guard and pummeled until he had dissolved into nothing. With his spirit animal gone, the last of the magic empowering Fruit Crunch and the other Knights had faded away, along with any lingering chance of them overcoming the remaining guards. Despite them having taken out almost all of the armored ponies by that point, the last few members of the Royal Guard had easily overcome the now-powerless Knights, forcing them to line up against the back wall of the train station while they’d stood watch over them, waiting for the princesses’ battle with Lex to end. But judging from the looks on the guards’ faces – eyes wide and jaws hanging open – this wasn’t the conclusion they’d expected. “N-no way…” murmured one of the guards, an earth pony with a dark brown coat that didn’t fully hide the cuts and bruises he’d sustained. “The princesses lost?!” “Should we do something?” asked the only other guard still standing, a pegasus with a bright white coat that was now dirty and scuffed. “We should be doing something, right?” The earth pony guard looked at his companion, his face suggesting that he was on the edge of hysteria. “What’re you asking me for?! I’m not in charge!” The pegasus wasn’t much better, blinking as though he were trying to wake up from what was happening. “So…who is, then?” “That’s easy,” smirked Fruit Crunch, making both guards glance at him. He didn’t return their look, instead nodding at where Lex was descending toward the fallen Princess Luna. “He’s right over there. His name is Lex Legis.” The declaration, along with the sight of the dark mass of shadows descending toward Luna’s insensate form, was enough to set both guards to shaking. “W-we need a plan!” yelped the earth stallion, breathing in and out rapidly as he looked at the pegasus. “Quick! Think of a plan!” “I can’t!” wailed the other stallion. “I’m not in charge either!” “Yeah, well, congratulations!” shouted the earth pony guard. “I’m officially granting you a field promotion! You’re now, um…temporary…honorary…captain!” Each word seemed to come with great difficulty, as though simply thinking of them was straining his overtaxed nerves, though the increased pace of his breathing might have had something to do with that. “Now think of something!” The pegasus, despite already being white, somehow managed to turn even paler at that. “But…but if you can do that, doesn’t it mean that you were already in charge?!” he whimpered. “I DON’T KNOW!” cried the earth stallion. “You better think of something fast,” added Cleansweep, unable to keep a smirk off of her face, nodding pointedly toward where Lex had a hoof at Luna’s neck. “Otherwise what happens next will be your fault,” intoned Straightlace ominously. “T-training…” moaned the pegasus, covering his eyes with both wings. “Gotta remember my training…” “We weren’t trained to deal with the end of the world!” croaked the earth stallion, his voice now sounding as though he was choking. “Equestria has fallen! We’re doomed! We’re doomed! We’re doo-” His voice ended abruptly as Feathercap telekinetically brought his binoculars down sharply on the guard’s head. The impact clanged loudly against his helmet, making the guard’s eyes cross as he swayed unsteadily for a moment before slumping over, unconscious. “Wh-what was that?!” yelped the pegasus, his wings still covering his eyes. “What happened?! Did something happen?!” Too distraught to think straight, it didn’t occur to him to move his wings so he could see again, and he started galloping blindly forward. “Give me a status report! But that doesn’t mean I’m in char-, oof!” His babbling came to an abrupt end as Fiddlesticks stuck out a hoof, tripping the guard and sending him sprawling face-first into the back wall of the train station, the resulting impact leaving him on the ground, unconscious. Everything was silent for a moment as the foals glanced at each other, before Straightlace shook his head. “I can’t believe these guys actually wiped out all our spirit animals,” he sighed. “I hope Lex curses all of them,” announced Fiddlesticks bitterly, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “For what they did to Nemel and the others, I hope he does something really awful to them.” Cleansweep was at her side in an instant, wrapping her forelegs around the other filly in a hug. “I bet he will,” she assured her. “Besides, maybe they’re not really gone?” Ending the hug, she looked at the others hopefully. “I mean, the Night Mare gave them to us before, so maybe she can bring them back?” “I hope so,” sniffled Feathercap, cradling his binoculars sadly. For a moment it seemed like he wasn’t going to say anything else, but then he swallowed and looked up at the others. “But…but if she can’t…” He faltered for a moment, but managed to keep going. “If she can’t…we’ll still be the Night Mare’s Knights…right?” “We’ll always be the Night Mare’s Knights,” declared Fruit Crunch firmly. The words brought a smile to the faces of the other four, and the sight made a warm feeling well up inside him. “I want to thank all of you,” he said suddenly. “I know you weren’t sure about doing this with me, because of how I acted before, but…I’m really glad you did.” “Aw, we should be thanking you, Crunchy,” replied Cleansweep. “This whole thing was your idea, remember?” She shot him a cheeky grin then, the same one that she’d used whenever they’d gotten into trouble together. “This has been way more exciting than just gluing all of our teacher’s chalk sticks to their tray.” “I don’t know if I ever would have stood up to my dad if I hadn’t joined the Knights,” admitted Straightlace. “It’s funny. Looking back, you were the only one who ever told me to stop trying to follow in his hoofsteps. I’m really grateful for that now.” He nodded at the other colt then. “Thank you.” Fiddlesticks spoke up next. “I always thought you were a troublemaker,” she confessed. “And I still think that.” Her smile turned wry then. “But only a huge troublemaker would think of doing something as crazy as attacking the Royal Guard. Twice.” The wry note disappeared from her smile then. “But if Silhouette had disrupted that ritual, it would have hurt the ponies that helped my little brother. Thank you for letting me help stop that, Fruit Crunch.” “I want to say thank you too!” piped up Feathercap, before blushing a little as the others turned to look at him. “I mean…we’ve already done all sorts of incredible stuff, meeting princesses and dream-goddesses and talking scythes. It’s been a lot more fun than just watching stuff without ever actually doing anything.” He rubbed the back of his neck as he held his binoculars up self-consciously. “So, um, thanks for leading us on such great adventures.” Now it was Fruit Crunch’s turn to be teary-eyed, and he had to swallow a lump in his throat. “You guys…” Not trusting himself to speak, he instead held out a foreleg tentatively. The others needed no further prompting, and a moment later he was surrounded in a group hug. “Do you know,” he murmured shakily, “you’re all my very best friends.” The foals stayed like that for a long moment before Straightlace suddenly spoke up. “Oh hey! Lex is bringing Severance back down!” Separating from each other, the Knights turned to look back at the stallion that had just defeated the princesses. Sure enough, Severance no longer had Lex’s aura around it, and was rapidly shooting downward toward the stallion, who was waving a hoof at it in what looked like a series of gesticulations. The sight made Feathercap lift his binoculars to his face, peering at Lex. “I think he’s casting a spell.” “What, on Severance?” blinked Cleansweep. “I wonder why.” “You think it has something to do with why he didn’t use it to fight the princesses?” ventured Fiddlesticks. “Maybe,” shrugged Fruit Crunch. “How about we go ask him? C’mon!” Without a second thought he trotted forward, the others falling in behind him as they made their way toward the pony that had defeated the princesses. Lex silently called upon the reserve energies of his circlet as he began casting. Although its reservoir of power was meager, it was enough to substitute for the energy that was carefully contained within this spell’s thought-matrix, allowing him to retain the spell’s mental structure by feeding the substitute energy in as he utilized what was already there. In essence, he’d be able to use this spell again immediately if the first casting didn’t destroy Severance. At least, in theory he would. In actuality, the scythe would almost certainly cut through him, or Luna, or both of them before he’d be able to try and cast it again. But on the infinitesimal chance that something happened to prevent it from doing that – a possibility that Lex couldn’t conclusively rule out, given how many other wildly improbable events had come to pass since he’d returned to Equestria – there was no reason not to take the precaution. At the same time, he pulled in additional magic through his body, feeding it into the spell alongside the substitute energies from his circlet. The fatigue he’d accumulated from holding Severance back made the process grueling, and Lex knew that if it wasn’t for his stamina-enhancing spell he’d likely have been in considerable pain, but he ignored it in favor of pouring as much additional power into the spell as he could, knowing he’d need as much as he could possibly gather. He was even making sure to make the requisite gesticulations for its casting with his right foreleg – the one that didn’t have the barbed wire wrapped around it – just in case the Night Mare made her displeasure at what he was about to do known again, preparing himself to resist what would most assuredly be agony when the razor wire around his left foreleg began to shred him again. But the wire around his leg remained completely still. Already halfway through the casting, even as Severance closed in on where he was standing above Luna’s prone form, the fact that the Night Mare hadn’t tried to interfere with what he was doing was enough to make Lex slightly concerned. He was attempting to destroy one of her personal weapons…was she not at all upset by that prospect? Surely this had to be more egregious than his offering to use the resurrection spell she’d given him on the worshiper of an ostensible competitor to her. Or perhaps this was permissible under her dogma; her credo of "the strong dominate the weak" taken to its logical conclusion. That, or she’s simply not concerned because she knows this won’t work, he thought grimly. That was entirely possible. On paper this idea – which he’d been developing for some time now, simply as a matter of course; as far as Lex was concerned, any power that wasn't under his absolute control was a power that could conceivably turn against him one day, and so countermeasures needed to be prepared – was sound, but there’d been no way to put it to the test. Not without alerting Severance that he was researching ways to destroy it. The plan that he'd eventually come up with relied on the fact that Severance was ultimately just a magic item. True, its power was phenomenal, but it still operated according to the same underlying principles. Specifically, it still had magical channels in itself that allowed it to function. If those channels were disrupted, then its functionality would be similarly impaired; likewise, if those channels were critically compromised, then Severance would be unable to function at all, effectively destroying it. Its physical form would still exist, but it would be nothing more than a mundane scythe, albeit one of masterful construction. Lex’s dispelling spell wasn’t, by itself, capable of wreaking that level of havoc on even an ordinary magic item. He’d tested it out before, and when it worked at all – since the magical channels, much like the structure of a spell, naturally resisted being tampered with if sufficient power wasn't used – it never did anything more than shut the item's magical properties down for a few seconds. Permanently destroying an item's magical properties was far beyond what his dispelling spell could do. But that was before he fed massive amounts of magical power into the spell. More power than his body could normally handle, thanks to his stamina-boosting enchantment that he'd cast on himself. If he was right, then pouring so much power into his dispelling spell would super-charge it to the point where it would be able to do more than just disrupt Severance. It would completely disjoin it. Making the final gesture as he pronounced the last syllable, Lex unleashed his spell at the descending scythe.