//------------------------------// // 702 - Casualty Assessment // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// “WOODHEART!” Mystaria’s heartbroken cry seemed to drain the energy from her, causing Luminace’s priestess to sink to her knees in dejection. But she wasn’t given a chance to wallow in her grief, as Shadow Star bounded over to her, cuffing Mystaria across the shoulder. “Get up! They might still be here!” Valor seemed to agree, the mare-turned-bear giving a guttural roar as she leaped through the space where Paska, Blat, and Vidrig had been only a moment ago. When she encountered nothing, she turned around as soon as her paws touched down, slashing through the empty space where the trio had been as though not having realized that they’d vanished. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” Jogging over to her friends, Spinner kept her lute at the ready, looking equal parts furious and anxious. “Mysty, do something! Figure out where they went so we can track them down and get Woodheart back!” “We don’t even know if they’re really gone!” insisted Shadow, glancing around suspiciously. “None of them were leaving tracks during our fight just now, the same way Grisela didn’t, so if that scroll the bald guy used made them invisible, they might still be here!” “Their scent is fading,” called Toklo, the adlet standing apart from the ponies. Despite his announcement, he hadn’t lowered his spear, and was also looking around warily. “If they’re still here, they’re concealing that as well.” “They’re gone,” moaned Mystaria, making no move to stand up. “The scroll that Paska guy read was a teleportation spell. I recognized some of the words in the incantation he used to activate it.” “Great!” yelled Spinner, though the word came out more impatient than excited. “So now that we know they’re gone, let’s figure out how to follow them! C’mon, you’re a priestess of the goddess of magic, right?! What’s our next move?!” “There is no ‘next move’!” screamed Mystaria, suddenly furious. Standing up at last, she gestured at where Valor was tearing up the ground where their attackers had vanished, apparently unable to contain her anger. “The verbal components for a teleport spell don’t include its destination, and I don’t know any magic for tracking them! Which means they could be anywhere! They could be halfway across the world for all I know! We can’t-” “MOVE!” yelled Toklo suddenly, gesturing toward something behind them. “MOVE NOW!” As one, the trio of ponies turned…just in time to see the twisted monsters that Lex had summoned bearing down on them. Their voices overlapping in a dissonant clangor of enmity and recrimination, the procession of horrors hadn’t stopped just because their target had disappeared, still advancing with ruthless determination…right toward the three of them. The sight was enough to make all three earth mares freeze in place. “Oh gods!” whimpered Mystaria. “Oh no!” muttered Spinner. “Oh sh-” Shadow didn’t have a chance to finish her curse as she was suddenly hit by a quarter-ton black bear, Valor – still under the effects of the Spinner’s speed-enhancing spell – snatching her up and throwing her onto her back before tucking Mystaria under her foreleg and grabbing Spinner’s tail in her jaws, dragging them all out of the way of the throng of twisted ponies. With nothing to stop them, the misshapen ponies descended onto the same patch of ground that Valor had been clawing at only a few moments earlier, swarming over the trampled snow in search of their prey. Undeterred at finding nothing, they continued to tread the area over and over, still shrieking and snarling hateful words toward the pony who had summoned them. Letting out a breath as she realized that – unlike a few minutes ago – Lex’s out-of-control magic wasn’t being directed at them, Spinner pulled her tail free of Valor’s muzzle, taking a few deep breaths to try and slow the pounding of her heart as she stood up. “Right…I suppose there’s one person here who has magic enough to figure out where they went.” “Are you serious?” snorted Shadow, climbing down from Valor’s back. She glanced back at Lex as she spoke, the stallion having yet to retake corporeal form, the mass of inky blackness that was his body still churning heavily even as Thermal Draft continued to hover around him, pleading in vain for him to calm down. “We can’t rely on him for help. Mysty said he can’t recharge his magic, which means that even if he has whatever spell we need, he can’t prepare it. Not to mention the fact that he’s clearly gone completely around the bend. And, I almost forgot, HE KILLED WOODHEART!!!” She let that hang in the air for a moment, glaring at Spinner as though daring the filidh to argue the point with her. But it was Valor – a shudder going through the black bear as her body shrank and the fur covering her thinned out, returning her to her pony form a moment later – who spoke up. “Do we-, thpff, pah!” Coughing as she spit out a few hairs from Spinner’s tail, Valor rubbed her muzzle before trying again. “Do we know for sure that she died?” “Are you kidding me?!” Narrowing her eyes, Shadow pointed at Toklo was going over to check on Panuk’s body. “Did you not see what that maniac’s mask did yesterday?! It’s why we’re hauling a corpse along with us now!” “Just because someone’s been stabbed doesn’t mean that the wound’s fatal!” argued Valor. “I’m not ready to give Woodheart up if there’s any chance that she might still be alive!” “Toklo!” The adlet in question’s head jerked up as Spinner called out to him, as though surprised to be addressed by name. “You were right there when Woodheart…when Lex’s mask hit her. Is there any chance that she survived?” The question made Toklo grimace, looking down. “…I don’t know.” “Oh come on!” Stamping a hoof in exasperation, Spinner gave him a frustrated look. “She saved your life, and you can’t even tell us whether or not she died in the attempt?!” The rebuke made Toklo’s grip on his spear tighten. “I don’t know! Everything happened fast! One moment that pony went mad and tried to kill me, then suddenly I’m tackled from behind, and then we were attacked by those monsters!” “How do you not-” But Spinner’s angry retort was cut off as Valor put a hoof on her shoulder, giving a silent shake of her head when the bard gave her an angry look. For a moment Spinner seemed ready to lash out at Valor too, only to let out a shaky breath a second later, giving the adlet one last dark look before turning away from him. “Mysty, you’re our resident magic expert. Please…please tell me you think there’s a chance Woodheart’s not dead.” Mystaria didn’t reply, instead staring at where the monster ponies Lex had brought forth were milling about. They hadn’t moved from the place where Paska and the others had disappeared, simply going back and forth over the same stretch of ground again and again, still rattling off a litany of abuse toward Lex. It was only when Valor’s hoof touched her side, making her gasp, that Mystaria turned away from the grim spectacle. “Huh?” Valor glanced at the horde of nightmares that had captured Mystaria’s attention before turning back to the priestess, her expression pensive. “Are you okay?” “…if I hadn’t tried to use my telepathy to speak to Lex-” “Oh no,” interrupted Spinner. “No no no no no! There’s no way any of this is your fault! The only thing you did wrong was wanting to believe that nutcase wasn’t a disaster waiting to happen! Tell her, Shadow! You didn’t trust that guy…Shadow?” It was only then that the three of them realized that Shadow Star had abandoned the conversation, instead having picked up one of the spears that Toklo had thrown as she walked a short distance away, poking at the ground with the weapon as if searching for something. Mystaria opened her mouth to ask what her friend was doing, but the question died on her lips as Shadow unearthed what she’d been looking for. Lex’s mask. “Knew I threw it around here somewhere,” muttered Shadow, glancing at where Thermal Draft was still trying in vain to get Lex to respond. Apparently satisfied that neither of them were paying attention to her, she stood over the skull-shaped piece of wood and raised Toklo’s spear, keeping the business end pointed at the mask. “Shadow!” called Valor, her voice tense. “What are you doing?” “Demanding that Woodheart’s blood price be paid,” snapped Shadow. “That’s not-” Shadow didn’t let her finish, bringing the spear down as hard as she could right between the mask’s eyeholes. The blade sank into the wood with a resounding thunk, one which made everyone watching flinch. But other than the deep scratch marring the surface of the mask, nothing else happened, which was enough to draw a muffled curse from Shadow as she pulled the blade free and raised it up for another strike. “Shadow!” yelled Mystaria, rushing forward. “Don’t!” “Can it, Mysty! We tried it your way and it only made things worse!” snarled Shadow as she brought the spear down again, this time opening a deep gouge in the center of the mask. “Bad enough when we thought that unicorn was just some weirdo with a lot of magic and a bad attitude! Turns out he’s completely insane, and that just cost one of our friends her life!” She wrenched the spear free again, shoving Mystaria away when the other mare tried to stop her. “So this time, instead of just hoping that he’s a decent pony deep down, I’m doing something about it! He’s dangerous enough with being able to turn into shadows and create giant razor crystals and summon a horde of monsters from nowhere, so he doesn’t-” THUNK! This time the spear cut a deeper rent in the mask. “NEED!” THUNK! The blade punched completely through its target this time, sending a large crack through the length of the wooden skull. “THIS!” THUNK! The last blow was more than the mask could take, the wood splintering as it split perfectly down the middle. With its container ruptured, the magic it held immediately flooded out, and all four mares shuddered as a wave of cold that had nothing to do with the temperature washed over them. But the feeling receded almost instantly, and after several moments of nothing happening, it became obvious that there was nothing else to fear from the item’s having been broken. Even so, Spinner let out a sigh of relief as she put a hoof over her heart. “Tip for the future, Shadow. Next time, give your friends a word of warning, okay?” “This had to be done before the crackpot came to his senses,” shot back Shadow, throwing the spear aside. “And I didn’t want to take the chance that he’d start reacting to things when he heard me say ‘hey guys, I’m going to break the nutcase’s killer mask before he flips out again and murders someone else with it.’” “You do realize that if Woodheart’s alive, we’re going to need his help rescuing her, right?” Valor canted her head in Lex’s direction. “He’s the only reason we survived fighting Grisela and her yetis. It was his tactics that let us hold our own against the adlets. And those…things, that he summoned were what chased off those monsters just now. If Mystaria’s correct about something being wrong with his magic, then destroying that mask has made him weaker at a time when we’ll be relying on his strength to get our friend back.” “Valor’s right,” announced Mystaria. “Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea, but we’re committed now, and we’re going to need Lex’s help if we want to get Woodheart back alive.” Spinner’s eyes lit up with hope. “So you do think she survived!” “I don’t know for certain, but I think there’s a chance.” “Based on what?” Shadow’s voice was bitter as she kicked one of the broken halves of Lex’s mask. “That adlet didn’t survive, remember?” “That mask was filled with necromantic energy, which in a lot of ways is like a poison,” explained Mystaria. “When you take in a toxic substance, your body starts trying to expel it. You might throw up or start sweating or even hack up blood; those are all methods of trying to get rid of a harmful substance. Necromantic energy is similar; the reactions aren’t necessarily physical, but your body still tries to reject it.” “And you think Woodheart might have done that?” questioned Valor, her expression stoic. Mystaria gave a helpless shrug. “It’s possible. If she was only grazed-” “She was!” yelled Spinner, making no effort to hide her excitement. “I saw it! When she jumped on Toklo, the mask only brushed against her flank for a second!” “So maybe she might have just gotten a small dose of what the mask was capable of,” reasoned Mystaria. “In that case, even if she lost consciousness, it’s possible that she didn’t die outright.” Despite her pessimism, Shadow seemed to be coming around to what her friend was proposing. “If you’re right…and those freaks just now wanted to snatch Lex without killing him, but had to grab someone else instead…” “Then if Woodheart is alive, they might keep her that way, at least for a little while,” finished Valor. “Yes! I knew it!” Jumping up, Spinner punched a hoof in the air. “I knew Woodsy wouldn’t let her ticket be punched so easily!” “I just wish there was some way to be sure.” Closing her eyes, Mystaria reached up and touched her holy symbol. “Luminace, please, send us a sign. Let us know if our friend is still with us, and what we can do to rescue her if she is. I have faith in her, and in your benevolence, but right now we need-” “Meep?” Her eyes snapping open, Mystaria went rigid, barely noticing how the rest of her friends were likewise stunned at the obvious answer that they’d all forgotten. As one, they slowly turned their heads to look behind them. And Littleknight, Woodheart’s familiar, cocked his head curiously as he looked back at them.