128 - Righteous Rage
Lex was seething by the time they reached the shelter.
It had taken them only a few minutes to exit the crate-filled warehouse, thanks to his having mapped a large portion of the place during his initial exploration. More fortuitously, they hadn’t been attacked by ghouls on their way out, either because the creatures had learned to keep their distance or because they’d already defeated them all. With Pillowcase being carried behind him by the disk of force, Cozy right by her husband’s side, and Fencer limping along at the end of her chain, Lex hadn’t hesitated in making straight for the shelter once they’d emerged into the daylight.
Their progress had been slower than either he or Cozy had been happy with, however. With her legs chained together and her left foreleg injured, Fencer had kept them from moving at a quick pace. Although he’d threatened to drag her if she didn’t move as fast as she could – a threat that he would have had no problem carrying out, though using his telekinesis to drag an adult mare would have required him to use a physically-taxing surge of magic, and probably wouldn’t have lasted very long anyway – he hadn’t needed to go that far. That was primarily due to the other pony they were transporting, as Cozy had been keeping a hoof on Pillow to make sure he didn’t fall from the disk carrying him. Worse, the disk itself would follow Lex at a speed no faster than a brisk walk; if Lex exceeded that pace, it began to fall behind, and he knew that if he got too far from it the spell would automatically terminate, leaving them with no easy way of transporting the unconscious stallion.
Forced to move at what felt like a crawl, Lex had instead focused on the only other useful activity that could be done in the meantime: interrogating Fencer. Her remark about a “blockade” around Vanhoover had caught his ear before, and it hadn’t taken much prompting to make her talk about it again. What she’d told him had made his blood boil.
“They’re not letting survivors leave?!” he’d raged, his anger covering up his horror at what she was telling him. “What do you mean they’re not letting survivors leave?!”
“Exactly what I said,” Fencer had replied, her ears folded and her eyes downcast. “Whenever anypony gets to the edge of town, the ponies there start throwing sticks and rocks to make us go back. They say they’re worried about us spreading the disease that turns ponies into those undead monsters.”
That had been the point where Lex had completely blown up. “That’s utterly preposterous! Even if they thought that the ghoul-borne illness was communicable between living ponies – and it’s quite clearly not, given that Drafty was in close contact with her friends for days and none of them became sick – then the proper response would be to set up a quarantine area outside of the city to isolate and treat the infected ponies instead of forcing them back into Vanhoover! Making them stay in this wreck of a city not only offers them no support system, it’s completely monstrous!” He’d stopped ranting then, but only to turn a suspicious gaze on Fencer. Despite her newfound passivity, he couldn’t bring himself to rule out that this insane story was some new scheme of hers. “If you’re lying to me…”
“She’s not lying.”
Lex had very nearly come to a complete halt at that, and would have if it wasn’t imperative to get Pillowcase back as quickly as they could. “You knew about this?!”
Cozy’s face had been grim as she’d replied. “We tried to get out of town. Who wouldn’t, when Vanhoover was like this? But when we got close to the city limits we were forced back in, just like she said.”
“Why didn’t you TELL ME THIS BEFORE?!” He couldn’t help but shout the words, overcome with fury. That something so horrific was happening was bad enough, but the very idea that this hadn’t been brought to his attention immediately was beyond unacceptable.
“We didn’t have a chance!” Cozy had protested…feebly, to Lex’s mind. “We met you only to be attacked on our way to the shelter, attacked again when we finally got there, and then attacked a third time later that night! There wasn’t exactly time to sit down and go over everything!”
“Except for this…criminal and her gang accosting us this morning, we’ve had five days without a disturbance! You or any of your friends could have said something at any time!”
“That’s not fair! We’ve been exhausted and stressed and trying to deal with everything that’s happened!” By that point Cozy had been yelling too. “Yes! You’re right! It should have occurred to us to tell you why we couldn’t get out of town! But we’ve just spent the last few weeks struggling to survive only to then have you show up and whisk us off into some even more deadly situations, and that’s not even getting into worrying about those other ponies that you were trying to cure or my husband or all of the other stuff going on, so maybe, just maybe, we’re not at our best right now!”
Anypony else would have been chastised by Cozy’s rebuke, but it only angered Lex more. He hadn’t had a chance to direct anymore of his wrath at Cozy, however, as Pillowcase – perhaps due to his wife’s raised voice – gave a soft groan and twitched slightly, instantly earning all of Cozy’s attention. Unable to unleash more of his vitriol at her while she tended to the injured pony in their midst, Lex had been forced to swallow his venom, instead giving another harsh yank on Fencer’s chain as he led them back to the shelter.
Lex flung the door to their warehouse open with enough force that the wood creaked with the strain. The sound apparently carried, because a moment later Sonata came running up to greet them. “You’re back! Did you-, whoa!” She skidded to a stop, eyes wide as she took in Fencer’s appearance. Then they slid over to the unconscious pony on the floating thingy that Cozy was tending to. “What hap-”
“Not now, Sonata.” Lex marched right past her as he spoke, his voice containing as much warmth as a glacier.
“But-”
“I said not now!”
The sudden flash of rage in his voice was enough to stop her in her tracks, her eyes widening in alarm. Being in a foul mood was normal for him, but right now he sounded seriously ticked off! Biting her lip, she followed him as he led the others towards the shelter proper. Once there, he didn’t even slow down as he yanked the door open and strode inside. “Doctors!” he bellowed. “Get over here and treat these ponies RIGHT NOW!”
For a moment, he was met with dead silence as everypony stopped what they were doing to stare at him in shock. Luckily, Sonata had informed the medical ponies that something like this might happen, and after their initial moment of surprise they sprang into action. Four of them ran over with a makeshift stretcher and quickly loaded Pillowcase onto it, Cozy following them as they quickly carted him off to the medical unit. Two other doctors – one of them House Call – approached Fencer. As they did so, the chains binding her fell away to nothing even as Lex lifted her severed horn in his telekinetic grasp. “Reattach this,” he ordered them curtly. Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Severance. “Keep watching over her. If she tries anything aggressive, or attempts to escape, incapacitate her.”
“S-Sir, I have to protest!” House Call’s voice wavered, but he kept speaking. “Treating a patient while she has a weapon hovering overhead, threatening to cut her down at any moment is-”
“This mare is a threat to you, your other patient, and everypony here!” snarled Lex. “I will not have her left unguarded! Now DO AS I TELL YOU!” The barely-controlled animosity in his voice, along with how his eyes had started to glow again, was enough to make House Call turn pale, nodding as he ushered Fencer towards the medical area.
Lex turned his gaze back towards the other ponies. “C. Shells!” he barked.
“I’m here.” The mare in question stepped forward, a look of forced calm on her face. It was the sort of expression that someone made when they were facing a wild animal and trying desperately not to provoke it.
“I want you and your crew to construct a cage.”
Her only reaction was to furrow her brow and frown. “A cage?”
Lex nodded. “One large enough to contain that…mare, after they get through treating her. Make sure that it’s sturdy, and that the locking mechanism can’t be undone with telekin-”
“Hold on!”
The crowd parted in response to the new voice coming from within their midst, ponies quickly scrambling out of the way so as not to be between Lex and whoever had just stuck their head in the proverbial lion’s mouth. A moment later, a pegasus stallion – Lex recognized him as one of the ponies from Fencer’s group. What had that fat little earth pony called him? Turbo, that’s right. – stepped forward, licking his lips nervously as he stepped forward.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” he started, forcing steel into his voice, “but you are not putting her in a cage like she’s some kind of animal!”
Lex slowly turned his head to regard Turbo, and for a long moment he just stared at him. The other stallion gulped, but didn’t back down. Finally, Lex spoke. “Criminal,” he hissed softly. “I’m putting her in a cage like she’s some kind of criminal. Because she is.” There was a dangerous tone in his voice, as though daring the other stallion to disagree with him.
Turbo heard it, but he refused to let this go. After everything they’d been through together, he was NOT going to let this pony who looked like he vacationed in Tartarus punish, completely out of the blue, the pony that had been the rock that kept their group together! “You whisk Fencer away without telling any of us that you’re taking her, then you bring her back in chains, with her horn chopped off, and looking like you…I don’t even know what you did to her but it looks bad, and you’re telling us that she did something wrong?” He firmed up his stance, flaring his wings out. “No. I might not be a unicorn, but even I know dark magic when I see it, and if you think I’m going to let some bad copy of one of Equestria’s worst villains hurt her anymore, you’ve got anoth-”
His speech ended abruptly as a pillow flew through the air and whomped him in the face. An angry female voice followed it. “You can’t talk to him like that!” Once again the crowd parted, revealing an upset-looking Drafty, who marched forward until she was right in Turbo’s face, flaring her wings out to match his angry posture. “Lex has saved all of our lives several times over, and he’s never once done anything worse to us than raise his voice! If he says your mare is a criminal, then she’s a criminal, and he’s giving her what she deserves!”
Turbo’s face darkened, and everypony fell silent as the tension thickened, knowing that this wouldn’t end with another pillow fight. The rest of Fencer’s group had slowly separated themselves from the others, moving to one side of the room. Lex simply narrowed his eyes, apparently willing to let the confrontation play itself out.
“Alright, time out!”
Heedless of the atmosphere, Sonata marched up and inserted herself between Drafty and Turbo. Standing on her hind legs, she placed a hoof on each of them and shoved them apart. “Both of you, cool off!” She looked around, putting on her best no-nonsense expression. “Right now Fencer and Cozy’s husband are both hurt, so can we at least agree that getting into a big fight probably won’t help the doctors fix them?” She gave a pointed look at Turbo, who made a sour expression but reluctantly nodded, and then turned her gaze on Drafty, getting the same response. “Okay! Now, everyone take a breath and calm down. We’ll get this sorted out, so try not to kill each other in the meantime.” She sent exaggerated looks towards the two ponies on either side of her, both of whom were regarding her sourly. But after a pregnant pause, Drafty muttered something and turned away. A second later, Turbo did the same, going over to the rest of his group.
Falling back onto all fours, Sonata sighed, before turning to face Lex. “We totes need to talk.”
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I beleive I made a mistake, and possibly asked this several months ago, but can you get Feat, ability combination that gives you Magic Missile, a Level 1 spell, as a 0 level, cost?. .Or was that part of the explanation of the level multipler for Lexs heavy spells? just confusing with the descriptions offered in the manual.
Theres something not of standard pony builds out on the border though, or at least not within quick summoning range?
8323301 I believe you're referring to the "exploit" to try and gain a level 1 spell as a level 0 spell - which can then (for most classes) be used at will - via using a metamagic feat with a +0 increase to the spell level combined with an ability that lowers the metamagic spell level modifier by -1 (e.g. Metamagic Master, which is the "serial numbers filed off" version of Wayang Spell Hunter) or Magical Lineage.
As the d20PFSRD pages note - and why I called it an "exploit" with quotation marks (for sarcasm) - is that it's not supposed to work this way, and any GM would be right to disallow it.
8323323
Its just annoying that even though there are options to allow higher level spell slots to be used when available just so you can have the casting numbers, you cant put the actual energy into the lower level spell, like you could do Fireball, or you could do Level 3 spell energy per magic missile, multiplied by the standard number of auto targeting missiles per caster level?
I mean, Gandalf uses a Level 9 slot for Magic missile and cant carefully cream off the local surface of the battlefield instead of cracking the local crust? just thinking of these spells that have spell cast levels for type base, enhanced, super etc and thyre just the lower leve spell in a higher level spell slot, taking up a spell slot in the book?
Ah. I apologise. I shouldnt try thinking before bed. Sorry.
8323369
I think what you mean is: It's annoying how you can't use higher level slots for lower level spells and gain a benefit from it. Which... isn't actually always true. Magic Missile is a bad example (it only helps agaist Globes of Invulnerability), but a Fireball gets a higher DC if you heighten it. Interestingly enough, Thoth (the one who made Eclipse, the thing in use here) did say that the Heighten Spell Feat is an unnecessary feat tax too.
Other than that... Well, that's what metamagic is for.
On the topic of infinite Magic Missiles... I'd be inclined to just pay the 18000 gp associated with a Command-Word Unlimited-Use Magic Missile and get an item for it. Who knows, if you DM let's you track down a Reclamation Robot, you might even get nonmagical Magic Missiles (though you'd run out of charges for it pretty quickly).
8323431
At least the Gnomes havent made a Gatling Gonne yet, with Unlimited Ammo.
Theres some really nasty things in feats and spells that the limits needed to prevent them being MAD or worse are far more complex and expensive than the base effect. Depending on your world view, teleportation spells are far more likely to create a city killer during their discovery than a working product. As so many other energy release variants of certain types?
What would be the average lifespan of a dyslexic mage? Or is it a different mechanism?
Well, at least we know Fencer's group(or the majority) is still somewhat loyal to her which shows that the other survivors are at least willing to stand up anyone that threatens their own. Once again, the situation is defused by Sonata after Lex's aggressive behavior towards Turbo but that's pretty much par for the course with this couple.
Hopefully, Sonata can ease the sudden divide in the group though I'm sure more than a few rouge elements will put a proverbial wrench in her plans.
p.s:Drafty's entrance with the pillow throw was amusing and I like her display of loyalty to Lex now, which is a far cry from her initial attitude towards him. This brief moment shows her growth as a character quite nicely to me and I'm sure Lex appreciates her loyalty...in his own way.
8325686 I suspect that Fencer would be quite surprised to hear that Turbo stood up for her. Remember, she regards herself as having given up on them, and that nopony cares about her, so the idea that he stood up for her on principle alone is likely to be shocking, to say the least. Fortunately, the consequences of his brave (yet foolish) actions in protesting Lex's treatment of her were offset by Sonata's timely intervention. Once again, she serves to smooth out Lex's roughest moments. Hopefully she can soothe his troubled mind the way she has before.
Of the four survivors that Lex brought back, Drafty has always been the most amenable to him. Cozy was (and remains somewhat) fearful for how he reminds her of King Sombra, and his general lack of obvious love for Sonata. Cloudbank has come to grudgingly respect him, but he still ruffles her feathers. Aisle takes a pragmatic view, being willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since he keeps saving their lives. But Drafty has been well-disposed to him ever since he saved her from the disease that was killing her - she was the one who tried to stop Cloudbank's needling him, who was worried about leaving him to fight Lirtkra and the others alone, and whom Nosey characterized as being his "fangirl" right before she asked him and Sonata to go on a double-date with her and Cloudbank. It's not surprising that she was willing to get in Turbo's face to defend his honor...particularly since she saved him when a dominated Cloudbank almost killed him with Severance.
For his part, Lex has been subtly keeping Drafty at a distance. Other than his briefly talking to her during another social experiment (where he thanked everyone at Sonata's behest) - and where she managed to get him to agree to that double-date - he hasn't spoken much to her at all. My guess is that he has absolutely no idea how to react to such honest, naked admiration. He's used to being misunderstood and disliked. Having someone so openly appreciate him is likely to be very much outside of his comfort zone.
This cave is clear too, dammit.
8386937 Huh. I'm not sure why (probably because I had to edit this chapter quite a bit when writing it), but I was sure there'd be some here.