His muscles still spasming from the electrical shock he’d suffered, Lex threw himself backwards, desperately trying to put some distance between himself and his opponent.
He wasn’t fast enough. A burst of pain flashed through his chest as his enemy’s dagger dug into him, missing his heart but still biting deep into his flesh. It was accompanied by a long cut across his collarbone, the wound as clean as a papercut but far deeper, the tip of the dagger slicing across bone and barely missing his throat.
Nor did his adversary – still wearing Feather Duster’s form – slow her assault. Her hind legs alighting on the catwalk moments after the last spark of electricity faded away, she pressed her attack, advancing on him as she lashed out with her blades again and again. Each attack aimed for a vital area, the daggers gleaming in the light of his horn as they darted toward his eyes, ears, neck, and other vulnerable points.
Against such an onslaught, there was nothing Lex could do except fall back, raising thin poles of black crystal to block the hits he couldn’t avoid as he backed onto the middle portion of the T-intersection. But he could already tell that his defense was failing rapidly. Without physical augmentation – something which he knew would quickly exhaust him if he kept relying on it – he could only produce so much black crystal, and using it continuously like this was already taking a toll on his supply of dark magic.
But creating a mountain of the stuff, the way he had against Twilight, wasn’t an option either. His enemy’s agility, combined with his own inability to see beyond the glow of his horn, made it likely that she’d retreat beyond his visual range before he’d be able to hit her with anything that big. That was why he’d spent so much effort working to limit Twilight’s movement, but now…
His horn glowing brighter, Lex tried to form a band around his enemy’s wings, trapping them the same way he had Twilight. But the crystal had barely started forming before the false Feather Duster twisted out of the way, sidestepping the half-formed loop of black crystal in a fluid motion before it could encircle her. The motion was so swift and so immediate that it made Lex momentarily flash back to Monitor, the pudgy fish-creature he’d fought in Vanhoover whose movements had been similarly deft. Like that monster, whoever he was fighting now wouldn’t be caught so easily.
A curse, then, Lex decided as he continued his fighting retreat. It would have to be augmented, but there was no helping that; without pouring extra energy into them, he was only capable of minor curses, and it was obvious that nothing short of a major malediction would be sufficient to deal with someone so dangerous. The only question now was what to hit them with.
It took Lex only a few seconds to decide, but in that time he took several more wounds, as a fast strike opened up a painful cut along his cheek, followed up by a deep gouge in his foreleg as he hastily raised it up to block an angled thrust aimed at his temple. Knowing he couldn’t take much more of this, Lex grit his teeth as he again forced a surge of power through his body’s magical channels, pouring it into the dark magic gathered in his horn as he directed it toward the unknown creature in front of him. Let’s see how well you can fight after this!
There were any number of curses that could have impaired her fighting prowess. He could have weakened her synaptic coordination the way he had to Spit Polish. Or shut down her sense of proprioception like he’d done to Tryout. Or caused her to become debilitated when near someone else just like what he’d put Garden Gate through.
But none of those were sufficient, now. Someone this dangerous couldn’t simply be disabled. Not when they’d proven themselves to be such a deadly threat.
The curse he used now, Lex knew, had to completely incapacitate them.
Which was why he was attempting to shut down the autonomic functionality of her lungs.
There was no visible discharge to the magic, and while Lex couldn’t feel her struggle as the curse fell over her thanks to the effects of the botched ritual, he heard her give a quiet gasp nonetheless. The sound made a malicious smirk cross his lips.
The malediction was designed to make her lungs only operate when consciously utilized, turning breathing an activity that had to be actively undertaken. As a consequence of that, she’d have a hard time regulating how much air vigorous activity required, making it impossible to sustain a high level of exertion such as fighting or flying. She could try, of course, but she’d likely reach the point of passing out before she’d be able to accomplish much, at which point he’d have no problem cancelling the curse and taking her prisoner-
“Heh.”
The quiet laugh brought Lex’s thoughts to a complete standstill. In front of him, Feather Duster’s features twisted in a sneer every bit as scornful as his own had been. Holding up a dagger, she clucked her tongue as she waggled the blade back and forth in a “tut-tut” motion.
Then she lunged forward, and although Lex jerked back instinctively, he was only able to save one of his eyes.
The sound of Lex’s voice raised in a roar of pain brought Sonata and Aria up short.
“That was Lex!” gasped Sonata, the blood draining from her face as she realized that he was in trouble. “Oh my gosh! We’ve gotta do something!” Lowering her voice to a whisper, she didn’t wait for Aria to respond. “Lex! We’re here! Where are y-, oh no!” Returning to her normal volume, she gave her sister a stricken look. “I forgot this doesn’t work! Quick! Do something!”
But Aria was already casting a spell, closing her eyes as she concentrated, her voice shaking only slightly as she sang the necessary words. A second later she snapped them open again. “He’s in that direction!” she declared, pointing to their right and slightly upward…directly at a stack of steel barrels.
Sonata looked back and forth between Aria and the metal containers, twitching with repressed motion. “He’s in one of those barrels?! Which one?!”
“No, you idiot!” hissed Aria. “He’s in that direction! My spell doesn’t take obstacles into account!”
“But…” Sonata looked around helplessly, taking note of how the only open routes were either to the left – in the opposite direction from where Aria had pointed – or back in the direction of the factory entrance, where they’d passed several other junctures. “Then which way do we go?!”
“I’m working on it!” growled Aria, a hysterical note in her voice. “Stop distracting me!”
“Well work faster!” Trying to peer down the leftward path to see if it turned in the opposite direction, Sonata growled at the inadequate visibility provided by the book of glow-in-the-dark stickers she’d snagged after one of the kids from the apartment building they’d cleared had dropped it during all the dancing. “I can’t see if this is the right way or if we should go back! You learned a whole bunch of non-singing, non-mess-with-your-head magic, right?! Can’t you make a light or something?!”
“I can set things on fire!” shot back Aria. “If you want me to make something to see by, that’s the best I can do!”
“Then set something on fire!” urged Sonata. “We’ve gotta get to where Lex is!”
“Fine! FINE!” shrieked Aria, her tone now one of barely-controlled panic. As horrible as it was to hear the guy she loved crying out in pain, the subsequent silence was far worse, filling her mind with terrifying images of what might have happened to him.
Whipping her head around as she looked for something she could ignite, Aria bit back a scream of frustration when nothing obvious could be seen in the faint light. “Screw this!” she declared, turning back toward the stack of metal barrels. “If those things aren’t flammable, then this’ll at least knock them down!”
She didn’t wait for Sonata to reply before quickly singing the words to a spell, holding out her hoof as a pea-sized orange bead rocketed from the end of it. In a fraction of a second it hit the stack of barrels, detonating outward into a fireball that lit their surroundings up in a bright flash.
The results were immediate. The barrels went tumbling, a series of deafening crashes making both sisters cover their ears as the heavy containers came down hard, the impacts setting off further collisions as nearby objects were destabilized. Clouds of dust went up, making Sonata and Aria stumble backwards, coughing as they tried to get away from the fouled air.
It was fortunate that they did, as the first barrel exploded a few seconds later.
The detonation swept both of them off their hooves, their yells of terror swallowed up by the boom that accompanied the blast. Sliding across the filthy ground, they came to rest side by side beneath the remains of some sort of industrial machine, blinking as they stared at where the flames spread by the wreckage were beginning to expand.
“You know,” coughed Sonata weakly as she looked at the devastation. “Between this and what happened with Lex’s ritual, I’m thinking that maybe, from now on, you should be the one to give me advice.”
Aria’s reply was lost as another barrel exploded.
“So, what’d they make here anyway?” muttered Thermal Draft as they crawled through the air duct, grimacing at the filth she felt covering her coat. “Besides dust, I mean.”
“How should I know?” whispered Nosey, pausing as they came to another intersection. “I’m not from here.”
“You’re the investigative reporter,” replied the pegasus. “I figured that while we’re looking for a grate we can pry loose, you had to have made notes about all the boring details.”
Rolling her eyes at the jab, Nosey chose the rightward path at random, hearing Thermal Draft following her. “Right now I’m more focused on figuring out how we’ll get Feather Duster out after we find her, but if I had to guess I’d say this place probably made various disposables for the upper city.”
“Disposables?” echoed Drafty.
“Las Pegasus’ lower portion is one big support system for all the resorts, casinos, hotels, and other tourist attractions up in the clouds. Some of that includes making things that the ponies there use once and then throw away.”
“Like what?”
Had she not been crawling along on her belly with nothing but her horn to light the way, Nosey would have shrugged. “The same things we do. Stuff made out of paper, cheap metal, and plastic. Probably more plastic than anything else.”
“Why’s that?” murmured Drafty, only paying partial attention as she tried to flex her wings in the cramped space.
“Because cheap metals are only good for tiny things like paperclips and staples, and using paper for stuff like plates and napkins looks too low-class for places that want to pass themselves off as being fancy,” explained Nosey. “I saw it all the time in Canterlot. Eateries and shops and places like that all want to look good for their customers, but the ones that aren’t the cream of the crop are all operating on a budget, so they have to cut corners on things like utensils and cups, and that means plastic.”
Drafty grunted at that. “So somepony did the math and figured out it’d be cheaper to have all that stuff made here than just ordering it, huh?”
“Probably, though my guess would be that they just made the raw materials here and shipped it elsewhere in the lower city for processing,” explained Nosey. “So this is where they’d mix the plant fuels or whatever they use, and there’s other places that turn them into wrappers or casino chips or-”
She didn’t have a chance to finish as a loud voice, raised in a wordless bellow of pain, echoed up from below them, causing both mares to freeze.
“L-Lex!” rasped Thermal Draft after a moment, starting to panic. “Something’s happened to Lex!”
“We’ve gotta hurry!” Nosey was already crawling faster. “There’s got to be some sort of access panel or removable flooring or something!”
“I knew this was a bad idea!” moaned Drafty.
“It’ll be fine! Lex will be fine!” insisted Nosey, trying to convince herself as much as the other mare. “He usually gets hurt when he fights someone, but he’s always the last pony stand-”
She didn’t have a chance to finish as a series of heavy crashes rang out, both mares going rigid with tension. The clanging echoes continued for several seconds, with the subsequent silence lasting for only a few moments before it was broken by the sound of explosions, the cacophony causing both of them to scream in fright.
“What’s happening?!” shrieked Thermal Draft, covering her head with her hooves. “WHAT’S HAPPENING?!”
“KEEP GOING!” yelled Nosey, dragging herself forward. “WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF-”
She wasn’t able to finish as a hatch suddenly opened beneath her, a yelp of fright escaping her lips as she fell through.