Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

931 - Wishing For More Time

There was no way to fight back against Vystalaran.

Because of the divine aura that the avatar exuded, the very idea of attacking him – of deliberately conceptualizing and executing an action for the specific purpose of causing injury to Vystalaran – was beyond that the physical universe could support. Trying to engage in such a line of thought would have been like asking a mortal to tear their own head off; it simply wasn’t something they could do, and even trying would have accomplished nothing except to cause them pain and distress.

As it was, Lex was still aware that this wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Belligerence’s negation power was keeping Vystalaran’s aura from erasing his awareness of what was happening. But there was little he could do beyond that; even thinking about ways to avoid or further negate what the elf’s mere presence had done strained Lex to his limit, his wire-form barely sufficient to let him contemplate even those modes of indirect resistance.

All that, and the avatar hadn’t even launched anything that could be considered an attack yet.

But then, he didn’t need to; his mere presence was more than enough to make such things unnecessary.

“We’re going back to Foelvan,” announced Vystalaran. “Thilaera, Loraestil, you can transport this animal. He’s quite docile now, and shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

“Of course, Lord Vystalaran,” murmured Thilaera deferentially. Lex couldn’t see her from where he’d collapsed, the strain of resisting the avatar’s aura having taken more energy than he could spare to stand, but from the sound of her footfalls, Thilaera wasn’t hesitating, apparently eager to do Vystalaran’s bidding.

Loraestil, however, seemed less enthusiastic. “What about that Burly creature?”

“Leave him,” answered Vystalaran immediately. “He’s been a champion of one of the pony gods for some time. If we strike him down now, after he’s already been defeated by one of his own kind, then it will look like we’re the ones provoking their pantheon...muddying the fact that it’s the other way around.”

“I understand,” grumbled Loraestil.

Vystalaran laughed softly. “You needn’t be so glum, Loraestil. I know this hunt didn’t go as you wished, but you still conducted yourself with valor for the sake of the elven people. You’ve brought no shame to your father’s name, and I’ll make sure that the Vice Coronal knows that as well.”

“Th-thank you, Lord Vystalaran!” This time Loraestil’s voice was much livelier.

At the same time, Thilaera’s footsteps stopped next to Lex, followed by a pause. “Ah...”

“Don’t be alarmed by his appearance,” came Vystalaran’s voice again. “As I said, this creature is incapable of harming you now. Place your hand upon him and see.”

“Of course.”

It was to Lex’s complete and utter humiliation that he couldn’t stop the barbed wire that made up his body from going still as Thilaera reached out, her slim fingers hesitantly making contact with the side of his face a moment later. He wanted to make the jagged metal thrash madly, to have it slice the she-elf’s fingers off, but he couldn’t bring himself to properly visualize such a thing, let alone make it happen. Even if she wasn’t Vystalaran, she was – simply by virtue of being an elf – enough like him that he couldn’t attack her anymore than he could the avatar himself.

Particularly since he was marshalling his strength for the one thing he could do...

“Now then,” announced Vystalaran. “To Foelvan-”

...which was activate Belligerence’s vortex.

It took all of Lex’s strength of will, succeeding only because he kept himself from thinking of it as an attack per se. He was simply utilizing a function of his artifact. There was no consideration of anyone else; no need to aim it or anticipate what would be done in response. Nothing else crossed his consciousness.

Even so, Lex felt incredible pain rip through him then, the action still flying in the face of the principles that Vystalaran’s aura had superimposed onto reality. Lex’s bending his thoughts hadn’t allowed him to override those truths; doing anything that attempted to harm the avatar was still a violation of the new laws of the universe. It was just that he’d managed to bend those laws, at the cost of invoking an incredible backlash onto himself.

But Belligerence still took effect, the vortex immediately drawing everything toward it.

Thilaera was the closest, not having time to so much as scream as the hand she’d laid on his face was immediately drawn into the void. The rest of her arm immediately followed, and Lex could see her eyes widening as she realized too late what was happening-

“Winds of Aerdrie,” murmured Vystalaran as he grabbed Thilaera’s other shoulder, the avatar looking only mildly concerned despite being only inches away from Belligerence himself.

But as soon as he spoke, his fall was arrested, hurricane-force air suddenly erupting. Despite being only inches away from Belligerence, it was enough to push him – and Thilaera, her one remaining shoulder still firmly in the avatar’s grasp – slowly but steadily away from the black quill. Even as space itself distorted, Belligerence pulling everything toward it, the wind seemed to grow stronger, slowly but surely carrying them away from the deadly weapon.

But that did nothing for Loraestil, who – unlike Burly Brawl – had been just within Belligerence’s range.

The hunter screamed as he was drawn inward, limbs flailing uselessly as he looked for some sort of purchase. But there was nothing for him to grab onto, and he was pulled faster toward oblivion-

Then Vystalaran pointed at him. “Misdirection of Erevan.”

Immediately, Loraestil vanished, only to instantaneously reappear in the distance, far outside the range of Belligerence’s vortex.

Which was where Vystalaran and Thilaera would be in another moment.

But that was fine, since injuring the avatar had never been Lex’s intent in the first place.

Rather, he simply needed to buy himself a moment...to use another of the seven treasures that he’d received.

Specifically, the one from Almina, the genie princess from the Elemental Plane of Water.

Set in a band of blue metal, the three rubies on the ring glittered brightly. Even without being able to see into the magical spectrum, Lex would have been able to tell that the ring he’d received from Almina was far and away beyond the similar type of jewelry that Adagio had been wearing. But Lex was less concerned with its appearance than he was with its power as he withdrew it from his pocket dimension and struggled to slip it onto a talon...

Genies were famous across the whole of Creation for their ability to manipulate the fabric of the universe. While their power was nothing more than a weak facsimile of what the gods could accomplish – being more akin to twisting the existing nature of things rather than overwriting it completely, similar to how Lex had just bent the natural laws that Vystalaran had rewritten – their powers were still capable of awe-inspiring feats.

There was a reason why mortals across the multiverse referred to what genies could do as “granting wishes.”

But what few of those mortals cared about was how genies couldn’t use that power for themselves. The Libram of Ineffable Damnation had made note of that, blithely mentioning how they were unable to grant their own wishes, or even those of other genies. That they couldn’t utilize their greatest power on their own behalf – and being largely unwilling to have their slaves, servants, or even allies do so for them, for fear that greed would move them to treachery – was something that the book’s author had apparently found quite amusing.

But the mystery of why the genies had that power in the first place, and were unable to use it for themselves, had been ignored by the Libram in favor of the practice – already ancient when the book’s author had been young, according to them – of summoning and binding genies for the purpose of cajoling them to use their power on the summoner’s behalf.

More specifically, the Libram had cautioned against doing such a thing, for one simple reason: all genies – regardless of what elemental plane they hailed from – had developed a deep and abiding cultural resentment of such coercion. The result of which was that, when summoned for the purpose of granting wishes, they’d quite often agree to do so, only to go out of their way to pervert the summoner’s intentions, granting them their stated desires without actually giving them what they wanted.

In fact, according to the Libram, most genies took pride in how they could manipulate the wording of a wish, spending a great deal of time and practice at turning even the most exacting of language against the speaker.

The irony, of course, was that Lex was now in possession of a treasure which made all of that moot.

Almina’s ring – or, as she’d called it, Heart’s Desire – was a ring allowed the bearer to make three wishes, regardless of whether they were mortal, genie, titan, or anything else. It was no more powerful than what any other genie could have done, but it was still a treasured artifact nonetheless. The reasons for that were two-fold:

While a mortal sorcerer or wizard of peak magical ability might have been able to devise a spell to emulate a genie’s wish-granting magic – Lex himself had seen Sanguine Disposition do exactly that – doing so was often far from being worthwhile. Such a spell was difficult, dangerous, and required expensive components to correctly utilize. To say nothing of what could happen if the casting was interrupted midway through.

That was why even the rumor of such a spell being placed into an object – pre-cast and waiting to be utilized for whoever found it – was enough to bring hordes of treasure-hunters. After all, it was simply common sense that such things were limited to however many castings had been placed in them. An amulet or talisman that had been imbued with one wish could only be used once; a ring with three wishes could only grant three, ever.

But Heart’s Desire overturned that logic, being able to grant three wishes...per year.

By itself that was incredible, being enough to make it an artifact worthy of nations going to war over. But there was another aspect to the ring which made it valuable beyond comprehension:

Even without a genie trying to maliciously twist how a wish was implemented, using such magic was dangerous. Twisting reality – even if it was only via magic, rather than divine will – was difficult, and the particulars of how a wish took effect could often be unexpected despite even careful preparation. Getting what you wanted from a wish was often a matter of chance as much as planning.

Reality was not something to be tampered with blithely.

But again, Heart’s Desire contravened that truism, as its wishes always took effect in accordance with what the user meant. No irony, no unintended consequences, no unpleasant surprises. If it couldn’t accomplish what was asked of it, it would simply fail to take effect rather than corrupt its wearer’s intentions.

And Lex already knew exactly what to wish for, murmuring his desire out loud as Belligerence’s vortex finally ended-

Vystalaran’s head whipped around to look at him. “Oh no you don’t!” he snapped, his voice taking on a harsher tone. “Reversion of Labelas!”

Everything stopped.

And then, the universe began to function in reverse. Like a film played backward, Lex saw himself putting Heart’s Desire away, right before Loraestil suddenly reappeared near Belligerence, only to fly backward as the vortex now flowed away from the quill. After that, Vystalaran and Thilaera were carried back toward it on the wind, the latter’s arm suddenly being restored as she was released from the avatar’s grasp and fell away from the weapon, her destroyed hand returning to the side of Lex’s face-

And then the vision ended. Loraestil was once again in the distance. Thilaera was cradled in Vystalaran’s arms, one of her own missing as the avatar kept her from bleeding out. And Vystalaran himself had a shocked look on his face, mouth open and eyes bulging. “The reversion failed?!” he gasped, staring at Lex in open astonishment. “Impossible!”

Lex had just enough strength left to smirk as he finished making his wish.

It had been truly amazing to him just how scared of dying Echidna – or rather, Echidna III – was. Far from stopping at merely protecting herself against direct threats to her life, she’d conceived of numerous esoteric ways that someone might try to kill her and developed contingencies and countermeasures for them all. From having something small enter her body and then suddenly grow, to being teleported to the Negative Energy Plane, to having someone attack her with sympathetic magic through her connection to her children.

But the one that had interested Lex the most had been her method of surviving someone going back in time to kill her in the past.

That was due to a particular item she’d acquired, and which Lex had demanded as part of their deal: a small blivet whose coloration changed depending on the angle from which it was viewed. She’d called it “Out of Time,” and claimed to have been given it by a member of the Monitors of Infinity that she’d seduced, the group which supposedly policed time travel.

More notable was that the item only existed in the past, serving as an anchor that was kept roughly a thousandth of a second prior to its user’s perception of the present, to which any alterations further back in time than that couldn’t affect them. That made its presence almost impossible to detect, let alone steal, since it never caught up to normal time; the only way it could change owners was via nonlinear control, which was why Echidna – having no trans-temporal sense of her own – hadn’t known that it could be taken from her; even for Lex, it had been challenging to acquire.

As it was, he’d taken this particular item only because it represented a defense against a power he was otherwise unable to fight against. Even if he could sense things across time, he had – as far as he was aware – no special defenses against his past being altered. In that, at least, he’d been able to sympathize with Echidna.

And now that he knew that Out of Time not only worked as intended, but was functional even divine attempts to alter his personal history, it was easily the strongest of the seven treasures that he’d acquired.

Which was the only reason he was able to finish his wish now, one of the rubies on Heart’s Desire turning dark a moment later.

His wish came true immediately, as a portal opened a few feet away.

Then a figure stepped through...

Author's Note:

Barely able to keep Vystalaran at bay, Lex uses the fifth and sixth treasures he received from the lesser titans to put a desperate plan into motion!

What did he wish for, exactly? Who's coming through that portal that opened as a result?

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Uhoh. Somene is going to be royally cheesed off, because that sure as heck aint Pinkie.

[Spiritus Arcane]

Ha ha, get recked Elvish prick.

[Not so New Brony]

Always pays to come prepared but damn, that cliffhanger on Lex's last chapter made me worried. Still, he's not out of the woods yet since he's still up against a full on god so hopefully whoever or whatever he summoned with the Heart's Desire can turn things around for both him and the girls back at the now ruined Keep.

Though given how much knowledge of the planes the Libram holds, Lex could have summoned any number of beings to face Vystalaran though something tells me that it won't be a physical battle but one of politics.

[Alzrius]

11865899 It's probably not, but you never know.

[Alzrius]

11866311 Amusingly enough, that was the exact same term I was using for Vystalaran in my head.

[Alzrius]

11867605 Lex presumably had some sort of plan in mind; the question is who exactly he used his wish to bring there. Whoever it is, it's an open question is they'll be able to stand up to an avatar, let alone will be willing to do so for Lex's sake. Even if it's some sort of enemy of the elven gods, I'm not sure anyone would start a fight just because one happened to be there; as you noted, politics are a thing, and you don't reach the upper tiers of power (i.e. can play at the same level as the gods) without recognizing that.

Of course, Lex knows all that, so we can only hope that he's accounted for it and planned accordingly; Vystalaran isn't likely to give him a second chance.