855 - Political Capital Offense
“It’s because of your champion, Lex Legis, that our pantheon stands on the brink of annihilation!”
The Moon Princess’s words sent a rush of tension through Noble Bright, and he settled into a ready position without thinking. He had no idea who “Lex Legis” was – his focus on the security of Soothing Meadows meant that he’d paid very little attention to the machinations of the other gods over the years; for all that they squabbled and schemed, every threat he’d ever faced in the defense of the realm had come from outside the pantheon – but if this so-called champion of the Night Mare really was a threat grave enough to put all of the gods in jeopardy, then that meant he was almost certainly a danger to the Sun Queen.
That wasn’t something that Noble Bright could forgive.
But his goddess had always been a beacon of compassion, and her next words proved that to be true once again. “Sister, don’t you think you might be overstating things just a little? Lex Legis’ elevation involved only trace amounts of divinity.”
“Sunny’s right,” drawled Kara, flipping a lock of white hair over her shoulder. “The way he is now, he can’t create a divine realm, draw strength from mortal worship, or grant anyone spells even if they prayed to him.”
Grinning, she gave the Night Mare a saucy grin. “I didn’t figure the Night Mare for being a tease, but the fact is she only gave him a little taste of godhead.”
Pausing for just a moment, Kara’s eyes widened in mock-embarrassment, her wings coming up to cover her mouth. “Oops! I meant to say ‘godhood.’ The ‘head’ part was what I gave him.”
Despite himself, Noble Bright shifted in place.
Across from him, Luminance looked equally uncomfortable as she adjusted her monocle, though Noble Bright suspected that it was for different reasons. “I agree that Lex Legis isn’t technically a god-”
“The elves don’t care about technicalities,” interrupted the Moon Princess, her voice harsh. “They’re not like the devils, making contracts with rigorous definitions and explicit stipulations. They care about the spirit of an agreement more than the letter of it, and that’s how they’ll react to this latest breach of our treaty with them!”
“So what?” sneered Blaze, stamping a flaming hoof, causing the ground beneath her to sizzle as it started to liquify. “Those willowy cowards didn’t raise an objection when I became the new goddess of war. And when that anemic little sorceress” – she pointed at Luminace then, her lip curling in disdain – “bungled her way into becoming a goddess, they were too scared to do anything except whine and complain.”
Spreading her flaming wings wide, a hungry grin crossed her face as Blaze looked at each of the other gods in turn. “They don’t want us to expand our pantheon? Let’s see them try to stop us!”
“Your eagerness for a fight does you credit as our goddess of war,” murmured the Sun Queen. “But don’t forget that your predecessor’s picking a fight with the elves is the reason that you were needed to assume her place.”
“Bah!” Blaze waved a wing, as if to knock the other goddess’s words away, and the gesture conjured up a flurry of ashes, fouling the air. “My ‘predecessor’ was so feeble that she couldn’t even prevent herself from being imprisoned by the elven gods’ mortal wizards! If they dared try that on me, I’d show them the difference between a petty squall and the fury of the sun!”
“That sounds like it’d be fun,” chortled the Unspoken, his voice a cacophonous riot of different tones, as though an entire zoo’s worth of animals were speaking in unison.
With a wave of his arm – which in the space of that single motion became a tentacle, then a fin, then a pedipalp, before turning into a furred forelimb again – the Unspoken changed the ashes into brightly-colored balls, bouncing randomly around the Synedrium. “But losing would be less fun. I don’t want to end up like Thundering Gale, stuck in some magical oubliette while my powers are siphoned away.”
“Precisely.” A soft glow lit the Moon Princess’s horn, the pale aura freezing the colored balls in place. Rising toward the roof of the Synedrium, they all lost their hue, becoming pale stars that twinkled as the ceiling darkened to the blackness of the night sky. “We have already tested the elves’ patience twice before. When Blaze was elevated to our ranks, we mollified them by explaining that we needed a war goddess for our own protection. When Luminance underwent apotheosis, we appeased them by pointing out that she’d done so on her own, without our backing.”
The soft light of her horn faded as she turned a dark look toward the Night Mare. “They won’t accept such excuses a third time, especially not when one of our own was instrumental in helping Lex Legis properly acclimate to the divinity he gained.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned her gaze to Kara next. “Particularly since it was one of your playthings who acquired it for him in the first place.”
The love goddess placed a hoof over her chest, looking hurt. “You’re blaming me for what that little strumpet did? Have you forgotten that I’m the one she betrayed, absconding with that book which I worked so hard to acquire?”
“You mean the last of Lashtada’s sacred scriptures?” asked the Moon Princess, her voice turning icy. “The sole remaining hope she has of renewing her faith on Everglow, which you stole from the adventurers who recovered it? That book?”
“That’d be the one,” answered Kara cheekily, seemingly not the least bit intimidated by the other goddess’s anger. Instead, she gave a helpless shrug, smiling. “And the fact that it’s now in one of Luminace’s stuffy old temples instead of locked away in my realm is all the proof you could need of my having been double-crossed.”
“You say that,” noted Luminace pointedly. “But you have to admit that it looks suspicious how you keep calling what happened a betrayal, but haven’t done anything to punish the perpetrator. It’s not as though she has some other god protecting her from you.”
That earned a throaty laugh from Kara, giving Luminace a look as though she was a child who’d just said something adorably precocious. “Oh, Lumin, your naïveté is so...virginal. Passion is something that’s better when it’s hot, but revenge is best when it’s cold. Trust me, that little harlot is going to get what she deserves for turning on me.”
“We’re getting off-topic.” The Sun Queen raised her head, and simply in doing so the darkness around the ceiling brightened, the stars gathered there fading away to nothing. “The fact remains that even if Lex Legis hasn’t become a true god, the elven pantheon is likely to view his ascendance as us working to bolster our ranks.”
“There’s something else we need to consider,” chimed in Luminace, giving the Sun Queen a worried look. “I was trying to say before: while I agree that Lex Legis isn’t technically a god, that might actually make things worse.”
“Worse for who?” gurgled the Unspoken, his jaw having changed to that of a shark.
“Us.” Looking around the chamber, Luminace glanced at each god’s attendant. “We’ve all made sure not to elevate even our most faithful servitors to even semi-divine status because we didn’t want the elves to think that we were building up our forces for a war after Thundering Gale was imprisoned. But part of the reason things never got that far was because it was their mortal wizards that did it, rather than the elven gods themselves.”
“You mean they hid behind the loophole that their pantheon took no direct action against ours, even though they were the ones who provoked her in the first place,” snorted Kara, before giving the Moon Princess a taunting smirk. “I guess the elves know how to play word games with agreements after all.”
The other goddess didn’t respond to the barb, instead keeping her eyes on Luminace. “Continue.”
Giving the Moon Princess a grateful nod, the smaller alicorn spoke again. “My point is, not only does Lex Legis’ ascension look like we’re trying to push the boundaries of our agreement not to raise any new gods, but by making him a titan – that’s the most accurate term for what he is now – it could be interpreted as us empowering him to try and rescue Thundering Gale.”
“That we’re raising up a non-divine champion of our pantheon to rescue the goddess that their pantheon’s non-divine champions imprisoned, is that it?” asked the Moon Princess. But she didn’t bother waiting for an answer before scoffing. “That should be easy enough to refute, since it would mean that the Night Mare actually cared about what happened to the previous war goddess.”
This time the Night Mare was the one to slam a hoof down, her eyes taking a dangerous gleam. “I was the one who stepped in to safeguard Thundering Gale’s realm after she was imprisoned, preventing it from being left defenseless while the rest of you were still trying to figure out what to do!”
The Moon Princess laughed at that, the sound low and mirthless. “You mean you tried to seize the mantle of goddess of war, hoping that it would give you enough power to overthrow me and then declare yourself head of the pantheon. Fortunately for the rest of us, Thundering Gale’s tenets of liberty, fellowship, and egalitarianism meant that her faithful rejected you completely.”
“If the Night Mare hadn’t stepped in, someone else would have,” interjected the Sun Queen gently. “That was why I chose to elevate Blaze, before our treaty with the elves was finalized. We needed a new war goddess, one whom Gale’s faithful were able to accept.”
“By the by,” added Blaze, shooting a wolfish grin at the Night Mare, “if you really want to prove that you don’t have designs on my title, you could go ahead and turn the Steel Storm over to me. I’m sure I could put my predecessor’s old toys to better use than you.”
“If you want Severance, Bulwark, Headhunter, or any of those other living weapons,” growled the Night Mare, “you’re welcome to try and take them.”
“I’m sure they’d leave of their own accord if you hadn’t brainwashed them,” scowled Luminace. “Even if they are constructs, they still have wills of their own. Securing Gale’s realm gave you no right to corrupt them into your service the way you did.”
“You’re one to speak of having no rights, considering how badly you’ve failed in the task we gave you.” Her voice dripping with derision, the Night Mare looked down at Luminace with naked contempt. “You’ve been a goddess for two centuries, and in that time you’ve made no progress on finding out how mortal wizards were able to trap a deity.”
The dragon Luminace had brought with her bristled at that, but stopped as the small alicorn held up a hoof, giving the Night Mare an upset look. “I’ve told you before, the elves’ ‘high magic’ is one of their people’s most treasured secrets! The only ones who’d be likely to know about it are one of the other great pantheons of the multiverse, but the elves already have alliances with most of them, and no one wants to jeopardize that for a provincial pantheon like ours!”
The Unspoken rolled his eyes, one of which was currently compound and the other covered by a nictating membrane. “Here we go...”
“The elves have working relationships with the dwarves, the Tuatha, and the Aesir, and so none of them want to go prying into how their magic works! The Seelie Court has been the elves’ allies since as long as anyone can remember! The Olympians’ planar abode is right next to the elves’, so they don’t want to upset their neighbors!”
“She’s so cute when she gets flustered,” snickered Kara. “I knew there was a passionate mare somewhere inside that bookish exterior.”
“The Ennead doesn’t have any sort of formal relationship with the elves, but after what happened with Apep, they don’t trust us either! The Celestial Bureaucracy won’t talk to me until they decide whether or not to formally recognize our pantheon, and last time I checked they still hadn’t even begun to make a decision! And the Vedic gods are still rejecting all contact outside of their own pantheon!”
Slumping in place, as though the rant had taken all of her energy, a defeated tone entered Luminace’s voice. “That doesn’t leave me with very many options. Some of the evil gods might know, but asking them would be leaving myself open to blackmail, since they know we don’t want the elves to know we’re investigating their magic.”
“Which wouldn’t happen if you presented yourself as a goddess to be feared, rather than trying to make friends with everyone you meet,” admonished Blaze.
Luminace gave the war goddess a reproachful look, but didn’t bother raising to the bait, instead finishing her report. “A lot of the smaller racial pantheons don’t even have a god of magic for me to liaise with. The Monitors are only concerned with safeguarding the sanctity of time. The archomentals don’t know about non-elemental magic and don’t care either way. The inevitables, archons, angels, and agathions are all more worried about starting a war than freeing Gale, and keep advising that we negotiate for her release rather than trying to rescue her ourselves. I’m actually desperate enough that I’m considering contacting a nous, even though their focus on psionics means that the chances of them knowing anything about elven magic are nil...”
Stretching one wing out, the Sun Queen wrapped it around Luminace, pulling the smaller goddess to her chest. “No one blames you, Luminace. We gave you an impossible assignment, and asked you to do it at the same time that you were trying to grow your own religion. Besides, this isn’t why we’ve gathered here now.”
Releasing Luminace, the Sun Queen looked around the chamber. “What should we do about Lex Legis?”
Silence fell then, as the gods all glanced at each other, waiting for someone to say something.
But the one who spoke next wasn’t one of their number.
“TOO MUCH TALK!!!”
The towering hulk of burning flesh that Blaze had brought with her roared at the top of its lungs, the behemoth raising its weapons over its head as it bellowed. “IF THIS MORTAL IS A PROBLEM, JUST KILL HIM!!! NO ONE IS TROUBLESOME WHEN THEY’RE DEAD!!! I’LL DO IT IF YOU ALL LACK THE COURAGE-”
The thing’s speech ended abruptly as it suddenly found itself face-down in a crater in the ground, with no transition between its ranting and its sudden defeat. But that didn’t surprise Noble Bright in the least, since Blaze was standing atop the fallen giant, an irritated look on her face.
One did not upset a goddess of war lightly.
“I didn’t bring you here because I value your opinion, Vutok,” snarled Blaze, pressing a hoof against the back of the fallen creature’s head. “Speak without my leave again, and I’ll sever your limbs and leave you hanging you from the viper trees for the next hundred years.”
Beneath her, the monstrous thing she’d called Vutok trembled, but Noble Bright could see that it was rage, rather than fear, that made the creature quiver. “MY...APOLOGIES...”
Snorting, Blaze stepped out of the smoking crater she’d left, turning her attention back to the other gods. “Idiot that he is, Vutok’s idea has merit. Lex Legis can’t be a problem for the elves if he’s dead.”
The Night Mare rounded on Blaze immediately, blue fire gathering along her horn. “Do you truly believe I’ll allow you to kill him?”
Noble Bright reached for his sword, anticipating a fight...and noticed that the pegasus that the Moon Princess had brought with her – a stallion whose coat was solid black, though his mane and tail were white – was whispering in the goddess’s ear, butterfly wings opening and closing softly. A moment later she gave him a look of consideration before nodding once, causing the stallion to smile as the goddess spoke. “Would you allow another?”
The question earned her a scowl from the Night Mare. “What?”
“Kryonex is the demigod whose divinity your champion availed himself of, correct? I’m given to understand that he’s currently preparing to unleash his revenge upon the one who took it” – she glanced at Kara for a moment, and when the goddess made no move to say anything, went back to looking at the Night Mare – “and that Lex Legis will doubtlessly move to defend her when he does.”
The Night Mare’s eyes narrowed. “And you want me to do nothing while another god tries to kill my champion?”
“Kryonex has a legitimate cause of retaliation against Adagio Dazzle,” noted Luminace. “And there’s room for him to press a claim against Lex Legis as well, especially if he tries to interfere with the Siren’s punishment.”
“You perfidious-”
The Night Mare’s rant stopped abruptly as she whipped her head around to stare at the leatherwing she’d brought with her, and who Noble Bright belatedly realized was giving his goddess an intense look. The two of them stared at each other for several moments, before – reacting to some unspoken signal – the leatherwing smiled and bowed, breaking eye contact at last.
Grunting at the obsequious display, the Night Mare directed her attention to the Sun Queen. “If my champion overcomes Kryonex, then I want him to have this pantheon’s full support, regardless of what the elves say.”
The leader of the pantheon tilted her head slightly, as though considering that. “Does anyone here object to that idea?”
Again, silence fell, and this time Blaze was the one to break it. “If he can outfight a demigod, then I’d say he’s worth keeping. We’re going to go to war against those pointy-eared ecofreaks eventually, and the more we have on our side then, the better.”
“I...suppose the Night Mare’s idea is a worthwhile compromise,” murmured Luminace. “It’s not like Kryonex has any allies who’ll come to avenge him if Lex Legis defeats him.”
Kara sat up, as though preparing to add her own opinion, but she was interrupted as the bloody bride in front of her turned around, cocking her head. “Is Lex Legis a strong pony?” she asked, voice lilting upward in child-like curiosity. “Would he marry me? Give me lots of babies?”
“Honeymoon Trap, I told you, we’ll discuss finding you a husband when this conference is over,” admonished Kara, her voice unusually stern before she sighed, looking at the other gods. “I prefer to make love, not war. But I suppose a fight is the quickest way to settle things.”
“It’s certainly more entertaining,” added the Unspoken, his tail changing between that of a lemur, a lizard, an eagle, and a silverfish as it swished behind him, his protoplasmic companion making a blorping sound in what Noble Bright could only guess was agreement. “Though we could always just ask The Author-”
“NO!” chorused the other gods in unison.
Not that Noble Bright blamed them. The Sun Queen didn’t speak of her often, but his goddess had made it clear to him over the years that no one in the pantheon – save only for the Unspoken, being the mad god of chaos – wanted to involve the creator goddess if they could help it...though why that was, the Sun Queen had never said.
As it was, the mention of The Author was enough to make even the Moon Princess wince. “Fine. If Lex Legis can overcome Kryonex, I’ll make no further objections to his current status...though I doubt the elves will be so forgiving, even if we present them with a united front.”
“Then we’re in agreement,” announced the Sun Queen with a warm smile, as though they’d all been having a polite discussion rather than a raucous argument that had almost come to blows. “We’ll observe Lex Legis’ confrontation with Kryonex, but otherwise do nothing to interfere with it. If he wins, then he’ll have our support, and if not...”
She glanced at the Night Mare, and although Noble Bright could see the dark goddess grinding her teeth, she said nothing, allowing the Sun Queen to finish uninterrupted.
“...then we’ll let the demigod take his revenge.”
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For those who are big into Ponyfinder lore, I should add that the parts about a war goddess named Thundering Gale, who is imprisoned by the elves, is my own invention, apart from what's in the books. This is an area that I think makes more sense with certain aspects of the setting, such as the elves taking control of weather magic or why the Sun Queen, who's Neutral Good, would elevate the Chaotic Evil demon Blaze to divinity.
Of course, if David Silver is reading any of this, please feel free to private message me so we can talk about making this canon in a future book.
This, is going to be messy, brutal, and prolonged.
Unless Lexx starts off by rolling all naturals on E20 5 in a row?
After all, something that Mortals can do is trapping Gods, and Lex just picked up one variant of a Shade trap?
11663747 Well, it's definitely going to be messy and brutal, but the way the gods were talking made the immediate issue sound like it was, well...immediate. But the underlying reasons why things are the way they are, though? As in, that stuff with the elves? Yeah, that's up there with "tense international relations" stuff...except on the scale of gods and multiple planes of existence.
This is starting to make the Night Mare's comment, about how he was operating on a whole new stage now, with a lot more powerful individuals taking note of him, start to seem a little more clear.
Welcome back.
Looks like Lex in for another tough fight and just after defeating a bloody tough one. Guess there is no rest for the wicked. gods are kinda hard to judge. They are theoretically unkillable to mortals but sometime you have the right amount of preparation and counters that you just kill them/trap them/defeat them or you have their one weakness or something like that.
The divine geopolitics are nice to see and those tree huggers are as annoying as ever. Kinda funny that there is classism even amongst gods lol. Look at those Provincial bumpkins. Coming straight out of the jungle.
Huh, so the Umbral Regalias previously belonged to the previous God of War of the pony pantheon which is apparently not that high on the metaphorical totem pole which actually makes the Moon Princess' statement a lot more sense now.
They can't start a conflict for fear of bringing the wrath of the other pantheons down upon them nor could they appear weak to avoid being targeted either. Essentially a cold war where Lex is going to be involved as a proxy of sorts, albeit one that has to take on a demigod in the near future without support.
Well, at least not outright support at least since Kara feels like the type to do stuff in the background that helps Lex indirectly.
11663961 Thanks! I had a lot of fun, and now I'm looking forward to continuing the story!
With regard to how a group of elven wizards were able to trap a full, honest-to-goodness deity, that's actually a bit of an inside reference on my part. Specifically, a nod toward the elven High Magic that we've seen in some Forgotten Realms products. More specifically, it's a variation on the spell N'Quor'Khaor ("The Banishing, Binding Outside of the People's Lands"), which is supposed to entrap a single avatar of a deity; while deities are much more than just their avatars, the magic uses the trapped avatar to force the deity outside of the world (i.e. the crystal sphere surrounding the solar system), preventing them from manifesting there again in any capacity until their avatar is freed; even other gods can't break the binding, though the spell requires the elves to allow for some method of undoing the seal.
In this case, the spell is slightly different, in that it's bound a god to within a single avatar of theirs, which is then trapped, preventing them from manifesting anywhere. That's technically stronger than the original version of the spell (which, I should note, can be found in Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves), but for all intents and purposes it has the same effect, in that it's removed a god from a world...albeit, in this case, every other world too. Since the elven gods on Everglow are supposed to belong to the same pantheon as the elven gods of the Forgotten Realms (i.e. the Seldarine, though I never used that name in this chapter), they've presumably improved their High Magic over time.
And of course, the pony pantheon knows that they're not much compared to the elven gods, hence why they're sweating over possibly upsetting them here. Lex, in other words, needs to prove to the rest of the pony gods that he's worth their standing up for him...which means he's got his work cut out for him. Again.
11663999 Fun fact: there's been a few (extremely subtle) hints about the Night Mare confiscating the previous war goddess's weapons and turning them into her Umbral Regalia (i.e. that she didn't have those weapons back in antiquity), such as this paragraph in Chapter 744:
Or in Chapter 786, with regards to the Auctoritas Caliginous (the Night Mare's holy book):
While I suspect those flew under everyone's radar, I like to think that it was a salient bit of foreshadowing.
As for the standing that the pony pantheon has compared to quite a few other gatherings of gods, I'm glad it came across just how minor they are. To make a somewhat-imperfect analogy, if we look at the various pantheons as nations on Earth, the elves would be one of the most powerful countries; the UK or Germany, etc. By contrast, the pony pantheon would be something like Moldova or Albania, the sort of country that most people barely remember, and no one really takes into account. So they can't really afford to pick a fight with one of the most powerful nations out there...and even having one of their number sniffing around after the equivalent of nukes (i.e. the elven High Magic which lets mortals imprison a god) can be a diplomatic disaster if not handled correctly.
In other words, the pony pantheon is perpetually behind the proverbial eight ball, and so Lex needs to make it clear that he's worth the trouble of protecting when the elves invariably give them the stink eye over his ascension. To extend the analogy, the elven presence on Everglow is like a major country building a military base in someone else's country. When the pony gods start showing off some new super-soldier, it's going to cause a stir, even if they swear up and down it won't be deployed against the elves.
Of course, that's only if Lex can prove himself by defeating Kryonex...