The ghouls bearing down on him were nothing less than a tidal wave of certain death.
The few sources of illumination on the battlefield were barely enough to provide sufficient light for Lex to see by. The glow from the campfires arrayed behind him barely seemed to reach his position, the three crackling balls of lightning that he’d arranged around the battlefield were already obscured by the mass of undead ponies, and the combined light from his horn and Severance’s own fluorescent shine were all barely enough to make the immediate area visible. It let him see the forefront of the army of ghouls that were charging at him, but not the ones behind them. The result was that there seemed to be an endless number of ghouls pouring out of the darkness…and all rushing directly for him.
The sight should have intimidated him, Lex knew. The vision of hundreds – for that was surely how many were in front of him now – of undead ponies should have been the stuff of nightmares. But that thought brought only a contemptuous smile to his lips as he raised Severance and prepared to strike.
Lex Legis was used to nightmares.
As the first of the ghouls reached him, Lex roared as he swung Severance…and unleashed utter devastation.
Howls rang out as scores of ghouls were obliterated instantly, their bodies reduced to pieces that rocketed away from Lex as though they’d been shot out of a cannon. Despite the single arc of his swing, all of them had been reduced to so much gore, as though sliced multiple times over. More than that, the range of the blow had exceeded Severance’s actual striking area, hitting all of the ghouls that had been closest to reaching him. Had he not seen it before, when Cloudbank had performed a similar feat on the broken ship that the kraken had hurled at them, Lex would have gaped at the sight; as it was, he couldn’t help the shudder that went through him. Incredible! This much power…! This was what the Night Mare had given him?!
Under normal circumstances, Lex would have castigated himself for not having figured out how strong Severance truly was before now. He would have cursed himself for how conservatively he’d pushed the weapon’s boundaries regarding overreliance, worried about losing the only way he had of easily replenishing his primary magic. But right then, regret was the furthest thing from his mind. As he gripped the weapon in the glowing aura of his telekinesis and brought it back to a ready position, Lex was grinning darkly, his eyes glowing green-and-purple as he turned to the horde of undead ponies. I can end it! he thought triumphantly, his anxieties about his injuries and his depleted magic falling away, replaced by a moment of sudden bloodlust. With this, I can finally put an end to the monsters infesting my city!
The plague of ghouls rushed in to congratulate him.
“Is…is this for real?” croaked Funshine, unable to take his eyes off of what was happening.
“It can’t be,” muttered Slip ‘n’ Slide, shaking his head at the impossibility happening right in front of him. But even as the words slipped out of his mouth another group of ghouls were reduced to body parts, Lex swinging his scythe through the things as though they were nothing more than stalks of wheat.
“We couldn’t…” Hopscotch had to pause, licking dry lips before trying to speak again. “We had to run away if we saw more than two of those things, and he’s…”
“We tried to shake that guy down…?” Granola Bar’s voice had a slightly hysterical element to it, remembering how easily Lex had defeated them all when they’d attacked him. “I knew he was strong, but this is crazy…”
“What’s going on?!” whined Piggy petulantly, straining futilely to see over the crowd. Stomping a hoof in agitation, he reared up onto his hind legs and tried jumping up, though this accomplished nothing except to get him two inches off the ground before sending him sprawling onto his rump as soon as he touched back down. Despite this, he quickly scrambled back up onto all fours, his face turning red in frustration. “Somepony pick me up!” he ordered. “I wanna see what’s happening!”
“Trust me,” murmured Granola Bar, “you don’t.”
“Yes I do!” squealed Piggy, stomping a hoof even harder to show that he meant business. “I’m in charge here and I wanna see what’s going on!” But for some reason, his tantrum didn’t seem to be working; nopony was listening to him! Biting his lip in agitation, Piggy turned toward the pony next to Granola Bar. “Garden, pick me up right-, hey…where’d she go?”
“I’m sure she….wait, what?!” Slip ‘n’ Slide’s voice suddenly became much clearer as he processed what Piggy had said, managing to tear his eyes away from Lex’s battle to look at where Garden Gate should have been. But to his mounting horror, there was just an empty space where she’d been a moment ago. “She’s gone!”
“What?” Granola Bar glanced next to her, then did a double-take as she saw that the pony she’d spent over a day watching had somehow managed to disappear. “Oh no!” She spun around, looking every which way, but all she saw was a sea of unfamiliar faces, almost all of them swept up in the spectacle happening up ahead. “Garden?!”
“Oh you’ve gotta be kidding me!” groaned Funshine. “She ran off?!”
Hopscotch looked ready to faint. “What do we do?! If she goes outside of the illusion, she’ll be seen!”
She looked down as she spoke, peering at the translucent image of a hole on the ground under her hooves. Although it looked fake to her, as if they were standing on a really big picture of a crater or something, Sonata had told them that Lex’s spell would make it look like the real deal from the outside. More than that, it would hide all of them and even let them talk normally…so long as they stayed inside it. “But anypony who leaves,” she’d said, “will totes be exposed, so stay put!”
“We need to split up!” Granola Bar was already moving as she spoke, starting to muscle her way through the crowd. “Spread out and start checking the crowd! She couldn’t have gotten far!” The others gave statements of acknowledgment, but she barely heard them, worried sick about her friend. Garden, please, don’t do anything reckless. We can’t lose you too!
Lex snarled viciously as he swung Severance at a group of ghouls coming at him from his left, lashing out with a brutal upswing that cut them all to pieces in a single blow. But he had no time to celebrate their demise as more of them barreled at him directly from the front, heedless of what he’d done to the last group that had tried that. Cursing under his breath, he spun the weapon around in his telekinetic grasp so that the tip of its blade was facing forward instead of back, and then brought it down in a slash that decimated the ghouls…but there were more already moving in to fill the gap, apparently completely unfazed at having seen so many of their fellows die.
There was no end to the things. By Lex’s estimation, he had been fighting for almost a full minute now, and in that time had to have slain three or four hundred ghouls, all without any of them having so much as landed a blow on him, let alone gotten past him. Yet there were still ghouls marching out of the gloom by the score; he could still feel their hoofbeats shaking the ground as they continued to charge him. How many can there possibly be?! he snarled internally, panting as he brought the blade down in preparation for another wide swing. His earlier enthusiasm was steadily eroding the longer the battle went on, diminishing in an inverse proportion to his mounting fatigue.
Grunting, he swung his head around, telekinetically dragging Severance in the same arc…and immediately realized that he’d done a foolish thing. Telekinesis didn’t require that you moved your horn in a same manner as whatever you were grasping; rather, that was something that unicorns did when using telekinesis while tired, moving their horn physically in an effort to reduce the perceived burden of whatever it was they were magically lifting. It didn’t actually make telekinesis any easier, however. Instead, all it did was telegraph how they were about to move whatever they were holding. Thus, it wasn’t a complete surprise when several of the ghouls managed to avoid Lex’s wild swing, leaping into the air or throwing themselves onto the ground as he swung Severance, barely managing to clear the weapon’s incredible shockwave.
There were only three of them, but they were the first three to survive being targeted by him so far. Shrieking in joy, the ghouls continued to bound toward him, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to retrieve the weapon, correct his momentum, and attack again before they reached him. Lex knew it too…and so he didn’t even try.
Instead, he released the weapon completely, his horn sputtering out as he abandoned it to fight on its own and turned all of his attention to the immediate threat. Barely noticing as the weapon sped out of his line of sight, Lex lifted a hoof and began to chant. The trio of ghouls were already mere feet in front of him, rushing toward him with everything they had, and he had no idea if they’d reach him before they finished. But as the lead ghoul bodily flung itself at him, its jaws widening as it aimed right for his face, Lex realized the answer an instant later: yes.
But in the fraction of a second between when he comprehended that and when the ghoul reached him, Lex had already figured out what to do about it.
Not breaking his chant as the ghoul barreled into him, Lex raised the hoof he was gesticulating with…and shoved it right into the undead pony’s open mouth. He grit his teeth as he forced himself to ignore the disgusting sensation of its tongue on his hoof, as well as the way it was futilely trying to close its jaws around his foreleg, his protective enchantments preventing it from finding any purchase. Instead, he made the final necessary gesture, pronouncing the last syllable, and an instant later the undead pony’s head exploded, fried from within by the red-hot beam that he’d unleashed directly into its brain. Two other beams immediately lanced out from the thing’s ruined skull and slammed into the pair of ghouls that were following in their companion’s hoofsteps, and an instant later they fell to the ground, burnt to a crisp.
Not stopping to admire his handiwork, Lex shook the filth off of his hoof as he turned back to survey the rest of the battle. Severance was wiping out another group of ghouls, but more were already rushing in…and as he’d suspected, they were ignoring the scythe completely, trying to make their way toward him above all else. This is exactly how it said they were acting in that bank in Vanhoover, Lex thought, remembering Severance’s report about what had happened to Cloudbank and the others. They’ve become completely oblivious to everything except feeding.
Grabbing the scythe in his telekinesis, Lex brought it back to his side, rearing back to prepare for another swing. Just that motion ached, and for an instant he felt himself teeter dangerously before he got his balance back. It was, he knew, a contest of attrition at this point. Either the ghouls would finally deplete their ranks, or he’d end up collapsing from exhaustion. The winner would be whichever side was able to hold out longer. They’ve lost at least five hundred ghouls by now…they can’t have that many more!
Everyone’s lives, he knew, depended on that guess being right.