Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

924 - Lex Gon' Give It To Ya

Lex grimaced as he blocked Burly Brawl’s punches, needing to push the air itself aside so that his forelegs could move fast enough to deflect them all.

Although he could foresee each incoming attack, that insight was only giving him a fraction of the warning it should have. What had been six seconds’ worth of awareness of the future had become – with regard to Burly – barely a quarter of that time. And that window of foresight was continuing to shrink rapidly.

All because the amount of gravity that Burly was generating was continuing to increase.

With every passing moment, the stallion’s mass continued to grow, even as his size remained the same. It had reached the point where the fabric of the universe itself was beginning to be adversely impacted, space and time being drawn in and compressed by the massive pressure Burly was exuding. But he himself didn’t seem to feel that pressure in the slightest; if anything, he was getting faster, using reality’s compression so that he could hit faster and harder than he would otherwise have been capable of.

And that wasn’t even taking into account the flames surrounding him.

They had now grown hot enough to where the Pentachromatic Armor couldn’t keep up.

That should have been impossible. While the artifact was powerfully resistant to physical damage, there was no amount of energy conduction that it was incapable of resisting. Right now, the scales – which once again had Lex covered from horn to tail – had turned red, indicating that it was resisting exothermic reactions. In that state, he could have dived into the sun itself and not felt even slightly warm.

Yet each one of Burly’s punches that Lex blocked left burns on his claws and forelegs.

The Pentachromatic Armor could repel any amount of energy...but it couldn’t stop manifestations of divinity.

“So Blaze gave you those flames you’re wearing,” noted Lex as he turned aside more gravitic punches, his undying body working to repair the burns. “Was it because she knew you’d need her help in order to win?”

“I ain’t gonna need that bitch’s help to win,” growled Burly, his convivial demeanor ruined by the mention of the war goddess. “So don’t go blamin’ her when you lose! The one who crushes you IS GONNA BE ME!!! BURLY BRAWL!!!”

His angry retort came with another increase in gravity. Already, the landscape was falling apart, as the rocks, trees, and even the land itself were being pulled inward, burning to ashes in the flames surrounding the scorched stallion. But Burly didn’t even seem to notice, lashing out so quickly that his punches were like a single, sustained output of destructive force.

The sheer power of it was enough that, even with the Pentachromatic Armor, the Ring of Perdition, and his own titanic toughness, Lex was actually being forced back. The relentless rain of punches was even hotter now, and the force of the blows had actually become painful. His ability to see Burly’s future had been condensed down to almost nothing, and what he could see – looking at how the stallion would respond to mind-altering magic, physical transmutation spells, and even being sent to another plane of existence – told him that the stallion would simply smash through any and all obstacles.

Burly Brawl was a single-minded juggernaut, and would not be deterred by anything.

Seeing Lex give ground made a fierce grin cross the antean’s lips. “What’s wrong?! Ain’t got some bit of wuss magic to help you?!”

The comment made Lex snort. “You mean like this?”

Immediately, he cast a temporal acceleration spell on himself. On its own, it wasn’t very powerful; with how fast Lex was now, the altogether minor boost it offered wouldn’t have done much. But he sank as much power as he could into it, causing its effects to magnify by multiple orders of magnitude.

Against Kryonex, it wouldn’t have done much.

But against Burly Brawl, the effects were dramatic.

Slipping between the fiery stallion’s punches, Lex sank his claws into the stallion’s flesh. Immediately, his talons began to scorch and blacken, the fires surrounding the stallion making him pay for getting so close. But he ignored the injuries, slicing into Burly’s supernaturally dense body with such incredible speed that – even under the time-dilating influence of the massive gravity well that the earth pony had become – he was still able to land countless blows in the span of a heartbeat.

The barrage was enough to reduce Burly to bloody pieces, his body collapsing into scorched gibbets of flesh and bone...which immediately pulled themselves back together.

As expected, noted Lex dispassionately. The more gravity he generates, the more of a sinkhole he becomes for ambient positive energy. He’s actually growing more alive the longer he fights.

Laughing louder, Burly didn’t even wait until he was fully reconstituted to renew his assault, seemingly egged on by what should have been myriad lethal blows.

“YER GONNA HAFTA DO BETTER THAN THAT!!!”

“Fine.”

No sooner had the utterance left Lex’s lips than he stepped forward, his spell enabling him to easily sidestep Burly’s seemingly endless stream of punches.

Then he reached out and grabbed Burly’s forelegs.

“HUH?!”

For all that he was able to manipulate the gravity he was exuding, Burly was still left momentarily jarred as he was brought to an immediate halt.

That was all the opening Lex needed. Ignoring that the heat was dealing severe damage to his claws, he threw Burly’s forelegs wide, leaving him completely open, and then kicked out, striking the earth stallion directly beneath his ribs.

Burly was immediately launched upward.

Rising into the air like a second sun, there was nothing Burly could do to stop his momentum. Despite the fact that his current gravity gave him the mass of a small moon, the earth stallion shot into the air as though he’d been fired from a cannon, limbs flailing as he tried in vain to arrest his upward movement. A moment later, he ceased struggling, and Lex could almost see the gravity around him starting to grow even more, his speed beginning to slow.

That should be enough, decided Lex as the Pentachromatic Armor’s scales retracted.

Burly Brawl was a powerful opponent by any measure. He had a divine blessing, was clearly overflowing with aristeia, and had mastered an esoteric form of magic using nothing but intuition and sheer grit. In Lex’s estimation, he had power enough that he could be ranked as a titan in his own regard.

But only a lesser one.

And although Burly had focused entirely on maximizing his combat potential, unlike those whores Lex had so recently summoned, there was still a vast gulf of power between the two of them.

It was time to show Burly just how wide that chasm truly was.

Calling upon Nenet’s metamagic, Lex cast another spell, overcharging it to the greatest degree that he could.

A moment later, a spectral claw appeared near Burly.

An observer might have mistaken it for the same spell that Lex had used near the end of his battle with Kryonex. But unlike then, this force construct was the size of a house, crackling with barely-contained power such that even the divine flames surrounding the earth stallion wouldn’t be able to destroy it easily.

Then a dozen more such claws appeared.

Then a hundred more.

Then a thousand more.

In an instant, the sky was blotted out by the sheer number of massive, disembodied claws hovering in the air.

And then, with a mental command from Lex, all of them slashed down toward Burly at the same time.

The earth stallion roared in challenge, the fires around him flaring out even as he increased the gravitic pressure around him. But that accomplished nothing except to make the extremely-resilient claws fall toward him faster. And although Burly punched out with everything he had, he couldn’t counterattack in every direction at once.

The result was that the storm of claws tore at him, not just once but again and again, ripping him to shreds only for him to reform just in time to be torn apart again.

Had he been a mortal, Burly would have died dozens – hundreds – of times over. Caught in an unbreakable maelstrom of rending talons, he fought back as best he could as he was ripped to pieces again and again, unwilling to give in even as he was shredded, his body restoring itself as fast as Lex’s spell could tear it apart.

Only for his healing to begin to slow down a few moments later.

Down below, Lex smirked as Burly gave a howl – not of fear but of defiance – and fought back harder, trying to stop the seemingly-endless rain of claws before they could eviscerate him again.

But it was futile; there were simply too many for him to stop them all.

The fact that Lex had surreptitiously reached into his pocket dimension while casting his spell, grabbing Belligerence just long enough to use its augmentation power had seen to that.

And you won’t be able to keep healing yourself now that you’re running out of positive energy, Lex knew, giving no outward sign that he was keeping the local environment free of what Burly was trying to pull in.

He’d need to thank Mei Li for that later.

The vixen’s power was truly exceptional. Although Lex felt guilty for how he was using an ability he’d gained after having all but forced himself on the kumiho, he couldn’t deny that what she’d received as a result of their soul-bond was as impressive as it was subtle. Being able to manipulate the flow of ambient energy in a given area meant that any number of things could be achieved.

In this case, he was able to redirect the trace amounts of positive energy in the area away from Burly Brawl. Although Mei Li’s power couldn’t stop the earth stallion from drawing in everything close to him – his gravity being far more forceful and direct than the kumiho’s softer method of control – it was enough to make sure that no more came in to fill the void that was left after Burly had taken everything he could.

The result was that eventually, Burly’s gravity had no more ambient life force to pull in, rendering his capacity to recover from his wounds finite.

After that, it was simply a matter of dealing enough damage to deplete his stores.

Of course, that had prevented Lex’s own natural regeneration from working, his soul unable to attract ambient positive energy either. But that didn’t matter when he still had healing spells that he could use on himself, easily repairing the damage that he’d taken without having to wait to recover.

Which only leaves the question of what the elves will do now, decided Lex, glancing at the trio of barely-visible figures beneath the shimmering dome.

Defeating Burly Brawl hadn’t been difficult. Compared to Kryonex, the stallion had been slower, weaker, and far less versatile. Not to mention a pathetically guileless opponent. For all that he was resilient to both injury and magic, Lex could have overcome him in numerous different ways.

But he’d wanted to make a show of force in front of the elves, one that would emphasize just who they were up against without showing them much in the way of what he could do. With their purpose here still being uncertain, that was the most optimal strategy, and would hopefully convince them to retreat. He still had numerous other problems to deal with: reconciling with Solvei and Nenet, dealing with Mei Li, rescuing Thermal Draft...

And figuring out what had just happened with the Night Mare.

Frowning at that last one, Lex glanced upward, able to see that Burly’s life force was rapidly diminishing under the barrage of massive claws. Already, his counterattacks were growing slower and sloppier, his wounds taking longer and longer to heal. More notably, the gravity around him was failing, and Blaze’s flames were dying down.

The fight was over. All that was left was to incapacitate Burly without killing him.

And he should be reaching that point...now.

With a thought, Lex caused the sea of claws to disappear. Almost as soon as he did, Burly dropped out of the sky, the momentum of Lex’s kick having been bled away by the relentless attacks. Now, with nothing to keep him in the air, he plummeted back down, limbs hanging limp as he tumbled end over end.

A moment later, he hit the ground hard enough to leave a crater.

Taking his time, Lex walked to the edge of the pit and glared down coldly at the unmoving form that lay within it. “How’s that for better?”

A pained laugh came from Burly’s throat. “Hehehe...not bad...”

Lex frowned as the antean slowly climbed to his hooves, grunting and groaning as he fought to stand. He could see into Burly’s future again, and knew that he’d been about to rise, but the fact that he was able to stand at all was shocking. His life force was depleted to the point where he shouldn’t have been anywhere near consciousness, let alone able to move.

And yet the muscled earth stallion – no longer looking like a charred crystal pony – was grinning as he stared up at Lex, showing no sign that he was finished yet. “So you just gonna stand there and stare at me? Or are we doin’ this?”

“There’s nothing left to do.” Lex’s voice was almost as cold as Burly’s flames had been hot. “You’re defeated. Stand down before you make your injuries worse.”

Burly snorted, his lip curling. “‘Stand down before you make your injuries worse’? You’re really gonna gimme that weak-ass crap? I thought I finally met someone else who knew that all that frilly garbage about duties and morals and society don’t mean squat. All that counts for anything is who’s tough enough to kill their way to the top of the heap!”

Sneering up at Lex, he spat on the ground. “What’s next, you’re gonna gimme some speech about ‘betterin’ myself’ or ‘workin’ together’ or some crap like that?” He chuckled, as though amused by the idea. “I was gonna bend that wolf chick of yours over and stretch her out good, you know. Would of made her howl at the moon. And you’re really gonna stand there and act like you don’t wanna kill me for it?”

The beast inside Lex growled at that, but the rage that it wanted to unleash was drowned beneath the wave of disgust that came over him then.

Ever since he’d realized the full extent of what he’d done to himself in Darkest Night, Lex had struggled against the vicious monster that now made up his instincts. More than once he’d been overwhelmed by it, and he still had no idea – outside of those brief moments when the additional power his goddess had given him had poured forth, letting him transcend himself – how to master it. But he’d never once willingly given in to it.

Burly Brawl, by contrast, was a pony who wanted nothing more than to become such a beast.

Rejecting anything beyond his instincts and impulses, this was someone who lived only to fight, feed, and fornicate. He had no sense of anyone else, no desire to be part of something larger than himself. He had completely rejected everything that made him a pony – that made him a person – and saw no loss in what he’d thrown away.

For all his talk about strength, Lex couldn’t see Burly as anything but someone who’d given up on himself, and that was enough to make him loathsome in his eyes.

“I’m not going to kill you,” pronounced Lex, making no effort to hide his disdain. “But once I’ve sentenced you for your crimes, you’re going to wish that I had.”

“Heard that before,” snorted Burly. “And I gotta say, it’s the dumbest thing ever. Lettin’ the other guy live when you have a chance to put him down just means he can come back later and try something...LIKE THIS!!!”

There was no sudden charge or rush of motion from the oversized stallion. He didn’t so much as lift a hoof. All that accompanied his sudden yell was a ripple in the air as space distorted...

And gravity descended upon Lex all at once.

It wasn’t a downward pressure, so much as an inward pull. Instantly, he collapsed in on himself, falling into the small black dot that appeared in the space that he occupied, containing all of the gravity that Burly had been using and then some.

In the blink of an eye, Lex was gone, leaving the pea-sized ebony orb hanging there where he’d once been.

“Hehehe, told ya!” laughed Burly, collapsing back into the center of the crater. “Talkin’ about all that high-minded crap don’t never do nothin’ ‘cept let the other guy get one last shot in. Too bad you learned that a little too late.”

“A degenerate such as yourself has nothing to teach me.”

“Huh?!” Burly’s eyes went wide as Lex’s voice rang out from within the tiny sphere.

“Whereas you have a great deal to learn.”

Even as he spoke, Lex forced his way out of the miniature black hole, the condensed gravity shuddering and then widen as he forced it open, slowly tearing it apart as he stepped out from inside it, unharmed.

“No way...” breathed Burly, his expression stupefied. “That ain’t possible! There ain’t nothin’ that can’t destroy!”

“I’ve seen apertures in reality that are truly capable of destroying anything,” retorted Lex. “And that gravity well you conjured doesn’t measure up.”

For a moment, Burly just stared, then he burst out laughing, struggling to rise again. “Now this was a fun time! I hafta admit, I didn’t think you’d be all you were cracked up to be, but this’s been the best fight I’ve had in years! We can’t let it end here, let’s go again-”

He stopped talking as Lex’s fist met his face.

The punch knocked him into the air, clearing the crater as he tumbled end over end, unconscious before he hit the ground.

Lex stalked after him, snarling. A curse was out of the question; Burly had a blessing from Blaze herself, whereas the curses that Lex used were maintained by a member of the Umbral Regalia. Having the latter use its power against the former ran the risk of starting a religious war-

He didn’t have time to finish that thought as a figure emerged from the colorful dome Loraestil and his minions had taken shelter in.

But the person approaching him now wasn’t one of the elves.

Author's Note:

Lex defeats Burly Brawl, only for a new challenger to appear!

Who is this new individual? Will they try to fight after seeing Lex take Burly down?

Comments

[SliverKing]

Hmmm.. I wonder what leads someone to choose to forgo everything except their base urges and instincts. I mean, Burly did not act like a stand up chap for sure but I would assume that he cultivated his strength for a purpose other than pleasure right? Is the stronger opponent the goal or the pleasures such strength allows the goal? Fun to think about but I still don’t have an answer lol.

[Booster Spice]

Burley is so severe depressed suicidal that his only reason for existance is existing to find something that can kill him, and saying this is the weakness he refuses to accept or display.

And now either Blazr, or given the Elves, someone from The Courts has arrived to talk, or Deal with Lex?

[Not so New Brony]

Guessing the elves might have called for backup though considering how much trouble they had dealing with Burly earlier as well as Lex's entourage, the display of power Lex just put up in bringing Burly down would have warranted Loraestil or his party members to swallow their pride and call for help.

Curious to see if this individual will try to open negotiations since they had opted to open the barrier the elves were sheltering in and seemingly just approaching Lex with no intent to fight...yet.

Putting that aside, Burly's lack of fear of death is odd to me. Granted, he certainly fits the type to not mind dying so long as it was a good fight but I'm curious if he's simply blinded by arrogance because of his ability to survive blows that would and should have killed him countless times in the past. Or if he's simply got a deathwish like Booster Spice implied?

[Alzrius]

11847083 Burly's motivations and backstory remain, as yet, unclear. Certainly, he doesn't seem to care about anything, up to and including himself, beyond enjoying himself in any particular moment, not only having no fear of dying but taunting Lex for not being willing to kill him. Given that, it's hard not to agree with Lex's characterization that Burly's someone who's given up on himself...which is unusually perceptive of Lex, given his inability to understand others.

Then again, given what Lex went through in Chapters 747 and 748, that's perhaps not too surprising, since he glimpsed what he'd be like if he lost everything he believed in as well. In that regard, it's not surprising that he'd have some insights into what Burly meant.

[Alzrius]

11847220 It's questionable if Burly is suicidal, or at least overtly so; surely if he wanted to, he could have killed himself some time ago? Though that presumes that his drawing in positive energy is voluntary and not something he can't control. Then again, perhaps that might have something to do with why he seems to hate Blaze?

Either way, Lex is apparently going to be given no time to ponder the matter, being that he's now got someone new to deal with. Time to see who they are and what they want.

[Alzrius]

11847957 The elves calling for help is distinctly likely, as they don't seem to be able to play at Lex's level (heck, they seemed to have a hard time standing up to Burly). Given that we know that Loraestil isn't so proud as to court defeat for the sake of his ego, they might very well have said that it's time to ask someone stronger to step in.

As for who this is and how they're going to engage with Lex, I suppose we'll find out soon.

Regarding Burly's state of mind, though...it's hard to say for certain. We know that he seems to be bored even of the things he enjoys (e.g. sex and alcohol), with only fighting seeming to excite him. We also know that he has a blessing from Blaze but hates her, and that he seems to be completely unafraid of the prospect of dying. There are several inferences that can be made from that, but as of yet that's all we can do: draw inferences. Perhaps we'll find out more later?