943 - Mare Occultum
“If you’ll allow me, I’ll arrange for our transportation to the goddess.”
Sanguine Disposition’s offer made Lex’s lip curl, wanting nothing to do with the vampire now that they’d made the trip to Darkest Night, the familiar dark woods surrounding them on all sides. “I’m the one the Night Mare has summoned. Your part is done now that you’ve conveyed her wishes.”
“Actually, no,” shrugged the leather wing. “She wants to see me as well. Did I forget to mention that?”
Lex’s eyes narrowed. “The Night Mare wishes to personally address both of us?”
“And that lout Steel Soul as well,” sighed Sanguine Disposition, tsking slightly. “I do hope this conference won’t take very long. His voice has this awful electrical undertone to it that never fails to give me a headache.”
Not bothering to reply, Lex instead looked up at the dark moon which hung in the sky. Unlike when he’d been here before, it was easily visible to his eyes now. According to the Auctoritas Caliginous – the goddess’s holy book, which he’d read back at the Shrine of the Starless Sky – that was Mare Tenebrum, the heart of the Night Mare’s realm, from which she oversaw all of Darkest Night. It was high above ground, but not so high that he couldn’t be there in an instant-
“If you’re thinking of going there yourself, don’t bother,” noted Sanguine Disposition. “That’s not where this meeting is taking place.”
That was enough to make Lex suspicious. “The Night Mare has summoned us, but not to the seat of her power?”
“Ah...a moment,” demurred the vampire, before casting a spell, causing the same ornate carriage that he’d conjured the last time he’d been here to spring into existence. “There we go, this should get us there in a modicum of style.”
He stepped forward, the door to the carriage opening of its own accord to admit him, but Lex cut him off before he could enter the vehicle. Moving fast enough that a mortal wouldn’t have been able to follow him, he was next to the carriage in an instant, slamming the door shut as he glared at the leather wing from less than a foot away. “If we’re not going to Mare Tenebrum, then where is this assemblage taking place?”
“As you said, at the seat of the Night Mare’s power.” Far from being upset by Lex’s interruption, Sanguine Disposition’s smile grew wider by a fraction. “Just not the one you know.”
“Then tell me about the one I don’t know,” shot back Lex.
Sanguine Disposition gave a chuckle that was almost a purr, leaning in closer. “And what will you give me in exchange for that information?”
“Absolutely nothing,” came Lex’s immediate reply, refusing to back down. “But I’m not going anywhere until I get answers, and if the Night Mare told you to bring me to her with all haste, then you’ll be the one she blames if she’s kept waiting.”
Sanguine Disposition snickered softly. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind getting in trouble if it meant that we deepened our relationship?”
Lex sneered. “For someone who claims to hold Kara in contempt, you comport yourself in a manner very similar to her own.”
He had the satisfaction of seeing Sanguine Disposition’s eyes widen at that, his smile wavering as he backed down. A moment later he squeezed his eyes shut, standing silently for several seconds before opening them again, and although he was still smiling his features were tight. “That was more than I deserved.”
“It was exactly what you deserved.”
The leather wing held his gaze for a moment, before looking down with a sigh. “Mare Occultum.”
“Hm?”
“That’s where we’re going. Mare Occultum.”
Lex frowned at that, not recognizing the name. While the Auctoritas Caliginous hadn’t said very much about the Night Mare’s realm, dedicating most of its pages to the Night Mare’s dogma and the proper way to worship her, it had been clear about Mare Tenebrum being her capital within Darkest Night. There had been nothing in there about any other locales, let alone any sort of secondary abode.
“And why are we meeting her there?” pressed Lex. “Why not Mare Tenebrum?”
Sanguine Disposition was quiet for a long moment, apparently considering the question. “It’s a secure location,” he said at last.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Precisely what I said,” shrugged the vampire, as if he didn’t know how else to explain it. “If Mare Tenebrum is the most eminent part of Darkest Night, then Mare Occultum is the most defensible.”
Lex paused, digesting that bit of information. The obvious follow-up question was why the goddess wanted to meet with him – and, apparently, her other champions – in what was apparently her realm’s most protected area?
There were myriad potential answers to that that he could imagine. She might have wanted to impart some sort of extremely sensitive information that she couldn’t risk another god – like Odin, with his inscrutable ability to know things he shouldn’t have – finding out about. Or it could have been because she was expecting some sort of imminent attack from the elves in retaliation for his having slain Gladoneral’s avatar. Or she could have wanted him to surrender Belligerence, keeping it where it was least likely to be stolen – even if he couldn’t imagine how that was possible – or misused.
But the quickest way to find out the answer would be to go there and ask her directly, rather than playing games with Sanguine Disposition.
Snorting, Lex removed his claw from the carriage door, flinging it open and entering without another word to the leather wing.
“Temperamental,” chuckled the vampire, climbing in after him. Sitting down across from Lex, he waved a hoof, and despite having no driver or team to pull it, the carriage lurched forward. “And here I thought you’d be happier, considering how you whipped that little plaything of yours back into shape.”
Lex didn’t bother replying, instead glancing out the window as the woods rolled by. Even so, the comment was enough to turn his thoughts back to Branwen, as well as everyone else that he’d once again left behind.
While his attempt to revive the slain fey using the soul-fragment that he’d previously placed inside of Love Slave had worked, it had left the vilderavn extremely weak. She’d barely been able to move, and had been highly disoriented, not knowing where she was or what was happening. Knowing that he had to leave again, and not wanting to take her – or anyone else – with him to face the dangers of Darkest Night, he’d simply put her to sleep and delivered her to Agapay and Nenet’s care, the latter weeping with joy and the former having regarded him with undisguised awe at having resurrected someone who should have been irrevocably dead.
Agapay hadn’t been the only one, as the other emissaries had all expressed varying levels of shock at what he’d done. They hadn’t asked about the whip he’d used, nor had he bothered giving them an explanation, instead conjuring up a spacious extradimensional locale – essentially another demiplane – for them to take refuge in while he was gone, albeit one that had much more in the way of amenities since he hadn’t needed to waste most of the energy involved by warping the flow of time inside of it.
But despite having made the hideaway as comfortable as he could, Solvei had been beside herself when he’d announced that he needed to leave again, alternating between anger and heartache. Fortunately, Mei Li had talked her down, but even that had only worked once he’d promised to not only leave their psychic connection open – confirming, once he’d arrived in Darkest Night, that it functioned just fine across planar boundaries so long as he wasn’t suppressing it – but that he’d have a talk with her, Nenet, and Mei Li about what their relationship was now.
It wasn’t a conversation that he was looking forward to.
“We should be coming up on the entrance soon.”
Sanguine Disposition’s announcement came just as Lex’s foresight announced that the carriage was about to begin moving down a slope, the magically-propelled vehicle speeding up as gravity lent it additional speed. But despite its momentum increasing – the view outside the window changing to that of sharp rock walls – the carriage’s interior didn’t jump or jostle, its magic ensuring that the ride was smooth and comfortable.
A wave of something akin to nostalgia washed over Lex then, the beast inside of him finding the area reminiscent of its life before he had met it. Although his memory was eidetic now, able to examine any and all sensory impressions from any point in his life in perfect detail, that was only true for his cognitive self. The creature he’d merged with was a being of instinct, having associative impressions and familiar impulses more than actual memories.
But that didn’t make those impressions and impulses any less powerful, and Lex was suddenly reminded that he was a composite being now, as much that creature as he was a pony. Its past was his past. Its deeds were his deeds.
Somewhere out there, in the wilds of Darkest Night, were the numerous children which that creature – which he – had sired.
It was an uncomfortable thought, not because he didn’t know what they were, or their numbers, or how many of them – if any – were still alive, but because he couldn’t bring himself to care.
The bestial side of him had only been concerned with begetting offspring, protecting them while their mothers raised them and taught how to survive, and making sure they had enough food until they were grown; after that, it had unfailingly driven them off, having no further need for any of them. The pony side of him was disgusted by the entire revelation; he had never wanted children, even with his own kind, and was thoroughly revolted by the idea of indiscriminately breeding with non-sapient species.
Though that presumed that all of his bestial side’s conquests had been non-sapient...
Pushing that line of thinking away, Lex instead focused on what he’d do if this entire trip turned out to be some sort of ambush on the part of Sanguine Disposition. The Night Mare might have decreed that her champions couldn’t directly combat each other, but even the vampire had admitted – during their first meeting back in Eigengrau – that there was nothing preventing them from leveling proxies against each other. If that was the case, then the vampire would likely stand back and indirectly affect the area while his agents attacked...
Enough time passed for Lex to work out strategies for over ten thousand different scenarios, mapping them out in extreme detail depending on the size, capabilities, and tactics of whatever force Sanguine Disposition leveled at him, before his foresight informed him that the carriage was about to come to a stop.
“And here’s the entrance,” sighed his traveling companion, giving a groan as he stood up and stretched his legs. “Sadly, this is as far as the carriage goes. From here, we move under our own power.”
“It would have been faster to have done that to begin with,” snorted Lex, exiting the carriage without a backwards glance as he looked around...
At an empty ravine.
Inwardly preparing for an assault, Lex glanced around, but there was little to see. The entire place could have been any stretch of the mess of chasms that he and Solvei had followed when they’d been tracking Sissel, except much deeper. A glance upward showed that they’d gone downward by over a mile, apparently on naturally-formed ledges and outcroppings that seemed to have formed a trail only by coincidence. Even then, the bottom of the place was little more than a bare patch of ground that extended forward and back at a slight curve, their ends hidden as the path disappeared behind rocky outcroppings.
More notable was the lack of any of Darkest Night’s denizens. There were no blood-draining mists around, no animate trees waiting to pounce, and no fauna of any kind save for some rabbit-sized hunting spiders which hissed in alarm as they scurried into various alcoves, recognizing the presence of a predator deadlier than themselves.
“Not much to look at, is it?” chuckled Sanguine Disposition.
Making no effort to hide his suspicion, Lex turned to look at the vampire. “This is the entrance to the most secure location in Darkest Night?”
The leather wing grinned. “I had the same reaction the first time I came here. But you have to admit, it’s actually quite ingenious. It’s hard to break into a place if you can’t figure out where it is or how to get inside. I’m pretty sure that even most of the Umbral Regalia don’t know about this, and I doubt that the ones who do can figure out how to enter.”
A coy expression crossed his face as he dispelled the carriage, leaving the two of them standing there amidst the desolate landscape. “Can you figure it out?”
Lex’s lip curled, still not convinced that this wasn’t some effort to make him lower his guard. But since every passing second made it less and less likely that the vampire was about to engage in treachery, he put his suspicions aside as he looked around a second time. Cycling through myriad arrays of perception, he checked for the presence of magic, hidden doorways, unusual sources of radiation...anything that seemed out of place.
But there was nothing. The entire place was as barren and empty as it looked.
Which makes it just like the entrance to the Shrine of the Starless Sky, Lex knew. In which case...
“There,” he announced, pointing.
“You’re right!” laughed Sanguine Disposition, looking delighted. “How did you know?”
“It seemed obvious enough.”
“A crack in the ground, barely five feet long and less than an eighth of an inch wide, and he says it’s obvious,” chuckled the bearer of the Secreta, looking at the small gap in the landscape. Running along where the wall of the chasm met the ground, it looked like a spot where erosion was wearing away at the ground, presuming that anyone would have noticed it at in the first place.
But Lex had detected that there was a slight flow of air coming from it, indicating that the crack ventured deeper underground, much like how the Night Mare’s shrine back on Everglow had only been reachable by the subterranean portion of a flowing river.
“Well, we better not keep the goddess waiting more than we already have,” announced Sanguine Disposition, striding toward the gap. “Make sure to follow me, there’s a lot of branching paths that make it easy to get lost.”
Even as he spoke, his body was already dissolving, transforming into a cloud of translucent mist. Moving as though caught in a nonexistent breeze, it curled around Lex once – like a cat rubbing up against someone it liked – before crossing the chasm and disappearing into the thin breach.
Resisting the urge to sigh at the vampire’s tiresome antics, Lex changed into a shadow and moved after him.
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Guess we'll check on Branwen later on. For now though, time to see if the Night Mare was the one to call for all three of her champions or if its a proxy or substitute working in her place.
Still, given where they are meeting, I do have to wonder if it's actually the Night Mare back from whatever the Author did to her and she needs a word with her champions...or perhaps something else of them to help her which would be rather dire given how her religion is.
I wonder, when Lex furnished the Demiplane for his wives and followers, did the spell form take the shape of its locallity of creation and furnish it similar to palces in Viljatown, Everfree, or did it folow more Lexs divinity and memories and furnich acording to Vanhoover, Equestria, and if so, just how confusing could somethings be to even the higher level entities there?
11898079 In point of fact, the actual size, qualities, and furnishings of a conjured extradimensional space are the salient details (along with things like how long it lasts, how secure it is, etc.) that determine how difficult of a spell it is. Since most such spells are extremely fixed in what they can do – compare a rope trick spell to a mage's magnificent mansion – that means that the relative degree of opulence (for lack of a better word) is a major differentiating factor in how those spells operate. So one which automatically (and unalterably) mimics local conditions would be a different (and probably weaker/easier) spell than one which allowed for large portions of its interior conditions to be decided by the caster at the time of the casting.
Of course, Lex sidesteps a lot of this because he's able to dump insane amounts of amplification metamagic into any spell he casts, which is designed to augment the actual effect being produced, which in this case is the generation of an extradimensional space and the conditions within it. So he can turn even a simple such spell into one capable of producing grandiose effects (presuming that he's not having to redirect it toward particularly difficult alterations such as changing how fast time flows within it).
I should note that, at this point in the story, I've drawn a difference between "folded spaces" (i.e. places that bend the physical structure of the universe, but are still part of it) and "demiplanes" (which are essentially their own planes of existence, albeit set wholly within larger planes). That's splitting hairs a bit on my part, as the basic d20 System rules only imply such differences without ever really defining them, which is probably something I should make a blog post about sometime.
11897999 I suspect that we'll check in with Solvei and the girls soon enough.
In the meantime, this is the first time in this fic that all of the Night Mare's champions will be gathered in one place, and given what happened with the Night Mare and The Author, it's hard to imagine that this doesn't have something to do with that. But that still leaves a lot of salient details that are unknown, and given how the Night Mare (if that was even her) didn't seem to know who Lex was when he tried to commune with her before...well, that doesn't suggest anything good.
11898654
It is quite the big step up from when Lex and Sonata had to spend the night in an empty 'room' with early on in the story. I can only imagine how happy she would be to be able to play around in such a space that can be altered with just a thought from Lex though I suppose it will be limited by his imagination which while very versatile is not as exuberant as Sonata's.
Wonder if she'd conjure up a taco themed room if she had the power...