//------------------------------// // 4 - Going Off-Track // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// For a long moment, Lex simply stared at the twisted wreckage of the railroad track. Though he knew that the odds of this having anything to do with him personally were virtually nil, he couldn’t help but feel slighted. First Sonata had bought the wrong tickets, then Princess Cadance’s sending missionaries to upstage him before he’d even arrived, and now this. It was like the entire endeavor was cursed. Shaking off his self-pity, Lex approached the group of ponies in railway-worker uniforms that were huddled in front of the ruined tracks. “What happened here?” he called out as he neared them. He doubted they’d have any answers, but given that they rode trains for a living, maybe they’d have some sort of insight, no matter how slight. It was a slim hope to begin with, and it was dashed a moment later as the group turned to face him. “‘What happened here?’” echoed a middle-aged-looking unicorn. “Something done torn up the track is what happened here! Look at this mess! Never seen anything like it in all my years.” There was a murmur of assent from the rest of the group, and the old unicorn continued. “It’s a good thing that I was keeping such a close eye on things, otherwise this’d been ten times worse!” He turned to regard his fellows, his tone turning lecturing. “You see? This is why a real engineer never slacks off on the job, no matter how many times he’s been over a route!” Lex, however, wasn’t concerned with the instructional value of the narrowly-averted disaster. “But what happens now? How do we get to Tall Tale?” The engineer turned back to him, his face making it clear what he thought of the question. “Son, are you daft? We’re not getting to Tall Tale with the track like this!” He waved a hoof at the devastation behind him. “Nothing we can do except throw the train into reverse and head on back. We’ll let the authorities know and they’ll send out a team to make some repairs. Shouldn’t take more than a couple a’ weeks to get it all patched up.” “A couple of weeks?” Lex fought down a surge of anxiety at the pronouncement. There had to be some other option! The older unicorn seemed to sense Lex’s distress. “Listen son, it’s not the end of the world. If you really need to get to Tall Tale so bad, you can ride back to Canterlot and switch lines to go to Vanhoover. That’s darn close, though you’ll need to get to Tall Tale from there on your own, since the marshlands make it downright impossible to lay decent tracks.” “How long will that take?” asked Lex through gritted teeth. He didn’t bother to correct the stallion about his ultimate destination. “Well, we’ll need four days to get back, since we’ll want to go a little slower in reverse just to be safe. After that, you’ll need five days to get from Canterlot to Vanhoover, since you’ve gotta go around the mountains. And I’d have to check the schedule, but you might need to wait a couple a’ days to catch the next train to Vanhoover anyway. So I’d say about a week-and-a-half or so, two weeks at most.” Lex opened his mouth to say exactly what he thought of that option, but before he could he was interrupted by the sound of Sonata calling his name, an edge of worry in her voice that instantly captured his attention, making him turn to face her as she came galloping up to join him. “What’s wrong?” “Bad news! The passengers are-, whoa!” She stopped instantly at the sight of the wrecked tracks, eyes wide. “Like, what happened here?!” Putting a hoof under her chin, Lex turned her to face him. “Sonata, focus! The passengers! What happened?” “Oh yeah! The passengers are all, like, super spooked!” A pregnant pause ensued, until it slowly dawned on everypony there that that was all she had to say. “What…that’s it?” sputtered Lex. Sonata nodded, a serious expression on her face. “Yeah! They’re all totes freaked out that we’ve just stopped in the middle of nowhere! I think some of them have caught a glimpse of what’s going on, because I heard some of them saying something was wrong with the track, but I had no idea it was like this.” She looked at the twisted metal that had once been the rails again, seeming to consider them. “Though when you look at it more, it’s really not all that frightening. I mean, I once used a spell to totally pump myself up so that I could bend metal just like that really easily. You remember that? It was after that other train we were on had wrecked, and we were looking for survivors.” She smiled, apparently remembering the incident fondly. She was alone in her sentimentality, as several of the railway workers had raised eyebrows in response to her story. “I, um, I should go back to the passengers. Try to calm them down,” ventured one of them. Several agreements were murmured, and the gathering began to break up and head back to the train. Only the unicorn engineer stayed behind, walking up to Sonata with a curious look on his face. “Little lady, I’ve never heard of a pony casting spells if they’re not a unicorn, but if you weren’t pulling our legs with that story, then could you maybe do something about that stretch of track?” “Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. Putting a hoof to her chin, she looked upwards in consideration before glancing at the tracks and giving a loud “hmm.” She repeated the process a few times before finally admitting, “Sorries. But I don’t have any spells to fix stuff, and I don’t think that just bending the tracks back will be enough. I mean, they look totally trashed.” Despite her diagnosis, she was smiling. “But I totally bet this guy here can fix things!” She pointed at Lex and continued. “He’s, like, a genius, and he’s got super awesome magic!” Lex didn’t seem to appreciate her vote of confidence. In fact, he shifted rather uncomfortably in response. “Sonata…there’s nothing I can do to fix this.” “No way! I thought you’d have, I dunno, nine different plans for how to make this all better!” He shook his head, slightly shamefaced at not living up to her expectations, but he had already considered his capabilities in response to the current situation and come to the conclusion that repairing the tracks was beyond him. He had known a spell that might have been able to repair even this extensive level of damage…but it had been one of the spells that the Night Mare had withdrawn from him after he’d lost her favor. The other option was to call upon the dark magic of King Sombra that he’d inherited when he’d grafted his horn onto himself. One of the primary powers it had granted him was to crystalize pure darkness into any shape he desired, though the more mass it had, the more power it required to create. Moreover, such objects were always far stronger than steel. Using that, it wouldn’t have been unduly difficult to create a blade and cut away the broken rails, and then make new rail lines to replace the old ones. Unfortunately, Lex had been forced to reject that option as well. Even though he could create rails, he couldn’t conjure enough material to fill in the deep gouges in the underlying ballast, and without that the train would tip over even if the rails were secured. Besides, the crystal objects he created could only last for an hour or so before they crumbled into nothing, so even if he could have gotten the train past this obstacle he would have needed to be present on the return trip to do so again, since stranding it on the last leg of its journey was clearly less viable for the train and its operators than simply reversing course. Sensing Lex’s disappointment, Sonata stepped closer to him, putting a hoof on his shoulder. “Well, it’s no big deal. I mean, we’re almost all of the way there anyway.” She turned to look at the engineer. “Right?” He nodded. “By my reckoning, we’re only about a hundred miles or so from Tall Tale. It’s a shame to have to go back when we’re most of the way there, but those’re the cards we’ve been dealt.” He had barely finished speaking when Lex cut in. “Wait, a hundred miles?” He cast an evaluating look back at the train, then returned his gaze to the older unicorn. “We were told that we wouldn’t get to Tall Tale until morning, and it’s only a little after midnight now. This train should be able to go fast enough that it could easily have reached the city before sunrise. Why were we going so slow?” The engineer burst into laughter, not so much at the question but at the clear suspicion with which Lex had asked it. “There’s no mystery to it, son. It’s just that it’s pretty inconvenient for most of the passengers to arrive in the middle of the night. We’d have to go and wake them up to let them know we were here, and then they’d have to wander around the city in the dark. Most of them are likely visitors who would need to wake up the friends and relatives that they were visiting, and so on. Nopony wants that, so we just cut back on the coal and cruise at a mellow pace so that we get there just when Princess Celestia’s bringing the sun up.” His good humor faltered a bit as he glanced at the wreckage one more time. “Truth is, I doubt we could have managed to stop in time if we hadn’t already cut the speed.” Shuddering, he returned his gaze to Lex and Sonata. “Listen, I didn’t want to focus on this so as not to cause any more consternation among the rest of the staff, and, well, I guess I didn’t want to think about it either, but…” he paused as his eyes flickered between the two of them before coming to rest on Lex. “From what the little lady was saying, you two sound like you have some experience with this sort of business, so I can’t help but ask: do you have any idea what could have done this?” Sonata shook her head immediately before turning to Lex with a questioning look. His brow furrowed in thought, not answering immediately. Instead, he took a step closer to the wreckage. Slowly, Lex walked around the mangled area, taking the entire scene in, then glancing around the surrounding area, before returning to the waiting pair. “If I had to guess, I’d say that a dragon did this.” “A dragon?!” The responses came from Sonata and the engineer in chorus, though the former sounded almost excited where the latter sounded panicked. “Oh wow!” gushed Sonata. “Just imagine if we can find where the dragon lives and defeat it! We’d be dragonslayers!” The thought left her starry-eyed, and she grinned widely as, in her imagination, a huge parade was held in their honor for defeating the monster. “That’ll be, like, super-duper awesome!” “Now just hold on a minute. I admit I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that could’ve done something like this, but that doesn’t mean that it was a dragon!” The engineer seemed spooked just from considering the notion, glancing around as though he expected the creature to suddenly leap down at any moment. “A dragon would fit most of the clues left behind. Look at how much damage there is; this level of strength would require that the creature be of exceptional size, and yet,” he waved a hoof to the side, “we’re surrounded by trees on both sides, with no evidence that they’ve been disturbed by anything particularly massive. That would mean that the creature was flying.” “Well, I guess,” admitted the middle-aged stallion. “But didn’t the little lady just admit that she could use magic to make her just as strong? Maybe this was something that could do something similar.” “Possibly, but I’m not detecting any lingering magical auras.” Lex ignored the confused expression on the other unicorn’s face, not wanting to get sidetracked with explaining how the circlet he wore allowed him to detect magical emanations. “Moreover, something that could leave such large claw marks inside the area of devastation wouldn’t need magic to augment its strength.” “Claw marks?” blinked Sonata, trotting over to look. The headlight from the engine cast uneven shadows around the area, making it difficult to see any details. It was only by chanting a spell and conjuring up a light of her own that she was able to confirm that there were deep claw marks, several inches long, where the track had been torn up. “Huh, I’ll admit that I’m impressed that you were able to see that, son, but that’s still not very-“ “And finally,” Lex interrupted, “there’s the broken ends of the rail.” Curiosity at Lex’s pronouncement caused the other two to move closer to the twisted metal. “Like, what about them? They just look all mangled to me.” “Look closer,” urged Lex. The two peered at them for a time, before the engineer suddenly piped up with wide eyes. “Well I’ll be! I thought they’d just been torn, but this…this is something else.” Sonata glanced between the engineer and Lex, who was nodding sagely, still not seeing what they did. “What? What about it?” The engineer looked turned to face her. “Railroad track is made special, so the metal doesn’t get too brittle. If it was, then exposure to the elements would weaken it enough so that when the train came through, the pressure would cause it to snap. That’s why something really strong could twist the tracks around before actually snapping them.” He looked back to the jagged ends of the track as he continued. “I thought that’s what happened here, that these ends were all warped-looking because they’d been stretched out before they finally split, but that’s not the case.” Pausing for just a moment, he finally revealed. “They’ve been melted. You know, from a fire…like the sort a dragon breathes.” “Wow…” whispered a wide-eyed Sonata, though whether she was in awe from her boyfriend’s deductive work or from the idea of a fire-breathing dragon was unclear. Off to the side, Lex frowned. The ends of the track were indeed melted, but it hadn’t been from fire. There were no scorch marks anywhere that he’d seen, and something breathing fire should have left them all over the place. It seemed more likely to him that the melted metal was the work of some sort of powerful solvent, but that poked a big hole in the theory that a dragon was responsible for this. He’d heard stories about dragons from all over Equestria, and they all had the common trait that such creatures were fire-breathers. Lex was drawn from his thoughts by the engineer giving him a pat on the back. “I’ll admit, that was some pretty fine detective work, son. Your girl was right when she said you were a genius. C’mon, I’ll upgrade you to two to first-class on the way back.” The conversation was apparently over at that point, as he started back towards the train. “That will not be necessary,” replied Lex, holding out a hoof to stop Sonata from returning to the train as well. “Huh? What are you talking about?” The engineer blinked in surprise. “We will not be returning with you,” answered Lex. “We’re going to walk the rest of the way to Tall Tale.”