//------------------------------// // 721 - Missing Link // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// “Undo what you’ve done this instant!” snarled Lex, his eyes glowing brighter as he took a step toward Paska, keeping himself directly between Thermal Draft and the grotesque canine. “Do it, or I swear that your death-” “Won’t happen,” interrupted Sissel, raising Woodheart’s Woodheart’s unmoving body as she clenched the druid’s neck tighter. “All I have to do is squeeze, and this pony’s head will pop right off. And I promise you, I can do that faster than you can cast a spell, faster than your wolf can move, and faster than your adlet can give commands to her elementals.” “She’s really not kidding,” announced Paska casually, turning his back on Lex as he strolled over to where he’d dropped his hammer. Changing into human form as he approached the fallen weapon, he picked it up and gave it a practice swing before resting it on his shoulder. “Besides, you really don’t want me dead, since I need to be alive in order to lift the killing curse I put on your mare.” Lex’s ears twitched slightly at the word “curse,” causing him to glance back at Thermal Draft. The pegasus was wiping her the blood off of her lips, her face pale and her legs shaking, but seemingly unhurt otherwise. If Paska had used a malediction on her... Then there’s nothing you can do about it, laughed his tulpa. You really have to appreciate the irony. The pony who used curses so readily to control everyone around him wasn’t prepared to deal with his own technique! Clenching his jaw to keep from screaming in rage, Lex drew in a sharp breath as he fought to remain calm, refusing to acknowledge the voiceless words in his mind. The last time he’d allowed himself to lose control, he’d made a bad situation worse. That would not happen again now! Instead, he forced himself to examine the situation logically. Presuming that Paska was telling the truth about what he’d done to Thermal Draft, then his options for dealing with it were limited in the extreme. His dark magic allowed him to lay and remove curses, potentially devastating ones – as Princess Luna could attest – if he poured additional power into them, but that granted him no special ability to manipulate curses cast by others. Worse, he didn’t have any magic designed to counter curses in his repertoire of thaumaturgical spells, nor among the smattering of divine magic that the Night Mare had granted him. Imbuing Solvei or Akna with the power necessary to lift a curse was likely a route to failure also. Lex had used curses often enough to know that one designed specifically to kill likely had a fair bit of power behind it, and while he could imbue his servants with an incredible variety of abilities, there were limits on how much power he could bestow on them. Giving them the ability to shape and direct something as complex as a counter-curse while likewise granting them enough magical power to break a strong malediction was an unlikely proposition. A ritual, he decided. One designed specifically to negate what Paska had done, or at least suspend it until a better solution could be devised, had some potential. Except that would require in-depth study of the exact nature of the curse on Thermal Draft. Worse, it would take time; if he’d previously designed some sort of ritual to remove debilitating magic, it wouldn’t be too hard to adapt it, but as he’d never bothered to perform the rigorous testing and experimentation that such a ritual would require, he’d need to design it from scratch now. And while the basic paraphernalia to perform such work had been among the materials he’d received from Solvei’s mother, that was far from the fully-stocked laboratory that would have made the process go faster. Which meant that Thermal Draft’s body would be ravaged in the interval. Assuming he could come up with such a ritual before the curse killed her. Even if he could, that was no guarantee that he’d be able to cast it without interruption. Of course, there was always the possibility that if he could just get to the Shrine of the Starless Sky and complete the Rite of Sublimation, becoming an alicorn would give him the power to fix this. But Lex found himself loath to bet Thermal Draft’s life on that. Not when Spinner had predicted that he’d fail, for reasons that he wasn’t sure of and so couldn’t completely safeguard against. And even if he did become an alicorn, that would do nothing to help Woodheart. “So what’s it going to be?” called Sissel, apparently tired of waiting for his answer. “The longer it takes you to go and slay Hvitdod, the more damage Paska’s curse will do to your pegasus. And just as a reminder, if you say no, this one dies immediately,” she added, shaking Woodheart, the druid swaying like a rag doll in the giant’s grasp. “Lex,” moaned Mystaria, choking back a sob as she gave him a pleading look. “Woodheart’s like a sister to me! Please...please don’t give up on her!” Shadow was less felicitous, still struggling in her bonds. “I swear to each and every god in the pantheon, if you let that monster kill Woodheart, I will devote the rest of my life to ruining the rest of yours, do you hear me?!” “Just tell them you’ll do it!” yelled Spinner, her expression frantic. “You’re supposed to be a big hero back in your homeland, right?! Kill the dragon, save the girl? So just give them what they want!” Valor’s contribution was to snarl angrily, still in her bear form as she thrashed, having no more success in breaking the black crystals than Shadow Star. But there was still one member of Fail Forward who was free. “MEEP!” No longer being held by Thermal Draft, and having had a chance to get his breath back after tiring himself out struggling to escape the pegasus’ grip before, Littleknight charged toward Sissel’s image, horn lowered and eyes locked onto Woodheart. It was a distraction that Lex didn’t need, causing him to let out a hiss of frustration. The stupid creature was accomplishing nothing, not having figured out that it was simply looking upon an image of its mistress that was being projected from elsewhere. With its psychic connection to her shut down, it had no way of sensing where she really was, which...which... Suddenly, Lex knew what to do. His horn lit up as he grabbed the almiraj in his telekinesis, the creature squealing as it was surrounded in a purple aura and floated back toward him. The sight made Sissel clench her hand tighter, and this time Lex was sure that she’d cut off the druid’s air, which prompted him to speak up. “I want a guarantee that you’ll return Woodheart and remove the malediction you’ve placed on Thermal Draft if I kill this dragon for you.” “Allow me to make a counter-proposal,” replied Sissel easily, not opening her hand as Woodheart’s face began to turn blue. “I can guarantee you that they’ll both die if you don’t, your girlfriend slowly and this one right now.” The sight of Woodheart dying right in front of them brought a renewed round of cursing and shrieking and pleading from her companions. Thermal Draft was quieter, simply whimpering his name as she looked between him and Sissel with wide eyes, Akna shuffling in place as though not sure what to do. Even Solvei sent a mental query his way, asking for orders. Lex ignored them all. Instead, he kept his eyes on Sissel even as he telekinetically brought Littleknight close enough to grab, pinning the wriggling creature against his chest with his foreleg. His left foreleg. “Then I suppose there’s only one choice left,” admitted Lex. That was enough to bring a small smile to Sissel’s face. “I’m glad you realize that. But I’m going to need you to say it out loud, if you don’t mind.” “Certainly,” granted Lex with a nod, even as he put the desperate plan he’d come up with a moment ago into action. An instant later, Woodheart vanished from Sissel’s grasp. For the first time since she’d introduced herself, the giant’s composure faltered. Her eyes widened as her lips pulled back in a sudden grimace, fingers contracting around empty air. But even as she recovered her stance, momentarily thrown off-balance by the sudden loss of the druid’s weight, the sound of a shuddering breath being drawn pulled Sissel’s gaze over to where her hostage had gone. Gently lowering Woodheart to the ground after she’d appeared in his grasp, the smile that Lex gave Sissel then was pure viciousness. Giving in to Sissel’s demand to go slay that dragon she’d been assigned to kill had never been an option for Lex. Even overlooking the fact that doing so would allow the snow-skinned humanoid to manipulate him at will – there was an entire village of hostages she could take only a few days from here – doing what she wanted would have accomplished little. As soon as she had his agreement, Lex had no doubt that Sissel and her siblings would withdraw to whatever base they were operating from, taking Woodheart with them. If that happened, rescuing the druid would become exponentially more difficult. Worse, there was absolutely no reason for the pale-skinned humanoid to keep her word about returning their hostage after Hvitdod was slain; given how many ponies these creatures had already murdered, it was more likely that Sissel would kill Woodheart as soon as the mare was no longer useful. Which meant that the druid needed to be reacquired now. As worried as Lex was about Thermal Draft, he at least had ideas – not very good ones, but ideas nonetheless – as to how she could be saved. But Woodheart was only seconds away from death, and there likely wouldn’t be another chance to get her back even if he made a deal to buy her a little more time. Which meant that his only choice was to bet everything on Littleknight. And on the Night Mare’s divine authority. Upon taking hold of the almiraj, Lex had immediately focused his will upon the creature, using the power that his goddess had given him to enhance its connection to its mistress. There was no guarantee that doing so would allow it to punch through the spell that Sissel – or whichever member of her misbegotten clan – had used to suppress the link between the two of them, but Lex had felt confident that it could. After all, when he’d fought Tlerekithres back in Vanhoover, the kraken had used its magic to try and resist being compelled via divine authority. But Lex had been able to push back against that, channeling his own power into his goddess-given ability, and had managed to keep the kraken at bay. If divine authority could resist even the formidable magic of a creature fearsome enough to command an entire undersea army – as well as act as the focus for Vanhoover’s elemental bleed – then there was every reason to believe it could overwhelm a spell from the monsters in front of him now. But that was only half of what Lex had wanted to accomplish. His understanding of the link between himself and Solvei was still imperfect. But according to what Mystaria and her friends had posited, it was similar to what Woodheart and Littleknight shared. And he’d already confirmed – back during their fight at the inn – that Littleknight was subject to the Night Mare’s divine authority. And while Lex had never been able to bring himself to experiment with enhancing his connection to Solvei – the fact that they were already connected in such an intimate way was unsettling enough; the prospect of deepening their bond, even temporarily, wasn’t a possibility that he wanted to explore – there was no reason why he couldn’t use divine authority to augment Littleknight’s link to Woodheart. While Mystaria had never mentioned the druid being able to teleport her familiar to her side, instead indicating that their link was weak enough that it essentially collapsed if they weren’t within a mile of each other, Lex’s connection to Solvei made it clear that such a thing was within the realm of possibility. What was less certain was whether or not divine authority could not only augment Woodheart and Littleknight’s bond to the point of actualizing that possibility, but also reverse it, allowing the almiraj to bring the druid to him rather than the other way around. As a hypothesis it was sound; the master-familiar bond was heavily slanted toward the former, but it was still a two-way connection. If he used divine authority to empower it – now that they were within its normal range of operation – and allow Littleknight’s overwhelming desire to be reunited with his mistress as a catalyst, then in theory it would allow the almiraj to teleport Woodheart from wherever Sissel was hiding nearby to his current location, which was in Lex’s grasp. And now, that theory had been proven correct. With shrieks of joy coming from his allies, and cries of alarm from his enemies, Lex’s eyes lit up as he made the black crystals imprisoning the rest of Fail Forward turn to dust. But he kept his gaze directly on Sissel as he spoke aloud the one and only choice that she’d insisted he say: “I’m going to kill all of you.”