Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

846 - Acknowledging Reality

“What do you think?”

Nenet didn’t answer right away, instead twisting to and fro in front of the full-length ice mirror that Solvei had created, looking over the new set of clothes that she was wearing now, courtesy of the adlet’s kindness.

After Ujurak, one of her tribe’s injured warriors, had donated his clothes – though the way Solvei had grinned when she’d used the word “donated” made Nenet think that his generosity hadn’t been entirely voluntary – her senior servitor had quickly washed them in magically-conjured freezing water before making an ice knife and cutting the material. Winding several strands of her own hair into thread, she’d then frozen the end of it to a needle-thin icicle and quickly started sewing the scraps of cloth together.

Her proficiency had left Nenet open-mouthed, but Solvei had waved away the compliments she’d given her. “Every girl in my tribe had to learn how to do this, and I was no exception,” she’d explained. “My grandmother always told me that even if I was going to be the next shaman, I still needed to know how to be a homemaker.” She’d snickered then, shaking her head as she’d deftly finished her stitching. “If she could see me now...”

Nenet had still been trying to figure out if that last part was in reference to Kara’s blessing when Solvei had finished, instructing Nenet to try on the clothes she’d made.

Now, looking at herself in the mirror, Nenet could only stare at what she saw.

Keeping her torso covered was a fur-trimmed bandeau. At first Nenet had been a little nervous, worried that the design wouldn’t accommodate her wings, but she hadn’t given Solvei enough credit. Instead of simply wrapping it around her middle, the fabric had been stitched into a figure-eight pattern, designing it so that it looped around the back of her neck rather than around her ribs. Not only did it leave her wings free and clear, but the design’s upward pull kept her chest from jostling too much when she moved.

Solvei had been just as insightful in designing her lower garment as well. The sarong now wrapped around Nenet’s waist rode low on her hips, just beneath the base of her tail. Nenet knew that was a shrewd decision, as anything which covered her tail would have been shredded by the spikes; even so, she couldn’t help but wish there was some way to cover her shame. Still, the fact that the sarong left one of her hips almost completely bare meant that she was still showing off her master’s mark, which would let anyone know that even if she was polluted, she still belonged to him.

Overall, it was a stylish ensemble, the sort of thing that Nenet had never imagined herself being able – or allowed – to wear.

Feeling a lump in her throat, she bit her lip, trying to hold back another round of tears. “I...I don’t know what to say...”

Solvei’s ears flicked back slightly. “Sorry, I know those aren’t not very good. If we have some time later, I’ll try and find some better fabric. Dyeing it might take a while, but-”

“That’s not what I meant!” blurted Nenet. “I just...I never thought that I could actually look so...” She gestured weakly at the mirror, still not fully able to believe that she was the beauty staring back at her. “...pretty.”

“Well, let me know if you start doubting yourself again, and I’ll make you another mirror so that you can admire yourself some more,” teased Solvei.

To Nenet’s surprise, she found herself giggling. “Don’t say that! I’ll end up becoming as conceited as Mo-, as Adagio...”

The mention of her mother was enough to make Nenet’s good mood fall away, and she glanced at her reflection again, frowning. Was she turning into Adagio? Here she was, admiring herself while wearing clothes taken from the adlets that Sissel and the others had tortured right in front of her for days on end. And I didn’t say a word while they did. Even now, it never occurred to me to tell them that I’m sorry-

“You’re not like her.”

Jumping slightly as Solvei’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts, Nenet glanced up, seeing the adlet behind her in the mirror, giving her a worried look. “You’re not like Adagio, you’re not like Sissel, you’re not like Grisela.” Reaching a hand out, she gave Nenet’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You’re not like any of them.”

Sniffling, Nenet felt her lower lip trembling. “I might be! I killed Paska and it was like I didn’t even care! I just shook it off and moved on! And when I confronted Adagio, I was so...so angry! I hated her so much that I couldn’t control it!”

She couldn’t help herself as tears started to fall down her cheeks again. “What if it’s not just my tail that’s all twisted and ugly? What if I’m like that on the inside too? I’m Adagio’s daughter, and she’s-”

“Not you,” interrupted Solvei. “Just because she’s your mother doesn’t mean that you’re going to turn out like her.”

“How do you know?” whimpered Nenet.

“Easy,” replied Solvei without missing a beat. “How do you feel about me?”

“A-about you?” stuttered Nenet, the question catching her off-guard.

“I wanted to kill you after Master found you,” admitted Solvei, making sure not to look away as she said that. “I told him as such, and I was furious when he refused.”

“I know,” confessed Nenet in a small voice. “I was only pretending to be unconscious then.”

Solvei’s eyes widened. “You...” Letting out a breath, she took a moment to steady herself. “Then you heard all of the awful things I said. And then later, when we were fleeing from Hvitdod, I dragged your cage along the ground in order to try and terrify you to speak. Do you hate me for doing those things?”

“No!” Nenet shook her head furiously enough to make her hair whip back and forth. “Not even a little! You apologized for before! And you defended me just now when Master lost his temper! And you made me these beautiful clothes!” Feeling a new bout of tears coming on, Nenet rubbed her eyes. “You’ve been so nice to me, I could never hate you.”

Solvei smiled. “That’s how I know you’re not like Adagio.”

Nenet made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Solvei...”

But the adlet simply smiled and turned her back around so she was facing the mirror again. “Now, turn into your four-legged form. I want to see if your shapechanging magic adjusts your clothes or not.”

Sniffling again, Nenet nodded, concentrating on returning to normal. A moment later, she was a gynosphinx again, with Solvei kneeling down to look her over. “Okay, looks like it worked!” she pronounced a moment later. “The fabric around your chest has definitely increased, which is good since otherwise there’s no way it’d be able to contain those things, and in the back...”

She paused for a moment. “Actually, this needs a little work.”

That caused Nenet to glance at where Solvei was examining her hindquarters. “What’s wrong?”

Solvei pointed at where the edge of the sarong was dragging on the ground. “The material adjusted for your size, but your waist is oriented forward now, rather than upright, and it’s causing the fabric to fall differently. Sorry, that was an oversight on my part. I’m still not used to having clothes actually adjust when changing forms instead of just tearing.”

Even as she spoke, she’d already conjured up another set of ice tools. “Stand still and I’ll bring the hem up a little. That should fix things.”

“Okay.”

Silence fell as Solvei went to work, and Nenet found herself with nothing to do but stare at her own reflection again, her thoughts turning back toward what Solvei had said to her before. “If it’s alright...”

“Hm?”

“I’d like to apologize to Yotimo later. Not just him, either; all of the adlets that Sissel kidnapped.”

In the mirror, Solvei halted at that, and Nenet had just enough time to wonder if she’d said something wrong before the kneeling wolf gave her a nod. “Okay.”

“And, um...there was another one. When Sissel first ambushed them – your tribe, I mean – she left one behind. He was hurt pretty bad-”

“Silla,” interjected Solvei. “Master managed to save him. He’s back at our village now, resting.”

Nenet let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad he survived. If we get a chance, I want to tell him I’m sorry too.”

“You’ll have a chance to later. Master said that he wants to talk to the elders about making amends for Panuk, and about me...”

There was a catch in her voice then, and Nenet fought down a wince, reminding herself that she’d just told Solvei that her feelings for Lex were the result of a goddess’s blessing. She said she didn’t know if she was okay or not, and here I am dumping all of my problems on her while she’s making clothes for me! Her wings drooping, Nenet sighed. Maybe I really am like Adagi-

“So what exactly is aristeia anyway?”

Again, Nenet found herself thrown by Solvei’s unexpected question. “What?”

“Aristeia,” repeated the adlet. “Sissel used it in our last fight with her, but she never said what it was. Just that it was something all of you had small amounts of.”

Nenet snorted a laugh, this time tinged with bitterness. “Because we’re all Adagio’s children, right?” A wry smile crossed her lips as she glanced at herself in the mirror again. “I guess that’s another way I’m not like her, because I don’t have the slightest bit of aristeia in me.”

She could almost feel the confused frown on Solvei’s face then, but the adlet didn’t ask a follow-up question, clearly worried she’d touched a nerve.

But Nenet didn’t want to dance around the subject, taking a moment to calm herself down before she started again. “Adagio can control a lot of the qualities her children are born with. If she wants them to be born with aristeia, they are. If she doesn’t want them to, they’re not. Most of her offspring were supposed to fight for her, so she made sure they inherited that power. But me and her other spellbooks weren’t supposed to do anything but memorize her magic for her, so she decided we didn’t need it.”

“Okay,” answered Solvei after a moment, continuing to trim the hem of the sphinx’s sarong. “But what is it?”

“It’s hard to explain,” admitted Nenet, pausing as she searched for a proper analogy. “You know how, when you throw a rock in the water, the size of the splash is proportional to the size of the rock?”

“Yeah,” replied Solvei, her voice making it clear that she had no idea where Nenet was going with that. “So?”

“Well, think of reality – the universe and everything in it – as the water, and all of us – you, me, Master, Adagio, everyone – are the rocks. The splash is what we make whenever we do something; run, jump, talk, punch something, cast a spell, whatever. Aristeia makes that splash bigger, even though the rock stays the same.”

Solvei’s hands slowed as she tried to puzzle that out. “So aristeia is a power that makes whoever has it...heavier?”

Nenet’s cocked her head. “What? No, the rock stays the same, it doesn’t-, you know what? Let me try again. You know how all physical objects, regardless of mass, have their own gravitational pull? Imagine that aristeia increased that, without a matching rise in density-”

“I’m sorry, Nenet, I’m trying as best I can to follow what you’re saying, but you’ve already lost me.”

Fighting down the urge to thrash her tail at her apparent inability to explain things, Nenet decided to drop the analogies and instead explain things in the most straightforward manner that she could. “Aristeia is a power that makes you, for lack of a better term, more real.”

That time, Solvei stopped what she was doing entirely, one brow going up as she glanced at Nenet in the mirror. “More real?”

The sphinx nodded. “Aristeia makes your existence more outsized, in terms of the effect that it has on the world around you. So if you have aristeia, and you hit someone, the damage will be greater because the universe itself reacts to it more. And it works in reverse; if you have aristeia, and someone without it hits you, the damage will be less because it’s harder for them to make the universe recognize the effect they’re trying to cause.”

“I see...” murmured Solvei, in a manner which made it clear that she didn’t.

“I mean, it’s not like that for everything you do,” continued Nenet. “It applies to certain facets of your existence more than others. So when you talk, your voice won’t necessarily sound any louder, even if a spell that you cast is stronger because the energy is more there than it would normally be. And the more aristeia you have, the more true that is.”

Solvei shook her head. “Wait, back up a second. If aristeia was making Sissel so real that she was hard to hurt, how come Belligerence cut her down so easily?”

“Well, I didn’t see that fight happen, but from what Master told me, it’s because that quill is blessed by the Night Mare,” answered Nenet after a moment’s consideration. “I mean, there are a lot of clerics and priests and other holy spellcasters who make magic items using the divine magic their god gives them, but that’s different from having a weapon be personally touched by a deity. Gods aren’t just more real than reality itself; they can rewrite it, or at least parts of it. That’s why they’re all gods of something, like war or fire or-”

“Death,” murmured Solvei. “Like Soft Whisper.”

Nenet paused, recalling what Solvei had told her during their trip out of the chasm. “The pony goddess you and Master met after you, er, died...fighting Hvitdod?”

Solvei nodded. “She said something a lot like what you’re talking about. That the Hvitdod that Master fought wasn’t the real dragon, but was a copy left behind because the original had left some sort of impression on the universe.”

“I guess that makes sense,” admitted Nenet. “I mean, supposedly Hvitdod had massive amounts of aristeia.”

This time both of Solvei’s brows rose. “He did?”

Nenet nodded. “That’s what Adagio said. That was part of why she wanted his curse so bad, since it basically warped reality around whoever he placed it on, making it so that any cold they came into contact with was colder. I mean, not in terms of temperature, but it made the cold-”

“More real,” finished Solvei. “Okay, but how did she get aristeia in the first place? Or Hvitdod, for that matter? How does anyone become more re-”

She couldn’t finish, dropping her tools with a gasp as she doubled over, holding her head. But Nenet didn’t need to ask her what was wrong, equally incapacitated as she felt the same sudden throbbing in her brain. It blotted out everything else, leaving her momentarily incapable of thought as she swayed, barely able to remain standing.

And in her mind, her connection to Lex flared again, flooding her consciousness with what he was experiencing at that moment. The sudden rush of panic, fury, regret, and pain overwhelmed her with their intensity, wiping away everything else. And they were growing worse with each passing moment, pressing down on her with such force that she sank to the ground without realizing it, her eyes rolling back in her head as she started to convulse, unable to register that Solvei was in the same state.

Then it became too much for her mind to bear, and she knew no more.

Author's Note:

As Nenet provides some long-awaited answers on the nature of aristeia, both she and Solvei suddenly collapse under an onslaught of sensations from Lex!

What has he done to cause this? What will be the result?

Comments

[Booster Spice]

“Aristeia is a power that makes you, for lack of a better term, more real.”

UhOh. Ive seen this effect in one of the Golden age SciFi short stories, but I just cant remember the story name, author, anthology or anything except for a single scene. He pushed his fingers slowly vut steadily into the solid marble pillar, leaving a set of holes behind. Your universe is old and tired and the laws governing it are weakening.

[Not so New Brony]

Either Lex botched with his decision or reattaching his godsblood imbued spine had some side effects that has spread to Akna/Solvei and likely Nenet too. Guess we'll find out next chapter.

As for aristeia, the fact that Adagio could decide whether her children can get it or not is interesting and it's likely connected to how she created them. Though I also recall that Sissel took the aristeia from her siblings when she killed them so the fact that it can be taken (likely only by other wielders of aristeia) which makes me think that Adagio might take it back once she's done with her children.

Though with all of them gone, it doesn't really matter.

[Alzrius]

11630633 That sounds like a pretty kickass scene! Let me know if you remember where that's from; I'd kind of like to read that story.

[Alzrius]

11630656 Yeah, that ending does make it sound as though whichever choice Lex made, he chose poorly.

As for aristeia, we've gotten some answers, but there are quite a few aspects of it that are still a mystery. As you noted, exactly how Adagio was able to parcel it out voluntarily raised further questions about exactly what she can do, and how she gained so much power. She herself has alluded to deals, but as Lex noted, Prevarius didn't seem to grant Drafty very much power; what sort of deals did Adagio make, and with who (or what), that she gained such ridiculous potency? Not to mention the over-the-top fertility?

Presumably the answers are forthcoming...if Lex hasn't just gotten himself killed again.