Keeping her eyes closed and her posture relaxed, Aria tried to make it as obvious as she could that she was ignoring the ponies a stone’s throw away from her. She knew that Sonata was among them, having seen her when they’d left a little while ago, and now that they were back she wanted it to be as clear as possible just how much she didn’t care that she was there. For a moment she wished that whatshisname was with her so that she’d have been able to flirt with him just to watch Sonata’s reaction, but since he wasn’t this would have to do.
Unfortunately, her ploy didn’t seem to be working. Although she’d been gawked at quite a bit by the group when they’d departed – she’d found that rather amusing, even if their expressions of amazement and fear hadn’t been nearly as good as the adoration she craved – they didn’t seem to be talking about her at all now. Instead, their conversations were about…the weather?
From what she could overhear, it was raining outside, and it took Aria a few seconds to remember that unlike on Earth or Everglow, that didn’t happen on its own here. Which meant that someone was making it rain, and to hear them talk it couldn’t possibly have been another pony. But while they seemed completely bamboozled by what was going on, Aria felt reasonably confident that she knew what was happening, and that was enough to make her forget about provoking those idiots, looking up at the ceiling in worry.
It had started.
“Lex!”
Jolting awake as his name was called, Lex immediately leapt to his hooves, feeling the pain from doing so catch up to him an instant later. For a split-second he thought that it was Sonata that had been calling him, but that notion was immediately dispelled as he saw C. Shells looking at him from a few feet away. She didn’t seem to be in imminent danger or otherwise overly panicked, and that was enough to make Lex’s tension ease slightly. “What’s going on?”
C. Shells gave him an apologetic look, knowing that she’d roused him in a rather unpleasant manner, but nothing else had worked; she’d called his name several times, but he’d been too deeply asleep to hear her. Raising a hoof, she pointed at the now-repaired door. “We got the door fixed, but as soon as it was repaired it slammed shut.”
Lex glanced at the door, then back at her. “And?” he asked tersely. That the door had immediately sealed itself was not unexpected, since his warding was still active. So why was she bothering him to tell him what he already knew?
“And the ponies who went outside to fix the outer doors are knocking to be let back in,” C. Shells replied simply.
“…right,” Lex admitted, a disgusted look crossing his face as he silently berated himself for not having come to that conclusion already. Turning to look at the door again, he telekinetically opened it. Sure enough, ponies began to rush back in. First inside was Cloudbank, who whipped her head around before her eyes settled on Lex.
“It’s raining!” she blurted out, rushing over to him.
“What?” Lex’s brow furrowed in confusion as he tried to parse what he’d just been told. If the doors had just been repaired, then he hadn’t been asleep very long at all, which meant that there was no way that Vanhoover’s weather services had been restarted when the city was still in such bad shape.
“It’s true,” said Aisle as he and several other ponies walked towards him. “We all heard it.”
Lex’s eyes looked over the rest of the group, noting that several of them were nodding, and his frown grew deeper. Unable to help himself, he looked for Sonata, and finally found her near the back of them, talking to Nosey. She’s deliberately avoiding you, came the voiceless words in his mind, causing Lex to narrow his eyes, sure that the hateful statement was correct. “I’m going to go see what’s happening,” he announced, making sure his voice was loud enough to reach Sonata.
He felt a burst of spiteful satisfaction as she glanced at him with a frown of her own, and he distinctly heard her mutter “of course you are” under her breath.
Fighting down the urge to give her a superior smirk, he instead looked up at Severance, which had returned with the others. “Come with me,” he ordered, not bothering to see if it was moving to obey before he started for the door. Just that much movement set off an explosion of aches in his body, but he refused to let it show, forcing himself to stride forward without flinching.
He made it halfway there before Nosey moved alongside him. “Lex, I don’t think y-”
“Shut up,” he snapped, not bothering to slow his pace. Ignoring her hurt look, he marched outside of the shelter, letting the door close behind him of its own accord. It was only then that he sagged, taking several deep breaths as he fought to steady himself. If the short amount of time he’d been asleep had done anything for his condition, he couldn’t tell.
“I didn’t get a chance to say this before, but you look terrible,” came a whisper, causing Lex to look over at Aria with a glare. “What? I meant with the bandages and all,” she smirked.
Refusing to rise to her baiting, Lex instead glanced backward, grabbing Severance in his telekinetic grip and moving it in front of him. Closing his eyes, he started to chant, trying to draw in the enormous magical energy that the scythe radiated so he could replenish his magic…but stopped before he’d gotten two syllables out. It was futile; the energy was there, but he was in no shape to draw upon it. It wasn’t that he was too hurt to do so, but rather that the act of drawing energy into his thoughts was such a grueling process that his mind couldn’t do so unless he’d gotten a full night’s rest first, rather than the short nap he’d just had.
He’d known that, of course. But he hadn’t been able to resist making the attempt; he’d spent most of his life being unable to replenish his primary magic except under rare circumstances. Having a battery that allowed him to do so with regularity was such a welcome change that he couldn’t help but try to use it now, when he was once again critically low on magic and in a situation where he needed it badly.
Unable to help but sigh as he put Severance onto his back, Lex started walking. “Follow me,” he ordered Aria curtly.
Scowling at the imperious treatment, Aria nevertheless did as she was told, her hooves clopping against the ground as her lower half swished over the floor in a side-to-side motion to help propel her forward. The sight was odd enough that Lex glanced back at her. “I thought you could fly.”
“My spell to do that wore off,” rasped Aria, fighting down the urge to curse at him. Her natural body was moderately proficient on land, but nowhere near as much as it was in the water. Worse, she knew that she looked ridiculous having to pull herself along like this. Glaring at him, she silently dared him to comment about how she was moving. She took it as a minor victory when he turned away without saying anything else and kept moving.
It took only a few moments to clear the fog-filled passages and come into view of the outer doors, but in that time Lex had ceased to have any doubts about what the others had said about the weather. The sound of rain hitting the warehouse roof was now clearly audible, and a moment later a bright flash of light could be seen around the doors, followed by a loud clap of thunder. Regarding the doors silently for a moment, Lex started towards them, then stopped, considering, before turning to face Aria. “Do you have any ideas what’s going on?”
“How should I know?” She crossed her hooves, looking away from him. “I’ve been here the whole time, remember?”
“Aria.” He said her name softly, in the same cool manner that he’d used when pressing her to work for him, and she flinched without quite knowing why. “We have a deal,” he continued. “I protect you, in exchange for your service. That means that if you know anything about what’s happening, you tell me when I ask. Otherwise,” his eyes narrowed, “I’ll declare our agreement to be null and void, and you’ll be left to fend for yourself.” He paused to let that sink in. “Now, do you have any idea what’s going on?”
For a moment, she grit her teeth, still refusing to look at him. She hadn’t held back because she had anything to hide, but rather because she wanted to mess with him a little. That he’d take it so seriously, to the point of threatening her, was not only unexpected but also humiliating. Did he really need to rub her face in the fact that he was her best chance to survive, let alone get her voice back?
“I don’t know anything for sure,” she muttered, sulking.
“Anything is better than nothing.”
Aria turned to Lex with a sigh. “After I was captured, Sitkra – one of the sahuagin priestesses – was trying to scare me by telling me about the Great Lord of the Deep. She said something about how he’d destroyed a ship that had come here before, and that when several ponies tried to fly away, he’d ‘moved the above-water currents’ to stop them.” She hunched over, looking rather miserable for having remembered that. “The point being that there was no escape.”
Lex narrowed his eyes in thought, glancing back at the door. “Above-water currents” sounded like the wind, and if this so-called Great Lord of the Deep could affect the wind, then he could in all likelihood summon a storm from out of nowhere. What he found more disturbing was the confirmation that another ship had come here, and had been destroyed for it. He hadn’t heard anything about that when he’d been back in Tall Tale!
It had to have come from Las Pegasus, he decided. Tall Tale had received news of Vanhoover’s flooding early, and it would have known not to send any ships towards a flood zone for fear of potential current manipulations making them run aground. But Las Pegasus was much further away, and so had doubtlessly gotten the news too late…and the ponies on that ship had paid the price for it.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before, when I told you to tell me what you knew about the aquatic monsters?” he hissed, trying to control his fury at the thought of even more pony lives having been lost.
Aria shrugged. “Like I said, it wasn’t something I knew for sure, just something I’d been told.”
Lex opened his mouth to rebuke her, but before he could say anything a crash so loud that it was almost an explosion came from the outside. Both Lex and Aria tensed, looking toward the doors as if expecting they were about to be knocked inward at any moment. But instead, the only sound were more crashes coming from outside, each one sounding as though a building were being stepped on, or something equally cataclysmic.
Knowing he needed to see what was happening, but not being willing to risk drawing attention to their location by opening the doors, Lex transformed into a shadow, not caring that his reserves of dark magic were now running perilously low. “Stay here!” he yelled at both Aria and Severance, before moving towards the doors. Passing through them, he looked outside...
The scene that was waiting for him looked like Tartarus itself had been unleashed.