“There’s a cul-de-sac up ahead,” reported Thermal Draft as she touched down beside Lex. “It’s basically just a small rock ridge with a slight curve to it, but it’s the best cover I’ve seen so far.”
Lex glanced upward, but it was futile. With the heavy cloud cover having returned in force earlier in the day – presaging the thick snow that had once again begun to fall – there was no real way to tell how late it was. The only reason he knew it was daytime at all was because full dark hadn’t fallen yet, and with the high mountains all around them serving to elevate the horizon, when nighttime did come it would arrive quickly.
“We’ll stop there for the night,” he decided.
“You know we could probably keep going for a little longer, right?” Thermal Draft flexed her wings, as if preparing to take off again. “I’m not tired, and I bet that I could whip up a spell to see in the dark pretty easily now, with all the practice you’ve had me doing. So we could probably get a few more hours in before we needed to take a break.”
“There’s no guarantee that we’ll find any sort of defensible position when we do,” retorted Lex flatly. “If we have to stop in the middle of the night with no cover because we’re all exhausted, we’ll be vulnerable to whatever predators might be out here.”
“Solvei said that there aren’t that many dangerous creatures in this area. Besides…” Smiling, Thermal Draft reached out to flick the amulet – formerly his own, now hers since he had a better one – that hung from around her neck, ruffling the cloak he’d also given her. “Thanks to these protective items, and with my wing being all healed up, I’m not afraid of whatever’s out here. Worse comes to worst, I can fall back and support you and Solvei from a distance while-”
“It’s an unnecessary risk,” snapped Lex, struggling to keep his voice level in the face of the sudden surge of anger that rushed over him then. “First of all, Solvei’s information doesn’t take into account the ecological impact of this prolonged period of inclement weather; a lack of food means that hungry creatures will range outside of their usual territory, so her attesting that this area is comparatively safe is not the reassurance you seem to think it is!”
Drafty took a step back at that, blinking at the sudden vehemence in his voice. “I didn’t mean-”
“Secondly,” continued Lex, “your assumptions about the nature of any threats we may face are entirely unwarranted! If we’re beset by something that can fly, then your wings won’t allow you to maintain a safe distance from whatever’s attacking us! Nor would such an attack necessarily be any sort of obvious confrontation, since an ambush predator could conceivably attack and inflict serious injury or death to any of us – including and especially yourself, despite the faith you’ve put in those altogether minor magic items I’ve given you – before we could even detect them in the first place!”
Her wings drooping, Drafty cringed. “I wasn’t suggesting-”
“And finally,” snarled Lex, his eyes changing color as his attempt to keep his emotions in check failed, “given the severity of what will happen to your soul if you die, I would think that you of all ponies would realize that this is a dangerous situation which needs to be handled with the utmost caution INSTEAD OF ACTING LIKE THIS IS SOME SORT OF ADVENTURE!!!”
Her ears flattening against her skull, Thermal Draft swallowed before answering, looking anywhere except at him. “…you’re right. I’m sorry.”
Turning away from him, she sniffled once before flapping her wings, rising into the air. “The cul-de-sac is about a hundred yards ahead. I’ll go get it cleaned up for us.”
The words had barely left her mouth when she took off, leaving Lex scowling in the wake of her departure. I just told her to take our circumstances more seriously, and the first thing she does is run off by herself?! No matter that a hundred yards wasn’t a great distance – though the foul weather, rocky terrain, and thin distribution of evergreens made it harder to cross than it normally would have been – the fact that she’d ventured off on her own so easily meant that he hadn’t gotten through to her, despite how cogent his reasoning had been.
Nor was Thermal Draft the only member of their group whom he was having trouble relating to…
Master, I felt your anger. Is everything alright?
Solvei’s voice slid through his mind, causing Lex to cringe at the unwanted mental contact. It’s nothing for you to be concerned about, Solvei.
Would you feel better if I brought you something to eat? queried the winter wolf. I saw a quail just now! It looked big and fat and very delicious! I could catch it for you!
Ponies don’t eat dead animals the way your kind does, thought back Lex disgustedly. Thermal Draft and I are settling down for the evening. Finish whatever you’re doing with the rest of your family and make your way to my position.
Yes, Master.
Solvei’s final statement carried considerably less enthusiasm than before. But it wasn’t the tone of her mental voice that let him know that she’d apparently taken the rebuke more harshly than he’d intended. Rather, it was that he registered her dejection directly.
That was another function of whatever bond – for lack of a better term – he’d somehow forged with the winter wolf. While he didn’t experience Solvei’s emotions, Lex was still aware of her state of mind at any given moment, along with her overall health and relative location. It was like there was a news relay about her in his brain. One which, at the moment, read: “Solvei. Distance: one quarter-mile northeast. Status: healthy. Disposition: sad.”
But as disconcerting as Lex found that, he was more uncomfortable with the fact that the link between himself and Solvei wasn’t a one-way transmission. The same way he was aware of her position and overall health, she was likewise aware of his own. But where Lex only received a notification of the winter wolf’s feelings, she actually felt the emotions that he experienced. It was a state of affairs that Lex was profoundly uncomfortable with, and yet could do almost nothing about.
The one bit of good news was that Solvei didn’t feel his feelings all of the time. It was only when they hit a certain threshold of intensity that they were transmitted to her; much like how only peak moments of anger or frustration would cause his eyes to glow, his emotions would only reach the winter wolf when they overflowed past the point where he could keep a lid on them.
To that end, he’d tried to retain his equanimity as much as he could, but that was a battle he’d spent his entire life fighting with little to show for it. Like a door with no latch and no lock, the barrier between his feelings and Solvei seemed ready to swing open of its own accord at the slightest provocation. For someone who was intent on safeguarding the sanctity of his mind at all costs, the situation bordered on unbearable.
Of course, he could shut Solvei out completely, if he used his dark magic to do it. The same power that allowed him to shrug off any attempts to interfere with his mind allowed him to shut down the connection between himself and the winter wolf completely…but never for very long. Worse, doing so not only put a drain on his dark magic – something which Lex knew he could ill afford, given how he’d been on Everglow for only a few days and had already fought multiple life-or-death battles – but it also suppressed the ancillary effects of their link. The last thing Lex needed was to psychically muzzle Solvei only for her to need to contact him because of something she’d found.
Nor was a more permanent dissolution an option. While Lex still couldn’t remember whatever it was that he’d done in that moment of semi-consciousness when he’d somehow bound Solvei to himself – though the winter wolf’s later testimony that they’d been together in some place surrounded by blue fire had been enough to confirm to Lex that the Night Mare’s divine authority had been involved – he’d made only a single attempt to try and undo whatever it was he’d wrought.
The result had been agonizing, for himself and Solvei both. The pain he’d experienced then had been as if he’d tried to rip one of his own legs off, and the winter wolf’s anguish had been – according to what he’d sensed over their link – far worse than his own, to the point where he’d been momentarily afraid for her life. The guilt he’d experienced over that incident had been unexpectedly profound, and enough to convince him that any further investigation into how to separate them would need to be postponed until he could figure out a way to do so without harming her.
Which meant that, for the foreseeable future, he had to live with Solvei’s presence in his mind.
And those are just the passive effects of whatever this is that’s connecting the two of us, Lex sighed to himself as he made his way after Thermal Draft. If I tried to augment it…
That he could do so seemed obvious. After all, that was the case with every form of magic he was capable of utilizing, as well as with divine authority. There was little reason to expect whatever was connecting him to Solvei would be any different. But as much as Lex knew he couldn’t afford to ignore the limits of what he was capable of – it was only because he’d explored what he could do with divine authority that they’d defeated Prevarius – this wasn’t an area he was eager to explore. Already, Solvei was concerned about the distress she’d felt from him each night as he slept; that she might become aware of the personal nature of the nightmares he suffered, or worse, the tulpa that continued to taunt him whenever his worries about Sonata, Aria, Nosey, and everypony else back home weighed on him too heavily, wasn’t something Lex wanted to deal with.
Instead, in the three days since they’d left the winter wolf’s den, he’d taken to exploring the other powers that Solvei had gained as a beneficiary of their newfound connection.
That had been a more fruitful area of research, if for no other reason than because the winter wolf was quite eager to show off her newfound abilities. Each morning, while her family – who had insisted on accompanying Solvei as she led them toward the nearest pony settlement – slept after a night of hunting, Solvei would eagerly demonstrate what she was capable of now. And after a few sessions of testing her limits, even Lex had to admit that he was impressed.
The magical channels in Solvei’s body were completely different now, having become highly optimized in the use of cold-based magic. While the overall power that she could bring to bear at any given moment was comparatively limited, the range of what she could do was determined only by her imagination, so long as it was exothermic in nature.
More extraordinary was that, as far as Lex could tell, Solvei had no limit on how often she could call upon her cryomantic power. Whereas a pony would eventually get tired from using their body’s inherent magic over and over, and even Thermal Draft’s ability to affect external energies via ritualization would eventually produce a strain on her body, Solvei’s ability to put her body’s magical channels to use seemed to cause her no physical stress whatsoever. The same way Solvei’s heart and lungs would work of their own accord without requiring any deliberate effort on her part, she could use the magic she’d gained – magic which required no chanting or gesturing on her part – as much as she wanted.
What would strain her was pushing herself beyond the limited power she was capable of using. Like himself, Solvei could flood her body with more energy than it was normally capable of handling, resulting in brief instances of excessive magical power. Even there, though, her body’s design was far more efficient than anything Lex had ever encountered; Solvei could only push herself so far before exhausting her ability to press her limits, but whereas he’d inflicted severe injuries on himself on more than one occasion as a result of pushing past what his body could safely handle, Solvei’s body didn’t go into shock when overtaxed in that fashion. Instead, it simply wouldn’t call upon more power, her autonomic systems overriding her ability to consciously overwork them.
And that was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
She’d also gained a reserve of dark magic of her own, though from what Lex could tell, she could only use it to resist mental intrusions and form black crystals. And to use minor telekinesis, Lex reminded himself. It was something the winter wolf took no small delight in calling upon, fascinated with the fine motor control that granted her.
Solvei had also retained, for some reason, the ability he’d granted her before to alter her size at will. From being as small as a pony to as large as a house, she could grow or shrink as she desired. Likewise, she’d kept a great deal of the supernatural toughness he’d imbued her with on previous occasions as well, and even improved on it. Now she could resist not only physical attacks, but fire, acid, electricity, and other esoteric forms of damage.
And that was on top of the greater physical prowess she now had. She was stronger, faster, and tougher than she had been before, nor was that all. Kinetic vision, reflexes, stamina; they’d all shown marked improvements compared to her past self. It was almost as though her body remembered all of the power he’d granted it before, and had simply rebuilt itself along those lines.
There were even hints that her mind had improved as well; she was picking up on various terms and definitions that Lex had mentioned when examining her with surprising acuity. She’d already corrected her speech pattern with regard to “seidr,” now properly referring to it as “magic” instead.
The one downside was that it was more difficult – slightly, but perceptibly – for him to imbue her with additional abilities via divine authority. That wasn’t surprising; there was so much power coursing through Solvei now that Lex would have been shocked if it hadn’t been harder to add more. As it was, the fact that it was only a little harder to grant her additional capabilities was staggering; it was, Lex knew, a testament to how efficient her new abilities had integrated with her. That was how he’d granted her the ability to use a minor but long-lasting spell to protect against modest extremes of temperature on himself and Thermal Draft, letting the two of them traverse what would otherwise have been miserable conditions in relative comfort.
Overall, the winter wolf now commanded a dramatic array of powers…which meant that Lex did as well, since Solvei was now effusive in her declarations of loyalty and obedience toward him. Calling him “master” was simply the most obvious display; not only did she obey his every command without question now, but she’d made it clear that she had no intention of ever leaving his side. It was enough to be off-putting, although Lex was in no position to reject her subservience; between her inherent powers, and what he could grant her via divine authority, Solvei was simply too useful for him to throw away…even if he’d been able to, given their psychic connection.
Though the thought of parting ways with Solvei, if he were being completely honest with himself, was-
Master, came the mental voice of the wolf in question, interrupting Lex’s musings, I just thought you might want to know, Kaja says that at the rate we’re going, we’ll arrive at the pony lands in another two days.
The report made Lex frown. That’s too soon.
Too soon, Master? In Lex’s mind, Solvei’s disposition changed to “puzzled.” I thought you wanted to return to your fellow ponies as quickly as possible?
I do, replied Lex, giving Thermal Draft a glance – one she didn’t return – as he reached the cul-de-sac. But two days from now is an event which is going to require my full attention.
What event, Master?
Between the magic items he’d gained, the powers that Solvei now had, and even Thermal Draft’s modest magical abilities, Lex knew that their group was far stronger now than they’d been even a few days ago. But after everything that had happened, he had every intention of marshaling as much power as he could. Which meant taking a slight delay on the journey home in favor of regaining the apex of his own strength, now that the chance to do so was finally upon him.
The equinox.