Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

273 - What Is and What Was

When Lex woke up, he was covered in mares.

That wasn’t too unusual for him lately. He’d grown accustomed to Sonata being next to him when he woke up, and Nosey was a recent addition, one which he still had very mixed feelings about. But Aria laying her head on his middle was new, and Lex frowned as he realized that between the three of them, he was pinned down.

For a moment he considered simply jolting them awake, but discarded that idea a moment later. He knew how unpleasant that was from personal experience, and had no desire to inflict it on any of them. Sonata deserved better treatment than that, it might interfere with Nosey’s convalescence, and Aria…he still wasn’t sure what the Night Mare had meant by “nurturing her interest” in him, but the last thing he wanted was her running off again, and she couldn’t do that if she was asleep.

With his course of action decided, Lex turned to the next issue: how to extract himself from the press of bodies without disturbing them. The next-best idea was to change into shadow-form and move through the bench, but that idea was ruled out as well. Too many times in the last few days he’d been forced into a fight while critically low on magic, and although he had no reason to believe that there was another battle in his immediate future, that wasn’t a situation he was eager to repeat, especially since he hadn’t found enough time to renew his full complement of thaumaturgic spells. Power needed to be conserved wherever possible.

Instead, Lex silently engaged his horn. As gently as he could, he lifted Aria’s head and moved it so she was resting on Nosey instead of him. Both stirred for a moment, but fortunately neither woke. Extracting his tail from under Sonata was touch-and-go for a few moments, but he managed to free it without disturbing her slumber. Finally free, he gingerly stepped over Aria as he climbed down from the bench, ignoring the persistent ache in his muscles as he made his way to the door, grabbing his saddlebags on the way.

By the time he’d exited the train station, Lex had put all thoughts of the girls out of his mind, instead turning his attention to what needed to be done today. A glance east showed that the sun had just barely cleared the mountains, but when he glanced in the opposite direction Lex saw that the camp was already up and about. Notably, a few ponies were milling about near the train station, eyeing the small mountain of food…at least until they saw him, at which point they smiled and shuffled forward. Although he knew he wasn’t the most perceptive of ponies, even Lex could figure out what they wanted.

“There will not be any breakfast,” he announced flatly. For a moment he wondered if he should have woken Sonata up after all, but it was too late to change his mind now. “This food needs to be carefully rationed until a more stable supply can be established. Until it is, provisions will be passed out at noon, and not before.”

He let that sink in, watching as the smiles drooped and the assembled ponies spoke to each other. Were they upset by his decision, or were they bearing their disappointment stoically? With no idea, he plunged ahead. “Until then, I’ve placed an alarm on what’s here,” he swung a hoof to indicate the supplies. “If you hear a loud ringing noise, it means that someone is stealing food. In that case, such an individual should be apprehended and brought to me for judgment. The same goes if you see any telekinetic auras around anything there.” It was unfortunate, but there was nothing his alarm spell could do about unicorn telekinesis. Such a thing would have been immediately obvious if it had been done last night, of course, but the glowing aura it manifested would be far less noticeable in the daylight.

It irked him to have to rely on community policing instead of being able to produce a solution with his magic, but it couldn’t be helped. Even if his force field spell had been large enough to contain the gigantic pile of food and drink, it didn’t last long enough to provide worthwhile security, its duration being measured in minutes rather than hours. Ultimately, making a public declaration as a deterrent was the best that he could do; hopefully, it would be enough.

When no one objected or asked any questions, Lex turned back to the food, slowly lifting a box of oranges and placing them a short distance away, outside of the area of his alarm spell. Then he did the same for a tank of milk. Then a bundle of oats. Minutes passed as he kept moving foodstuffs, making a second, much smaller pile of food. When he judged it sufficient, he pointed to it as he looked back at the crowd. “This is for special-needs ponies whose circumstances require immediate attention,” he declared. “The sick, the elderly, the very young, and any other ponies that need immediate nutrition are welcome to what’s here.” Again he paused, his gaze sweeping over the crowd. “Those are the only ones who are. If I hear that someone whose health didn’t require it took some of the food that I’ve set aside here, rest assured that individual will answer to me!” The last four words came out in a snarl, his eyes glowing green-and-purple as he uttered them.

The crowd was deathly silent in the wake of his speech. Satisfied that he’d made his point, Lex stepped down from the platform, and the massed ponies parted instantly to make way for him. None took so much as a step toward the second pile of food that he’d made.

---

The trip across the camp had taxed his muscles enough that Lex had been forced to stop and catch his breath several times before reaching the rows of outpatient tents. Fortunately, most of the ponies that had been awake had been clustered around the train station in hopes of a morning meal, so there were few around to see just how badly he was struggling. It had been arduous enough that he had seriously considered slipping into shadow-form, despite his earlier vow to conserve his magic where at all possible. Only his stubborn refusal to give in to something as petty as mere physical discomfort had kept him from doing so.

That, and he’d be spending hours in shadow-form anyway when he went back into Vanhoover. Purchasing those supplies had cost him almost all of the funds he’d managed to acquire from the local bank. More was necessary, and delays were intolerable. He needed to get the ponies from the local farming communities to resume coming here to sell what they’d grown, and they’d expect to be paid for it when they did. That would continue to reduce the burden on the immediate food supply, and let him jumpstart the local economy again, starting Vanhoover on the road to recovery.

But it’s only a start, he knew. I still need to contact Cloudsdale and have them deliver emergency rainclouds before a drought takes hold. We’ll need much more in the way of supplies in order to start making Vanhoover’s buildings habitable again. A loan needs to be negotiated with Las Pegasus in order to pay for it all. None of it would be easy, but at least now that everypony wasn’t in imminent danger it could be done.

That was notwithstanding one of the survivors he’d brought in yesterday. That particular pony had been rushed into emergency surgery almost as soon as the doctors had examined him, and the procedure was still going on now. With none of the medical ponies he’d spoken to a few minutes ago being able to forecast whether or not their patient would pull through, Lex had been able to do nothing but grit his teeth, shove his worry down, and move on to the things he could affect.

That had brought him to where he was now, looking over the half-dug mass grave as he returned Severance to his back, the scythe having nothing to report. That, at least, had been welcome news, as had the revelation that the ponies he’d assigned to dig the hole had apparently worked throughout the night, operating in shifts to the light of nearby campfires. The bad news was that, for all their diligence, the work was still going too slow; in Lex’s estimation, it would take another few days at the very least before they’d have it wide enough and deep enough to hold the remains of the ghouls.

At least they found plenty of gems in the meantime, he sighed mentally as he glanced at the pile of precious stones that the diggers had unearthed. He’d need to look them over later; with any luck, some of them would be sufficient for storing spells in. As for the rest…

“It was on a dig just like this one. I’d just unearthed some crystal or other, and I’d tossed it out of the basement I’d been asked to excavate-”

“It was an amethyst, sweetheart, and you were digging a sewer pipeline.”

“Hey now, who’s telling this story, you or me? So there I am, getting rid of yet another shiny rock, when I hear this voice telling me to be more careful. So I look up, thinking that I’d almost hit somepony, and that’s when I see the most beautiful mare in the world looking down at me. All I can do is stare up at her as she starts reading me the riot act about how I’d almost broken that poor piece of feldspar or whatever it was…”

The details of the story had varied with each telling, but the sequence of events had always been the same. It had gotten to the point that by the time he’d been three years old Lex had heard the tale of how his parents had met so often that he’d grown bored with it. Now he would have given almost anything to hear it again.

His father, Big Dig, had loved telling stories almost as much as he’d loved digging holes. The latter had been his destiny, as his cutie mark of a shovel pressing into the ground had shown, while the former had been his hobby. It didn’t matter if it was the story of how he’d met his wife or his own father’s stories about living through the chaos of Discord’s brief but terrifying reign or old tales about Rockhoof, the so-called greatest digger who’d ever lived.

His mother, Jewelia, had seemed to like her husband’s stories to nearly the same degree that she’d liked the gems that he always brought her back after a dig. A lapidary with a cutie mark showing three gemstones of red, blue, and yellow, she’d never failed to embellish Big Dig’s tales with details or corrections or encouraging questions. There had been no question that they’d loved each other deeply, a love surpassed only by their love for their son, despite how little they’d understood him…or he them…

Shaking his head, Lex turned away from the hole, heading back toward the camp as he pushed the unwanted memories away. He could have tailored his thoughts so that digging holes or finding gemstones wouldn’t have reminded him of his parents, of course; manipulating associations of memory was a trick he’d long since mastered. But he’d never been able to bring himself to do so. No matter how much it hurt to be continually reminded that he’d never see his parents again, the prospect of cutting them out of his thoughts – of losing a little more of them, even if it was just an associated memory – hurt even more.

But I have the strength to bear it, he told himself silently. Memories. Nightmares. Monsters. I have what it takes to withstand them all. He had to, otherwise all the hardships and suffering and misery he’d endured up until now would have been meaningless, and a life without meaning was a life that no one would recognize as being worth living.

Certainly not Lex Legis himself.

Author's Note:

As Lex thinks over what to do next, his thoughts turn toward the past.

Will everything he's gone through help him build a better future? Or is he headed towards a breaking point?

Comments

[Not so New Brony]

So Lex ended up as a living pillow for the ladies, cute though not as cute as the fact that he had already gained Aria's interest as Night Mare advised and should he be successful in turning her into a pony and subsequently restore her voice, he's definitely going to earn more than just brownie points, albeit unintentionally.

Wonder what's the first thing Aria will do when she turns, sing and potentially enthrall some admirers though as she stated, Lex is the cream of the crop amongst the current selection. Though if she does try to enthrall Lex, I don't think she'll enjoy his reaction. Come to think of it, aside from Sonata, no one else knows about Lex's stance on mind control.

Also, concerning Lex's spellcasting, does this mean that some of his other spells had memories connected to his past too? Now that I think about it, the phantom ponies his tulpa summoned to fight the ghouls might have been created through the same process though the memories were warped by the tulpa. If this is true then Lex has the potential to do the same as a cost-efficient alternative to the astral construct...or were the phantoms some form of astral constructs themselves or something similar?

Or did I misconstrue Lex and his magic to the extent that it could be the equivalent of butchering another language?

p.s:I imagine the camp's location is similar to the gem fields near Ponyville which implies that gems are rather common throughout Equestria and not just near Ponyville. If so, their loss isn't that great in the long term.

[Booster Spice]

Lex is going to need a bigger bed.

Digging that many gems out of arandom hole would make them worth about as much as root crops? Swap you this hoof sized quartz for that hoof sized potato, except the only way that would achieve parity exchange is between ponies and dragons, due to foodstuffs, otherwise to ponies the quartz isnt even worth a potato? Although it wuld go a way to explaining glass skyscrapers when the local building rocks make good quality pure quartz sheet on basic melt float, enver mind trandmogrification?

Refugees working in Admin would be best for working through the camp, listing everyone by requirements and ability? Then again, whats the chances of having a Hollerith and Hopper in the survivors, if theyre not arriving by the next train?

[harts fire]

time to just pause and take a breath.

[Alzrius]

9160506 The ladies were indeed all cuddling with Lex in his sleep, which does indeed conjure up an adorable image.

Regarding Lex and Aria, the Night Mare spelled it out for him in a way that anyone else would find straightforward and easy to understand, but Lex - true to form - managed to find inscrutable. He simply doesn't have the social nuance to intuit that "her interest in you" is understood to be romantic in nature. To his thinking, there are numerous ways she could potentially be interested in him, such as with regards to his magical abilities, or because he can fix her voice, or because she's ambitious like him, etc. "Romance" is quite clearly not something he's seriously considering.

Regarding Lex's stance on mind-affecting effects, he hasn't propagated his stance on that, but to be fair that's not really something he's needed to. Most unicorns, with their native Equestrian magic, can't really hit that level of power; unless I'm forgetting something, then outside of cursed artifacts and other dark magic, it takes a unicorn with Starlight Glimmer-levels of power to be able to use mind-affecting spells, at least that we've seen. (Though it's not hard to imagine that there are easier spells than one that allows for total mental domination of multiple people at once.) Likewise, Aria herself hasn't really shown much in the way of that with her current spellcasting. I suspect that Lex will tell her not to enchant anyone if and when he makes her into a pony.

Regarding Lex's magic, I'm not entirely sure I'm understanding what you're theorizing. I can tell you that his magic isn't related to his memories per se; rather, it's just that his spellcasting is based around holding energy inside his thoughts, rather than his body the way Equestrian magic is (though he's used to using the still-existing magical channels in his body to boost his magical prowess, though doing so tends to hurt him if he overdoes it). His tulpa, by contrast, is a bit of an enigma. We've seen it do the following so far:

1. Increase the degree of skill/control (rather than power) that he can bring to bear when casting a spell. By utilizing all of his mind (i.e. his consciousness and the tulpa) when casting a spell, said spell will be utilized with a great deal more focus and precision, which helped him greatly when trying to overcome Xiriel's spell resistance.
2. Cast spells that Lex didn't realize that he'd prepared. Exactly when/how it prepared them was unclear, but as a fragment of his own mind, Lex's tulpa appears to be able to store a few spells on its own, just like how he does within his own thoughts. Notably, the one spell we've seen it use in this regard was one that Lex had previously decided was too horrible to be used (that being the hostile empathic transfer spell that killed Xiriel).
3. Bring Lex's personal nightmares into the real world. This is similar to what Luna's tantabus wanted to do in season five's Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?, though it was implied that there was magic used in it doing so, making it unclear if it was directly bringing his nightmares to life or casting some sort of spell to do so (or maybe there's no difference; making things from dreams appear in the real world could easily be construed as being magical to begin with).

As for gems in Equestria...see my next post for more on that.

[Alzrius]

9160825 Strictly speaking, I doubt that the gems which seem to be all over the place in Equestria are worth as much as a root crop. After all, you can eat a root crop; gemstones don't seem to have nearly as much practical value, judging by how Rarity seems to be the pony most interested in them, and that's for purely decorative purposes.

That said, we have seen them used as currency in the series. In season three's Just For Sidekicks, we see the Cutie Mark Crusaders buy a large dryer for the pets they're watching with a gem, and in that same episode Zecora donates a gem to a charity drive and Spike uses one to buy a train ticket. Rarity also tips a bellhop with a gem (saying "keep the change!") in season four's Rarity Takes Manehattan, so they clearly have some value as currency. Presumably, less value than the bit, but given how uninterested the show is in fleshing out the details of the world and how things work, that's just a guess. Certainly, I'd go so far as to say that all but the most unusual gems are of very little monetary value.

Of course, this sits awkwardly next to the d20 System's economic underpinings, but those aren't much better anyway, given that they do things like assign absolute value to various items and things. So really, the preexisting assumptions are broken all around.

[Alzrius]

9161462 That's sort of what this chapter was. In the aftermath of everything that's happened, Lex is very much aware that there's more to be done, and even he needs to slow down and catch his breath every so often, even if he hates to admit it.

[Not so New Brony]

9161934
Oh, guess I didn't make myself clear with my comment. Apologies for that. guess somethings were lost in translation in the midst of my rambling.

What I meant was does he have any other spells that are or were associated to his memories of the past, specifically of his family, including his grandfather whose image was warped by the tulpa.

Now that you've listed out the instances of tulpa's actions thus far(aside from constantly plaguing Lex with nightmares while barring any outside intrusion.), I wonder if it also acts as a repository for some of the things Lex wants to forget, like his failed attempt to court Brush Strokes, and uses them to store certain spells. Eh, it's fun to theorize anyways.

[howard035]

Good to get some background on Lex's parents.

[Alzrius]

9162350 One thing that I'd mentioned previously, and wanted to put in here but couldn't find a way, was that both of them were earth ponies. It caught them by surprise that they had a unicorn foal (let alone Lex's massive intelligence and social ineptitude).

[Alzrius]

9162103 It's clear that the tulpa focuses on the memories that are most painful for Lex to bear, though it's also been said to focus on things he fears will happen/wants to avoid. Whether or not that's related to its magical/spellcasting abilities is uncertain so far.

[howard035]

9162908 May be part of why his magic system is so different from every other unicorns'.

[Alzrius]

9162972 No, there was no problem with his understanding the extant unicorn method of spellcasting. Rather, he quickly grew disillusioned with its limitations, and so invented a completely new type of spellcasting from the ground up, one that operated on a completely different method and implementation from typical unicorn spellcasting. It wasn't something he stumbled into due to not having unicorn parents.

[James Fire]

All I can do is stare up at her as she starts reading me the riot act about how I’d almost broken that poor piece of feldspar or whatever it was…”

I'm not sure using the Riot Act here is a good idea, since we can presume that Equestria has no such thing?

[Alzrius]

9221759 The term "riot act" never comes up in the show, it's true, but I'll refer you to season eight's Horse Play, where Rarity says the following:

Rarity: But... but... but how?! The audience is about to riot! We have no backdrop! And our lead actress is—! [squeak]

There's also Autumn Blaze singing about how her "stand-up was a riot" during her song "A Kirin Tale" in season eight's Sounds of Silence, though that's given in the context of a song, which doesn't make it quite as diegetic as I'd like.

Either way, I figured "close enough."