//------------------------------// // 5 - Pouches and Pathos // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// “Son, I’ll ask you one last time: you sure you want to do this?” “Yes,” answered Lex flatly, not bothering to look up from the food he was wrapping. This was the fourth time the engineer had asked him that in the fifteen minutes since he’d stated his intention to continue on to Tall Tale without the train. The idea that repeatedly asking the question would somehow elicit a different answer was enough to make him roll his eyes. Before the engineer could try and talk him out of it again, Sonata exited the train and trotted over to them, balancing two trays of food on her back. “This is the last of it,” she announced, setting them down beside Lex. “I made sure to get extra sugary treats, so that we’ll have plenty of energy for the walk there!” She grinned with pride at her reasoning, not noticing Lex’s wince. He much preferred bland food. “Your stallion’s still keen on going through with this. What about you, little lady? It’s not too late to catch a ride back with us,” the older unicorn reiterated as he turned his worry-filled gaze on Sonata. She smiled at his concern, but waved it off. “Don’t worry about us. We’re totes going to slay that dragon and become super-awesome heroes! You’ll be able to tell every pony about how you were there at the beginning of our adventure!” The engineer made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “I still think this idea is completely daft, but if you two want to go walking along a hundred miles of empty track all by yourself with a dragon on the loose, I can’t stop you.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but a shout from one of his attendants that they were ready to go turned his attention back to the train. Giving them one last backward glance, he slowly returned to the engine and climbed aboard. A moment later the train began to lurch backward, picking up speed as it began its impromptu return journey. Conjuring a soft light as the shine of the engine’s headlight began to recede, Sonata animatedly waved goodbye to the departing vehicle. Lex ignored the departing locomotive entirely, placing the last of the food in his pack. Although his haversack was enchanted so that each of its pockets had storage capacity far in excess of what their appearance suggested – with the central pouch being notably deeper than its two counterparts on the sides – the multiplicity of items that he had already placed into it during his time on Everglow, where he had originally acquired this particular bauble, made it so that the five days’ worth of food that he and Sonata had bought for themselves had barely fit into storage. Normally, Lex would have fussed over the placement of edible items alongside his myriad scrolls, gemstones, and other collections of materials. Concerns such as the food getting squished or staining his things would have caused him a great deal of consternation. However, the magic that allowed his pack to hold such a prodigious capacity of things without increasing its size or weight had likewise eliminated this problem. Since the folded space within the haversack’s pockets was isolated from the world outside of it, accessible only by each pouch’s mouth, this meant that the contents of each pocket were not subject to jostling or bumping. Regardless of how delicately the contents were arranged, their placement would not be disturbed even if the wearer of the backpack were to turn cartwheels. By themselves, these features were remarkable enough. But what Lex truly found ingenious about the simple-looking backpack was how it allowed for the convenient retrieval of stored materials. Even the most diligent packing job would be disrupted if you needed to dig through the stuff on top in order to reach what was on the bottom. But the way the haversack manipulated space cleverly allowed for even this inconvenience to be avoided. Rather than having to root through the contents, whatever item was desired was always the top-most item, placed just under the leather flap as though eagerly waiting to be retrieved. Lex had experimented with this function several times, curious about how the pack was able to accomplish this without displacing any of the other materials placed in a given pocket. What he had eventually discovered was that the haversack was subtly rearranging the orientation of the opening of its pouches with regards to its contents every time they was opened. In this way, the “top” item was whatever the user wanted it to be. It was, in other words, a device of truly impressive utility. To Lex’s mind, it perfectly underscored why Equestria needed his leadership. An item like this couldn’t currently be produced in Equestria without extraordinary effort; while creating minor magic items could be done without undue difficulty, such materials were extremely limited in what they could accomplish. Anything that approached the level of complexity exhibited by this pack was virtually unknown, relegated to the realm of near-mythical creations by the greatest of unicorn wizards, such as the sage Meadowbrook, Aponyus of Maretonia, or Star-Swirl the Bearded. Everglow, by contrast, considered this a minor item, a modest luxury that could be found in most magic shops. The disparity was unsurprising, at least to Lex, who was keenly aware that the magic of Everglow was more advanced than that of Equestria. Indeed, knowing what he did about Everglow, such a discrepancy between it and his native world was only to be expected. Unlike his homeland, Everglow was a world where strife and chaos were the natural state of things, and civilization and security needed to be forcibly maintained. It was little wonder then that the magic used by the ponies of Everglow was so much stronger than that used by their Equestrian counterparts; it had to be, in order to stand up to myriad threats that were accepted as a natural part of their world. Lex understood all of this, and yet he still found it to be a poor excuse for the fact that the native magic of his home-world was so feeble in comparison. Or rather, that it had existed in such a meager state for so long, with no change between the era he had been born into and now. A pony that paid careful attention to their diet and got enough exercise had an excellent chance of living to see a full century, even if only barely. Those few unicorns that reached the highest tiers of Equestrian magic could learn a spell to manipulate aging that would let them have a lifespan three times as long as their fellows before its efficacy was expended. Lex, in comparison, was more than a thousand years distant from the time of his birth. But that millennium had not been one that he’d personally lived out; rather, he’d spent it locked away in stasis along with the Crystal Empire, the victim of King Sombra’s curse when the tyrant had been defeated by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Upon his – and the Crystal Empire’s – return, Lex had been horrified to find that Equestria had virtually stood still in his absence, with no real change to speak of having occurred. While minor differences could be found in abundance, such as Celestia and Luna now ruling from Canterlot instead of maintaining a separate castle of their own, or how small towns and hamlets had risen and fallen in the interim, everything that was even remotely substantive had not changed in the slightest. No new forms of magic. No breakthroughs in technology. No advances in culture. Equestria, his beloved and beautiful homeland, had become stagnant. Lex placed the blame for this squarely on the alicorn sisters who ruled the land. To his mind, one of the central responsibilities of leadership was to nurture the growth of new ideas and innovation. Progress should be encouraged even if there wasn’t some sort of existential necessity for it, the way it was on Everglow. There was a reason why the root of “leadership” was “lead”; to be a ruler was to chart a course forward, not to sit back and do nothing as everything ground to a halt. Lex had attempted to share this wisdom with Princess Celestia, appearing before her six weeks ago and broadly outlining her and her sister’s myriad failures and how, if they would just abdicate in favor of his rulership, he would correct their mistakes and plot a new, better course for Equestria. But he had been denied, his ideas cast aside without any consideration in favor of her simplistic ideology of “it’s a virtue, not a vice, to let ponies govern themselves.” He had been prepared for a vigorous debate, be it on politics, economics, or philosophy. He had not been prepared for such self-righteous simplemindedness. In the face of such willful incompetence, such deliberate intransigence that would neither correct its own flaws nor allow anyone else to do so, Lex had taken the only course left to him, and declared open rebellion against the alicorn sisters’ rule. That he’d needed to flee Equestria immediately after doing so was a humiliation that still gnawed at him. But there had been no other choice; for all his fiery words about casting Celestia and Luna down by force, he knew that he had little hope of victory should he face them in battle. Retreating to Everglow, where the abundant magic and myriad dangers could serve as a crucible, was the only practical course of action to take. Retreating to Everglow…and to Sonata. Though he’d only met the beautiful sea pony – a breed of pony that was unknown on Equestria, but was apparently similar enough to an earth pony that the difference struck him as little more than academic – a short time before, they had, to his everlasting surprise, developed a rapport, even going on a date together. Since a misunderstanding had caused her to remain behind on Everglow when Lex had returned to Equestria, he had run to Sonata’s side without hesitation upon going back to that world. He had been wise to do so. Although he had been intent on making plans for gaining power enough to wage war on Celestia and Luna, Sonata had counseled him otherwise. She was the one who had, again and again during their conversations, insisted that there was a better manner of getting what he wanted than by using force. Instead, she had urged him to limit his ambitions, to negotiate for a deal that was more amenable to both sides, even if that meant that he would receive less than absolute rulership of all Equestria. He had strongly resisted her advice at first, but to his astonishment she won him over to her point of view during their time together. Not completely, of course; he was still firmly convinced that he could manage Equestria far more adroitly than Celestia and Luna, and was still intent on making that happen. But she’d somehow convinced him that it was better to reliably achieve something small, rather than potentially fail completely while trying to accomplish everything in one fell swoop. That hadn’t been the only revelation she’d given him. The other had been that, at some point during their time together, his uncharacteristic appreciation for her presence had turned into genuine affection, which had shortly thereafter blossomed into love. He hadn’t even realized it at first. It was only when he’d thought she was in danger that he’d realized just how much he needed her, and that realization had pushed him to confess his feelings. Even though she had already admitted that she loved him too, telling her that he’d fallen for her had simultaneously been the most terrifying and most thrilling moment of his life. Watching her now, as she kept waving goodbye to the train she had mistakenly gotten them onto in the first place, he was struck by how much his feelings for her and his ambitions for the future had become intertwined. But rather than upset him, he felt comforted by that. It seemed natural, and correct, that the most important things in his life had become so intricately bound together. Finally convinced that the train was completely out of sight, Sonata turned to Lex. “So! What’s the plan?” she asked in a chipper voice. He was quiet for a moment before answering. “Sonata…I’m glad you’re here with me, and…I love you very much.” A look of surprise blossomed on Sonata’s face – it was the second time he had ambush-romanced her today! – before it melted into a smile. It wasn’t her usual cheerful grin, but rather a look of heartfelt joy. Closing the small distance between them, she kissed him before responding, “I love you too.” Stepping back, her usual excitement returned full-force. “Now let’s go slay us a dragon!”