Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

636 - Divine Authority

It was all so obvious in hindsight.

Knowing what he knew now, it was clear to Lex that there had been plenty of clues as to the true nature of the power that the Night Mare had given him. He simply hadn’t noticed them. Or rather, he hadn’t properly appreciated the significance of what he had known.

That the Night Mare had imbued him with a portion of her own nature as a deity had been self-evident. “You shall contain a fragment of my essence within you,” she’d said at the time. It was something that he should have paid more attention to.

The next clue had been the gemstone-embedded resurrection spell she’d given him. It had been a gift that he’d studied long and hard before putting it to use, hoping to reverse-engineer the life-restoring magic held within. He’d failed at that, but had gained new knowledge in doing so: that divine magic – while relying on thought-forms which shaped and directed energy through a series of complex instructions in a way that seemed identical to the magic that he’d painstaking created when he was younger – was fundamentally different from his own thaumaturgical spellcasting. Not just for healing magic, he realized now, but for all divine spells, if you examined their underlying structure closely enough.

His own style of spellcasting worked because it relied on specialized instructions embedded in the conceptual structure of his thoughts, instructions which made use of complex manipulations of natural laws so as to actualize metaphysical principles in order to achieve specific, concrete effects in the real world.

The instructions bound up in divine spells – if examined closely enough – operated on a different basis.

They worked because the gods wanted them to work, restructuring a small portion of existence itself so that it functioned how they desired.

Of course, if the nature of a god was to alter reality– at least to some limited degree – as an act of pure willpower, and a god had placed a fragment of their own essence within him, then Lex had realized that the power the Night Mare had given him was capable of far more than he’d ever imagined. The question then was what else he could do with it.

And now he knew the answer:

Anything I want.

---

The four winter wolves rushed forward as one, teeth bared and claws flexing. Their strides were heavy enough that the vibrations could be felt through the solid rock of the cavern floor. Snarling and howls filled the air, the calls of hunters who’d found their prey and were committed to the kill.

In response, Lex raised his wire-bound foreleg toward Solvei and spoke.

“Overwhelm them.”

It was more than just a command. It was an order that carried the weight of a godly pronouncement behind it. It was a declaration of what would happen, for no other reason than because he wished it to.

Even as the words left his lips, he felt the invisible tendrils of power lashing out, finding Solvei and sinking into her. It wasn’t anything so crude as puppeteering her limbs now; instead, the power went to work on a far more refined level, changing her so that she could fulfill the proclamation he’d made, a vessel to carry out his will. It was like what had happened in the cave yesterday, when he’d called upon her to defend them, but in a more sophisticated manner now that he was consciously directing the process.

At his side, Solvei shuddered, not in pain but in a rush of exhilaration as new strength coursed through her body. Reflexes sharpened. Bones toughened. Muscles thickened. Adrenaline flowed. The magical channels in her body surged. Every part of her physical self became greater, stronger, more than she had been only seconds ago, all to fulfill the mandate she’d been given.

With a wordless roar of exaltation, she shot forward, bridging the gap between herself and her family in an instant. From his position on the other side of the den, Lex saw their eyes widen in shock, either at her suddenly going on the attack or at how fast she’d moved.

Then she was on them.

Having been in the lead of their wild charge, Ebbe was the first to go down. Darting out of the way of his wild rush, Solvei lowered her head and sank her teeth into his foreleg as his own momentum carried him past her. Her fangs pierced his thick hide even easier than Bolverk’s claws had, and Ebbe howled with pain as her teeth scraped across bone.

But his cry had barely left his throat when Solvei yanked her head around, pulling his leg in the direction opposite he’d been moving. Combined with his forward motion, the sudden yank backward caused him to lose his balance completely, sending him tumbling to the ground as Solvei released his leg. Worse, his sudden fall put him directly in Kaja’s path, causing her to yelp in alarm as she stumbled into him, tripping over his prone form and staggering off-course as she tried to tried to keep her legs under her.

Solvei, however, had no time to capitalize on her sister’s sudden vulnerability, instead turning her attention to where Turid was rushing past her on her other side. Lex could see that the elder wolf’s eyes were locked onto him, clearly having decided that the best way to win was to take out the seidrmadr who had bolstered her daughter’s combat prowess.

She never got a chance to get close to him though, as Solvei spun around with far greater quickness than a creature her size had any right to, clamping her jaws around one of her mother’s wings. Turid gasped in pain, but just like Ebbe didn’t get a chance to do anything else as Solvei surged forward, plowing into her mother’s side as she savagely shook her head back and forth. It was enough to make Turid abandon all thoughts of offense, desperately flapping her wings in an effort to free herself from Solvei’s grip…only to be caught off-guard as Solvei suddenly released her, rushing upward before she could stop herself and colliding with the low-hanging roof of the den. The crack of her skull hitting the stone was audible to everyone in the den, and she crashed to the floor a moment later, unable to get her legs under her in time to prevent her from landing hard on her belly.

Satisfied that her mother was dealt with, Solvei looked toward Sten, who’d been at the back of the charge-

Only for him to slam into her full-force just as she turned to face him.

The hit should have knocked her into the air. Sten had six inches and several dozen pounds on her, and had been running full-tilt. But while the impact lifted Solvei’s front paws off the ground, she managed to keep her back legs firmly planted, grunting heavily as she fought to recover her stance.

Sten, however, wasn’t about to let the opportunity in front of him go to waste. Keeping his forward motion going, he reared up, latching his jaws around Solvei’s throat even as one claw came around to swipe at her vulnerable underbelly. Both were killing shots, and he had Solvei dead to rights on each.

But when he squeezed his jaw a moment later, the only sound that could be heard was his teeth suddenly cracking as they failed to penetrate her skin. His claw swipe fared little better, opening up a line of shallow scratches along her belly that oozed only a trickle of blood, what should have been a disemboweling strike reduced to a set of light scrapes.

Unable to contain his surprise at what had happened, Sten stood no chance in the face of Solvei’s counterattack. Wrenching her neck free of his jaws, she returned the favor a moment later, sinking her teeth into the meat of his shoulder, easily piercing the skin which had so effortlessly shrugged off being stabbed by Lex’s black crystals only yesterday. Using her upright position to her advantage, Solvei reared her head back, lifting Sten a few inches clear of the ground before she turned and flung herself back onto all fours, slamming him onto the floor of the cavern hard enough that the breath exploded from his lungs in a whoosh, leaving him wide-eyed and gasping in pain.

The entire exchange had taken less than ten seconds.

Scattered around where Solvei was still standing tall, the other four winter wolves groaned and started picking themselves up. Ebbe looked as though he wanted to rise, but a single growl from Solvei was all it took for him to abandon that idea, curling his injured leg under him as he crawled backward. Turid grunted as she shook her head, her injured wing tucked protectively at her side. Sten coughed, sucking in a lungful of air as he finally managed to get his breathing under control. Kaja was the least bad off, having managed to regain her balance as she stared at her sister, wide-eyed at how effortlessly the white wolf had fended the four of them off.

And at the back of the cavern, Bolverk was raging. “What are you fools doing?! She’s just one little pup! The runt of the litter! You all have the Red Man’s power, so kill her already!”

Even though it wasn’t directed at her, Solvei sneered at the rebuke. “If you’re unhappy with your followers, come over here and fight me yourself, alpha.” The last word was thick with derision, turning the term from one of respect into a form of mockery.

His eyes flashed at that, but Bolverk remained where he was. “I’d rather watch your kin rip you into bloody pieces.”

From his position near the entrance to the den, Lex laughed. “It should be obvious, even to a creature of limited intelligence such as yourself, that they can’t.”

Snarling, Bolverk slammed a paw down onto the ground hard enough to make a dust cloud rise around him. “What was that?!”

“You heard me,” sneered Lex, looking at the pack leader contemptuously as he gestured at the fallen wolves. “These curs that you browbeat into subservience, like yourself, are empowered by mutations from that Red Man of yours. But right now, Solvei is empowered by the Chosen of a god. Even you should be able to tell which one is superior.”

That was ultimately what it came down to, Lex knew. While there were still limits to what he could do with this power – he could only use it so many times, couldn’t break the sixty-second limit, and could still only affect certain creatures – the sheer breadth of what it was capable of was something he was still exploring. While he could only imbue Solvei with so much power at a time, the limits in how he could make it manifest in her were few indeed. Throw in how he could potentially force larger quantities of power on her if he concentrated harder, and even force it to greater heights if he overchanneled energy into it through his body, and the potential for what he could do was staggering to consider.

Having learned so much about what the goddess had given him, Lex had come to one other realization as well. Ever since he’d received this ability, he’d simply referred to it as “the Night Mare’s power.” But now he found that to be a wholly inadequate term, and as much as Lex knew that the nomenclature of what he’d been given was unimportant, he disliked descriptions that were misleading on principle. Calling this “the Night Mare’s power” identified where it came from, but not what it was.

Fortunately, he knew exactly what to call this now, even within the privacy of his own thoughts. Indeed, there was only one label that was appropriate when referring to a god-given power to overwrite an aspect of reality that was found to be lacking:

Divine authority.

Author's Note:

Using the divine authority granted to him by the Night Mare, Lex empowers Solvei, giving her the power to easily overcome her family!

Is the fight decided? Or will Bolverk insist on continuing the conflict?

Comments

[Not so New Brony]

Okay, putting aside the part where Lex tried to do everything himself, I can see why the Night Mare might be frustrated (or would disappointed be more fitting?) with Lex if he was underutilizing the blessings and boon she granted him as her champion or outright discarded in Severance's case.

At the very least, Lex will be better equipped to handle journeying through Everglow on his quest to return to Equestria and with time, he'll probably learn how to utilize more of the Divine Authority's powers. Though speaking of Equestria, I can imagine what Thermal Draft would want from Prevarius which isn't very good since it'll be a smorgasbord of trusting ponies to make deals with.

Provided he can get past the Archangel whose name escapes me at the moment who said that he'll stop any further interlopers from outside of Equestria.

[Firefoxino]

That's good and all but am I the only one who's ready to see draft turned into a succubus because she was idiotic enough to make a deal with a devil? Only me? Good.

[harts fire]

Divine authority! lex is all most there.

[Booster Spice]

Analysing.

Analysis Complete.

Welcome to L-Space, Lex Legis. What would you care to do today?

[Alzrius]

10972981 The Night Mare is a goddess who encourages ponies to develop their strengths, but she doesn't define "strength" purely in terms of personal power. Rather, in her religion, the exercise of strength is with regard to exerting influence over the lives of others, i.e. these who lack strength. She's also a goddess of monsters and eldritch beasts. So it's no real surprise that the bulk of what she gave Lex was the power to not only command various creatures, but to empower them as well. Doing so is at the heart of her credo.

Of course, she's also a goddess who believes that the strong should develop their strength on their own. The weak, who cannot come into power on their own merit, can be raised up if their master chooses to give them power, but those who would rule over others need to earn the right to do so. To that end, the Night Mare will show the the way, and even give them the tools to do so, but she will absolutely let her faithful sink or swim on their own. She was willing to give Lex nudges here and there when he looked like he was going astray, but it was up to him to figure out how to utilize the gifts she gave him. That's something she won't compromise on (which is why Lex came very close to failing to fulfill his promise to grow her religion in Equestria, since it was the Night Mare's Knights who figured out that he needed to act as a conduit to put potential worshipers of the goddess in touch with her).

Fortunately, Lex has at last realized the scope of the gift that the Night Mare gave him, which means that - so long as he has Solvei (or some other creature like her) - he'll have a lot more options at his disposal while he's on Everglow. The divine authority that the Night Mare has lent him is apparently incredibly powerful, and with his intellect he'll likely be able to put it to good use.

Which he'll likely need to do soon, if Prevarius has done something to Thermal Draft.

[Alzrius]

10973096 Heh, I wonder...

The funny thing is that, in the d20 System (i.e. Pathfinder 1E and D&D 3.X), succubi are demons rather than devils. In fact, devils in Pathfinder don't really have a "tempt with sex" niche among their ranks; erinyes are beautiful, but aren't seducers; handmaidens are attendants rather than companions; sire devils taint bloodlines, but don't really offer carnal satisfaction. D&D 3.5 did have a pleasure devil type, but it's not Open Game Content (though for a fanfic that's not really an issue).

As for whether or not Thermal Draft would want something like that, well...she does seem to be unhappy about how she had to pretend to be Sonata in order to steal a romantic encounter with Lex...

[Alzrius]

10973254 Well, it's the Night Mare's divine authority; he's just borrowing it, but still...the fact that he's realized just what it is and what he can use it for is a big step up for what he can do.

[Alzrius]

10973692 Heh, he's not that far along. Still, you have to admire how just one day of enduring the hardships of Everglow has made him re-evaluate his powers, realizing that he's stronger than he thinks. Imagine what will happen if he's stuck there for a while.