“Certainly,” smiled Harrowing Ordeal. “It’s not something that should be shared in front of an outsider, however.”
The comment came with a pointed look at Aria, who narrowed her eyes dangerously. “Excuse you?”
But Harrowing Ordeal didn’t seem intimidated in the slightest, giving a helpless shrug that caused the scabs around his shoulders to crinkle again. “I’m one of Our Dark Lady’s faithful, as is your stallion.” He glanced back at Lex, pausing then. “Even if he’s not in her good graces at the moment. Your hoof is bleeding, by the way.”
That last statement was clearly directed at Lex, causing him to glance down; sure enough, the barbed wire had constricted tightly enough that it was now penetrating his skin, causing rivulets of blood to run down his leg. But when he displayed no reaction except disinterest, Harrowing Ordeal kept speaking. “Given the sensitive nature of what we’re discussing, what with the goddess having such a personal interest in this, I’m afraid it simply wouldn’t be proper for the details of what I’m about to say to be disclosed to someone who isn’t a follower of her religion.”
“So what?” The words were accompanied by a chuckle, but there was no humor in Aria's voice. Slowly, she sauntered toward Harrowing Ordeal. “Lex admitted all of that stuff about his deal right in front of me, and you didn’t seem to have a problem with it. But now you expect us to believe that all of a sudden you two have to have your little powwow in secret?” She kept advancing, until she was right in Harrowing Ordeal’s face. “I don’t think so.”
Harrowing Ordeal’s response came in the form of a sharp exhale. While his every breath had been accompanied by tendrils of smoke before, the oily black fumes poured from the scabbed stallion’s nose and mouth heavily now, billowing out in plumes that engulfed Aria completely. Alarmed, she leapt back, but in doing so inhaled the some of the noxious cloud. Her lungs immediately rebelled, causing her to gasp and cough as she stumbled backward, her eyes stinging and watering from the acrid smog enveloping her. Her distress was so acute that she only barely heard Harrowing Ordeal’s mocking laugh. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go rest for a bit and let your betters sort things out?”
“Y-you…!” coughed Aria. The haze from the summoned stallion’s breath was already clearing out, but she didn’t feel any better. Even so, she struggled to get her breathing under control. “I’ll k-kill you!”
“Enough, both of you.”
It was the measured calm in Lex’s voice that caused Aria to freeze, shocked at how unconcerned he sounded, as though the prospect of her being excluded – let alone the fact that she was still fighting to breathe – didn’t bother him in the slightest. Apparently Harrowing Ordeal heard it too, because he chuckled audibly as he sat back and scratched at his haunch, sending another flurry of scabs falling to the ground. But it was what Lex said next that floored her. “Aria, go wait on the other side of the plaza.”
Scarcely believing what she was hearing, Aria strode toward him, fighting down another coughing fit as she did. “Are you kidding me?” she wheezed. “Lex, you can’t possibly trust that pony-”
“That thing isn’t a pony,” pronounced Lex flatly. “He doesn’t have a cutie mark.”
His eyes flickered over to Harrowing Ordeal as he said that, and Aria turned to follow his gaze, her eyes looking to where the summoned stallion had scratched his haunch. Although the scabs were already growing back, she could still see that there was nothing on his flank. But the significance of that discovery eluded her, and she turned back to Lex with a growing sense of incredulity. What was he thinking? “Okay, great, not a p-pony,” she had to stop as she started to cough again, needing a moment to catch her breath. “That just makes him even more unreliable, right? His whole thing about n-needing to talk to you alone sounds c-completely made up!”
Lex gave her a cool look as he raised one brow, as though he didn’t think very much of her take on the situation. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But maybe not. Either way, I want to hear what he has to say, and if he won’t say it with you around, then I need you to go wait on the other side of the plaza.”
Aria could only stare at him, before turning her head to look at where he was telling her to go. The plaza wasn’t that big, and she’d only be a few dozen feet away from the two of them. But she was fully aware that Lex was in no position to defend himself, and she was growing more certain with each passing second that Harrowing Ordeal was aware of that too. If he closed what little distance remained between himself and Lex before launching an attack, Aria wasn’t certain that she’d be able to get a spell off in time.
Especially, she realized with a sudden shudder, with how hard it was for her to catch her breath now.
“You have to realize,” she said slowly, dropping her voice to a whisper and fighting down the urge to keep coughing, “that this is a trap. This guy acts like a sleazy buffoon, gets you to think he’s no big deal, and then pounces. It’s a ploy.”
“If it is, I’ll deal with it,” replied Lex dismissively. “Now go.”
Aria knew she should have been angry. She should have been absolutely furious. First he revealed that he was seriously considering breaking up with her, then stood idly by while that disgusting monstrosity all but spit in her face, and now he was treating her like a nuisance when she was looking out for him?! She should have cut him down to size with a torrent of insults, slapped him across the face, and then left not just the plaza but the city altogether, leaving Lex to his fate. Heck, if that was how he wanted to be, then she should just save him the trouble and break up with him first!
But those emotions wouldn’t come. Even when she tried to summon them, all she got was a bout of nervous tension rather than the towering rage she wanted, causing her to stamp a hoof in anxiety. “You had better know what you’re doing,” she croaked, telling herself that it was that creature’s bad breath that made her voice catch like that.
Then she turned and, with one last glare at Harrowing Ordeal, trudged toward the other side of the plaza.
Lex watched Aria go, waiting until she’d covered most of the distance before he turned back to Harrowing Ordeal. “Satisfied?”
“It would be better if she left altogether,” replied the other stallion flippantly. “But I suppose so long as we keep our voices down, it will do.”
“Good. Now…” Lex lifted the gemstones that he’d offered in payment in his telekinesis, holding them in the air next to himself. “Tell me what I want to know.”
Smirk affixed firmly in place, Harrowing Ordeal glanced left and right dramatically, even looking upward in a brazen show of secrecy. “Alright,” he began, lowering his voice as he moved slowly toward Lex. “The way to escape from the conditions that have been imposed on you is simple…”
Despite the stallion’s approach, Lex didn’t so much as tense. Not that he could in his current state; just remaining upright was already a considerable strain. “Go on.”
“All you have to do…” Harrowing Ordeal smiled again, and this time the expression had a menacing cast to it. “Is pass the mantle of authority that the Night Mare has given you to someone else.”
Frowning sharply, Lex narrowed his eyes. “What?”
Harrowing Ordeal was right in front of him now, but the scabbed equine didn’t stop moving, starting to circle him slowly. “Isn’t it obvious? After all, your current predicament is predicated on you being Our Dark Lady’s champion. If you surrender that distinction, then the entire burden falls away. It becomes the responsibility of whomever receives it. And fortunately for you,” Harrowing Ordeal stopped right behind him then, but Lex didn’t bother turning to look at him, facing forward as the taller stallion leaned in close, “there’s someone right here who can take it from you.”
Lex’s answer came with a snort of contempt. “I find that answer lacking, and certainly not worth recompense.” With a thought, the gems he’d been holding were dropped back into his saddlebag. “I have no intention of giving this power away.”
“A pity,” answered Harrowing Ordeal, moving back from where he’d been leaning over Lex’s shoulder.
“I disagree,” shot back Lex, still not bothering to turn around. “And if you have nothing else to offer, then we’re done.”
“Oh, but you misunderstand,” came Harrowing Ordeal’s voice, now a silken purr. The sound was enough to finally get Lex to glance back over his shoulder at the creature. “When I said you should give that power to me, I wasn’t saying that you should do it voluntarily.”
The words were immediately followed by the scabbed stallion turning his head to the side and breathing another cloud of roiling black smoke. But the vapors didn’t fall over Lex; instead, they were directed off to the side, forming a thick patch of smog just wide enough that it cut off his view of Aria…and her view of him. No, Lex realized a second later. Her view of both of us. That had been why Harrowing Ordeal had circled him; it had been calculating the positioning it needed to obscure Aria’s view of them both. He knew that she wouldn’t dare use any area-affecting spells when we’re this close, and that the smoke would make it hard for her to use any single-target spells. But he’d also seen that the cloud of smoke wouldn’t last very long – it had dissipated just a few seconds after he’d breathed it into Aria’s face – which meant that it was planning to act quickly…
Sure enough, a glance back showed that Harrowing Ordeal had already fallen into a crouch, preparing to leap at him, one hoof raised in preparation for a punch that was clearly meant to cave in his skull. “Don’t blame me for this,” snickered the stallion. “It's your fault for bringing me here when you’re too weak to defend yourself!”
Across the plaza, Lex could hear Aria calling his name in alarm, followed by the sound of her coughing as she tried to force herself to sing. Her hooves could also be heard, frantically pounding the cobblestones, and Lex knew that she was trying to move so that she could get Harrowing Ordeal back in her sights. He also knew that there was no way she’d be able to make it before the creature threw itself at him, and that in his current state there was no chance that he’d be able to fight the larger equine off; even casting his remaining attack spell – the one to seal a target in a prison of ice, letting the supernatural cold freeze the victim to death if they were unable to break free – would take too much time to enact before the scabbed stallion reached him.
Lex had let himself be cornered, and now he was completely out of options. But as Harrowing Ordeal started to move, Lex did the only thing that he could.
He laughed.
Aria struggled to keep her voice steady as she chanted the words to a spell, fighting down the rising urge to cough as she made herself rush laterally across the plaza, trying to get Lex and Harrowing Ordeal back into view. Her magic missile spell wasn’t very strong, but it was guaranteed to always hit the target, but only if she could see the person she was aiming at! I just need to get his attention, she told herself, fighting down a rising tide of fear. If he sees that I’m the bigger threat, he won’t have time to hurt Lex! Unless he had some way of resisting her magic, or had used his own to turn invisible, or-
The sound of Lex’s laughter – his voice filled with confidence – stopped her in her tracks, a sudden sense of hope and relief rushing through her. She barely noticed as her spell died on her lips, the cloud that Harrowing Ordeal had breathed dissipating a second later. As it did, she could see that neither stallion had moved, with Lex still glancing back over his shoulder at Harrowing Ordeal, who was still tensed, as if poised to leap.
Except…something was wrong with the scab-covered stallion. As Aria watched, his limbs shook lightly, and a low groan of effort came from his throat, as though from exertion. A second later he relaxed his posture with a grunt, stumbling away from Lex. “Wh-what’s going on?!” he yelped, and all of the posturing was gone from his voice now, replaced with fear and anger. “What did you do to me?!”
Lex laughed again, turning to face the larger stallion directly. “I summoned you, you fool. You’re only on this plane because my magic brought you here. Did you really think I hadn’t made use of any safeguards when I did?”
He took a step forward then, and Harrowing Ordeal took a corresponding one back, a look of panic crossing his face. “What safeguards?” he spat. “You didn’t summon me into any containment spells or magic circles!”
“I didn’t need to,” scoffed Lex. “I simply made sure that the ritual I used to bring you here built restrictions into the nature of your summons. While you’re here, you can’t make any vigorous motions. You can’t use any magic. And you can’t leave the immediate area.” The smile that crossed his lips then was wholly mocking. “Of course, building such heavy restraints into the spell meant that there was only a little power left for the actual summoning, assuring that only a pathetic weakling would arrive. Hence why you were the one to answer the call.”
“Bastard!” Harrowing Ordeal’s invective was filled with impotent rage and mounting horror. “You tricked me!”
“You brought it on yourself,” shot back Lex scornfully, continuing to advance on the retreating stallion. “Everything you just said about escaping the Night Mare’s demand by turning the power she gave me over to another was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“It would have been true enough after I killed you!” Harrowing Ordeal was rapidly running out of room as he continued to retreat from Lex, already nearing the edge of the plaza. “Once you were dead, you wouldn’t have had to worry about it anymore, and I’m sure Our Dark Lady would have let me take your place!”
“I suppose death would have relieved me of my obligation to the Night Mare,” agreed Lex, “but you’re even stupider than I thought if you actually believe that she’d give a cowardly imbecile like you anything.” He stopped moving forward then, and Harrowing Ordeal likewise came to a halt, his back almost against one of the buildings ringing the plaza. “And since I seem to recall that the Night Mare holds mercy to be a sin,” continued Lex, “and I have no wish to antagonize her even further, I believe it’s time to bring this conference to an end.”
He looked over at Aria then, his face as casual as if he were reviewing the camp’s food supply. “Kill him.”
Maybe it was a coincidence, but Aria felt the persistent cough that had been plaguing her suddenly clear up, and she grinned evilly as she looked at Harrowing Ordeal. “With pleasure!” she chuckled, before raising her voice in musical chant…
“No, wait! WAIT!” wailed the larger stallion, all pretense of defiance gone now. Almost panting in fright, he looked back at Lex. “We can still honor our original agreement! There really is a way you can give the Night Mare what she wants and still keep your mares!”
“Lies,” snorted Lex.
“It’s not a lie!” yelled Harrowing Ordeal, his voice shrill with fear as Aria continued to chant. “I swear it! I swear it in the Night Mare’s name!”
Lex held out a hoof toward Aria then, and knowing what he wanted from her, she cut off her chant with a sigh of disappointment, having badly wanted to kill that disgusting piece of garbage. “Speak,” ordered Lex, giving Harrowing Ordeal a baleful look. “Quickly.”
“Slavery!”
“Hm?”
“The answer is slavery!” Harrowing Ordeal looked between Lex and Aria, making sure that the former hadn’t given the latter the go-ahead to resume her spellcasting. “The Night Mare wants you to give up your relationship with your mares, right? So all you need to do is replace it with a different type of relationship! You’re already lovers, so you can’t just marry them or call them concubines or some other designation that subsumes that same bond. But if you strip them of their personhood and make them your property, well, owners can value their possessions however they want, even to the point of using them for personal gratification! So you make the sacrifice the goddess wants, you can still enjoy your girls, and you’re even demonstrating her tenets of how the weak are dominated by the strong! It’s the perfect solution!”
Silence fell over the plaza, with Lex and Aria staring silently at the cowering stallion. Finally, Aria looked over at Lex and spoke. “Please say I can kill him.”
“Hey, come on!” Harrowing Ordeal’s voice took on a slightly indignant tone, though it might have been to cover up a whimper as he looked back at Lex. “I gave you the answer you wanted!”
Lex hesitated for a moment, and Aria licked her lips in anticipation. But she couldn’t help but give a groan of disappointment a second later as Lex – his visage darkening as he gave the scab-covered stallion a hateful glare – telekinetically opened his saddlebag and withdrew the gemstones from before. With a careless toss, he threw them at Harrowing Ordeal’s hooves. “Take them,” he snarled. “And be glad I’m allowing you to live.”
“Yes! Of course!” Almost collapsing with relief, Harrowing Ordeal immediately began to gather up the gems, holding them in a small pile against his chest. Now that the threat of imminent death had passed, his poise began to recover, his smile returning as he looked back at Lex. “You know, I think we can work well together, you and I. It’s clear to me now that my power is nothing compared to yours, and since I’ve learned my lesson you’ll find that I can be a reliable-”
He didn’t get a chance to finish, as Lex made a single sharp gesture, barking a word of power. Instantly, the space around Harrowing Ordeal warped and bent, and in an instant the stallion – and the gems he’d been cradling – were gone.
Aria let out a huff. “You should have let me kill him.”
“You couldn’t have,” answered Lex after a few seconds, absently staring at where the monstrous equine had been. “The magic I used to summon him here wouldn’t have allowed for that to happen.”
Frowning, Aria cocked her head. “Say what now?”
“I distorted the facts about how the ritual I used to bring that creature here worked, in order to convince that treacherous thing to answer my question honestly,” replied Lex, his voice distracted.
Despite herself, Aria couldn’t help but feel curious. “Distorted how?”
The question seemed to bring Lex back to himself, and he sighed as he glanced over at her. “I knew that any entity from the Night Mare’s realm would be dangerous to interact with, particularly in my present condition, so I made sure to take that into account when designing the summoning ritual back at the train station.” He gestured idly toward where Harrowing Ordeal had been. “Specifically, by introducing multiple flaws into the ritual’s functionality.”
Aria raised a brow. “Flaws?”
Lex nodded. “In addition to deliberately reducing the amount of energy utilized by the ritual, therefore making it unable to summon anything truly powerful, I likewise compromised the ritual’s functionality so that whatever creature was called would only barely be able to maintain its presence in this realm.”
“Okay,” said Aria slowly, starting to become lost. “So what does that have to do with why I couldn’t kill that ugly creep?”
“I just told you,” replied Lex. “The ritual only barely brought that creature here. Any disruption to his mode of existence on this plane would have immediately sent him back where he came from. Hence why he couldn’t move vigorously, use whatever magic he had, or even move very far from the local region of space-time where he was called. That was why he couldn’t leave this area and why the summons would have expired on its own in a few minutes if I hadn’t sent that thing back. Naturally, this also applies to any damage that he might have suffered. Whatever you did to that disgusting creature would have accomplished nothing except to return him to his home realm.”
Aria processed that for a moment. “Okay, I think I get-, wait…so you’re saying that Fugly Grossout there could have left whenever he wanted if he’d just done some pushups or something?”
“Fortunately, he was too stupid to realize that,” snorted Lex. “He felt the strain against his existence here when he tried to attack me, but didn’t understand that if he’d kept pushing against it, he would have disrupted the magic and sent himself back where he came from.” He scowled then, a sour look crossing his features. “It was just one of several ways in which he was an utter imbecile.”
“Right.” Aria rolled her eyes, remembering Harrowing Ordeal’s “solution” to Lex’s current dilemma. Most guys, she knew, would jump at the idea of having their own harem of sexy slave-girls. But Lex? He’d never do it, not in a million years. But that meant…
“We’re going back,” announced Lex, an audible the note of dejection slipping into his voice. He didn’t bother to look back at her as he started trudging back toward the camp.
If he had, he would have seen the thoughtful look on Aria’s face as she followed him.