Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

876 - The Renewing Light

Lex grunted as he hit the mountainside, the impact great enough that it blew away the entire summit and most of the crest as well.

He barely noticed the damage to the landscape, however, instead grimacing as he took stock of the eighty-seven broken bones and twenty-nine ruptured organs his body had sustained. None of that was enough to interfere with his ability to continue fighting – pain no longer had the ability to impair his actions, and he wasn’t dependent on biology to function – but the fact that the wounds weren’t closing on their own was a testament to just how bad the situation had become.

The negative energy polluting his body had finally surpassed what he could offset on his own.

He still had recovery options, both in terms of healing magic he’d received from the Night Mare or simply concentrating in order to repair his body. But neither of those would have done very much; the negative energy saturating the area would have smothered the former, and in his current state the latter wouldn’t have accomplished enough to make the effort worthwhile.

Worse, neither would have prevented him from accumulating further damage as the fight went on.

As if to prove that point, Kryonex closed the gap between them in an instant, shooting across the valley at speeds far in excess of what a creature his size should have been able to attain, slamming bodily into Lex.

“It seems as though you’re reaching your limit at last,” noted the demigod conversationally as his legs lashed out at Lex again. “I must admit, I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”

“Allow me to oblige you!” snarled Lex, reupping his newly-shattered wards against the cold even as he called forth a spell. It took only a fraction of a second to cast it, feeding more power into the conceptual matrix as he-

Was immediately struck from four different directions at once, Kryonex’s burst of speed interrupting his casting and causing the spell to fizzle as he reeled under the blows, anti-cold wards once again crumbling under the onslaught.

Nor had Kryonex struck him at random, as this time the force of the blows sent him careening toward another cluster of the undead filling the valley.

Slamming into a mob of skeletal humanoids, burnt lizards, and dismembered monsters, the impact blew them all apart as Lex hit them with the force of a comet, striking the ground hard enough to leave a trench over a hundred feet long. But even that was enough to worsen the situation, as the unliving creatures – whether overcome with hatred for their slayer, hunger for life energy, or simply too insane to care – had grasped and clawed at him even in their instant of destruction, overwhelming him with more negative energy.

Flipping upright before he’d fully come to a halt, Lex hesitated for a half-second as a brief sense of lightheadedness overcame him, the dizziness inviting more of the undead to rush at him.

Cursing as he realized that his soul’s connection to his body was beginning to fray under the sheer morass of anti-life that he’d been subjected to, Lex sank his talons into the ground, growling as he overturned the terrain around him. Flipping over a frozen slab of rock the size of a hoofball field, he had the satisfaction of seeing the undead closest to him sent flying as the ones behind them were crushed beneath the tons of stone that he’d just upended.

The reward for his efforts was that more undead came at him.

Summoning Belligerence to his grasp, Lex immediately began casting another spell, knowing that was all he’d need to turn the tide of the fight.

Just like before, Kryonex had no intention of allowing him to do that, immediately appearing before him with his massive legs already swinging downward.

Exactly as Lex had known he would.

It was the one way in which his enemy had proven to be predictable. Each and every time he’d tried to cast a spell, the demigod had doggedly pressed his offense, keeping him from doing so. Lex had tried fortifying his position behind multiple barricades of ultra-dense black crystals, concealing himself behind several layers of illusions, and evading at the fastest speed he’d been capable of, all in an effort to buy himself the few moments he’d need.

Each time had been for naught. Kryonex had burst through his cover, seen through his attempted misdirection, and easily caught up to him. And each time, he had proceeded to attack with such ferocity that Lex had lost the spell he’d been casting. While Solvei’s cryomancy could be used through a simple act of will, thaumaturgical magic required intense concentration and dedicated focus, even if only for a moment.

Kryonex had shown himself to be unwilling to grant him that moment. Even despite the demigod’s strange reluctant to use his divine powers – ever since Lex had broken free of his enemy’s attempt to freeze him in time, Kryonex had limited himself to physical attacks – his strategy had been one Lex had repeatedly failed to overturn, unable to bring his strongest magic to bear even as the demigod, the undead, and the portal had slowly but steadily worn away at him.

And to compound matters further, each spell that Kryonex had disrupted was one that he couldn’t recover. A disrupted thaumaturgical spell was lost, its activation expending the power involved even though it fell apart before it could take effect, and although Lex now possessed a vast repertoire of powerful magic, his mental catalogue of spells was still limited. Each interrupted casting was a spell he wouldn’t get back until after the fight was over – since there was no way Kryonex would ease off enough for him to renew his spells during the battle – narrowing his options even more with nothing to show for it.

Which was why Lex had something different in mind this time.

“More of the same?” remarked Kryonex as he descended, limbs already lashing out in a hurricane of strikes. “I expected something different this time.”

Lex made no response, instead focusing on defending himself as he held off the demigod’s furious assault. Dodging wherever he could, he turned aside only those blows that he couldn’t avoid, his wards shattering from even blocked strikes. He immediately renewed them, but that was another task performed alongside the casting he was already doing and the desperate defenses he was raising...

And then the undead reached him.

Before, when the animate corpses had attacked him, Lex had been forced to split his focus, either destroying them and leaving himself vulnerable to Kryonex, or ignoring them in favor of the demigod, allowing the malevolent dead to score a few hits on him before he brushed them aside.

This time, however, Lex used them to his advantage.

Kryonex’s moving in had put the demigod right alongside him in the middle of the unliving horde. So far they had all ignored the demigod, either recognizing that he was too great an opponent for them or because they were still following the commands they’d died obeying. But Lex had no intention of allowing them to continue leaving Kryonex untouched.

The closest of the unliving monsters was a charred skeleton, its intestines writhing in its gut like a nest of snakes as they slid up the creature’s burnt throat and out its mouth, reaching for him like some horrific tongue. But rather than retaliate against the attack, Lex instead grabbed the disgusting organ in one claw, ignoring the sting of the negative energy it contained as he whipped it around. Twirling the monster at the other end as though its intestines were a lasso, he spun it in a circle before hurling it into the air.

Nor did he stop there.

A slavering frost drake corpse that could have been another ghoul joined it an instant later. So did a headless form of a six-legged polar bear. And the hollow husk of a small humanoid whose torso had been ripped apart. Those and scores of other undead were flung upward in an instant, howling as they were launched into the sky.

And once all of the undead that were within his reach were airborne, Lex expanded his telekinesis, grabbing every single unliving creature he could reach and lifting them into the air, several thousand bodies shrieking and wailing as they were dragged upward.

Then he flung them all at Kryonex.

But not a single one reached the demigod, each of the undead freezing in midair as the demigod’s eyes flashed.

“Trying to bury me beneath the undead in order to buy yourself enough time to finish your spell?” mused Kryonex, pedipalps clicking. “A poor plan, since they lack the power to injure me. Can you say the same?”

No sooner had he finished speaking than the undead resumed moving...but not toward him. Instead, they uniformly shot toward Lex, streaking through the air so quickly that they were little more than decaying blurs, moaning and screaming as they flew directly at him.

It was exactly what he’d been hoping the demigod would do.

Give me a major source of positive energy! The strongest one you possibly can!

Acknowledged, came the answer from his tulpa.

When he’d first come up with this plan, Lex had used his foresight only to confirm that his tulpa would be able to comply with his order. Making a strategy around something that it couldn’t give him would have been an unforgivable lapse in judgment. But his surprise had been complete when he’d realized that the mental construct wouldn’t stop there.

Situational analysis complete. Order contextualized. Optimizing now.

Up ahead, the undead were falling toward him like raindrops, so numerous that they almost blotted out his view of Kryonex. Even the most casual analysis of their speed and trajectory showed that they’d impact him before he’d be able to finish his spell, at which point he’d be buried under more damage than even a titan could ignore.

But his tulpa’s power kicked in first.

And around his body, golden armor shimmered into being.

Polished and gleaming brightly, it covered him from horn to tail, each piece looking as though it had been designed specifically for him. The horn-guard was a burnished gold, shining with the radiance of the sky at sundown. The eyepieces on the helmet were translucent emeralds set with turquoise, replicating his ocular glow in the form of gemstones. Filigree on the left vambrace presented the barbed wire beneath, not as twisted metal but as winding links of an intricate chain. The final aspect was an outer surcoat of pure white, a large symbol of a bright red orb surrounded by a vivid halo.

Armor of the Renewing Light, complete.

No sooner had his tulpa announced the name of what it had brought forth than the armor shone, the golden metal lighting up as though someone had turned a spotlight on it. But rather than reflecting any outward glow, the light came from it, its intensity rapidly increasing until it shone like a star that had fallen to earth.

And within it, Lex felt his wounds immediately start to close, the negative energy that he’d been hit with being expelled rapidly as its opposite flooded his body.

But the light didn’t stop there, exploding outward in a blinding coruscation that engulfed all of the undead falling toward him...and obliterated them all.

Each of the falling undead was burned to nothing almost instantly, disintegrating into nothing but ashes in a fraction of a second. A few came close enough to almost make contact with him, but Lex merely had to shift in place, twitching a talon in their direction, and the light seemed to wind around them with a tangible thickness all its own, breaking them down and destroying them before they could cross the last of the distance.

“What is this?!” Taking a step back, Kryonex raised one leg, as if to shield his eyes. “That’s not a spell! What are you doing?!”

“You’re right, this armor isn’t the result of a spell,” laughed Lex triumphantly, bringing Belligerence around as he brought forth all that power that his titan’s body could generate as he finally – finally! – finished the thaumaturgical activation he’d been aiming for.

“But this is.”

In his grasp, another of Belligerence’s black crystal rings broke apart, leaving only a single one left.

Then his magic roared outward and engulfed everything.

Author's Note:

Calling upon his tulpa, Lex annihilates the undead and heals his injuries, giving himself enough time to complete his spell!

What magic did he use? And what exactly is the the Armor of the Renewing Light that his tulpa brought forth?

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Tulpa has a nice selection of items in the back. I wonder if that was on Les actual list, or in the extended archive that can only be indirectly searched for, or roll to generate?

In final Fantasy terms, where teh Ultimate Boss has 5 or 6 forms and 60 million hitpoints as poosed to the Heros 10k, I wonder where Kryonex currently sits?

At least its not Belerephone? That things a nightmare.

[Not so New Brony]

Imagining Lex going through a transformation sequence like the Power Rangers or Sailor Moon would is something I'd never thought I'd ever imagine and it was glorious as it was hilarious!

Still, the tulpa's ability to manifest things into reality even if temporary certainly came in clutch here and Lex using it to buy himself time for his spell is just icing on the proverbial cake to me. We've already seen what happened the last time Lex expended one of the crystals so the effects should be devastating though given the target is a demigod, At the very least, it should wound Kyronex though given what we've seen of the demigod's ability, I doubt he'll just take the attack so easily.

Would be quite annoying if Kyronex ended up being a body double or puppet like Grisela did with her own. A little skeptical of that theory but given the fact that Adagio has a perfect puppet of herself fooling everyone...

[TheAbsoluteRadiance]

That Tulpa clutch. I keep forgetting that it exists.

[Alzrius]

11720583 Insofar as Lex's tulpa goes, it was always operating as a variation of the dream-binding skill (i.e. it is that same skill, but using Eclipse's corruption/specialization rules to introduce certain limits and drawbacks in order to gain corresponding advantages and benefits). But that was before Lex became a titan; now that he has, there are even more changes being made to the base functionality of that skill.

As for Kryonex, Lex is fairly sure he hasn't dealt much damage to him at all; it's mostly been a defensive battle up until this point. Of course, that seems to be over now...

[Alzrius]

11720893 I tell you, I came this close to describing the order, and the manner, in which the pieces of the armor appear on his body, before I realized that might have been going just a little too far. But yeah, the urge to dig in deep and get in on that "transformation sequence" presentation were strong!

Thankfully, Lex's tulpa was able to help him turn the situation around, and now that he's managed to get a huge AoE spell off, he'll hopefully be able to start taking control of the fight instead of just reacting to it. As it is, this seems to be little more than a warm-up for Kryonex so far...or maybe a cool-down, since he's a god of ice?

[Alzrius]

11721116 Thankfully, Lex didn't. He has limits to how much he can call on that power, and using it now means it has that much less ability to be used later, but holding something in reserve is pointless when you're going to lose otherwise. Now let's just hope that it was worthwhile.