Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

712 - A Bridge Between Worlds

“You’re a devotee of the Night Mare?”

Lex couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice. Shortly after they’d taken Toklo prisoner, the adlet had expressed marked disdain toward the concept of serving a higher power, fiercely asserting that his people were free, living in harmony with some vague consortium of spirits. For his tribe’s shaman – who was the doctrinal authority among the adlets with regard to said spirits – to be faithful to an actual deity was difficult to believe.

If Akna noticed his doubts, however, she didn’t seem phased by them. Instead, she nodded gravely. “Now do you understand why we need to have Yotimo and his warriors leave? To them, I’m an apostate; they’d kill me and devour me on the spot if they knew that I had promised my life to a god, hoping that my soul would be reborn within the tribe rather than going to the Night Mare’s realm.”

The implication that she’d be taken in by the goddess after her death made Lex’s lip curl. “And you really think she’ll accept you?”

Akna’s brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t she? My faith in her is true!”

“The Night Mare is a pony goddess,” spat Lex. “And you’re no pony.”

Tilting her head in confusion, Akna needed a moment to come up with a response. “She’s a goddess whose followers are mostly ponies,” she admitted. “But she herself accepts the pledge of any who commit themselves to her wholeheartedly.”

“Ridiculous,” spat Lex.

Scoffing, Akna gestured behind herself, at where – beyond the edge of the dome Lex had conjured – Solvei was cautiously creeping closer to the ice elemental the shaman had conjured, her nose twitching as she took in its scent. “Your slave isn’t a pony,” she noted. “And yet she serves you devoutly. Does that not mean that she also worships the goddess of your heart? And if she does, do you truly believe the Night Mare will refuse to let you keep your slave after the two of you die?”

“Solvei is not-” Lex forced himself to stop speaking, fighting down the sudden flare of indignation that came over him then. The sheer number of assumptions Akna had made just now was bad enough; notwithstanding the number of close calls he’d had recently, Lex fully intended to live forever, making any assumptions about the circumstances of his afterlife moot. Likewise, he’d never bothered to inquire as to what Solvei thought of the Night Mare; it simply hadn’t been something he’d ever considered.

But it was her assertion that Solvei was his slave – a piece of property whose life had quantifiable value – that bothered him the most. Even then, it hadn’t been Akna’s blithe assumption that he’d do something so hideously immoral that had caused his temper to flare.

It had been that she’d insulted Solvei’s dignity, implying that her service to him was borne out of coercion rather than loyalty.

The idea made Lex want to gnash his teeth in anger, and it was the very fact that he felt that way about Solvei which disturbed him so much. Particularly since it wasn’t the first time he’d felt such affection toward the winter wolf.

It made no sense. Solvei wasn’t a pony; she was a creature with which he’d found himself sharing a profound – and profoundly unwanted – bond, which was the only reason he could think of why he was so partial to her now. That explanation didn’t comfort him, however. The idea that their connection might be affecting his view of her, corrupting his thoughts and feelings in a way that his dark magic couldn’t resist, was a prospect that frightened Lex more than the grave.

And on top of all the recent negativity that he’d only just managed to push out of the forefront of his mind, it was more than he was prepared to deal with right now, leaving him looking for a different topic to focus on.

“Where?”

Again, Akna cocked her head. “Where...? You mean, where is the Shrine?”

Still trying to regain his equilibrium, Lex simply nodded, not trusting himself to speak at the moment.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” she replied. “I’ll take you there myself once we’ve sent Yotimo and-”

Her reticence had the opposite effect, serving only to frustrate Lex further. “Where,” he hissed, his eyes glowing as black crystals began to sprout from around his hooves, “is the shrine?!”

The threatening display caused Akna to back up, tensing as she moved toward the edge of the dome. A glance back showed her that her ice elemental hadn’t moved, and she licked her lips as she looked between it and Lex. But she didn’t call for it, instead gauging how much to say as she narrowed her eyes. “North of here,” she admitted grudgingly. “Near the edge of the woods. But you’ll never find it without my help.”

For a long moment, Lex didn’t reply. Then he let out a slow breath, his eyes returning to normal as the black crystals crumbled to dust. “That won’t be necessary. I’m no longer concerned with locating the place.”

He ignored Akna’s shocked look as he strode toward the edge of the dome.

It was a matter of simple geography. The entire reason he and the others had been searching for the Shrine of the Starless Sky to begin with was because they’d hypothesized that it was the staging ground from where Grisela and her coterie of monsters were launching their attacks on that village. But while Mystaria’s map had indicated that the Shrine was beyond the mountain pass and to the north, it hadn’t indicated that such a thick and deadly forest was in their way, nor that the adlets – who were hostile to the yetis that Grisela had relied upon – claimed that area as their territory.

What that meant was that the Shrine was unlikely to be where Grisela was operating from. Between the adlets and the monsters in the forest, the trek to the pony village would have been more trouble than it was worth. And Lex had no doubt that the winter witch and her so-called brothers had traveled on foot; if they could have teleported, they wouldn’t have appeared in the mountain pass where the adlets had originally spotted them, over a day’s march away from where they were trying to procure food.

That was all supposition, of course, but without hard evidence one way or another – and with the lives of those villagers, and quite possibly Woodheart as well, depending on them finding and dispatching Grisela and the rest of her ilk as quickly as possible – it was a question of where to prioritize searching. Now that the Shrine was looking less and less likely to be the place they were seeking, it was time to direct their efforts elsewhere.

“What are you doing?!” snarled Akna as Lex marched toward the edge of the dome. “Stop!”

Her last order came as she interposed herself between him and the boundary of the spell, and her voice was loud enough to make Solvei glance back at them sharply, the ice elemental belatedly doing the same. But the adlet shaman didn’t seem to care, glaring at him. “You came here looking for the Shrine, and now you’re just going to abandon it?!”

“I came here looking for the force commanding those yetis we slaughtered,” corrected Lex. “Now that you’ve given me enough information for me to determine that the Shrine isn’t likely to be their base of operations, I’ve lost interest in it.”

“Base of...?” echoed Akna, looking at him incredulously for a moment before shaking her head. “Listen to me, that Shrine is more than just a place sacred to the Night Mare! It serves as a bridge between this world and hers! That’s how I was able to acquire Headhunter! If we work together now, then we might be able to bring back even more holy relics like it!”

The prospect made Lex’s lip curl. As badly as his thaumaturgical spellcasting had been crippled when he’d discarded Severance, and as often as he’d wished he had a way to overcome the limitation on his strongest magic – particularly in light of Mystaria figuring out his secret – he’d never once regretted his decision to throw the scythe away. Not after it had murdered Silhouette, attempted to do the same to Luna, and covertly turned Fruit Crunch and his friends to the Night Mare’s service without telling him.

The prospect of something like that happening again wasn’t something he could bring himself to entertain. Not when Drafty’s soul would expire if she were to die again. Not if one of the others had their mind warped – the way Akna clearly had – because they’d held one of those weapons without realizing the consequence. Too many ponies had already paid the price for his mistakes; to have that happen again when he knew full well what the consequences would be was absolutely inexcusable.

“Those living weapons are more trouble than they’re worth,” he snarled. “You’re better off without them. Now get out of my way.”

Her hands clenching into fists, Akna stood her ground. “What is wrong with you?! You’re intent on fighting whatever brought those yetis back, aren’t you?! It was because of Headhunter that I was able to wipe them out in the first place! Think of how easy it would be for us to finish the job with two weapons like that!”

“I’m not going to tell you again,” warned Lex. “Move, or I’ll go through you.” It was no idle threat on his part, as a thought turned him back into a mass of shadows.

But Akna refused to budge, her words spilling out faster as she realized that their meeting was coming to an end. “It’s not just about ending this new threat! If we show my people that the Night Mare is their salvation, I might be able to convert them to her worship! Think of the prestige we’ll gain with her if we can bring new souls into her faith!”

Having already done exactly that, the prospect earned a derisive snort from Lex, already floating forward. “If you thought that was possible, you would have done so after you used Headhunter for the first time.”

“That was because I had to give it back, and I wasn’t sure-, no, wait!” In her desperation as Lex made good on his threat to leave, Akna attempted to grab him, but it was futile. Her fingers passed through the billowy blackness of his form without closing on anything substantial, and she could only watch helplessly as he moved to the edge of the hemisphere he’d conjured.

“You can undergo the Rite of Sublimation there!”

Her last outburst meant nothing to Lex. He’d never formally studied the Night Mare’s faith, which meant that the specifics of her religious practices were outside his realm of knowledge. Nevertheless, he came to a halt anyway. But it wasn’t because of what Akna had said that he stopped. Not directly, at least.

It was because he’d felt the barbed wire wrapped around his foreleg move.

That shouldn’t have been possible. He was in shadow-form at the moment, which meant that he had no foreleg to feel anything with. And yet the sensation had been unmistakable.

Even more unexpectedly, what he’d felt hadn’t been pain. Usually, when the manifestation of the Night Mare’s power reacted to something, it was because she’d taken umbrage at something he was doing, the barbs cutting him with an intensity proportional to her displeasure. It was only rarely that they moved without cutting him, something he knew was indicative of her approval.

Which had been what he’d felt just now.

Returning to material form, he examined his foreleg with a critical eye. The barbed wire had gone still now, but even so...

“The Rite of Sublimation,” he murmured.

Sure enough, the barbed wire moved again. Only slightly, but this time he could see the motion in addition to feeling it.

Whatever that was, the Night Mare seemed to be pleased by the idea of him undergoing it.

That was enough to give Lex pause. He wanted nothing to do with any of the goddess’s so-called Umbral Regalia, but as much as he disliked the living weapons, he had no antipathy toward the Night Mare herself. For all that he found her troublesome at times, he still respected her. Likewise, he was keenly aware that she’d saved both himself and Thermal Draft when his attempt to teleport them out of the burning factory back on Equestria would have killed them both.

She had looked out for him then. Was she looking out for him now?

Behind him, Akna sighed in relief, thinking that it was her admission alone that had stopped him. “It’s true,” she added. “And I can prove it.”

That was enough to make Lex glance back at her, one brow raised in a silent query.

For a moment she didn’t move, except to purse her lips. Then she raised her hands, only to pause as if thinking better of what she was doing, lowering them a second later. Instead, she bent at the waist, only to abort that motion midway through as well, standing back up straight. Her ears flickered as she looked around, and Lex saw her glance at where the rest of her people were stationed, several of whom had their eyes on the dome they were in.

“This...whatever it is,” she muttered, waving a hand at the transparent shell around them. “It’s not going to vanish anytime soon, right?”

The question, along with her odd behavior, made Lex frown. “It will last for an entire day unless I dismiss it.”

“...alright.”

Taking a deep breath, Akna nodded, straightening up as though having resolved herself. Even so, Lex saw her swallow lightly, and she turned so that she was standing in profile to him, staring outward at the patch of the forest away from where her people were keeping watch.

Then she began to strip.

Repulsed, Lex took a step back. “What are you doing?!”

“When I went back to the Shrine, after the yetis were all slain, I prayed to the Night Mare for the power to bring my people to her,” answered Akna, refusing to meet his eyes as she untied the straps of her fur-lined halter top, pulling the garment – the only thing she was wearing above her waist – over her head a moment later and tossing it aside. “And in order to prove myself, I offered to undergo the Rite.”

She kept moving as she spoke, fiddling with the belt around her waist before pulling it off, pulling her russet leather pants down past her hips a moment later. “I managed to complete it without losing myself, and was rewarded for doing so. And that reward showed me that the Night Mare didn’t want me to simply bring the adlets into her fold, but all the creatures who dwell in the frozen reaches.”

All that she was left in now was a thong, the thin material doing almost nothing to preserve what was left of her modesty. Even then she hesitated only a moment before grasping the sides of it, tail raising just enough for it not to catch on her fur as she bent down and stepped out of her last article of clothing. “That’s why she gave me this power.”

Lex was about to ask what she meant when Akna began to change.

A wet snapping sound came from within her body, drawing a pained grunt from her lips as she sank into a crouch. It was immediately followed by another, and then another, until the soft pops and crunches flowed into a quiet cacophony. The entire time, Akna’s body continued to shift, her shoulders moving so that her arms extended in front of her rather than to the side, fingers shortening as her nail turned into claws. Her chest flattened, breasts disappearing as her ribs grew wider. Her back legs shortened as she fell onto all fours, becoming proportional to her new body shape. Even the hair on her head seemed to retract, her braid vanishing in favor of leaving her covered with fur that was uniformly white, leaving her blue eyes the only spot of color on her now four-legged body.

In the span of a few seconds, Akna had become a winter wolf.

Groaning in relief now that the transformation had finished, Akna looked back at Lex. “Long ago, my people and your Solvei’s were one and the same. And the Night Mare has bid me to bring them together again, reunited under her dominion.”

Author's Note:

Akna reveals her secret, and her ambition, to Lex!

What is the Rite of Sublimation? What exactly has it done to Akna, and what will happen to Lex if he goes through with it?

Comments

[Not so New Brony]

Well, at least we have a better idea of what Spinner's prophecy about Lex suffering some deformity is about and he'll come to the same conclusion and with Akna as a point of reference, he'll have a source of information of what happens in this 'Trial' and whether it'll be worth it or not.

Though I doubt the Night Mare will let him opt out of it without some 'encouragement'

[Booster Spice]

I wonder why Im singing along with Chubby Checker?

[Alzrius]

11230202 Heh, it certainly seems like this could be what Spinner was referring to when she made her ill-fated divination, doesn't it? Of course, Lex has a lot on his plate, to which I have to wonder if he'll care overly much about Spinner's prediction, particularly given everything else that's at stake. Presumably Akna can give him the inside track on what the Rite consists of, but will that be enough to change what the filidh foresaw?

[Alzrius]

11230308 With that emoji, I'm now hearing "let'th do the twitht" in my head.