Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

629 - Sick as a Dog

Lex could feel his tension growing in inverse proportion to how much time was left before the creature that called itself Solvei slipped free of his control.

He’d performed several tests with the power the Night Mare had given him – albeit only rudimentary ones, since his focus had been on getting to Vanhoover as quickly as possible – shortly after acquiring it. Besides confirming a large array of creatures that he couldn’t control, and that the ones he could remained under his power for no longer than sixty seconds, he’d also determined that he could only use that power no more than thirteen times in a single day. And while he’d learned during the battle at Vanhoover’s dockyards that he could enhance that power by physically channeling energy into it through his own body, he couldn’t retain uses that way; thirteen times per day was the absolute limit, until that power refreshed itself each night at midnight.

Given that he’d only used it twice today – once to prepare a component in order to use his minor healing spell on Drafty from where Dark Streak had injured her, and again to subdue Solvei – Lex knew there was little immediate danger with regard to the oversized wolf. It would be easy to take control of her again if she so much as looked at either of them wrong. But that would only suffice for a grand total of eleven minutes, at which point there would be little he could do to stop Solvei from making a meal out of the two of them.

As much as Lex could appreciate the parallels between what had happened with Sonata and Fireflower compared to Thermal Draft and Solvei now, that didn’t mean that the situations were identical. Fireflower had been lost and afraid, meaning no harm to anyone. Solvei had attempted to kill them and eat them. No matter that she’d apparently filled her belly now; given her large size, it wouldn’t be long before she was hungry again, most likely for the meat she apparently craved.

To that end, the smart thing to do would be to pursue the line of inquiry Thermal Draft had raised – finding out if Solvei knew where the nearest pony municipality was – and be done with the creature before the next eleven minutes were up.

But that was going to be difficult if Thermal Draft kept peppering it with inane questions!

“Wait, so you’re called a ‘winter wolf’?” asked the pegasus with a good-natured snicker, keeping up the conversation she’d started with the monstrous canine after the creature had divulged its name. “That’s a little too on the nose, isn’t it? I mean, we’re a pegasus and a unicorn, not a ‘winged pony’ and a ‘horned pony.’ Although I guess earth ponies are kind of the exception.”

“Just so you know, ‘winter wolves’ are what others call us,” answered Solvei defensively. “We call ourselves utvalgte. It means ‘the chosen ones,’ because we’re the tribe that remained loyal to our ancestor, Hrothvitnir, after Vutok the Destroyer emerged from the Great Gap beyond the edge of the world.” Rising to a sitting position, she gestured with a paw. “We-”

“Lie back down!” demanded Lex, backing the command up with another application of the Night Mare’s power. The previous use had worn off just as the wolf had sat up, and he couldn’t take the chance that she’d felt her freedom return and had been preparing to pounce.

Having no choice but to obey, Solvei sank back onto her belly. “I didn’t mean any harm,” she whimpered. “I was just going to tell the sacred story of our ancestors. You didn’t have to use your seidr on m-, oh! That’s right!” Despite being unable to get up, she looked over at him with renewed interest. “You’re a seidrmadr, aren’t you? What other powers do you have?”

Thermal Draft tilted her head. “That’s the second time you’ve called him a seid-whatever. What does that mean?”

Solvei opened her mouth to reply, but Lex – not wanting another long digression from the winter wolf – cut her off. “‘Seidr’ is their word for ‘magic.’ The suffix ‘-madr’ means ‘user’ or ‘wielder.’”

Solvei’s eyes widened. “You know the language of our ancestors?!”

“I know many languages,” snorted Lex dismissively. “Now-”

“Yeah, but one spoken by the ancestors of a tribe of talking wolves on another world?” interrupted Thermal Draft, a look of amazement on her face. “What’s the story there?”

Lex let out a slow breath, strangling the urge to berate the pegasus for wasting time they didn’t have. He’d cut in to avoid a long story, not to tell one! “The temple of Luminace – the pony goddess of magic – in Viljatown, the capital of the Pony Empire, doubles as a library,” he explained through gritted teeth, wanting to finish this and get back to more important topics. “When I first came here, I used its resources to try and research a way home. Since several of their treatises on magic made use of various foreign terms and phrases, it was most efficient to simply teach myself those languages using the dictionaries they’d compiled. One of those was Koloss,” he added, with a nod at Solvei to indicate that as the tongue she’d been using.

Thermal Draft blinked. “Teach yourself those languages?” she repeated. “By reading dictionaries? As in, reading each one cover-to-cover?” Her eyebrows went up when he nodded. “Exactly how long did that take you?”

Lex scowled, not understanding the point of the question. “A few hours for each one. Why?”

“A few hours each,” echoed Drafty, nonplussed. “You learned to speak entirely new languages in a few hours each.” Shaking her head, she regarded him with wide eyes. “Lex, just how smart are you?”

The question made him frown, not sure if she was actually asking or if she was being rhetorical, but Solvei cut in before he could give it any further thought. “If you have seidr, and you can speak the language of my ancestors, then can you heal my pack?”

It was such an abrupt subject shift that Lex could only frown at the winter wolf. “What?”

“My pack, my family, are all sick,” she explained, her ears folding back. “I’ve been looking for a way to fix them, but nothing’s worked. Can you help them? Please?”

The request made his lip curl. “Absolutely not.”

Despite already lying on the ground, Solvei seemed to slump in place. “Please! You’re looking for others of your kind, right? That’s why you’re out here all alone? I can show you where they live! And…and we can reward you for your help! We have the gold that your people love! And, um, and…and we have some seidr of our own that I’m sure my mother would be willing to share once you cured her! So please…!”

For her part, Thermal Draft bit her lip. “Lex…maybe you should…”

“No,” he replied coldly. “This creature injured your wing, almost froze me to death, and now it wants me to use my magic to cure whatever’s afflicting the rest of its misbegotten kind? It’s one thing to feed a creature like this. It’s another to help its kin so that they can continue savaging ponies!”

He gave the white wolf a look of loathing then. “That’s what your kind does, isn’t it? That gold you mentioned, you’ve gotten it from other ponies that you’ve killed. Isn’t that why you know where they live?”

Solvei winced. “It’s not like that! All of those things were taken as keepsakes from before I was born! Yes, we used to hunt your kind, but my mother’s mother declared that their home was off-limits after her mate got most of their pack killed when he led an attack on their land! She said they had dangerous weapons – metal sticks with sharp edges, long spikes that they shot through the air, and other strange tools – that they weren’t prepared to for. Now we stay away from their homes. I only bit your mate’s wing because I was starving…”

The correction came to Lex’s lips automatically. “She’s not-”

“Lex,” interrupted Thermal Draft, blushing for some reason as she walked over to him. Tentatively, she reached out and brushed a wing against his side, making sure not to let the feathers trace over any of his wounds. “You saved me when I was sick,” she murmured softly. “And that’s when I knew that…” She trailed off, swallowing before she continued speaking. “That you were my hero. Why not do the same for her now?”

The utter fatuousness of her reasoning made him scoff. “You are a pony,” he replied without hesitation. “I have a moral obligation to do everything in my power to aid ponies whose lives are in danger. This,” – he waved a hoof at Solvei, the motion nearly drawing a grunt of effort from him – “is a carnivorous monster, no different than the sahuagin and the other sea creatures whom we slaughtered by the dozens when they attacked Vanhoover. Even if she’s telling the truth about not attacking pony settlements, that’s a position that could be abandoned at any time.”

He paused for a moment, letting that sink in. “I will not aid creatures that prey on ponies. Better that her pack be wiped out by whatever disease they’ve contracted.”

“You don’t understand!” protested Solvei. “Being sick has made them more likely to attack your kind, not less! They all think that they’re invincible now, and that the old rules don’t apply anymore! If I can’t find a way to fix them, they’ll attack your people’s land again, which means that they’ll all be killed!”

Thermal Draft’s gaze immediately moved back to the winter wolf. “Wait, what?”

Lex’s eyes narrowed. “You’re saying your pack has contracted an illness that’s made them more aggressive?” That sounded too similar to the outbreak of ghouls that had overrun Vanhoover for his liking. While most of the undead ponies’ victims had been paralyzed and subsequently devoured alive, anypony who’d been bitten by a ghoul but had managed to escape had contracted an illness. Those who’d succumbed to it had died – which had been most of the ponies who’d gotten sick, since Vanhoover’s collapse had meant that not only had medical treatment been impossible to find, but even basic hygiene had quickly become unsustainable – only to rise again as new ghouls, slowly but surely expanding the population of the hungry undead.

If Solvei was telling the truth, and there was something similar plaguing her kin now…

It wouldn’t even need to be something that serious to be dangerous, he decided after a moment’s consideration. Any disease whose symptoms include aggression and bouts of violence could be devastating for anypony living nearby. While Solvei had made it sound like the ponies in the region had fought off the winter wolves before, they’d likely lost lives in the process. That would almost certainly happen again if the winter wolves mounted another attack now…in which case, he’d be at fault for not curing Solvei’s pack when he had the chance, preventing the attack before it ever happened.

“Fine,” he spat, giving Solvei a sour look. “I’ll see what I can do for your pack.”

Immediately, her tail set to wagging, a relieved sigh escaping her lips as her ears perked back up. “Thank you! Please let me up, and I’ll take you to them right away!”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” came a new voice from the mouth of the cave.

Like Solvei’s, it was female, but with a slightly deeper pitch, as though the speaker were older. Nor was it alone, being accompanied by chuckling from at least two others. Or at least, that was all Lex could determine as he whipped his head back toward the cave entrance, spotting three large shapes walking inside, their features obscured by the glare from the light outside.

But Solvei apparently didn’t need to see who’d spoken to know who it was. “Mother!”

“It’s time for you to come home now, Solvei,” continued the newcomer as she padded further into the cave, her features slowly coming into view. “No more running away.”

The words made Solvei cringe. Or perhaps it wasn’t what her mother had said, but rather was the sight of her that made the winter wolf flinch. If so, that was something Lex could understand.

Now that he could see them clearly, it was obvious that whatever had happened to Solvei’s kin was far worse than a mere illness…

Author's Note:

Solvei pleads with Lex to heal the sickness her pack is suffering from, but as they arrive on the scene, it seems like things are worse than she let on!

What's happened to her fellow winter wolves? And how will they react to the sight of Lex and Thermal Draft?

Comments

[Not so New Brony]

First thing that popped into my mind was undead but given how coherent they are in comparison to the ghouls in Vanhoover, my next best guess that Solvei's pack are possessed/mind controlled or at least the pack leader is possessed/mind controlled and forced to lead the pack just like Block was with the refugees. If that is the case then my mind can only think of a certain siren...

Or, the pack isn't sick at all and they are being aggressive on their own and Solvei just thinks its an illness. Of course, that's just my thoughts given how little was revealed so far.

Regardless, the fact that Lex knows some if not all of Everglow's languages will probably come in handy though even if he knows the language, their culture will be another matter altogether.

Though I do have do wonder how the scholars managed to catalog the winter wolves' language. Either the wolves belonged to a long fallen and forgotten civilization and only remnants of the knowledge live on...or the scholars who transcribed and translated the language were really, really determined. Both of which fascinate me for different reasons.

[Alzrius]

10945785 That they've become undead was Lex's first thought also, but presumably that isn't the case. As you noted, Solvei's mother seems a lot more coherent than the ghouls were; while we can't rule that out until the next chapter (since presumably it will pick up where this one left off), the smart money seems to be on something else. As for what...well, to hear Solvei tell it, the rest of her family is acting unusual, so obviously something is affecting their minds. But what?

One thing to note here is that winter wolves (typically) have an Intelligence score of 9, where average human (and pony) Intelligence is 10 (with 11 being only slightly higher). Throw in how provincial Solvei is (e.g. she doesn't know terms like "swords" or "bows and arrows," and has to borrow another language's words for "magic" and "wizard") and it's not improbable that Solvei simply doesn't have the ability to recognize what's happened to her pack as being something other than a sickness, even if it's something else entirely.

With regards to Lex knowing the language of her ancestors (because the temple of Luminace was able to catalogue it), that's an instance of me dancing around a limitation of the d20 System. Looking back at the winter wolf entry linked to above, they all know two languages: Common and Giant. That's because the default array of languages (scroll down) in the game system is predominantly racial in nature, rather than geographic. That's something which doesn't match our intuitive understanding for how language works, however, and so it falls apart if examined too closely (or alternatively, requires a radically different understanding of how languages spread in the game world). It's no surprise that developed settings such as Pathfinder's Golarion or the Forgotten Realms have numerous local languages that functionally replace a lot of the default assumptions that the game rules use.

The result is that I had to alter the assumptions a little bit, without getting too deep into the underlying issues. As such, Solvei's ancestral language went from being "Giant" to "Koloss" (as in, the Norwegian word for "colossus"; notice my repeated use of Norse-related languages for everything related to Solvei's people), and is probably going to be the language used by creatures with similar cultural backgrounds to the winter wolves (which we got a hint of here, as she started to explain her people's mythohistorical origins; the names I used there were not random).

[Booster Spice]

The Kittie looks like it might be freinds, But family have arrived for dinner, and Gruel just aint gonna cut it?

[Alzrius]

10946339 Somehow I suspect they'll prefer something a little more fresh...as in, freshly-slaughtered.

Of course, a certain stallion wielding a goddess-given power might have something to say about that.

[harts fire]

Lex to the rescue. and this one is going to pay off 10 fold in time.

[Alzrius]

10946472 Maybe it will. Maybe it will...