Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

872 - Out of Time

For all that he’d gained in terms of sensory abilities, situational awareness, and cognitive capacity, Lex knew that he was far from omniscient.

If anything, his new capabilities only served to make his remaining limits that much more stark.

There were still gaps in his knowledge that could only be filled by observation or experimentation. Overlooking crucial details or drawing erroneous conclusions were still possible for him. And although he’d virtually always have a few seconds’ warning, he could still be surprised.

All of those points were driven home as his trans-temporal sense registered an unfamiliar voice about to start screaming from somewhere below him. In his foresight, the sound pierced the air for only a few seconds before it cut off with a wet gurgle, a sound that the beast inside of him had heard often before, usually right by its ears as it tore an enemy’s throat out.

Somewhere down there, among the masses of the newly-risen undead, someone was still alive...and was about to die horribly.

All because he had carelessly slaughtered the creatures Kryonex had thrown at him, his realization that they were the demigod’s victims rather than his minions having come too late to save them.

The thousands of corpses shuffling below him comprised of hundreds of different creatures, most of which Lex had never seen before and couldn’t identify. They could have been vicious killers or peaceful recluses, stoic philosophers or rampaging barbarians, emotionless hermits or sociable aesthetes. The only thing they had in common was that they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the result being that he’d killed them all without bothering to even consider the possibility of stopping them without taking their lives.

At that moment, in Lex’s eyes, each and every one of them was Panuk.

But there was still one that he could save.

It was with that thought in mind that Lex rocketed toward where the scream was going to come from, putting everything else out of his thoughts.

That was when Kryonex made his move.

There was no warning. No precognitive alert. No sense of magical forces being shaped or directed. No word or sense of motion from the demigod himself.

All that happened was that the demigod’s eyes lightened slightly.

Then the death ward that Lex had wrapped around himself froze – there was no other word for it, the magic solidifying as its operation ceased – before shattering into a thousand useless fragments an instant later.

Just as he plowed into the mass of undead.

“You’re probably wondering how it is that I was able to open a gateway to the Negative Energy Plane, despite being a god of ice,” noted Kryonex conversationally as Lex collided with the horde. “Or how I was able to fracture your spell just now.”

Lex ignored him, teeth clenched as he lashed out in every direction at the undead throwing themselves at him. Just like before, he could see them all coming, able to react to each of their attacks in turn. But unlike before, he couldn’t afford to take his time about it, knowing that the death scream he’d foreseen was about to happen.

Fighting the undead off one-by-one wouldn’t let him get there in time. Nor would turning into a shadow let him bypass them; he could already see numerous spectral undead gathered around him, his foresight telling him that they’d be able to interact with his shadowy form as if it were solid. Flying would be even worse, as there were already several dozen airborne undead moving in on his position.

Which left him no choice but to dip into his reserve of spells.

Exactly like he knew Kryonex wanted.

“The answer,” continued the demigod, “is that, like so many small-minded beings, you lack an appropriate appreciation for why cold is the strongest elemental power. Far from being a mere lack of heat, or mundane applications of frozen air or water, the true nature of cold is that it interrupts the very nature of motion – of energy – itself.”

Raising one leg, Kryonex waved it at the portal like a teacher gesturing at a blackboard. “This portal, for example. Each plane of existence is a universe unto itself, and each universe vibrates at its own frequency; that’s why the most common spells for traveling the planes require specially-prepared tuning forks. But vibration is movement, and the cold arrests movement. Thus, it was a simple matter for me to create an area of stillness in the range between this plane and that one, resulting in a localized convergence, or ‘bleed’ in the common parlance.”

Barely listening, Lex instead concentrated on borrowing Nenet’s metamagic, doing his best to charge through the unliving throng as he readied his spell. He ducked under the open-handed swing of a three-eyed giant, its chest crushed and its hands covered with enough negative energy that it was visible to the naked eye, before leaping over the blackened jaws of a snow worm that he’d immolated, twisting in mid-air to avoid the spectral claws of two horned bears, their eyes having turned into empty pits filled with sickly yellow light.

All the while he kept casting.

The restriction that he’d so naively adopted when he’d created his thaumaturgical spellcasting – making it literally unthinkable for him to prepare area-effect destructive spells – was still there, even as a titan. But Nenet’s power let him circumvent that restriction, pulling together a metamagic array designed to spread an individualized spell over a limited area.

It was nowhere near what Belligerence could have done, but right now that was a positive feature rather than a drawback: he was only a few dozen feet from where the scream was about to happen, the death cry being zero-point-nine-eight seconds in the future.

Fortunately, he only needed half that time to finish casting the fire spell he was preparing even as he rushed through the fray.

Zero-point-four-nine seconds later, his spell’s heat beams poured into the metamagic array, and turned everything within forty feet of himself into a maze of burning shafts of crimson light.

Kryonex’s eyes lightened further. “Of course, that’s not all I can freeze...”

The red rays were already lancing out in every direction as the demigod spoke. Too numerous to count, they didn’t stretch in straight lines, instead bending and warping in every direction, twisting around and curling past each other so as to not leave a single cubic inch of space untouched by their passage.

In an instant, the undead that had been crowding around Lex emitted a chorus of shrieks as they were annihilated, their bodies pierced dozens of times over by the superheated rays.

Clearing a path between him and his target:

The pale-skinned woman who had been the first ice creature that he’d spared.

She was still near the snowbank where he’d tossed her, the footprints around her showing that she’d picked herself up and tried to rejoin the fray. But those tracks ended at the small fissure that she’d fallen into, the crevasse just barely wide enough to engulf her up to her chest, her arms pinned between her sides and the rock walls, unable to free herself as she thrashed and shook.

And around her, the undead were closing in, the mangled corpse of a blue-skinned lizard stumbling forward as it opened its jaws, barely two feet separating its teeth from her head as the woman opened her mouth to scream.

But with no further obstacles between himself and her, there was nothing to stop Lex as flew forward, one claw raised-

“For instance,” interjected Kryonex, “did you know that time itself can be frozen?”

-and Lex felt the universe itself congeal around him.

...his left foreleg hurt...

In his mind’s eye, the future changed, no longer showing him knocking the unliving reptile away and himself saving the trapped woman.

...the barbed wire scraped over his leg, but not because it was moving...

Now, his trans-temporal sense skipped over the moment of her actual death entirely, showing that in the next half-second she’d already be dead, her neck ripped to shreds as her head dangled from the bones of her spine, her eyes glassy and unseeing.

...instead it was like the metal was caught on something despite being held outstretched in front of him, grinding against some invisible substance in a way that seemed to transmit the shock directly to his nerves...

Already, the undead monster seemed to be moving toward her at an accelerated rate, and Lex knew that his perception was slowing down, that it was about to come to a complete stop, and he’d be trapped in time and unable to even perceive it killing her, let alone stop it.

...making the pain seemed to radiate out from his limb, beyond where the wire touched, flowing over his shoulder and across his torso, engulfing his head and spreading down his legs and tail...

The last thing he saw was her eyes making contact with his own, and even if he was unable to decipher the look in them, the beast inside of him recognized the terror of someone that was about to die.

...but he pushed harder with his foreleg in response, refusing to withdraw even as that made the sense of abrasion grow worse, screaming in defiance as he pressed harder against whatever it was that was obstructing him, determined that it would crumble before he did...

And then he was through, the pain disappearing as he crossed the remaining distance just as the undead lizard closed its jaws around the woman’s neck.

“What...?” rumbled Kryonex.

But Lex wasn’t listening, instead grabbing the undead creature just as the woman’s death scream left her lips. Abandoning defense, he wrapped one claw around its jawbone and the other across the top of its skull, tearing the two apart in a single motion. The loss of its head bothered the monster not at all, and Lex felt its claws rake across his abdomen, the wounds burning as the negative energy that infused its corpse sinking into him. But he ignored the injury as he turned his full focus toward the dark-haired woman.

Unlike himself, the debilitating murk of the monster’s unlife hadn’t reached her, his death ward spell still clinging to her. But the creature’s attack had punctured her neck in multiple places, and she was already coughing up blood as her eyes rolled back in her head, dying right in front of him.

Knowing via his foresight that a healing spell would be of little help – its effectiveness hampered by how its opposing force was saturating the area – Lex instead covered her neck with his claw, concentrating on closing her wound through sheer force of will. Immediately, he felt her flesh close up underneath his talons, and awareness returned to her face, choking for a moment before drawing in a breath of fresh air.

“Qing jiu,” she gasped in Tianyu, “jiu wo!”

“Wo hui jiu ni,” answered Lex as he pulled her out of the fissure, shaking off the monster attacking him even as he batted aside a spectral humanoid of half her stature, two others moving in to take its place-

FIGHT HIM. KILL HIM. ATTACK WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE.

Immediately, the woman’s face twisted in a snarl, but before she could so much as raise her hands, Lex invaded her mind. Not trying to override Kryonex’s control, he instead inserted an orthogonal command, circumventing the demigod’s orders. Sleep.

Shuddering once, the woman’s eyes fluttered closed as she collapsed in his grip, and Lex twisted to keep her out of the way of another spectral attack, leaping into the air as he quickly outdistanced his pursuers. Nenet, I’ve picked up a survivor. I need you to take her and keep her safe.

Solvei would have protested his decision, but it was to her credit that – although he could sense her tension and confusion – Nenet didn’t second-guess him. I understand, Master! Just tell me what to do!

I’m going to summon you here, and pass her off to you. Take her back inside and watch over her. I’ll make it so you can pass through the wards unharmed.

It was a poor plan; he knew it, and he was sure that Nenet must have as well. It ran a very real risk of alerting the undead as to where the entrance to the mountain retreat was, and would likely result in some of them breaking off from the fight to try invading it. But the alternative was to keep fighting while carrying an unconscious woman, and now that Kryonex had shown himself to be capable of undoing his spells, that was too great a disadvantage to countenance.

Conserving power was no longer the optimal course of action.

Now, the best strategy was to wipe out the horde as quickly as possible.

---

“Ooh, rescuing a damsel in distress!” cooed Kara from where she’d sidled up next to the Unspoken. “Think he’ll add her to his harem?”

“I was hoping he’d do another laser circus attack,” huffed the only male god present, his duckbill making his voice come out scratchy and rough. “That was fun.”

“I’m more impressed by how he broke that time stop Kryonex used,” admitted the Sun Queen. “I’m not sure what kind of magic that was.”

“Neither am I,” murmured Luminace, frowning as she made her way over to the Night Mare’s side, glaring at the armored goddess from behind her monocle.

“We need to talk.”

Author's Note:

Taking several hits in order to rescue a survivor, Lex somehow manages to overcome Kryonex's attempt to freeze him in time!

How did he thwart the demigod's power? And who is that woman that he saved?

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Sneaky sneaky Nightmare Moon, replacing Lexs Barbed Wire with one of the Regalia?

Affect with the Deities Authority?

[Alzrius]

11710410 Heh, interesting theory there. But is it right? I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

[Not so New Brony]

The Pony Pantheon is essentially us readers here given how we've essentially been observing Lex since the beginning. XD

Still, having Lex speak mandarin caught me off guard for a moment, more than Kyronex freezing Lex's time. Wonder if Lex's fears of this exposing Nenet to danger would come true. Then again, the risk will drop significantly if he can eliminate the undead horde in their entirety before they can pose a threat to those under his protection.

However, as arrogant and longwinded Kyronex is here, I doubt he'll just idly watch Lex decimate the horde. Then again, the demigod could have a contingency plan for that outcome too. Essentially a gauntlet of deadly hurdles that escalates with each one dealt with. Though I do wonder if Kyronex has the luxury to expend so much power on Lex.

[Alzrius]

11710511 You know, despite how obvious it seems to equate the readers with the gods, that didn't even occur to me.

And as for the language Lex and that woman briefly spoke, remember, it's "Tianyu," the celestial script that was referenced back in Chapter 791:

“See the inscription on the back?” prompted Mystaria. “It’s in Tianyu, the celestial script. Can you read it?”

“Of course I can,” snorted Lex, turning the clasp over to look at the array of logographs on the back. “Ward against ironic retribution,” he pronounced a moment later.

That's one of several instances where I've basically conscripted a real-world language to stand in for one of the standard languages that the d20 System assumes (though I've assigned a new name to each one, as the standard names in that link are necessarily anodyne). "Koloss," the language that Solvei would periodically use terms from, was another, substituting Norweigan for that list's "Giant" language (since it's one of the languages that winter wolves are listed as speaking).

As for whether or not Kryonex is going to keep hanging back as Lex eliminates the undead horde...it's unclear, but it wouldn't surprise me if the demigod starts getting more into the fight. He's started taking steps to keep Lex at a disadvantageous position, and the undead army seems to be the point of his opening gamble, so it wouldn't make sense for him to stand by as it was eliminated. In that case, Lex might have to fight those monsters and the demigod at once, which could turn very bad very quickly...though given whatever it was that happened when Kryonex tried to freeze time around Lex, there seems to be something else at work?

[Spiritus Arcane]

I mean, it was already hinted Lex was a reality warper, and that was before he got powered up into a Titan.

[Alzrius]

11710643 Those hints weren't meant to be that he was a reality-warper per se, but rather that he was overturning a lot of conventional rules about what could be done with magic (i.e. that he was a point-buy character in a world mostly populated by people with character classes).

[Booster Spice]

11710655

Goedels Incompleteness Theorem. No matter how all encompasing your Axioms of reality are, you can Always use those hard rules to make Exceptions.

Laywers will always find a hole.