Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

760 - Salacious Sorcery

Sanguine Disposition’s statement was so absurd that it took Lex a moment to formulate a reply.

“What are you talking about?” He couldn’t keep the derisive tone out of his voice, appalled by what the leather wing was suggesting. “I don’t have a blessing from Kara!”

Smirking, Sanguine Disposition tsked at him. “No need to be coy about it. You might not know this about me, but I have a bit of history with Kara myself, so I can tell. And you definitely have a trace amount of her divinity around you. Nowhere near as much as the Night Mare’s, but it’s unmistakably there.”

“What’s he talking about?” Confused, Akna glanced between the two stallions before turning to look at Solvei. “Who’s Kara?”

“I don’t know,” answered Solvei with a shake of her head. She didn’t bother looking at Akna as she spoke, instead keeping her eyes on Lex. While he wasn’t so upset that his emotions were spilling over to her through their psychic link, she could still tell that he wasn’t happy with what the other pony was saying. Master, give me the order and I’ll make this pony stop talking.

Lex ignored her, instead clenching his teeth as he glared at Sanguine Disposition. “I don’t have a blessing from Kara,” he insisted. “Nor would I accept one if she offered it! The Night Mare is the only goddess with which I’ve trafficked!”

But his protest only made Sanguine Disposition laugh. “The blessings of the gods aren’t for mortals to accept or deny,” he chuckled. “They give them at their own discretion, not ours. But while I’m sure the Night Mare appreciates your loyalty, you don’t have to worry about her being jealous. If Queen Iliana, ruler of Everglow’s Pony Empire, can collect blessings from all the gods in the pantheon, I doubt the Night Mare will object to you having Kara’s.”

“That’s-”

“But really, we should discuss all of this in more comfortable surroundings, don’t you think?” Waving a hoof to indicate the Solvei’s ice wall and the sleet storm that Akna had summoned, the red-eyed stallion canted his head toward the guards on the walls. “You worked so hard to secure entrance into Eigengrau. I’d hate for word to get out that I was inhospitable to a royal visitor, especially when they’re held so high in our goddess’s esteem.”

“You mean besides sending the captain of this town’s guard out to fight us?” sneered Lex.

If Sanguine Disposition was bothered by the not-so-veiled implication of hypocrisy, he didn’t show it. “Have dinner with me,” urged the leather wing again, throwing another wink over his shoulder as he turned and sauntered back toward the gate, tail swaying. “I promise, you won’t come away unsatisfied.”

For a long moment Lex didn’t move, watching as the stallion collected Breakdown and continued toward Eigengrau, the conversation apparently over. But that wasn’t surprising; as Sanguine Disposition had correctly noted, Lex had already made his desire to enter the town abundantly clear. Turning away now, after having already gone through so much – and expended resources to secure their entrance, such as his wound-transference spells and his last use of the Charismata – would have been counterproductive.

Nor, to his profound discomfort, could Lex easily dismiss what Sanguine Disposition had said about his having a blessing from Kara.

It wasn’t a prospect that Lex wanted to think about. His single interaction with Everglow’s goddess of love had been decidedly negative, when she’d hijacked a portal that he, Sonata, and several other Equestrian ponies had been using in hope of returning home. Instead, they’d ended up in Kara’s divine realm, where the goddess had made it clear that she’d release them only if they helped her locate Equestria, intent on spreading her religion there.

Fortunately, Lex had been in the Night Mare’s good graces at the time, and the goddess had objected to one of her faithful being so brazenly abducted by another deity. It was thanks to her that their release had been secured...and which had subsequently convinced Lex that the Night Mare was worthy of his respect, petitioning the goddess for greater power in exchange for giving her what Kara had been seeking: her religion, brought to Equestria.

After that, Lex had given no further thought to Everglow’s goddess of debauchery. As far as he’d been concerned, his one and only meeting with Kara was barely worth remembering. She’d inadvertently convinced him that he’d need divine patronage – with the Elemental Bleeds having marked Equestria’s conjunction with a wider multiverse, one that he’d learned was filled with new dangers that his homeland would need protecting from, such power was an absolute necessity – and that the Night Mare was the perfect candidate for that role. But other than that, Kara had no bearing on his life.

It had only been much later that he’d found out how wrong he’d been.

Nosey had been the one to reveal the truth to him. During their unexpected encounter in Las Pegasus, she had inadvertently admitted that Sonata had been praying to Kara in secret, asking the love goddess for advice about their budding relationship. That particular revelation had been disconcerting in the extreme, but not nearly as much as the fact that it had been Kara’s guidance which had been responsible for him and Sonata getting back together after they’d broken up on the way to Tall Tale.

Shaken both by the fact that Sonata had been consulting with a foreign deity without telling him, and that said deity had played such an outsized role in one of the most important relationships in his life – in more than one, since repairing things with Sonata had been a large part of the reason he’d eventually developed a romance with Aria, as well as his ill-considered relationship with Nosey – Lex had confronted Sonata about that in Las Pegasus. She’d tearfully admitted to everything, and while Lex hadn’t had the heart to berate her for what she’d done, there’d been no time to analyze the extent of Kara’s interference in his life any further, since news of Feather Duster’s kidnapping had arrived almost immediately afterward.

But now Sanguine Disposition was saying that Kara’s influence hadn’t stopped at simply giving advice to Sonata...

Master, should we go after him? queried Solvei telepathically. It’s not too late to go around this place if you’d prefer not to have anything to do with that bat pony anymore.

“He mentioned ‘blessings’ and ‘divinity,’” murmured Akna, frowning as she looked at Lex again. “Is Kara another goddess?”

“A pony goddess,” answered Lex distractedly, walking toward the entrance to Eigengrau. Although he knew he was still reeling from the Rite of Sublimation revealing the pointlessness of everything he’d dedicated his life to, Lex couldn’t bring himself to ignore what Sanguine Disposition had told him. It was with an almost morbid – bordering on masochistic – curiosity that Lex found himself contemplating what it would mean if he did have a blessing from Kara.

How much more of his life was based on lies and deception?

“Goddesses have different things they’re in charge of, right?” murmured Solvei, her discomfort apparent as she padded after Lex, Akna keeping pace with them. “The Night Mare is...power, I think? And Mystaria said that Luminace is the goddess of magic. What does Kara control?”

“Most of her portfolio concerns itself with various aspects of deception,” answered Lex absently, paying only scant attention to the winter wolf’s question. “Which could very well be taken as a referendum on her also being a goddess of love.”

“Love?” echoed Akna, slightly incredulous. “And she gave you a blessing?”

The question earned her a soft growl from Solvei. “What exactly does that mean?”

Not wanting to pick a fight, Akna raised her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Nothing, I just...wait, hang on!” Her eyes narrowing as she checked that her cloak was still securely fastened around her – managing to once again miss that her tail was lifting the back of it up – Akna shot Lex an accusing glare. “Does this have anything to do with why I can’t seem to stay covered up?!”

Between most of his attention being elsewhere, and how inane her comment was, it took Lex a moment to respond to Akna’s query. “What are you babbling about?”

Putting one hand on her hip, Akna gave him an indignant look. “Oh please. My having all these embarrassing ‘accidents’ right in front of you? And you have a blessing from a love goddess? This is clearly the result of her magic!”

Lex’s lip curled, disgusted by what she was insinuating. “First of all, while she might be one of the lesser members of the pony pantheon, Kara is still a deity. The idea that she’d use her powers for such petty acts of erotic stimulation is demeaning to her status as a goddess. Secondly, I don’t...”

Before he could finish telling Akna precisely how unattractive he found her, Lex nearly stumbled over his own hooves, eyes widening as a sudden flash of insight came to him.

The result of Kara’s magic.

Petty acts of erotic stimulation.

By themselves, neither of those concepts had any special significance to Lex. Even taken in tandem, they had no real importance that he could see. But within the context of a supposed blessing from Kara, those ideas solved a minor mystery that he had never been able to unravel before now.

Those spells!

The thought ran across his brain with such vigor that he unintentionally transmitted it to Solvei, whose ears flickered in nervousness. Master? What spells?

Lex didn’t even hear her question, his blood pounding in his ears as he thought back to just after he’d slain the dragon attacking Tall Tale. He and Sonata had gotten back together, after which he’d cut a deal with the Night Mare in order to secure her blessing. Barely a few hours later, he and Sonata had made love for the first time, and when he’d awoken the next morning, there’d been almost a dozen new spells in his mental catalogue...all of them with a distinctly sexual bent.

Or at least, the ones he’d examined. After looking at the first two – a contraceptive spell and one designed to stimulate feelings of tactile pleasure; both of which he still made regular use of – he’d been too embarrassed, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, to make even the most cursory examination of the others. More concerning had been where those spells had come from, since he’d never studied them. At the time he’d reluctantly concluded that they were from the Night Mare, though that explanation had struck him as being dubious. But if Sonata had already been communicating with Kara back then, and the love goddess had seen fit to give him a blessing...

Letting out a slow breath, Lex resumed heading toward Eigengrau, ignoring the repeated queries of the lupines following after him. Instead, he set his jaw as he forced himself to at long last look over the remaining spells that Kara – for he was beginning to accept the Sanguine Disposition’s idea that the love goddess had played more of a role in his life than he’d previously believed – had given him. With his sense of embarrassment muted by the scope of all the losses he’d recently suffered, Lex silently vowed that this time he’d review all of the magic that Kara had seen fit to give him.

If he was fortunate, those would represent the full extent of her meddling.

But somehow, Lex couldn’t bring himself to think that the mere presence of a few spells was what Sanguine Disposition had detected.

Pushing that thought away, Lex instead took inventory of the lascivious magic he’d been given.

There were ten spells in total, including the two he’d already made use of. Of the remaining eight...one allowed for temporary physical transmutations, but only of the target’s sexual characteristics, allowing for an uncomfortably wide range to which their anatomy could be altered. Another was a mind-affecting spell, similar to what the Sirens used in their singing, but far more focused, causing the target to feel a short-term burst of intense lust toward the spellcaster.

Fully three of them were dedicated to conjuring various planar beings, all of which were tailored to only be capable of bringing creatures of an erotic nature. From ephemeral spirits of arousal to a variety of different succubi to tentacled monstrosities, there were a bewildering array of creatures that those spells could bring forth.

And as if to complement those was a spell designed specifically to allow the caster temporary ability to crossbreed with virtually any other type of creature. It still required that a partner have the physical apparatus necessary to potentially host a new life – that it still had a womb, in other words – but so long as that was present, “compatibility” was assured. As the offspring would have qualities of both parents and itself be viable, Lex found it to be the singularly most repulsive spell of the lot.

To his relief, the next spell was far more blasé, simply granting the target a marked increase in their skills as a lover. Closer examination revealed that it was surprisingly intricate, however, granting an innate proficiency that was startlingly close to what a pony’s cutie mark afforded them. There was no outward mark designating a recipient of the spell, nor did it interfere with a pony’s existing special talent, but it was still shockingly similar in functionality.

But it was only when he noted how that particular spell was permanent that Lex grew suspicious. He’d never questioned his ability to satisfy Sonata and Aria – the two most beautiful mares in all of Equestria, who (as much as he hated to think about it) had lifetimes’ worth of experience – before, accepting that he was simply possessed of remarkable prowess in the bedroom the same way he was with magic, governance, and so many other disciplines. But reviewing that spell now, and knowing that his tulpa had a habit of using magic of its own accord whenever felt sufficiently unnerved – such as in the aftermath of his first time with Sonata – he found himself unable to ignore the possibility that the rogue portion of his mind had cast that spell on him without his knowing.

The prospect was disturbing enough that Lex paid little attention to the final entry in the spells Kara had given him.

After all, who’d have any use for a spell that turned somepony into a vampire?

Author's Note:

Lex finally takes stock of the sexual spells Kara gave him!

Reeling from so many harsh truths being dropped, how will Lex react if Sanguine Disposition tells him the rest of what Kara did?

Comments

[Booster Spice]

For some reason I ahve a song going through my head.

Becasue its so long since I heard it, I know Im getting the words wrong.

Something about.

Zamboni, Vampony, Slam Pony, Mam an Damn an Dan?

[Firefoxino]

O.o this chapter introduced looooooooooooood

[Not so New Brony]

Well, those spells are...certainly unusual but focused on debauchery as expected of Kara though the one with turning someone into a vampire is undoubtedly the odd one out but given Kara's domain over deception, it might be related to Thermal Draft's current species but I would not be surprised if it's also connected to seduction if Sanguine Disposition's attitude and words towards Lex are anything to go. Either he was trying to come on to Lex or it's simply part of how he is.

[harts fire]

well Lex now what?

[Alzrius]

11378965 I'll confess, I don't know that one. Sounds like it has a good beat, but I'm not sure if you can dance to it.

[Alzrius]

11379409 That's inevitable when Kara becomes the topic. You can't really deal with a sex goddess without things getting naughty.

[Alzrius]

11379494 Well, it helps that vampires are both deceptive by nature (being one of the few undead with an inherent ability to pass for being alive) and are generally considered to be seductive creatures. Of course, it's interesting that Sanguine Disposition noted that he has "a bit of history" with Kara also...perhaps that's just coincidence, though? Still, he's apparently quite interested in Lex, though exactly how is still somewhat up in the air (even if he's making at least one type of interest abundantly clear).

[Alzrius]

11379516 He's apparently heading into the city, so for now he's seemingly decided to follow up on what Sanguine Disposition said. As for whether or not that's a good idea, I suppose we'll just have to find out.