Spinner was the first one to speak up in the wake of Solvei’s announcement. “Okay, I’ll bite: what’s an adlet?”
“A traitor,” spat the winter wolf, giving the tied-up lupinoid a look of contempt. “A coward. Hrothvitnir created them, just like he did us. But when Vutok the Destroyer came forth in fire and wrath, these ungrateful wretches fled rather than fight for their world or their maker.”
That description prompted a snarl from the adlet, his cowed expression giving way to a look of anger. “You’re twisting what happened! The only reason Nuti-Amaguk created us was so he could sacrifice us in his war! When we realized that he didn’t value our lives except as weapons, we decided for ourselves not to die fighting his battle with Ikumak-Amaguk! Now we live as a free people, beholden to no one, unlike you!”
Solvei’s teeth pulled back from her lips, growling dangerously. “You mistake savagery for freedom!”
“You’re one to talk of savagery,” sneered the adlet, the argument seeming to rile him up rather than intimidate him more. “We’ve grown strong and wise in our independence, while your kind still run naked through the snow, with no weapons other than the sharpness of your teeth and no magic beyond the chill of your breath!”
“Your clothes and your tools don’t make up for the fact that your spirits are empty,” retorted Solvei, her eyes flashing as black crystals grew around her, covering her from snout to tail in armor even as she grew in size, looming over the bound adlet. “And the magic my master has given me is both weapon and garment, far greater than anything your kind have ever-”
“That’s enough, Solvei.”
Lex’s order was given in an even tone, but the winter wolf nevertheless whimpered, her tail drooping. “But Master, this lowly creature-”
“Is wasting my time with fables when there are more urgent matters to address,” interrupted Lex. “Now stand aside.”
Solvei didn’t argue, shrinking back to her usual size as she let her armor crumble to nothing, backing off as Lex stepped toward the adlet. “Tell me more about the yetis,” he demanded.
The recalcitrance that the adlet had recovered while bickering with Solvei fled then, the two-legged wolf shuddering as he looked away from the masked pony. “Like I said, they’re heretics. They don’t work in harmony with the spirits of the land and sky as we do” – Woodheart perked up at that, giving an inquisitive churr that Lex ignored – “nor do they honor any gods. Instead they bow and scrape for some icy monstrosity that calls itself Kryonex, which isn’t-”
“I don’t care about their religion,” hissed Lex. “You said that your people killed them all, and that it couldn’t have been correct that a large group of them moved through the pass only a few days ago, even though that’s what happened. Is it possible that there was a troop of yetis that escaped your notice when you attempted to wipe them out?”
The question made Valor cock her head. “You think the yetis attacking that village is related to what happened between them and the adlets?”
“It’s possible,” murmured Shadow thoughtfully. “If a couple of them survived, maybe Grisela found them and promised to help them get revenge. Maybe leading them to the village in order to kidnap ponies for food was her way of providing for her new followers.”
“But this wasn’t just ‘a couple,’” protested Mystaria. “There were almost twenty of them. Not to mention it doesn’t make sense that they’d need to go all the way through their enemy’s territory just to get that much food. That village is the most distant from Bright Night, and that innkeeper made it sound like this only started happening recently.”
“Maybe it’s because of how heavily it’s been snowing recently,” offered Thermal Draft. “That’s what happened with Solvei’s family. Even though the snowy weather was more comfortable for them, it made game harder to come by.”
“Shut up, all of you.” Lex didn’t so much as raise his voice, but his cold glare made it clear that he expected to be obeyed. “I want to hear the prisoner’s answer.”
The adlet grimaced at being at the center of everyone’s attention again. “Maybe one or two could have gotten away, but no more than that. There’s no way they could have replenished their numbers enough to make any sort of war party this soon.”
“Are there other yeti tribes around here they could have called upon for reinforcements?” pressed Lex.
A sliver of the adlet’s earlier indignation reasserted itself then. “We weren’t just trading skirmishes with a few groups of those idolators; we warred with all of the yetis in this region, and we won! After the fighting had finished, our shaman communed with the land and announced that there weren’t enough of those filthy creatures left to oppose us!”
His ire fled as quickly as it had come, and he slumped back down then. “It was the last revelation she gave us before she passed away, and we held our victory games in her honor. Akna wept when she ate her bones, saying her grandmother-”
“‘Ate her bones’?” cut in Thermal Draft, looking horrified. “You…devoured your shaman?!”
The adlet looked at her, confusion written all over his face. “Of course we did! That’s how…” Whatever he was going to say was lost as his eyes widened, recalling something. “Panuk’s body! What happened to it?!”
“Why?” asked Valor, a disgusted look on her face. “Hoping for a snack?”
“We eat our fallen so that their spirits aren’t lost to us!” There was a desperate tone in the adlet’s voice, as though imploring them to understand. “Consuming their flesh is what allows them to be reborn within the tribe! If they’re devoured by scavengers, it might be generations before we eat enough of the scroungers who carry the fragments of their being for them to be restored to us!”
“Maybe if you actually had an afterlife to look forward to, you wouldn’t need to worry about what happens to your kind after they die,” snickered Solvei, openly enjoying the adlet’s distress. “Your friend should have thought of that before he challenged my master.”
The adlet’s eyes widened, looking between Solvei and Lex. “What are you say-”
His question was cut off in favor of a terrified yelp. The reason for it was obvious to everyone as Lex’s horn had already begun to glow, his eyes doing the same as a black aura appeared around the captive adlet, shrinking to cover him like a second skin. The others all jumped at the sight save for Solvei, who smirked.
“Lex!” yelled Mystaria, looking like she wasn’t sure whether to rush toward him or the thrashing humanoid. “What are you doing?!”
“I told that thing before that I was growing tired of listening to its pointless digressions,” answered Lex, his voice stern. “Now it’s going to pay for refusing to heed my warning.”
“So you’re going to suffocate it instead?!” Spinner couldn’t have sounded more horrified as she watched the adlet writhe helplessly, unable to free itself from the black coating covering it.
“‘No torture’ my ass!” spat Shadow, bringing her dagger to bear as she rushed toward the adlet, clearly intent on cutting him out of whatever clingy material Lex was covering him with.
But she didn’t even make it halfway to the adlet before Solvei intercepted her, the winter wolf growling as she moved between the earth mare and their prisoner. “Master is punishing that loathsome creature for disobeying him. Interfere with that, and I’ll be the one who punishes you.”
“We’re used to taking punishment,” shot back Valor, moving up alongside Shadow, shield held at the ready.
“Not your best comeback, Valor,” sighed Spinner, starting to strum her lute as Woodheart barked in agreement.
“All of you, back off!” yelled Thermal Draft. “Lex knows what he’s doing!”
Seeing how fast everything had gone downhill, Mystaria bit her lip, giving the unicorn in question a pleading look. “Lex, stop this!” she pleaded. “I thought you didn’t believe in mistreating prisoners!”
“I don’t,” answered Lex calmly. “And if you idiots had paid closer attention instead of jumping to conclusions, you’ll see that I’m not. Look.”
He held a hoof out toward the adlet, directing everyone’s attention to it…just in time for them to see the black covering sink into the creature’s body, seeping into every inch of it, until it had completely withdrawn into the creature, who was left gasping and shuddering. “Wh-what happened?!” he croaked. “What did you do to me?!”
“I placed a curse on you,” intoned Lex darkly. “One that will keep your spirit from ever returning to your tribe after you die.”
That sent a shudder through the members of Fail Forward, glancing at each other in trepidation. “You used some sort of necromancy on him?” murmured Spinner with a gulp.
The question drew an amused snort from Lex, glancing at Solvei as he telepathically gave her an order.
Blinking in confusion at the instructions, she turned and approached the adlet, ignoring the way he cringed as she padded over and picked him up in her jaws again, just like she had when she’d sat him upright before. This time, however, her eyes bulged the instant she closed her mouth around him, and she flung herself backward a moment later, heaving and retching and she furiously wiped her paws over her muzzle.
The spectacle drew blank stares for a moment, until Mystaria’s eyes widened. “Wait, don’t tell me…”
“You made him taste bad?” Thermal Draft’s voice was an equal mixture of incredulous and impressed.
But the adlet himself took the news much worse, his eyes widening. “No!” Twisting in place, he managed to bend over far enough to put his snout to clawed paws at the bottom of his digitigrade legs. Having worn no footwear, it was an easy matter for him to nip at one ankle…at which point he, like Solvei, immediately gagged, spitting it out with a moan of misery as his stomach roiled and his eyes watered.
“Now you see how it is,” explained Lex as the adlet continued to convulse. “Your flesh has become completely inedible. No matter what sort of palate it has or how it prepares you, the taste of your body is one that no creature can stomach.”
“You…you can’t do this!” wailed the adlet, its voice rapidly turning hysterical. “Please, have mercy!”
Lex laughed darkly, holding up his wire-wrapped foreleg. “I don’t show mercy. When you die, your body will be left to rot, with neither your kin nor the carrion-feeders consuming it. What happens to your spirit then, unable to be reborn among your people?” His horn lit up again, this time dragging the adlet back into a sitting position as Lex stepped closer to him. “Go on. You enjoy prattling on about that primitive religion of yours, don’t you? Tell me what happens to the spirits of your dead that can’t be returned to your tribe.”
The adlet was openly weeping now, going completely limp in Lex’s aura. “Don’t do this to me!” he sobbed. “I beg you!”
“This is a first,” muttered Shadow. “A guy breaking down in tears because he just found out he’s not going to be eaten by cannibals.”
“That’s all a bunch of hooey though, isn’t it?” murmured Drafty, abandoning her position at the mouth of the cave to join the mares of Fail Forward as they looked at Lex. “I mean, all that stuff about their spirits…their souls, being reborn if they eat each other…it doesn’t actually work like that, right?”
“The short answer is ‘no, but,’” sighed Mystaria. “The longer answer is that it’s complicated. While the passage of souls to the Outer Planes – either to the realm of whatever god they worshiped in life, or to the plane whose numinous gradient is the closest match for that of their soul – has been repeatedly documented by sages, there’s evidence to suggest that a soul can alter its own trajectory after its mortal life comes to an end. The most notable example is souls that refuse to move on after death and become various incorporeal undead, like ghosts and specters. So while it’s never been proven that I’m aware of, in theory someone who believed in reincarnation strongly enough could potentially-”
“Your whimpering moves me not at all,” continued Lex to the adlet, the mares all quieting instantly as they waited to see what he was going to do next. “If you want to be absolved, then you’ll offer me your obedience, not your tears.”
The adlet looked up then, a glimmer of hope in its eyes. “And…and then you’ll remove this curse?”
“That depends on how well you follow my orders.”
Gulping, the adlet nodded. “I…I understand…”
“Good.” Releasing the furred humanoid from his telekinesis, Lex glared down at it imperiously. “Now, after your people killed the yetis, what happened to their bodies?”
“They were disposed of.” The adlet’s voice was one of utter defeat, as though he couldn’t imagine voicing any opposition now. “Their hides became our tents, their bones were used for tools, their fur was made into our clothes. We made use of them for everything except food. We might threaten to eat other thinking creatures, but that’s a scare tactic; doing so would pollute our spirits.”
Lex considered that for a moment, then switched topics. “There’s a temple to the pony goddess known as the Night Mare somewhere in this area, the Shrine of the Starless Sky. What do you know of it?”
The adlet paused for a moment, then shook his head, cringing slightly. “I’ve never heard of such a place.” As if anticipating Lex’s anger at the lack of information, he quickly continued, the words spilling quickly from his lips. “But Akna, who became our foremost shaman after her grandmother passed, might know of it! She has much mystical knowledge, and the spirits tell her many things! In fact” – seemingly desperate to please now, he nodded eagerly – “I bet she could tell you everything you want to know about that place! Or even take you to it!”
“Why bother?” snorted Shadow. “We’ve already got a map.”
Mystaria frowned. “We have a map, but it’s decades old, and doesn’t account for things like terrain hazards, dangerous creatures in the area, or how the heavy snowfall might have made certain paths more difficult.”
Spinner glanced between Mystaria and their captive, raising a brow. “So you’re saying…what, exactly? That we should go ask for directions from a tribe of cannibals, one of whom we just killed, another of whom our unicorn friend here cursed, and in the company of a winter wolf, which we know they hate?”
“Or,” countered Mystaria, “we go ask for help from a tribe of people whom we know are the enemies of the yetis we just fought, who don’t eat ponies the way said yetis do, and who might be able to save us a lot of time and trouble finding the place we’re looking for. Besides, we need to talk to them after what happened.”
Valor raised a brow. “How do you figure?”
“She’s suggesting that, having killed one of their number and captured another, the remaining adlets might be preparing to retaliate against the pony communities nearby,” answered Lex, ignoring the relieved sigh that came from their captive upon hearing that no one else from his scouting party had lost their lives. “In which case, the situation is one that needs to be dealt with preemptively, since I have no intention of allowing that to happen.”
“Exactly,” nodded Mystaria. “So it might be worthwhile to try and deescalate any potential hostilities before they occur. There’s no point in saving everyone here from Grisela if we start a war with the adlets in the process.”
“Oh wonderful,” sighed Shadow. “This trek we’re on just keeps getting better and better. So now we’re going to pay a visit to a tribe of wolf-people? The same wolf-people who killed the yetis that almost killed us?”
“We did alright for ourselves fighting them just now,” shrugged Valor, to which Woodheart offered an enthusiastic chirp. “Besides, I think Woodsy is eager to talk to people who communicate with spirits the way she does.”
“And if they try anything,” added Solvei, glancing at their morose-looking captive, “we can just kill the rest of them.”
“Or not, please,” winced Thermal Draft. “I’d like to avoid more fights if we can.”
Her eyes slid to Lex as she said that, but the unicorn was already looking back at their prisoner. “You’re certain that your tribe’s shaman knows about the Night Mare’s temple?”
“I’m sure she must know something,” he insisted, nodding.
“Then you know what to do if you want to have any hope of having your fellows eat you once you die,” answered Lex, his lip curling in disdain. “Take us to this shaman of yours.”