Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“Lex Legis!”
Although he recognized the voice of Princess Celestia, Lex didn’t so much as turn his head in response to her calling his name. Almost as soon as he’d left the train station he’d seen her in the distance, talking to a group of ponies that were gathered around her, and the sight had made his lip curl in contempt. No doubt she’s regaling them with some banal aphorism on the merits of cooperation rather than actually taking action herself, he’d thought darkly. But there was no point in chastising her about it now, not when he’d have the chance in a few hours. He might have been forced to abandon his plan to arrest the alicorn sisters for their disgraceful conduct, but there was no reason he couldn’t castigate them for it. Besides, with the misery that he’d expected to feel over his alienating the mares in his life beginning to make itself known, he wasn’t in the mood for Celestia’s self-righteous hypocrisy right now anyway. His decision made, Lex had put her out of his thoughts and instead focused on going to retrieve Severance.
But Princess Celestia had other plans, apparently. Only a few seconds after she’d called his name, there was a fluttering of wings, and a moment later she alighted on the ground a stone’s throw in front of him, blocking his path. “I need to talk to you.”
“We’ll talk at noon,” snapped Lex curtly. “I have other tasks that require my attention right now.” But despite his words he made no move to go around her. The ponies Princess Celestia had been addressing were already turning their eyes toward the two of them, and Lex had no idea if his adjusting his course to avoid her – rather than having her make way for him – would be interpreted as a sign of weakness on his part. But it might not matter anyway, he realized; several of the ponies from the crowd that Princess Celestia had left behind were members of the Royal Guard, now rushing over to position themselves on either side of her. Going around her wouldn’t be something so easily accomplished now.
Celestia herself barely seemed to notice the guards. “I need to speak with you before our conference,” she pressed.
Lex didn’t answer for a moment, wondering if he should use this opportunity to augment his circlet and examine Celestia’s magical capabilities again. But it took only a moment for him to decide against it. Channeling additional magic through his body always resulted in considerable physical strain; forcing that magic into a magic item, whose functionality wasn’t designed to receive the increased power, was even harder to do. Given that his injuries weren’t fully healed yet, and that he’d already exerted himself in his failed effort to move the sun just a few minutes ago, it was more economical to wait until Celestia and Luna were together before going through the effort of heightening his circlet’s functionality again. With that decided, he turned his full attention back to whatever petty emergency the princess was having, his curiosity about whatever was upsetting her warring with his irritation at her insistence. “You have thirty seconds,” he growled.
The guards surrounding the princess glared at him, clearly not liking his disrespectful tone, but Princess Celestia herself didn’t seem to care. Instead, she took a step forward, a reserved look on her face. “I don’t understand you at all,” she admitted. “You openly advocate that it’s better to govern with force and control instead of harmony and compassion. You’re more comfortable with the dark magic of King Sombra than the magic of friendship. You’re arrogant, belligerent, and I know that you’ve used the evil magic of that horn to curse some of the ponies under your care here.”
Lex grit his teeth at Celestia’s unmitigated gall. This failure of a princess thought she had any right to criticize him?! Narrowing his eyes, he managed to swallow his bile, refusing to act as though he had to justify himself to her. “You now have twenty seconds left to get to whatever point you’re making.”
Celestia didn’t reply immediately, looking at him in silence as though studying his face before letting out a soft sigh, her features softening slightly. “I’ve spent most of the morning talking to the ponies here, and while they told me about the uglier parts of your rule that Sonata and River Bank glossed over, they also confirmed all the good that you’ve done. About how you fought bravely to protect everypony, worked diligently to provide for them, and mourned for the ones you couldn’t save.”
Lex went rigid at that last part, clamping down on the surge of grief-fueled rage that went through him then. Don’t you dare mention Cloudbank and the others to me! he screamed internally. Don’t you DARE! The shame and the anguish he felt over what had happened to them were still raw enough that, although she’d been considerate, the mere prospect of Celestia – one of the ponies whom he respected the least – throwing their deaths in his face was almost more than he could bear. “Ten seconds,” he announced stiffly.
Closing her eyes, Princess Celestia shook her head slightly. “I don’t understand you,” she repeated. Opening them, she moved toward him again, stepping forward until she was almost close enough that she could have reached out and touched him. “But I truly believe that you want to protect Equestria and its ponies, just like I do. Even if we agree on nothing else, we can agree on that.”
She smiled at him then, but Lex didn’t return the expression. “Five seconds.”
Apparently unperturbed by his continued obdurateness, Celestia kept speaking. “You’ve also always been forthright about your beliefs, never using deception or trickery to try and get what you wanted, even when it might have served you better. Because of that, I’m willing to believe whatever answer you give me when I ask you this.” Her smile disappeared then, her expression becoming unreadable, at least to his eyes. “Are you planning on attacking my sister and me at our meeting later today?”
Lex couldn’t keep his surprise from showing on his face. How did she know I was considering that?! For a split-second he wondered if any of the girls – in a fit of pique over how he had mishandled things with them earlier – had warned Celestia about his intentions. But that couldn’t be the case; he’d never informed them, nor anypony else, that he’d briefly decided to arrest the alicorns before he’d thought better of it. Was she using some sort of divinatory magic? He knew she couldn’t be spying on his thoughts; he had too many countermeasures in place for any such magic to possibly reach him, at least not without alerting him of what was happening. Or did she have some spell that would let her look into the future directly? If so, then the fact that she’d asked him if he was going to undertake a course of action he’d already decided not to follow was a perfect example of why using such spells was a fool’s errand.
Lex had heard about spells that could predict the future during his time on Everglow, and the practical and metaphysical implications of such magic had intrigued him enough to open an immediate line of inquiry into them. He had terminated it shortly thereafter, however, when he’d learned that such spells all – without exception – had some inherent degree of fallibility in their forecasts, returning results that would prove to be correct most of the time, but not all of the time. To Lex, that was enough reason to discount such spells in their entirety; to do otherwise was to place his trust in information that might well turn out to be wildly inaccurate, with no way to tell until it was too late. That was more uncertainty than he was willing to countenance. If such spells can’t be completely accurate each and every single time, he’d decided, then they’re nothing more than guesswork.
Which was, almost certainly, what Princess Celestia was engaging in right now. There was no evidence that he was aware of to suggest that she had any sort of precognitive abilities, after all. It was far more plausible that she was remembering the first time they’d met, where violence had broken out when their dialogue had broken down. In fact, if she was concerned enough about that to seek him out ahead of time and inquire about his intentions… Then it means that she’s afraid of me, he realized. The thought sent a flash of twisted pride through him, and he almost smiled, pleased at the idea. No doubt the tales of his escapades that she’d heard from everypony had made her realize that his magical strength exceeded her own, to her anxiety. That’s right, you nag, he thought spitefully. I’ve already surpassed you, not just in moral virtue and governmental aptitude, but magical ability as well. Look upon me, and see your own obsolescence made manifest!
All of that went through Lex’s mind in less than a second. Outwardly, his initial expression of surprise at Celestia’s question had lapsed back into his usual sardonic look, and he didn’t hesitate to reply. “No,” he answered coldly. “I have no intention nor expectation that our meeting will involve violence of any sort. Now get out of my way. Your thirty seconds are up.”
Out of his peripheral vision, he could see several of the guards bristling angrily at his words, but none of them moved to challenge him. Celestia herself had no reaction save to look at him silently, and Lex locked gazes with her. Utter silence fell as the two of them stared at each other, and Lex made certain not to so much as blink, determined to win what he felt certain had become a contest of wills. He was rewarded a moment later when Princess Celestia nodded, stepping to the side. “Very well,” she said at last. “Until noon, then.”
Lex’s only answer was a derisive snort, the corners of his lips turning upward in a vindictive smile as he strode past her.
Princess Celestia watched Lex leave, her expression pensive.
Her question had taken him by surprise, that much had been obvious. What was less certain was why. Had he been caught off-guard by her asking if he’d planned on attacking her and Luna because he’d found the idea to be ludicrous, or because he’d been planning on doing exactly that? Although Celestia hoped it was the former, she couldn’t bring herself to be completely sure.
Still, the important thing is that he said he wouldn’t, she knew. Whether because he’d never planned to, or because her asking about it had unnerved him enough to abandon any plans to do so, Lex had been quite clear about not fighting them. As wary as Celestia felt toward him, she hadn’t been lying when she’d said she was willing to believe him. Whatever else could be said about Lex Legis, his code of honor – warped though it might be – was something that he very obviously held dear. Now that he’d declared his decision not to take action against them, he’d stick to it.
Which meant that something else would be what caused her vision to come true.
Although she’d lived for well over a millenium, Celestia hadn’t had very many prophetic dreams. On average, she’d had less than one per century. But when they happened, the things that she saw always came to pass. Always. Right now, that meant that something was going to cause Lex to go on a rampage in a short while, and while nothing might be able to prevent that – or the grim fate that awaited Silhouette, her sister’s worshiper – finding out what caused it might give her an edge in bringing the conflict to a swift end before anypony else was hurt.
But if Lex wasn’t the one who initiated hostilities in a few hours, then who – or what – was?
Lex and Princess Celestia exchange tense words before their meeting, leaving the question of Celestia's vision more uncertain than ever!
Are Celestia's prophetic dreams about to be wrong for the first time in her life? Or will Aria be the one to make what she saw come true?
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that You up sentence messed?
The plot thickens! Like a garden with soil being added.
9574120
D'oh! That should have been, "the guards surrounding the princess." Fixed now.
We can only hope that it sprouts flowers instead of weeds.
9574150
With how much you say D'oh, you could be a decent stand in for Homer.
9574155 I do quite like that expression. I find it very onomatopoetically pleasing, insofar as an exclamation of sudden, frustrated realization goes. Certainly more so than reaching for a rather generic (and somewhat crass) bit of profanity.
Lucky for Lex she said "planning," not "considering."
If Lex had better probability modeling (tough for a guy without computers) he'd be able to make use of those visions. I'm playing a character who is about to become a high level medium, which gets an ability to cast the Astral plane section of Contact Other Plane at will and avoid the potential Ability Decrease, so I've been trying to research the spell. Lex would have to use high level spell slots and probably stick with the plane whose ability decrease DC is 1 plus his modifier to not risk Int Drain, so this version is not really worth it for him. But there's got to be a way to use this spell to partially eliminate risk, in the model of the classic "will the other guard lie to me" riddle.
The question should be if Sillouette isnt Wormtongue, then what triggers things? Parents with Familiars etc?
The Armageddon is going to be caused by a being that wants lover
So it’s a amour-geddon
around he -- around her
*Sitting on the edge of seat in utter suspense* This is perhaps one of the few times in your story when I genuinely want to cry out at a cliffhanger for it's appearance and now that I think about it, the first time where the cliffhanger isn't revolving around an action sequence that made me feel like that. Umm...congrats?
Back to the chapter.
Lex misconstruing someone else's intent is pretty much Lex being Lex but Celestia's proactiveness in approaching Lex was unexpected(was totally expecting Luna) as was her openly asking what she did even if it left her very exposed if Lex had said otherwise. While she pretty much has Lex's code of conduct spot on, banking her safety and that of her little ponies on it was naive(even if she brought her guards) but I suppose that's just her exhibiting the trust in her fellow ponies and the good she sees in them, even the one who essentially declared war on her a few months back.
Only in Equestria...
9574224
For as much as I don't think her Wisdom score is too high, I think Celestia knew to make that distinction.
At the level that Lex (and Twilight) operate at, such modeling isn't very difficult for them. Rather, it's that Lex is a control freak for whom that level of uncertainty is simply not acceptable. It doesn't matter if he can have 99% confidence in the answers he's received; that's not enough for him to feel comfortable acting on information about what could happen. If he's going to put his complete trust in magically looking into the future (which would necessarily obviate other forms of prediction), then he wants complete and total certitude, otherwise he has no use for such spells. To do otherwise is closer to an act of faith than calculated insight, and he can't bring himself to commit to something like that.
There are two things to make note of here. The first is that this spell, as with most of the spells that function in that regard, aren't really what's being discussed in this chapter. That's because this chapter is talking about spells that look into the future, whereas spells like contact other plane don't really do that. Rather, they tend to gather information about the past and/or the present. You can use that spell to ask about the future, but that's not really the same as looking forward in time. It's just asking an entity with greater knowledge (and, presumably, a greater vantage point into the mortal realm) what they think will happen.
The second point to make note of is that the idea of "probability modeling" with spells like this is one of those things that doesn't really work when you try to put it into practice. To look at contact other plane specifically – and you'll notice that there are a lot of caveats around that spell that almost everyone tends to gloss over; notice that what happens to your Intelligence and Charisma scores is described as a "decrease" rather than ability damage or ability drain? So you arguably can't use the restoration family of spells (or similar spells and effects) to fix them. For that matter, it's highly ambiguous whether or not you get to pick the deity being contacted; the spell says that you contact a particular plane of existence, but it's entirely plausible that the specific deity contacted is random, meaning that you won't know what the relevant percent chances are if you aim for an Outer Plane – you're getting in touch with a specific entity.
Trying to run a model of probability (even if you know the relevant chances of success, such as by aiming for an Elemental Plane, the Positive/Negative Energy Plane, or the Astral Plane) by asking the exact same question multiple times and comparing the answers you've gotten to try and model the breakdown of true answers, false answers, etc. won't work where contact other plane is concerned. Why? Because it's entirely within the realm of plausibility for the GM to say that the entity being contacted will repeat whatever answer it gave you the last time you asked that question. That is, it won't answer the same question according to the percentage tables; nothing says that specifically, of course, but I take that completely as a given. If someone asks you the same question multiple times, is your answer likely to change?
9575004 Typo fixed now. Thanks for catching that!
9574437 That is the question, isn't it? Except now we have to wonder if what Celestia saw is going to happen at all.
9574932 I salute your excellent pun!
9575113 I'm quite glad you're finding the suspense thrilling! That's what I've been trying to build up for a while, first by laying the groundwork for making a confrontation believable (i.e. Luna has no problem believing that Lex will become a monster), then by foreshadowing it happening (i.e. Celestia's vision), then by throwing a monkey wrench into the works in the face of what we thought we knew (i.e. Lex abandons his plans to fight the alicorns, but Celestia's visions are always accurate), only to put things back on track (i.e. Aria decides to use the alicorns to get revenge on Lex), but now we learn that maybe the entire conflict can be averted (i.e. Lex's revealing that divinations aren't perfectly accurate...but is he correct?). So the entire thing has now reached a state of wavering uncertainty, where it could go either way.
Which means that there's not much left to do before answering the question.
As for this chapter specifically, you're right that this is a good example of Lex being Lex, since he's currently without any of his companions to mitigate his worst impulses (and he's in a bad mood anyway). That's contrasted with Celestia being Celestia, with her wanting to see the good in everypony, so long as she thinks that there's any good in there (she has no problems taking on those that have none). As she noted in this chapter, Lex is very hard for her to understand, since he consistently rejects everything she believes in and yet acts in service to others. It's enough to make her hope that a resolution is possible between them, but at the moment a conflict seems inevitable...at least, to her.
We'll just have to wait and see if it actually happens or not.
9575574
You gave a set up
As LEGO bricks and I merely
Put it together
9575797 Very true. (But that second line has eight syllables. )
9575803
It was not intended to be a haiku but thanks for the tip.
9567377
Or playing chessmaster
It is my headcanon that she was completely unaware of the entire thing and it was someone else that planned this
Hell she probably thought her sister was dead
9575566 Lex is probably not a fan of gambling.
Yeah, I would normally never consider using Contact Other Plane, except the weird medium ability lets you specifically ignore the decrease effect, so there's really no cost to it, and cast it unlimited times per day. So I had considered the possibility that asking for something on question 1 and then having questions 2 through 6 be successive versions of "did you tell the truth on question 1?" might well not work, according to GM discretion. I was thinking more just dropping the spell after 1 question and recasting it to talk to a different astral spirit. (The class ability version only lets you target the Astral Plane). Of course, that means 10 minutes of in-game time per question, and forcing the GM to role a lot of percentile dice over and over, so it could get really annoying fast.
9575930
Not particularly, I would imagine. But as with many things, it's a question of scope and scale. Lex wouldn't particularly care about something like a slot machine, because there's no larger context to it, unlike using divination magic to try and predict something important (i.e. "would I win if I fought Celestia and Luna?"). Likewise, more interactive forms of gambling have underlying mechanisms that can be understood, manipulated, and leveraged in his favor; that's a lot more mentally palatable to Lex than a random percentage chance of failure, with no way of knowing whether or not you got the proverbial short straw until it was too late.
I honestly think that the best way to deal with contact other plane is to treat the percentages listed (i.e. the chance that the entity knows something or not) as applying to a particular topic rather than question by question, since otherwise the results can be odd to the point of sounding schizophrenic. Like, the entity might know the answer to "is the lich's lair north of this town?" but not know "is it south of this town?" for example.
Of course, endless consequence-free casting does sort of makes it easy to check answers against other answers, but at least then your poor GM wouldn't be rolling so many dice!