814 - Being Better
Is he going to be alright?
Although he could clearly register Solvei's anxiety, Lex didn’t answer right away, looking over Yotimo via the magical spectrum. For his part, the old wolf blinked at the two of them, his eyes glassy and unfocused, before his gaze shifted to the canyon wall, staring at nothing.
But that was because of the magical aura clinging to the adlet, Lex knew, and it was only after he’d finished examining it that Lex replied to Solvei’s question. It’s a spell designed to scramble the target’s synapses, interrupting transmissions between neurological-
He stopped as Solvei’s disposition shifted to confusion, causing Lex to bite back a sigh before trying again. The spell has scrambled his senses, bombarding his brain with random information which is making it difficult for him to think straight.
It was only when he glanced at Solvei that Lex realized she was biting her lip, which confirmed that the accidental enhancement that he’d imbued their bond with was fading rapidly. That wasn’t surprising; every time he’d poured additional power into something – be it a spell, a magic item, or the Charismata – the effects had been pronounced but short-lived. There was no reason for it to be otherwise now.
Even so, Lex felt a pang at that. While it might have been artificial, being so aware of Solvei had been as close as he’d ever come to understanding someone else...
But you can fix him, right? pressed Solvei. Or grant me the power to fix him?
Shaking off his wistfulness for a dream that he knew now was impossible, Lex glanced back at Yotimo, now rocking in place with his knees drawn up to his chest. All of a sudden he didn’t feel like using telepathy anymore. “There’s no need,” he answered out loud. “Based on how fast the spell’s aura is decaying, it won’t last much longer. When it expires, he should make a full recovery. Once he does, we can start heading for where Paska has taken the others.”
Solvei grunted at that, and her feelings soured as she glanced in the other direction. “What about her?”
Lex didn’t need to follow her gaze to know that she was referring to the tiny sphinx – “Nenet,” Sissel had called her – that he’d found. She was currently held within a cage of black crystals that he’d made, not yet having woken up. “We’re taking her with us. I plan on interrogating her as soon as she regains consciousness.”
This time, Solvei’s feelings were those of bitterness. “Can I be the one to kill her if she doesn’t play along?”
“It won’t come to that,” answered Lex as he moved to retrieve his severed leg. “If she proves recalcitrant, I’ll simply use the Charismata to force her to speak.”
Frowning as he picked up his leg in his telekinesis, Lex cast a preservative spell on it – the same one he’d used on Pillowcase’s corpse back in Vanhoover – before putting it in his extradimensional saddlebag. He knew that there was regenerative magic in this world. That Rainbow Dash had been able to regain her lost wing, having lost it shortly after he’d met her, Twilight, and their other friends in Viljatown, was proof enough of that. But he hadn’t been there for the actual restoration of her limb, and so had no idea as to the specifics of how that magic worked. It might very well be that it could only reattach the original limb, rather than regrow the new one.
Until such as a time as he could find out, however, he’d need to make do with only three legs. Between that, and how many spells he’d expended, they’d need to prioritize avoiding Hvitdod when they reached the others; fighting the dragon in his current state, Lex knew, would be tantamount to suicide.
Solvei blinked, and out of his periphery Lex saw her cease the baleful glare she’d been giving the caged creature and look at him instead. “The Charismata affects her?”
He nodded. “I suspected it would, now that I have a better understanding of how it works, but I confirmed it when I healed her injuries.”
“You healed her?” Shock mixed with anger came from Solvei then. “Why?”
The question earned her a scowl from Lex. “Because by taking her prisoner, I necessarily accepted a duty of care toward her, one which includes treating her injuries.”
“But she’s our enemy!” growled Solvei, pointing at the downed sphinx accusingly. “She helped Sissel in our last fight, remember?! She did...something to help her project that illusion of herself!”
“I’m aware,” replied Lex flatly. “That has no bearing on the current situation. Asserting authority over someone else requires that authority to be exercised judiciously.”
Solvei grit her teeth. “You had Sissel captured, and you killed her!”
“I rendered her immobile, but I never accepted her surrender,” Lex reminded her coolly, “and I likewise rejected her offer to turn over information in exchange for clemency. All that was left was for a sovereign authority to pass judgment on her for her crimes, and as I recognize no temporal power greater than my own, that responsibility fell to me. It was in that context that I decided that she deserved to die for what she’d done.”
“SO DOES SHE!” yelled Solvei, pointing at Nenet. “She helped Sissel and the others! That makes her responsible for what they did to Silla! And Yotimo! And me!”
“That’s for me to decide. Not you.”
Tensing up, Solvei clenched her fists, glaring at him before abruptly turning and stomping toward Sissel’s body with a snarl. Reforming her ice blades, she flung herself at the snow giant’s corpse, a ragged scream coming from her throat.
Lex made no move to stop her as Solvei butchered Sissel’s remains, howling anew each time she sank her blades into the corpse. There was no technique behind the blows, no consideration of where on Sissel’s body she was hitting; all she was doing was stabbing at it, howling each time her arms came down.
Again and again she hacked at her fallen foe, her strikes growing wilder and more uncoordinated each time, until finally she couldn’t seem to control herself anymore, and stumbled away from the gory remnants of Sissel’s body before collapsing to her knees, shoulders shaking as her composure completely fell apart.
The sight broke Lex’s heart, and for a moment he found himself wondering if he should let her kill Nenet after all. She wasn’t wrong about the sphinx being at least partially complicit in her siblings’ crimes, and if it would make Solvei feel better...
It took him only a moment to make his decision.
“Solvei.”
She didn’t respond, other than to give a low moan of misery and shake her head.
“Solvei. Look at me.”
He didn’t use the Charismata to force her, but she obeyed anyway, sniffling as she turned to face him, her ears flat against her head.
“The mistake that I made,” he began slowly, “wasn’t that I killed Panuk. It was that I thought that punishing him was protecting everyone else.”
Confusion cut through her sadness as she blinked at him. “W-what?”
For a moment he almost launched into a lecture about the difference between modes of justice and weighing the effects of proportional punishments against wider deterrence, but the words stuck in his throat, knowing that would have done nothing to help how she felt right now.
“I was angry...and I was afraid...and that colored my judgment.” It made him want to crawl out of his skin to say that out loud, much like how he’d felt whenever his tulpa had been driven to torment him.
But it had never once said anything he hadn’t already known, even if he’d been unable to admit it.
“I’d been thrown into this world, not for the first time, and forced to fight to survive. I’d failed to protect Thermal Draft, didn’t know if...if ponies I cared for back home were alive or dead...and had just been drawn into another battle I didn’t want. So when Panuk suddenly appeared and threatened everyone, I selected the harshest possible punishment – as though he was the same as Bolverk or Prevarius – rather than one that would have been more suitable. Because I had decided that the best way to keep everyone safe was by killing anything that seemed hostile, regardless of how much of a threat they were.”
“Master...why are you-”
“It was the wrong decision.” The words were like acid on his tongue, and the ones that were waiting to be spoken were even worse, but he forced himself to speak them anyway. “I know that you’re Akna now, and that she...that you care deeply for your tribe, so...if you resent me for killing him...then I won’t say you’re wrong to feel that way.”
And there it was: the real reason why he hated the fact that she was Akna now.
As Solvei, she’d practically worshiped the ground he walked on, not only fawning over him for rescuing her family, but choosing him over them once their bond had been formed. Her dedication had been utterly selfless, and without even realizing it, he’d come to cherish her for that.
Akna, however, had no such feelings for him that he’d been aware of. She’d been a reluctant ally against a shared enemy, and while they’d learned to work together – to the point of saving each other’s lives in Darkest Night – he’d harbored no illusions about the regard she held him in, or that her people had been foremost in her mind.
Even with the devastating revelation about Kara’s so-called blessing, there had been no indication that Akna had been affected by it. Which meant that whatever grudges she bore toward him – about Panuk, or not acquiring one of the Umbral Regalia, or anything else – were now part of Solvei also.
That was something that hadn’t occurred to Lex in the wake of their return from Darkest Night, too busy with his own transformation and the myriad tasks he’d set for himself before they’d left the Shrine of the Starless Sky. It had only been when she’d panicked over the fate of Silla and the rest of his comrades, leaving Lex to face the horrific truth of his inner beast alone, that he’d come to appreciate that his soul-bound companion was different now...and that even if her eager devotion had been because of a god’s manipulation, it was likely gone forever.
That had hurt far more than Lex had expected.
And so he’d done what he always did when someone had hurt him and lashed out at her, something he felt ashamed of now since none of what had happened was her fault.
But he’d wallowed in his own negativity enough – and was close enough to her, thanks to their connection – to recognize that she was doing the same thing now.
He’d made bad decision after bad decision since coming to Everglow. Panuk, Toklo, Nisha; he’d even come close to killing Solvei herself, the first time they’d met. It had only been because of Thermal Draft, and Woodheart, and the Night Mare – all telling him that he was being too harsh – that he hadn’t made an even worse mess of things.
The least he could do was to pass that lesson along to Solvei now.
“I made the wrong decision with Panuk,” he repeated, silently adding that to his long list of regrets. “And because I did, it made things harder, for myself and for you. I don’t want you to make the same mistake with Nenet.”
Solvei was slumped in place, staring at the ground, and despite their connection he couldn’t get a fix on her emotions, being too jumbled to register clearly. “But she helped them hurt everyone...”
“I know. The same way that Panuk and Toklo threatened Fail Forward. The same way Nisha insulted me. The same way you injured Thermal Draft’s wing.”
She shuddered, tilting her head down more, her hair covering her eyes.
“Nenet isn’t blameless,” continued Lex. “But that doesn’t mean that she deserves the same treatment as Sissel. Even if it’s impossible to imagine, forgetting that fact carries the risk of consequences that could come back to haunt you later. You’re part of me, now, and I don’t want you to go through that-”
He stopped talking as she stood up abruptly, still not looking at him. “I can’t do this,” she mumbled, turning and stumbling away from him. “I just...I need to think...”
She didn’t say anything else as she turned and shuffled toward the other side of the canyon, neither looking back nor speaking to him telepathically, her emotions still in turmoil.
For some reason, Lex found himself thinking of Twilight as he watched Solvei – watched Akna – leave. The purple alicorn was similar to himself in many ways, possessing a genius intellect and a natural aptitude for magic. But she was his total opposite when it came to understanding others, being as gifted at empathy as he was deficient at it. What would she have said? he wondered.
He turned the morose thought over in his mind, but for all his intelligence, no answer came back to him.
The question did, however, distract him enough that he didn’t notice Nenet crack one eye open, looking between him and where Solvei had gone.
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Be very careful Lex, Cozy Glow, like Botulism, is small, cute, and utterly deadly.
Seems Nenet might have heard his lecture to Solvei and Akna and provided she understood it, she might stop pretending to be unconscious and try to negotiate. Then again, she is technically a spellbook so maybe one of the spells she possesses might be ones that would let her escape. Though I can't remember if she can access and use them or not.
Regardless, here's hoping Lex's decision to spare Nenet doesn't bite back later on cause he already has far too many regrets to deal with.
11544494 That wasn't my impression of Nenet, but I suppose we'll see soon enough.
11544535 It's unclear at this point what Nenet will do with regard to having overheard Lex's lesson to Solvei/Akna. So far there's been no evidence that she can use any of the spells that she's stored in her; I believe the most we've seen of her is that she can tell the spells she knows to others, who can use them provided they already have the requisite ability. But beyond that, there's been virtually nothing about her abilities.
Hopefully Lex made the right decision in sparing her; ideally he's right to have done so, but there's no way to know until the rewards/consequences have already happened.
Nice chapter like always. Seems like Nenet has a chance to survive but seeing as she is a spell book I guess that her soul is compromised to Sissel’s Mother.
11546154 Thanks! Nenet's definitely got more of a shot than Sissel had, though there's no way of knowing to what extent her being a backup spellbook for "Mother" complicates things. Maybe we'll learn more in the near future, though with the metaphorical clock ticking with regard to saving the adlets, that might not be a possible.