Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

874 - Cold and Lifeless

Kyronex’s leg caught Lex across the chest, opening up a gash large enough that he could feel the wind against his heart.

But while that would have been a crippling – or more likely, fatal – wound to a mortal, Lex simply grit his teeth and spun with the blow and counterattacked, one of his rear claws slashing at the demigod’s metatarsus. Just like the last few exchanges, all his effort amounted to was a small scratch, and it was difficult for him to tell if he’d inflicted anything more than cosmetic damage to his enemy.

Even so, he pressed the attack, ducking under another swipe from his divine opponent and stepping inward. Giving a snarl that came directly from the beast within, he leaped upward and stabbed out with Belligerence, aiming directly for Kryonex’s left eye.

But the attack didn’t make it halfway to its destination before one of Kryonex’s pedipalps caught the barbed tip of the quill, the point sinking a quarter-inch into the exoskeleton before stopping.

Hissing at being thwarted again, Lex instinctively threw his weight behind Belligerence, trying to drive it through and inflict some real damage-

Only to immediately abandon his effort as his foresight warned him on the wraiths converging on him.

A dozen strong, the inky black shapes could almost have been twisted reflections of his shadow-form, complete with flickering yellow pinpoints for eyes. But unlike his transformation, these creatures were undead whose souls had left their bodies, wrapping themselves in negative energy so thick it manifested visually, forming the indistinct black shapes now descending upon him, limbs raised as their eyes shone brightly.

Yanking Belligerence free of Kryonex, Lex spun in place as he hurled it at the wraiths, two of them screeching and dissolving into nothing as the weapon pierced them. The other ten didn’t notice, swooping around to surround him as they began to swipe at him, their touch brimming with unlife.

Refusing to let himself be pinned down, Lex twisted past three of them in quick succession, retaliating with swipes of his claws that rent the wraiths as though they were made out of paper. Another two tried to flank him, moving from his left and his right at the same time, but he dodged them easily, moving upward-

Just in time for Kryonex’s downstroke to catch him, knocking him into the ground hard enough that the ribs that the demigod’s previous hit had revealed shattered from the impact. Worse, he’d been knocked through two other wraiths, and he could feel their negative energy seeping into his body, undermining his ability to restore himself.

But he had no time to dwell on that as the corporeal undead were already moving to capitalize on the hit he’d taken. A quintet of humanoid corpses, so badly burned that their original race was impossible to tell, flung themselves on top of him, their touch trying to siphon away more of his life force.

Scattering them with an eruption of black crystals, Lex immediately righted himself, using the half-second’s respite he’d bought to concentrate on repairing the damage he’d taken. In an instant, the hole in his chest closed up, reality again bending to his will...but it took more effort he knew it should have, the restoration taxing him in a way that had nothing to do with physical exertion.

Wounds inflicted by the demigod weren’t just physical damage.

If they had been, Lex wouldn’t have been concerned. The actual force behind Kryonex’s blows was crushing, but not to any serious extent. As far as being the product of mass times acceleration went, Kryonex was striking with power comparable to that of Hvitdod.

Rather, it was the absolute chill that each moment of contact with the demigod wrought that was the problem. So cold that it froze the positive energy where it touched him, Lex had no choice but to use Solvei’s cryomancy to wrap wards around himself. But despite augmenting them to the point where even Hvitdod’s ability to freeze creatures of intrinsic cold wouldn’t have been able to get through, they were only barely able to mitigate the brunt of the damage.

Worse, they were in constant need of renewal.

The demigod was so incredibly gelid that no matter how much strength Lex put into them, his wards were only able to withstand a single hit from Kryonex before they collapsed. When they did, Lex needed to restore them immediately, lest Kryonex strike him without any defenses up; although Lex had his own innate resistance to the cold, he didn’t trust it to stand up to what Kryonex was capable of dishing out. Or at least, not for very long, which meant that whenever his wards collapsed, they needed to be renewed immediately.

But between continually renewing his defenses and trying to fight back, Lex found himself taking repeated hits from the legions of the undead.

All while the open portal to the Negative Energy Plane wore away at his ability to recover naturally.

Individually, the unliving hordes were only marginally more dangerous than they were in life. Even with the portal eating away at his ability to revitalize himself, the mob of undead weren’t particularly threatening. With Nenet’s metamagic and Belligerence, Lex felt certain that he could take them all out with a single spell.

But Kryonex apparently knew that, which was presumably why he was no longer content to simply sit back and observe the fight, instead moving in and pressing his attack just enough that Lex couldn’t find the few seconds necessary to try and clear the battlefield.

Even that wouldn’t have been an insurmountable problem, except for how powerful a fighter the demigod was.

As if to prove the point, five giant legs came swinging down at him, their movement faster than Lex’s eyes could track, leaving him relying entirely on his supernatural senses.

Each one of Kryonex’s limbs came from a different angle, leaving him balanced on just two of his remaining legs. But as he struggled to block, dodge, counter, redirect, and foil each of the demigod’s legs – frantically rebuilding his wards each time they went down – Lex could see that Kryonex wasn’t in the least bit unsteady despite how lopsided his stance was. Nor did Kryonex’s attacks leave him overcommitted, each leg moving apart from the others yet working together in tandem, resulting in no gap in his guard that Lex could try to exploit.

But that was no surprise either. Balance, inertia, momentum, leverage, and other such mundane concerns had ceased to be problems for Lex when he had become a titan; it was only to be expected that Kryonex wouldn’t be bound by them either.

The demigod was just better at using that to his advantage.

And with a morass of specters moving in to capitalize on his defenses, Lex did the only thing he could think of to buy himself some space, turning into shadow and plunging into the ground. That wouldn’t keep the incorporeal portion of the undead army at bay, but it would-

He didn’t have a chance to complete that thought as, all around him, the latent moisture in the ground froze, pulverizing the stone. An instant later, one of Kryonex’s legs pierced down through the fragmented rock, and pierced through Lex’s insubstantial form as well, the cold once again shattering his protection.

Struggling to free himself, finding the claw that had punctured him to be as solid to his shadow-form as it was to his physical body, Lex realized that going underground had been a serious mistake. All he’d done was make it harder for himself to sense Kryonex’s presence, and cripple his ability to fight back; better to-

Oh no.

Dragging himself off of the end of Kryonex’s leg, Lex immediately sped toward where Nenet and Adagio were holed up, repairing his wards...only for more of Kryonex’s legs to pierce the ground, forcing him to break off to avoid being skewered. That was enough time for the wraiths and specters he’d been avoiding to reach him, and Lex lashed out with a beam of dark magic, scattering the incorporeal flock only for a moment.

M-Master! came Nenet’s psychic shriek a second later, just as he’d foreseen it would. Some of the undead are trying to break in! I don’t know if your wards are going to be able to hold them off!

Rushing back above ground and turning solid again, Lex spared a half-second to glance in the direction of the cave entrance. Sure enough, there were roughly two dozen undead clustering there now, the illusion having fallen. Worse, he could just make out seven or eight immaterial creatures rushing into the mountainside directly, ignoring the entrance altogether as they passed through the layers of solid rock without slowing down.

But even that half-second cost him, as Kryonex and the undead moved in to try and capitalize on his moment of distraction, leaving Lex cursing in frustration.

When he’d handed that dark-haired woman he’d rescued to Nenet, he’d needed to pass her to the sphinx directly; there had been no other choice, since he’d cursed Adagio’s redoubt to be impassable to teleportation. While Mystaria’s clasp made him immune to his own magic, that didn’t extend along his connection to Nenet, and so the sphinx had been forced to come out to meet him.

Having her bypass the magical defenses he’d set up hadn’t been a problem; he’d been able to transmit the necessary information about them across their bond for her to get there without issue. But although Lex had hidden her presence as best he was able with illusons, he’d known that there were some undead creatures who would be able to sense her life force directly once she ventured that close to the battlefield, the positive energy certain to stand out against the backdrop of the increasingly negative-saturated area. And while Lex had hoped that his own, much greater concentration of vitality would keep their attention, it was inevitable that some would seek out an easier target.

And while Lex knew that they wouldn’t be able to reach the sphinx easily, there was only so much that his defenses could do.

Especially since only the room where he’d left Adagio had any protection against incorporeal creatures.

Even that was only a secondary protection that he’d woven into the thin screen he’d raised to keep that chamber safe against scrying. Added purely out of an abundance of caution, he hadn’t seen fit to imbue any sort of serious resilience to it. If it was subjected to any sort of dedicated assault, it wouldn’t last very long.

Nenet, I know that you’re almost out of magic, replied Lex, using Belligerence to guard against another sweep of one of Kryonex’s legs while he leaped over another, stabbing a skeletal creature with writhing innards through the heart as he blasted another wraith with dark magic. But if the undead manage to breach the barriers I set up, I’m not going to be able to help you.

That was enough to make her emotional state change from nervous to alarmed. Master, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that!

You said that Grisela’s puppets were taking anything valuable they could find from your siblings’ quarters, Lex reminded her, one claw shooting out to rip a headless giant in half before he turned in place to catch another two of Kryonex’s legs in place – one with his remaining fore-claw and the other with his telekinesis – just before they pincered him between them. Were there any magic items there?

Yes, the leftovers that they didn’t bother bringing with them when they went to attack Kryonex’s realm. Her distress faded then, but only somewhat. The astradaemons had some too, taken from Paska after they killed him.

Use whatever’s there to defend yourself, as well as Adagio and that woman.

A flicker of uncertainty came from Nenet then, as though she was trying to make up her mind about something, but it vanished a moment later. I understand, Master. I won’t let you down.

I know that you won’t, Nenet.

That was enough to make her worry fade, replaced with resolve, just as he’d known it would.

Then Lex turned all his attention back to where Kryonex and the undead were baring down on him again.

Author's Note:

As Kyronex enters the battle, Lex finds himself struggling to stand up to the demigod and the undead, even as some of the latter head after Nenet!

Will the sphinx be able to protect everyone all by herself? Or are she and her master both simply delaying the inevitable?

Comments

[AmlpfanREADER]

874 chapters? what the actal fuc-

[Alzrius]

11715723 Yeah, I get that a lot.

[Booster Spice]

Just what collection of one shot spells, abilities and items did Adagio use to be able to damage Kryonex so much in the furst place, apart from getting an illegal number of critical 20s sucesses with Advantage, Suprise, etc especialy given Kryonexs non linear time sense?

Trouble is, no matter what defenses Nenet finds, nothing is really going to help because Adagio is the primary target anyway and Lex is just being a non tiring incidental currently on the way?

You cant freeze Chaos because it becomes Order?

[Not so New Brony]

Lex is hanging in there thanks to his status as a titan though he's taking more damage than he can dish out which is not ideal in such a situation. However, I am really curious why Kyronex is fighting so defensively instead of just overwhelming Lex since he can pretty much shrug off most of Lex's attacks here.

Also, it appears that Adagio might get the opportunity to escape soon though she'll probably get caught up in the horde if she makes a break for it. Well, unless she can teleport away, her options are way more limited than Lex's.

[TheAbsoluteRadiance]

Lex is complexly swept up in Kyronex's pace But it is weird that he is fighting so defensibly. It's either he is just cautious of mortals after what happed with Adagio or he still haven't healed enough.

[Alzrius]

11715968 A salient point (admittedly from two chapters ago) is that even being able to see through time doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to always stay one step ahead of your opposition (though in that case it was framed from Lex's point of view). Being able to see what's going to happen doesn't mean you can't misinterpret things, or draw erroneous conclusions, or even be surprised despite having a few seconds' leeway to react.

For Kryonex, we know that Adagio used her Song of Destruction to injure him; that's understandable, since that spell was able to completely shatter multiple layers of defenses that Lex had raised and hit him hard enough to skeletonize him. He wasn't truly injured near death, but was definitely hurt more than the few drops of godsblood that Kryonex shed.

More notably, Adagio had an advantage that Lex doesn't: a small army of daemonic mercenaries and her own children (some of whom likely had more aristeia than Sissel) to use as cannon fodder. When you're willing to trade so many lives in order to earn a small scratch, it's perhaps not surprising that she was able to accomplish her goal. Kryonex is a demigod, but a relatively modest one even as far as demigods go.

As for Nenet, well...she's fairly intelligent, even if she is a bit of a shrinking violet. Hopefully she'll come up with something!

[Alzrius]

11716536 I have to admit, it makes me happy that people are realizing that Kryonex is fighting a defensive battle. I was a bit nervous that people would see him attacking physically and think that he was starting to get serious. In fact, for a demigod to limit themselves to simply physical attacks (albeit with an elemental effect when contact is made) is them holding back, by a considerable amount.

Though of course, that begs the question of why he's not pushing the advantage as hard as he could.

[Alzrius]

11716008 Kryonex does seem to be fighting a defensive battle, which is rather awkward since he's not only the aggressor but is also apparently stronger than his opponent. So why isn't he going harder than he could? Clearly, there's a mystery here.

As for Adagio, I'll admit that it's hard to see her missing an opportunity to use what's happening now to her advantage. The question is if she'll be able to...and the other question is what she'll do if she gets the chance.