Lateral Movement

by Alzrius


495 - Get Rectitude

“Starlight, how could you?!”

The panic was visible on Starlight’s face as she shook her head in response to Sugar Belle’s anguished cry. “N-no! You don’t understand!” Wrapping her tail around her flank in order to hide the colorful mark there – a purple-and-white star with a pair of blue-hued glimmering streamers – from view, Starlight reached for the first excuse that came to mind. “The Staff!” she blurted. “It was the Staff of Sameness! When it, uh…when it was destroyed, the backlash made my cutie mark reappear!”

“And did the Staff make it reappear underneath a coat of paint?” snapped Night Glider, clearly not buying it.

Neither was Double Diamond. “We believed in you!” he cried mournfully. “We trusted you!”

“I gave up singing because I thought you were my friend!” whimpered Sonata. “I love singing!”

“All this time,” moaned Party Favor, “you kept telling us that cutie marks brought nothing but pain, that special talents led to heartache…and you kept yours!”

“I HAD TO!” yelled Starlight, the hard edge returning to her voice as she lowered her tail. “My special talent is magic! I needed it!”

“But why?” Sugar Belle couldn’t have looked more disappointed if she’d tried. “We already had the Staff of Sameness. Why did you need more magic than that?”

“The Staff?” snorted Starlight, her voice full of contempt. “The Staff never had any magic! It was just a piece of wood I found in the desert! The power to remove cutie marks came from me! It always came from me! If I had removed mine, I wouldn’t have been able to remove anyone else’s!”

Starlight had hoped that her confession would make everypony realize the impossible position she had been in, would make them realize that she was the victim here, protecting a system that she could never truly be a part of. But instead it seemed to have the opposite effect, with Night Glider pointing at her accusingly. “So it was all a lie from top to bottom!”

Nor did Party Favor seem any more understanding. “You said that everypony in our village needed to be equal, or it would destroy our entire way of life!”

“That’s why I pretended I couldn’t use the magic I had left after you took away my cutie mark!” added Sonata.

Double Diamond had tears in his eyes, but his expression was unforgiving. “Was anything you said true?”

“OF COURSE IT WAS!” Although she’d known that this would be the likely result of her secret getting out, Starlight couldn’t accept what was happening. Why was nopony giving her the benefit of the doubt?! Why weren’t they focusing on everything that she’d done for them instead of obsessing over one flaw in what had otherwise been a perfect society?! “So I told one little lie! The rest of it was all true! You were all miserable before you came to my village! The only reason you were able to be happy and become friends is because I made you all the same! You think you would have had it better living someplace like this?!”

She canted her head toward the battlefield, strewn with rubble and unconscious ponies. Maybe pointing out how much worse the alternative was would make everypony feel a bit more grateful. “Look around you! Lex Legis created a society where everyone is different! All so he can sit at the very top of it! Why do you think he’s had so many other ponies do his fighting for him?!” She glared at each of the ingrates surrounding her in turn, daring them to disagree. “You think he’s never lied to any of the ponies living here?! He didn’t even tell Sonata about that creepy magic he’s using to defend himself!”

“That’s, like, totes unfair!” protested Sonata. “Lex only keeps secrets to protect people! He kept what happened to that Block Party guy under wraps because he was worried it’d cause a panic! When the time was right, he told everyone all about it!”

“And that orange pony said that Lex didn’t lord his powers over them!” added Sugar Belle.

“All those ponies who fought you were different,” pointed out Party Favor. “But they still worked together!”

“They were even willing to sacrifice themselves for each other!” added Night Glider. “That earth colt jumped in front of that filly to protect her, and then that one pegasus mare did the same thing for the other!”

“And Lex protected them both!” Double Diamond gave Starlight a look of reproach. “If they can do all of that while still having their cutie marks, why don’t you think that we deserve that same chance?”

Starlight wasn’t able to answer, unable to speak past the bile rising in her throat. After all of the work she’d done on their behalf… Setting up a village dedicated to true harmony. Freeing them from the shackles of their cutie marks. Coming here to try and invite new friends into the society that she’d made. Suffering through so many pains and injuries when Lex’s minions attacked her for threatening their misguided hierarchy. All of that…and now the ponies she’d gone through so much effort to help were turning on her all because of one little white lie?! It was like they’d been looking for a reason to betray her!

Starlight knew there was no victory to be had here anymore. Even if she defeated Lex and these turncoats and everypony else in this place, no one in Vanhoover would follow her now that these traitors had made her look like some kind of hypocrite. The best thing to do now would be to cut her losses and go back to her village. Alone.

“Fine!” she hissed through gritted teeth, her horn lighting up. “You all admire these strangers so much?! Then you won’t mind ending up JUST LIKE THEM!”

Their eyes widening in fear, the others backed away, and Starlight took a moment to enjoy the terrified looks on their faces. It was what they deserved for stomping all over her dream like that-

“Pathetic.”

Lex’s voice was filled with scorn, its mocking edge making Starlight’s spine stiffen as she slowly turned to look at the pony who was responsible for destroying everything she’d built.

His unnatural flickering had ceased, leaving Lex completely solid once again. But despite his magical defense being down, Lex – who had somehow managed to stand up again, an effort that had clearly taken a toll on him – seemed completely unconcerned with how vulnerable he looked. If anything, he seemed completely at ease, his lip curling in a contemptuous sneer as he glowered at her. “You’re so pathetic, Starlight Glimmer.”

“You…”

“You can’t even live by your own philosophy,” he continued, voice oozing with disgust. “And not because of how preposterous it is. You’re just too weak-willed to endure the hardships that you would have other ponies bear.”

Starlight had never hated anyone in her life as much as she hated Lex Legis in that moment. It wasn’t just how deep his words cut her. The fact that he was going out of his way to taunt her like that, to try and hurt her after he’d seen how her closest friends had all betrayed her, filled her with a black, twisted loathing that she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling.

But Lex was either oblivious to that, or he just didn’t care. “It’s clear to me now that your warped ideology has nothing to do with trying to improve the lives of the ponies that you deluded into adhering to it. It’s simply that you want to reduce everyone else to the lowest common denominator because you lack the fortitude to confront your own weakness!” A mocking grin slid across his face then. “And you actually think that you have the power to take anything away from me?” His smirk fell away as he spat on the ground. “As I said: pathetic.”

For a long moment nopony moved, nopony even breathed, as they waited for the inevitable to happen.

And then, very quietly, Starlight spoke. “There’s one thing…” she breathed. “One thing that I know I have the strength to take from you.”

“And what’s that?” scoffed Lex.

Her eyes starting to glow white as she called upon all of her remaining reserves, Starlight pointed her horn directly at him as the last remaining fragments of her self-control shattered.

“YOUR LIFE!!!”


It was fear that drove Lex to action.

He had known that Starlight Glimmer was no ordinary unicorn ever since he’d first set hoof on the battlefield. But it hadn’t been until she’d defeated Cloudbank and Thermal Draft – the two of them now lying sprawled out and insensate a stone’s throw away – that he’d gotten his first direct glimpse of how strong she really was.

The black crystals that he could create were orders of magnitude stronger than steel. Although the wall he’d raised in front of the two pegasi had only been an inch thick, for Starlight’s attack to pierce it had been a sobering demonstration of power on her part. All the more so for the fact that she was already weakened. Her combat acumen was likewise impressive; from her quick discovery of his upgraded shadow-form’s point of vulnerability to her quick use of a shield to protect herself from being struck by lightning, she had proven herself to be an adept tactician.

But what had frightened Lex hadn’t been her power or her intuition.

Rather, it had been her callous disregard for everypony around her.

When Lex had reordered his thoughts to make them suitable for his thaumaturgical spellcasting, he had deliberately and irrevocably formatted them to be incompatible with spell structures that were designed to inflict harm across a given area, as opposed to targeting individuals. The indiscriminate nature of such attacks simply made it too easy to cause collateral damage. And while that restriction made it difficult to fight multiple enemies at once, it was one that he didn’t regret imposing on himself.

Starlight, by contrast, had proven that she had no such restraint. That she had exploded nearby debris without concern that any of the ponies she’d already defeated could be hit by the resulting fragments had driven that point home. But her attack on Thermal Draft had been far worse; the fact that her attack had pierced the black crystals he’d created meant that, if he hadn’t raised that barrier when he had, she and Cloudbank would almost certainly have been killed.

But as worrying as that knowledge had been, it hadn’t turned into full-blown fear until just now, when Starlight’s minions – and Sonata! – had started berating her over her having lied about giving up her cutie mark.

The revelation that Starlight had simply painted over it rather than removed it the way she had for the rest of her group had been of little interest to Lex. While it solved the mystery of why her magical channels hadn’t had the same alterations as Fruit Crunch’s, Aria’s, and those other ponies with Starlight despite looking the same – as well as exposed her for the hypocrite that she was – Lex was far less concerned about that than he was with the danger Sonata and those other ponies were putting themselves in. Hadn’t they seen what she’d tried to do? Didn’t they realize that antagonizing her ran the very real risk of making her attack them?

He’d been halfway through casting his whisper-spell, intending to tell them to cease upsetting her, when Starlight had started to become visibly agitated. At that point Lex had known that it was too late. He needed to focus her attention back on him before she hurt somepony…especially if that somepony was Sonata.

But that would be hard to do when he couldn’t so much as stand.

The fact that his upgraded shadow-form had reached the end of its duration, returning him to full corporeality, just as Starlight began to rant in earnest only drove home how powerless he was at that moment.

The only course of action left was to turn back into his full, unmodified shadow-form and use his remaining dark magic to fight as best he could. That would almost certainly be a losing proposition; Starlight had shown herself to be ready for him to make more black crystals spring up out of the ground around her, and he wouldn’t be able to do that for very long before he ran out of dark magic. But there was no other choice now. Not when Starlight seemed like she was seconds away from losing her temper and killing a group of ponies right in front of him.

Not when she was potentially about to kill Sonata!

That thought made the fear rushing through Lex reach a crescendo, and it drove him to his hooves. Every breath felt like sandpaper against the back of his throat, and his legs felt as weak as a newborn foal’s. But somehow, he stood up anyway. He’d turn into shadow-form in a second; for now he needed to make Starlight focus on him!

Pathetic.

“Pathetic,” he called, and felt a rush of relief when his taunt worked, drawing Starlight’s attention. But to his consternation, Sonata and the others had only moved a few paces back! Silently screaming at them to retreat further, Lex regretted not having used his whisper spell the way he’d originally planned. But now it was too late, and all he could do was keep baiting Starlight and hope that the others would take the hint and fall back. You’re so pathetic, Starlight Glimmer. “You’re so pathetic, Starlight Glimmer.”

The words played across his thoughts at the same time as they came out of his mouth, somehow finding enough breath to speak without needing to gasp between them. It was an odd sensation, but not nearly as odd as the sense of déjà vu that swept over him then. This…this had happened before. But when…?

The sensation of spellcasting that Lex felt a second later answered his question, even as new strength flowed into his body. The ache in his muscles suddenly wasn’t so bad, and although his lungs still felt overtaxed, he could breathe clearer now. While not in great shape, he was suddenly capable of fighting again, recognizing the stamina-enhancing spell that he’d invented in the wake of the battle on the docks, and also – with a muted sense of shock – recognizing what was happening.

It was his shadow.

Just like when he had been on the verge of being defeated by Xiriel, the rebellious fragment of his mind was intervening, casting a spell of its own accord in order to turn things around. But why now? What was the salient factor between that encounter and this one?

Lex had long since mastered the ability to think in parallel, following multiple lines of thought simultaneously. It was that talent that let him continue to berate Starlight Glimmer, indicting her as viciously as he could (and noting with relief that Sonata and the others were finally backing further away from her) even as he tried to run down the similarities between his encounter with the devil, the fight with the ghouls – when his shadow had also been goaded into action – and now. What had made the circumstances of those battles different from the others that he’d fought? What did those three instances have in common? What…?

Suddenly, he knew what it was.