“LEX!”
Sonata and Aria’s voices rang out in unison, but Lex couldn’t bring himself to look over at the two of them. Literally so, as he didn’t have the strength to turn his head. Indeed, at that moment, simply hanging onto consciousness felt like a struggle that he was only barely winning.
The newest lacerations that he’d acquired when that griffon – who was, he could tell by the daggers she’d wielded, the assassin who’d previously worn Feather Duster’s appearance – had barreled into him were like searing lines of fire across his shoulders, adding themselves to the overwhelming maelstrom of pain coursing through him. Managing to stand upright in order to provoke the assassin into attacking him had almost made him black out from the effort it had required, and after she’d collided with him, he could only manage the smallest of motions. Even that, he suspected, was because the floating gemstones were still orbiting him, their magic making things just a little easier.
“Bright Feather?”
Easier enough that he was able to manage a faint smirk as his one undamaged eye managed to glimpse the assassin – who by chance was still in his field of view – drop her daggers and call the name of someone he didn’t recognize, staring into empty space.
He was still wearing the expression when Sonata and Aria dashed over to him, frantic.
“Lex!” Aria was the first to reach him, picking him up and looking him over just long enough to confirm that he was alive and conscious before pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. “I knew you’d rescue us,” she whimpered, sounding more fragile than he’d ever heard her. “She said she was going to cut my voice out, but I knew you’d stop her!”
“Of course he did!” smiled Sonata, rubbing the back of her head gingerly before leaning in to nuzzle him. “Lex Legis might be the smartest pony, like, ever, but he totes doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘give up.’” She cocked her head then, her smiling fading as something occurred to her. “No, wait, that’s two words. Lemme try that again-”
“I had to!” The assassin’s hysterical cry cut her off, making both mares stiffen in fright as they looked at where the griffon was shrieking at nothing. “You wouldn’t have been able to go through with it! You would have…have tried to talk me…”
Her voice faded, leaving both mares rigid with tension as she yanked her goggles down and pinched the space between her eyes. But Lex knew they were letting precious seconds slip away. “We need to get out of here,” he murmured. If it hadn’t been for the iridescent spindle removing his need to breathe, he doubted he’d have been able to summon up the strength to speak. “I don’t know how long that poison will last.”
“Poison?” Sonata tilted her head, looking between him and the distressed griffon. “Is that why she’s acting like a honey-crusted nutbar all of a sudden?”
“If she’s lost her mind, then we should finish her off right now,” murmured Aria. But she made no move to act on her words, and Lex could feel her tremble faintly as she stared at the assassin.
“No,” he rasped. “There’s no telling how long this will last, or how much her current state will impair her ability to react to danger. We need to withdraw now, before she comes to her senses.” He paused then, as much from the strain of speaking as to survey the battle-scarred clearing. “Where are Feather Duster and Nosey?”
“We told them to run,” answered Sonata, grunting as she started helping him up, the floating gemstones adjusting their orbit so as to not collide with her. “Feather Duster was totes out of it, but Nosey and Drafty were able to carry her, and we told them to get out of here.”
“Thermal Draft?” The rush of surprise and worry that ran through Lex then almost made him dizzy. “She’s here too?”
“Yeah,” murmured Aria, finally managing to tear her eyes away from the unseeing griffon. “She and Blondie found Little Miss Maid, and then Dark Streak – the assassin – found them.” She paused for a second, then continued. “Blondie said someone paid her to come and kill you.”
“Dark Streak, not Nosey,” added Sonata helpfully.
For a moment Lex wanted to ask how they’d figured out the assassin’s name, as well as how they’d managed to get her to return to what he presumed was her natural state, before deciding that he’d worry about those things later. “We need to find them. There’s no telling if they made it out or not.”
“I’ve got that covered.” Aria didn’t wait for a response before she sang a quick spell, waiting just a moment after the last note ended before pointing toward the back of the warehouse. “There. Blondie’s in that direction.”
“Let’s go,” urged Lex. “Quickly.”
It wasn’t just the possibility of Dark Streak coming to her senses that lent urgency to his voice. The fire had crept much closer during his third encounter with the assassin. The heat was rapidly becoming uncomfortable, with only a few obstacles now between them and the open flames. Worse, the air was rapidly fouling, and he knew it wouldn’t be too much longer before it became unbreathable altogether.
Fortunately, he had a way out prepared, since his short-range teleportation spell was one of the few bits of thaumaturgical magic he had left. It wouldn’t get them very far, its maximum range being only a little under a thousand feet, but it would be able to get them outside of the burning building.
Except, he realized, he couldn’t use it now. Even though that spell only required spoken components – in his current state, the proper gestures that most of his other spells needed would have been almost impossible for him to complete – he could only transport himself and four other individuals. And the presence of Sonata, Aria, Feather Duster, Nosey, and now Thermal Draft meant that there was one more person than he could bring along with him. Nor could he simply elect to stay behind himself and transport the five of them instead; the spell required that the caster be transported in order to work, bringing any passengers along as adjuncts. Nor could he try and empower it beyond its normal limits; such a thing was far beyond his current capabilities.
And since leaving anyone behind was completely unacceptable, that meant that they’d need to find some other way out before the assassin recovered, or the fire reached them, or they succumbed to smoke inhalation, or something else happened.
“I did it for her!” came Dark Streak’s wail from behind them. “Why can’t you see that?! No one would have accepted her!”
The anguished cry made Sonata glance back. “What’d you poison her with, anyway?”
“I don’t know what the substance actually is,” admitted Lex, “but the label said that it was called ‘waking nightmare.’” Although he had little use for humor, he couldn’t help but see the irony in that. “Given that it was pulverulent, I took a chance that it was meant to be inhaled rather than ingested.”
“Wait, so you just whipped up some sort of poison powder between when we left you and now?” Aria raised a brow at that, continuing to guide them through the maze of discarded factory equipment.
Lex tried to shake his head, but even that much was more than he could muster, so instead he replied verbally. “No. It was in one of that griffon’s bags.”
Sonata’s eyes widened in sudden insight. “Oh, you mean this one?” she asked, casually producing the pouch in question. Seeing the nonplussed looks directed her way then, she tilted her head. “What? I saw you fling it at that griffon when she rushed you and figured it might be important, so I scooped it up while Aria was acting like a damsel whose prince had come.”
The mare in question flushed. “I was not acting like a damsel!”
“Yuh-huh!” grinned Sonata. “You were all like ‘I knew you’d rescue us!’ and ‘She was going to cut my voice out, but I knew you’d stop her!’ and ‘I totes want to put on a pretty dress and sing you a love song!’”
“You made that last one up!” screeched Aria as she turned even redder.
Lex ignored the pair’s antics, instead eyeing the pouch Sonata was casually carrying. He’d retrieved it after having managed to accidentally cut if off of the griffon during their previous encounter, when he’d tried to enclose her in a cage of black crystals. It was similar to the haversack he’d lost during his fight with Xiriel, being enchanted so that it was bigger on the inside than on the outside. It was another indicator that this ‘Dark Streak’ was from Everglow – which was troubling in its implications, if Sonata was right that someone had paid the griffon to come and kill him – since containers with such a utilitarian enchantment were a regular feature of that world’s magic item shops.
Even so, he’d had no time to conduct even a partial inventory of what the bag contained. With how much of a struggle it had been just to walk, attempting to examine the contents of the sack while simultaneously tracking the sounds of battle – using that to home in on where Sonata and Aria had been fighting, since he’d suspected they’d be no match for the assassin – had simply been too much. It had been good fortune alone that the powder-filled vial labeled “waking nightmare” had been the first thing he’d seen when he’d opened it.
That, and a bit of divine assistance. Despite the fact that he didn’t need to breathe thanks to the iridescent spindle orbiting his head, Lex had little doubt that he’d introduced some of the waking nightmare poison into his own system. Holding it in his mouth made that all but guaranteed. Fortunately, it wouldn’t kick in for several hours, thanks to the goddess-given spell he’d used to slow the spread of poison through his system.
“There they are!” exclaimed Aria, coming to a sudden halt. “Blondie! Over here!”
It wasn’t hard to see the pony she was calling out to. Up ahead, Nosey’s eyes were widening behind her glasses, awkwardly turning toward them as she half-carried Feather Duster on her back, the unconscious maid draped over her and Thermal Draft, who was close by the reporter’s side.
That situation lasted only for a moment, however, before Thermal Draft yelled his name and made a mad dash toward him, leaving Nosey staggering as she found herself suddenly carrying Feather Duster all on her own.
Thermal Draft didn’t seem to care in the slightest, however, skidding to a halt right in front of him as she looked him over, her expression horrified. “Lex! Oh my gosh, you’re hurt really badly!” she exclaimed, wincing as she looked at his ruined eye. “That griffon, she…she said she did all sorts of horrible things to you, but I figured she had to be lying. You never lose a fight-”
“And he didn’t this time,” snapped Aria, giving the fretting pegasus a glare. “Why do you think we’re here and she’s not? Lex got the better of her.”
“Totes!” added Sonata. “He, like, breathed some of her own poison on her, and she went super-crazy! She started talking to herself, and looking at the walls, and-, um…hey Lex? How come you weren’t affected by that stuff you hit her with? I mean, you were holding it in your mouth, right? How come you haven’t gone round the bend the way Dark Streak did?”
Lex opened his mouth, but didn’t have a chance to answer as Nosey made their way over to them, grunting as she shouldered Feather Duster’s weight. “I’m glad you guys are here, we have a prob-, oh!” Her train of thought disrupted as she got a good look at Lex, Nosey’s hoof flew up to her mouth, her eyes starting to water as she looked him up and down. “Oh geez, Lex! You look awful!”
He didn’t bother to respond to that, instead turning his attention to the pegasus on her back. “Is Feather Duster alright?”
“We can’t get her to wake up,” answered Thermal Draft, still eyeing him as though she expected him to succumb to his injuries at any second. “We’ve tried shaking her, pinching her, yelling in her ears; none of it worked.”
“She’s still breathing, and her pulse is steady,” added Nosey. “We just can’t get her to come around. I think she’s drugged.” Shaking her head, she looked between him and the Sirens. “Listen, we’ve got a problem.”
“Aw come on! Another one?!” moaned Sonata. “What is it now? Is the whole place sinking? Or is it being invaded by giant rats? Or maybe it’s sinking because it’s being invaded by giant rat, since they’re gnawing on the foundation or something?”
“Worse,” replied Nosey grimly. “We’ve been checking, and there’s no way out of here.”
Aria slumped in place. “Are you kidding me?”
Nosey’s expression was bleak as she shook her head.
“I’m afraid not. We’re trapped.”