//------------------------------// // 958 - The Fourth Wife // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// Lex roared as he surged upward, yanking down on the long strand of barbed wire that had been his left foreleg, even as he thrust Belligerence out. Directly toward the Night Terror’s face. Screeching loudly enough that it had to have been audible throughout all of Darkest Night, the avatar immediately released the other end of the jagged strands. Even as the length of wire collapsed back in on itself, reforming into Lex’s foreleg, the Night Terror spread her own limbs wide, giving a frantic beat of the membranes between them. It was a clumsy motion, the thin flaps of flesh being meant to glide through the air rather than push against it, but it was enough to change the trajectory of her descent, carrying her over Lex and causing him to stab nothing but empty space. He immediately spun around, drawing the ebony quill back- Just in time to see the Night Terror dive back through the hemisphere of blades that he’d conjured, again somehow avoiding the press of weapons despite there not being enough space for her to do so, and then vanishing into the gloom of Mare Occultum. It was exactly what Lex had hoped she would do. She truly is a predator through and through. While Lex had never been – and, he’d come to accept, would never be – able to perceive the nuances of interpersonal communication, the Night Terror had made it exceptionally easy to understand her strategic approach to their fight. Mostly due to how she had denied that it was a fight at all, instead calling it a hunt, with her tactical approach being to hobble, corner, and pin down her prey before moving in for the kill. What she’d left unsaid was how she’d react when her prey suddenly fought back, turning the hunter into the hunted. Predators, Lex knew, were biologically designed to be efficient hunters. They had to be, since they occupied a narrow ecological niche, only able to exist in a given region in numbers far smaller than those of the creatures they fed upon, lest too many hunters depopulate the available prey and lead to the predators’ starvation. Those small numbers, however, required predators to meet an extremely high burden in order to survive: when your food source could not only hide or run away, but also fight back – potentially injuring the predator severely, making future hunts that much less likely to succeed, or even killing them outright – there was very little margin for error. The sheer frequency with which a predator needed to engage in fights to the death over the course of its life, since that was their only method of feeding themselves, meant that they had to be efficient at hunting, lest they die out. But while their skill at hunting was therefore a predator’s greatest strength, Lex knew that there was a point where it became a weakness. “Achieve the best possible results with the smallest possible expenditure of resources.” That was the definition of efficiency. It was a guideline that advocated specialization, encouraging a system – be it computational, economic, or even biological – to put everything it had toward accomplishing what it was designed to do, discarding anything that couldn’t be utilized to that end. Which meant that when confronted with a situation that fell outside of its area of specialization, such an optimized system would quickly flounder, having sacrificed everything designed to handle circumstances outside of its expertise. For predators, that meant that prey which could fight back with anything more than a mere token show of resistance simply weren’t worth the trouble. The sought-after reward – a single new meal – was greatly outweighed by the potential downsides of permanent injury or death. Thus, efficiency demanded that a predator abandon the hunt so as to cut their losses. Given that Lex hadn’t wanted to risk using Belligerence on another deity, let alone destroy the Nigh Mare’s avatar, it was fortunate that the Night Terror – who, as a god of predators, was an exemplar of their behaviors – had done exactly that. But Steel Soul and Grim Darklight won’t, Lex knew. And even Sanguine Disposition won’t be able to hold back, since he has to maintain his appearance of being my enemy. Which meant that he needed to bond with Nisha immediately. But upon turning his attention back toward the black wolf, Lex could see that she was in no condition to undergo such a process, barely clinging to life after having been struck by the Night Terror’s tail. It was only because of the protective spells that he’d laid on her when Sanguine Disposition had caught up to them that she’d survived the hit at all. Even then, it was obvious that she wouldn’t last much longer, her chest having caved in almost completely, her eyes rolling back as she spat up blood in a futile effort to draw breath. With no time to waste, Lex was already casting a healing spell as he rushed over to her- Only for two beams of azure energy to tear through him before he’d crossed half the distance. A second later, Steel Soul’s voice rang out as he rushed the barrier, not giving a moment’s hesitation at Lex’s transformed state as he invoked the Dominata. “FACE ME IN BATTLE, LEX LEGIS!!!” The Night Mare’s power wrapped around Lex immediately, tearing into him as he ignored his fellow champion’s command and focused on Nisha. In his transformed state, the damage taken from defying the Dominata was reduced...but only partially. Even with his increased resilience, the blessing that his goddess had given Steel Soul was still injuring him faster than he could recover from, causing the barbed wires that now made up his body to begin unravelling. But that stopped a moment later as Lex pointed Belligerence in Steel Soul’s direction, invoking the weapon’s power of negation. “What?!” Seeing Lex continue to ignore him without suffering for it, Steel Soul immediately halted his forward advance. “What did you do?!” But Lex’s only response was to keep pointing Belligerence at him, instead focusing all of his attention on Nisha as he reached the black wolf’s side, unleashing the strongest healing spell that he had as he laid a claw on her. Immediately, her chest filled back out, bones snapping back into place as organs restored themselves. Drawing in a ragged breath, she shuddered as she squeezed her eyes shut, opening them a moment later. “What-, huh?!” “It’s me, Nisha,” clarified Lex, his foresight telling him that she couldn’t recognize him in his current form. “This is a transformation I undergo when-” “Is it painful?” rasped Grim Darklight, appearing on the opposite side of the hemisphere of blades from Steel Soul. “It looks like it is. I’ll need to inquire about such a form myself once I’ve realized the Agonata.” Bleeding with every step he took, the scarred stallion placed a cleft hoof over his heart. A moment later he pulled it away, bringing out a spectral image of a compressed figure, one which grew larger and more solid as he flowed away from him, until it was fully corporeal. “Algos, my eremite, go and bring my wayward wolf home.” The creature that he spoke to, now completely emerged, was a vision of horror. Humanoid in stature, large sections of it had been cut away. Its lips, ears, and nose were all gone, with any hair it might have had lost beneath a mess of scars on its scalp, giving it a skull-faced appearance save for its eyes, which seemed to bulge due to the lids also having been removed. What skin remained was grayish in pallor, and the only thing that served to break up its necrotic appearance were the various stitch-lined incisions. The rest of its body was just as bad. Gaunt, it was clad only in tattered remnants of black leather, the material shredded from how its joints were embedded with what looked like shards of broken glass. Large double-ended needles had been inserted beneath the nails of each of its fingers, turning them into makeshift talons. Skeletal remnants of what had once been wings protruded from its back, now held together only by dried remnants of sinew. And all across its form were surgical scars that matched anything Grim Darklight had. But rather than obeying the stallion’s command, the monstrosity turned its lidless eyes toward the one who’d summoned it. “One day...” it croaked, its voice harsh and gravelly, “we will share...the unfathomable pain...together...” Grim Darklight smiled. “Don’t threaten me with a good time. Now, bring me the wolf.” The creature lingered for just a moment, then turned and sped toward the hemisphere of blades, not hesitating in the least as it plunged into them. The weapons tore into it, carving deep gouges in its body, but it didn’t seem to notice the damage, pushing itself further onto the blades as it fought to get past them. The sight was enough to bring Steel Soul’s hesitation to an end. “I will not be outdone by one masochistic mortal and his fleshy slaves!” Throwing himself forward, Steel Soul’s multicolored barrier flickered back into visibility as it impacted the blades several feet ahead of him. But although the whirling weapons couldn’t penetrate the field surrounding the mechanized stallion, neither was he able to dislodge the blades from where they hung in the air, the blades refusing to budge. From overheard, Sanguine Disposition’s chuckling voice rang out. “How’s that for ironic? Your defenses are so strong, they’re keeping you from trading injury for accomplishment.” A moment later, a patch of mist flowed down from between the stalagmites, passing between the whirling blades before changing back into the vampire, still in his corpselike appearance. “More for me, I guess.” Steel Soul’s internal components glowed brighter in reaction to the taunt, but he didn’t reply to the leather wing. Instead, he focused on the glowing blades themselves. “Deactivate multispectral field,” he hissed. “Overclock type six magical countermeasures, phase-state nine, four-point-three seconds.” Immediately the shimmering field around him collapsed, even as a barely-audible hum rang out from within his body. No sooner had the sound begun than he took a step forward... And the portion of the blade barrier that was in front of him vanished, the swords in his path winking out of existence as he neared them, letting him rush through unopposed as he charged toward Lex, weapons lighting up. His smile diminishing, Sanguine Disposition began casting as he also made a beeline for where Lex was standing over Nisha, eyes narrowing as he took in the sight of the other stallion’s wiry form. Opposite them, Grim Darklight’s proxy broke through the barrier, raising one mangled arm to point balefully at Nisha as it lurched forward. But before any of them could finish what they were doing, blue fire engulfed the purple-eyed wolf, Lex holding his left foreleg out toward her as the flames covered her completely. A moment later, from within the conflagration, the overlapping voices of her and her tulpas could be heard. “ “ “I waited/hoped/wished for this for so long, to surrender/belong/submit to you, my cherished/dearest/beloved master.” ” ” The overlapping multiplicity was already beginning to fade, the chorus decreasing even as the flames began to die down. “ “All of the pain/shame that I endured, all of the sorrow/suffering, was worthwhile/bearable, because it brought me to you.” ” Then there was only one voice, the flames beginning to flicker out. “And now that you’ve made me whole, I swear...” The blue fire finally died away completely, the soul-bond complete. But what was left in the flames’ wake wasn’t the black wolf that they’d engulfed. Standing upright, her body was almost completely human, with coffee-colored skin that hugged a tight, well-proportioned frame, unblemished save for his cutie mark now being on each of her hips. Her hair was the same black that her fur had been, hanging just past her shoulders. Even her eyes had changed, no longer being a solid purple. Now there were recognizable sclera, pupils, and irises, with only the latter still having the violet hue from before. Heedless of her nudity, she slowly sank down onto her knees, smiling as she looked at Lex. And across their link, he registered not just love, but worship that bordered on obsession. “Your Nisha will honor you.”