Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

892 - To Strike at Nothing

Go forth, my champion, and conquer!

The Night Mare’s voice echoed in Lex’s mind, resounding with the azure flames coming from the barbed wire wrapped around his foreleg. Her words made the spectral fire glow brighter, flaring in response to her will before snaking down over his claw and flowing into Belligerence, seeping into the runes carved along the length of the weapon.

And the inscriptions glowed brightly as they absorbed the divine energy, far outshining when he’d charged the weapon with his own power.

In my name, honor this sacrament, and dominate all who stand in your way!

A thin smile crossed Lex’s lips. He had no idea what the Night Mare was doing to Belligerence; despite how it looked, he was sure it had to be different from the way he’d poured energy into the quill in order to injure Kryonex. Divine power had, after all, only strengthened that orb – or whatever it was in the process of becoming – and yet it seemed as though the goddess was directing her own godly energy into the weapon now.

Stabbing the creature with that seemed like the worst possible idea. Everything he’d witnessed told Lex that it would just absorb the power the Night Mare had imbued Belligerence with and grow even stronger. Logic, reason, and intuition all insisted that he was supposed to do something else with what he was being given.

Perhaps stab himself; the Night Mare’s religious rites often included elements of self-harm. Or maybe it was meant to act as a lure, using the imbued divinity to entice the creature away from where it could hurt anyone. There were a thousand different possibilities that he could think of.

But for once, Lex put aside rationality, and instead gave himself over to something else:

Faith.

He’d prayed to his goddess for a miracle, and her response had been to empower the weapon he’d consecrated in her name.

There was no need to look any deeper at it than that.

Even as the aura emanating from the ebony monster in front of him grew stronger, increasing as its size eclipsed the mountains and continued to grow, Lex felt his body start to break down – his skin beginning to shrivel and slough off of him – but he nevertheless gripped Belligerence and rushed forward.

Take power, and never surrender it!

Even as Lex moved, the black thing’s form continued to grow and warp, shaping itself into a better-defined outline. Tendrils continued to stiffen and segment, sprouting digits at the end, while several others wove together into long membranes that stretched across the decimated valley. But if the thing was trying to contort itself into any sort of recognizable shape, it wasn’t one that Lex was familiar with, the proportions and connections between them being wildly askew from where they all radiated out from the thing’s center.

It was that center that he decided to aim for as he charged toward it. His goddess had, in all likelihood, given him a weapon that could destroy whatever this thing was. Although Lex had no idea how this thing’s cognition or sensory awareness operated, he was taking a gamble in presuming that it didn’t realize that; divinity had been something it wanted to absorb, rather than avoid.

But that would most likely change if he dealt it a non-fatal injury. Once it realized it was vulnerable, the creature would almost certainly adjust its tactics accordingly. And although it had no organs or vital points to target, Lex wasn’t willing to bet everything on a glancing blow to one outstretched limb.

If he only had one shot – quite likely literally – then he was going to aim for the central portion of his foe, and trust that the Night Mare’s power would do the rest.

That power was coming through in abundance now, blue fire continuing to pour into Belligerence even as he moved, the quill feeling supernaturally heavy. That was to be expected; when Nenet had recovered his spine from Adagio, it had been almost impossible to move with telekinesis, and the same had been true when he’d tried to keep Kryonex from falling into the monster’s vortex.

Divine power, Lex knew from experience, wasn’t something that could be easily manipulated by terrestrial means.

As it was, Lex couldn’t suppress a grunt as he hauled the quill aloft, his own combination of divinity and aristeia barely enough to let him carry the thing.

And as if it sensed what he was intent on doing, the lightless creature’s wild thrashing stopped.

Then its limbs shot out toward him.

Lex was already moving, his horn lighting up as he used his telekinesis to help move Belligerence, barely skirting the edges of the creature’s swipes. I won’t be able to throw it like this, he knew. Getting up close is my only chance!

Except with how slowly he was moving, having to drag Belligerence around even as his body slowly disintegrated, that wasn’t going to happen.

Discarding the quill wasn’t an option. Even if he could teleport it back into his grasp – which was highly uncertain, given how the divine power it was being filled with was making it increasingly hard to move – the Night Mare was still feeding power into it through the wire around his foreleg, and he didn’t dare do anything that might break the connection. For that same reason, he didn’t even consider shoving it back inside the pocket dimension he’d placed his other possessions in. One way or another, he’d have to approach the thing without Belligerence leaving his grasp.

But how...?

Use others, urged the Night Mare in his mind, and make their strength your own!

Taking his goddess’s advice literally, Lex immediately called upon Solvei’s cryomancy, using Nenet’s metamagic to empower it as much as possible.

Grisela had used ice and snow to create puppets of herself, making them fight her battles for her. Kryonex had briefly utilized the same technique, creating golems in an attempt to slow him down during their fight. There was no reason why Solvei’s magic – capable of summoning ice elementals in abundance and making a frozen copy of Sanguine Dispositions palatial manor – couldn’t do the same thing now.

A moment’s concentration was all it took, and then Lex was surrounded by a dozen copies of himself rendered in ice, falling in seamlessly around him as he resumed his skyward charge at where his foe was hovering up above.

Despite being mindless constructs – not having it in him to summon elementals after the slaughter he’d committed – the golems didn’t need to be told what to do, having been programmed with instructions as he’d brought them forth. Thankfully they also possessed the ability to fly, along with an increase to their reaction speed, thanks to Nenet’s metamagic.

Which was why, as an inky black limb with multiple elbows and twice as many digits at the end lashed out toward him, one of the golems was just barely able to nudge Lex out of the way in time, taking the hit that had been meant for him.

The same thing happened five more times in the next few seconds, the golems sacrificing themselves to let Lex close the gap between himself and the creature.

He was almost there...

Bow to no one, and subjugate everyone!

Again, Lex took the Night Mare’s words as instructions, standing atop two of the remaining golems and pushing off of them. His claws were little more than bones with bare, shriveled skin coating them now, and he could feel his strength ebbing. Snarling inwardly, he willed the universe to give him more power as he fought to cover the last of the gap between him and his target, but reality itself was fraying, unable to comply with his orders.

And below him, the last of the golems – which had been collapsing in on themselves from the moment he’d created them – fell apart, his foresight telling him that he was too deep inside the creature’s annihilating aura to make any more; they’d collapse as soon as they were formed if he tried. The same was true for any sort of ice he’d conjure, or black crystals.

At such close range, physical material couldn’t exist for more than a split-second – himself and Belligerence notwithstanding – giving him nothing to push off of. And with the quill growing more cumbersome by the moment, his body eroding, and reality itself too frayed for him to use it to his advantage, Lex was stuck. Literally so, unable to cross the last few dozen feet to his foe.

As if it sensed that, the black creature’s six limbs closed in on Lex from every angle, impossible to block or dodge.

So Lex did neither, instead retrieving a small diamond and throwing it directly at the creature, the gemstone breaking apart as it came to within a few yards of its pitch-black body-

Let’s see how you like it.

-and the magic inside went off, opening up a vortex.

It was exactly like the planar tear that he’d made back when he’d fought Xiriel, except this time it wasn’t the result of crudely shoving one extradimensional container inside of another until space itself tore. Rather, Lex had deliberately designed the magic in that particular gemstone to result in the same kind of violent planar aperture, just in case he’d ever needed to pull an enemy into another dimension. Of course, that hadn’t done much against Xiriel, and Lex knew that it would be even less effective against the thing he was fighting now.

Or at least, that would have been the case if the thing hadn’t already weakened the fabric of reality around it.

But since it had, and because his anti-teleportation wards were no longer reinforcing the dimensional barriers in the area, the result was that the rift that opened was massive in scale, creating a rupture half-again as large as the valley itself, pulling everything toward it.

Immediately, the creature was pulled through the dimensional tear, its limbs flailing as they fell in first, missing Lex as the rift pulled them off-target. Lex himself would have immediately followed, but his grip on Belligerence kept him anchored, the quill barely budging despite the fissure’s powerful inward draw.

Divine energy was indeed quite difficult to move.

Fortunately, the divinity that creature had absorbed didn’t seem to do it much good as half of its body sank through the breach, malformed limbs flailing as it tried to grab onto something-

And then it teleported, reappearing almost a thousand feet away from the rift, having avoided being drawn through in its entirety.

A half-second later, its form gave a pulse, and the rent in space closed as its negation power shut down the magic that had prompted the aperture in the first place.

Leaving Lex that much further from his target.

Exactly as he’d planned.

No mercy! hissed the Night Mare. No weakness!

His body dessicated and withered because of the thing’s corrosive aura, Lex stared up at the creature, knowing that it was regarding him in turn.

He might not have known how its cognition or its sensory awareness operated, but he knew the pattern that it had followed during the course of their fight, having had ample time to analyze its tactics.

And in truth, they were simplistic in the extreme.

Chasing them around the battlefield. Teleporting so artlessly that it could be kept ahead of with speed alone. Simple vortexes that pulled everything directly toward it. Negating whatever was giving it trouble. The thing’s strategies were childishly straightforward, just going after what it wanted directly with no indication that it understood concepts like feints, ruses, or misdirection.

More than that, it had repeatedly evinced frustration when its tactics failed, switching to a new approach only after having the previous one thoroughly foiled. When those hadn’t worked, it had simply cycled back through its same tricks again, repeating the strategies that hadn’t worked before. It was only because Lex and Kryonex had been trying to fight each other while dodging it that the thing had gotten any divinity at all, granting it new powers that had made it more and more difficult to deal with. Even then, the thing’s actions had remained startlingly easy to predict.

The same way Lex was predicting what it would do next.

This entire time, he’d been waving a plentiful helping of divinity – everything the Night Mare was pouring into Belligerence, plus his own – right in front of it. He’d even gotten closer to it, dodging its attacks all while coming within a stone’s throw of its center. Yet he’d refused to let it absorb that power, dangling it just out of reach despite the thing’s best efforts. And now...

It’s too far for a vortex of its own to be worthwhile. It couldn’t catch me with its limbs before. It should realize it only has one option left.

A moment later he was proven right, as the thing teleported directly to where he was.

It was what Lex had been waiting for it to do.

In that single instant when it vanished and reappeared directly where he was – its vast size covering the area for hundreds of feet in every direction – he made his move:

With preternaturally adroit timing, Lex pulled the pocket dimension that he’d made over himself, disappearing into the folded space.

He hadn’t wanted to put Belligerence in there before since that would have meant letting go of it even as the Night Mare fed the weapon power, knowing that he’d need as much as the goddess could give him in order to succeed. But being in there with it, his claws still grasping the quill, was a different story!

And never forget, whispered the Night Mare, that you are my-

But with the subspace that he’d sequestered himself in – being merely a folded section of the plane he was on, rather than a separate dimension altogether – already coming undone as reality unraveled, there was no time for Lex to listen to his goddess’s benediction.

Instead, Lex pointed Belligerence’s barbed head toward the pocket dimension’s egress.

Then he thrust it forward, burying the quill – and his foreleg up to the shoulder – in the nothingness that was the void creature’s body.

Author's Note:

With the Night Mare pouring divine power into Belligerence, Lex manages to stab the weapon directly into the entropic monster that the sphere has become!

Has he slain the creature? Or has it grown too strong for even the Night Mare's power to overcome?

Comments

[Not so New Brony]

Sweet Cheese and crackers, that cliffhanger! (In a good way of course) I had to find an appropriate soundtrack to listen to while rereading and I took my time imagining the action while doing so and damn I had fun

Anyways, a part of me is amused at how Lex took the Night Mare's words to him as literal orders and yet also a little sad out that he won't find out the reason for them until later if at all since he doesn't necessarily have any connection to the pony pantheon...well, aside from Kara who will probably only answer him with/for a booty call.

Still, with the Night Mare out of commission, the Darkest Night might experience an upheaval if and when they find out their goddess is MIA though her fellow pony divines might try to maintain order in her absence, or establish a new one under their reign. Hard to say.

[Booster Spice]

Just like a cancer cell?

If you cant kill it directly due to its mutations, pour on the randomisations until its internal stresses rip itself apart or in the case of Knurd, a self replicating ordered crystal equivalent occurs and proceeds to consume the antidisorder around it?

[Alzrius]

11763161 It really made my day to hear that you enjoyed the chapter so much! Action scenes, and cliffhangers, are something I really enjoy writing, mostly because I get a kick out of finding ways to keep the stakes rising even as the challenges get progressively harder. Throw in some unexpected twists and counters, and it's quite fun to write! As such, it's very gratifying to hear that it's also fun to read.

With regard to Lex finding meaning in the Night Mare's sayings, I have to wonder if she said that because she knew he'd take it as help with regard to the fight he was in. Being a goddess, it's entirely possible that she was going out of her way to aid him that way, in addition to the divine power she was lending him. Of course, that's just one interpretation; it's entirely possible that he was interpreting things in light of his faith in her.

Of course, even if he's managed to win the fight (which remains a very big if), it doesn't look like the Night Mare will be able to give him any such help for quite some time to come.

[Alzrius]

11763311 It's hard to draw a real-world parallel to a creature that's essentially made of concentrated nothingness. Which is why Lex was having such a hard time, really. As it is, it's presumably taken a hefty infusion of divinity to damage the thing, if that's what he's even managed to do.