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.
For a moment, Lex just stared at the scythe as it floated in front of him.
Finally. Finally something was going right for a change. With Severance, he could renew his thaumaturgic spellcasting, bringing the bulk of his powers to bear against the problems that were still plaguing Vanhoover. To say nothing of utilizing the weapon against whatever monster threw itself at him next. But in the meantime, there were questions he needed it to answer.
Reaching out to grab it with his telekinesis, Lex pulled the weapon closer. “Where have you been?” His voice held none of the relief he’d felt mere moments ago, not out of any intent to disguise his feelings but because he’d already pushed those emotions away, focusing on what came next. “Tell me everything that happened since I saw you last.”
The weapon’s response had barely begun when Sonata interrupted. “Welcome back!” Heedless of Lex’s aura around the thing, she brazenly walked up to the scythe and threw a foreleg around it in a hug. “It’s, like, totes great to see you again! I-, hey!” She yelped as it suddenly jerked away from her before glaring at Lex, knowing that he was responsible for the abrupt end to her friendly reunion. “What did you do that for?”
“Sonata, do NOT touch that thing!” Lex met her glare with one of his own, remembering the Night Mare’s casual observation that the scythe altered the mentality of those who wielded it to better suit the dark goddess’s liking. He’d ordered the weapon not to do that under any circumstances, and as far as he was aware it hadn’t changed Cloudbank’s thoughts, but there was no reason to take a chance. Especially not when it came to his beloved.
“Aww, why not?” Sonata pouted. “He’s our friend too, right? And after what happened to everypony else, I thought you’d be, like, dancing for joy now that he’s back.”
“It’s not a ‘he,’ it’s an ‘it.’ And it’s extremely…” Lex didn’t finish speaking, forcing himself to stop before he lost his temper. Instead, he took a moment to remind himself that no one but him knew about Severance’s ability to alter its user’s mind, nor about its vague warning about abandoning him if he came to rely on it overmuch. As far as Sonata knew, Severance was a reliable weapon that was also alive, and nothing else. There was no reason to chastise her. Even so, his response came around gritted teeth, exhaustion burning away what little patience he had left. “Just…let me debrief it, alright?”
Her brow crinkled at that, tilting her head in confusion. “Huh? What’s that?”
“I want it to report on what happened in Vanhoover.”
“Ohhh, why didn’t you say so?” Smiling guilelessly, Sonata turned away so that Lex and Severance could catch up. I shouldn’t get in their way, she decided. Lex needs more guy friends. Instead, she turned to regard everypony else. Severance’s return had attracted more than a few ponies, and the crowd itself was starting to draw others over, curious about what was going on. The sight of so many eyes directed at her – or at least, near her – was enough to make her slightly giddy. Now, to start doing her job as a spokespony. “Everypony!” She made sure to get it right that time. “Everypony, listen up! In just a minute, Lex Legis will make an announcement about all the super-tragic stuff that’s happened. And it’s gonna be totes awesome because it’ll be delivered by his hot spokespony: me!” She couldn’t help but jump for joy then, heedless of how her attitude didn’t match what she’d just said, looking over her should to shoot Lex a grin and a wink.
Unable to help but gape at the juxtaposition between her words and her attitude, Lex somehow forced himself to turn his attention back to Severance, turning and walking away from the crowd as he brought the scythe with him. He’d deal with Sonata later. “Now, tell me what happened after I sent you with Cloudbank.”
The scythe’s accounting of the events was short and to the point. It took only a few minutes for it to describe what had happened in Vanhoover, relaying how Cloudbank and her followers had successfully fought their way into the bank, barely managing to get into the bank vault before escaping with the money they’d been sent to retrieve. Despite – or perhaps because of – the dispassionate recounting, Lex felt his chest tighten. The knowledge that they had all struggled so hard, risking their lives to fulfill the directive he’d given them, somehow made the knowledge of their loss even harder to deal with.
That was the reason why, once the scythe reached the point in its report where Nosey appeared out of nowhere and dispatched the others with contemptible ease, Lex suddenly interrupted it. “Why didn’t you save them?” The words came tumbling out of their own accord. “There must have been something you could have done!”
The scythe didn’t hesitate in its reply, pointing out that saving them was Lex’s responsibility, not its own. “Don’t you dare lecture me on responsibility!” hissed Lex, his eyes blazing green and purple. “I lent you to Cloudbank so that you could assist her in accomplishing her mission, the first priority of which was always to come back alive!” When Severance began to blithely reply that Cloudbank was weak, Lex snapped.
Unable to hold back an inarticulate cry of rage, he slammed the scythe to the ground. Immediately, it tried to lift itself back into the air, but Lex lunged forward, stomping on the flat of the blade, leaning his weight on it and pressing the weapon back down into the dirt. “Don’t you dare disparage those ponies who gave their lives in my service! Don’t you DARE!” Incensed, he lifted his hoof only to slam it back down again before Severance could rise. “Those five ponies were the very best of everyone in Vanhoover! In all of Equestria! They all displayed courage and selflessness and acumen beyond all expectations! They deserve to be honored for their sacrifice!” He brought his hoof down on the blade again, not noticing that it felt warmer than it did a moment ago, his voice rising as the feelings he’d been suppressing for the last few hours finally boiled over, black crystals beginning to sprout from the ground. “YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED TO HAVE COME BACK HERE WITHOUT THEM! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED FOR NOT HAVING DONE EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO HAVE SAVED THEIR LIVES, EVEN IF IT MEANT YOURS! YOU HAD A MORAL DUTY TO PROTECT THEM, AND YOUR FAILURE IS A DISGRACE THAT WILL NEVER GO AWA-”
His ranting was cut off as he suddenly snatched his hoof away from Severance with a snarl of pain, the blade suddenly being too hot to touch. As he watched, the weapon slowly rose back into the air, its blade already beginning to glow a dull red. Slowly, it rotated in place until its blade was pointed directly at him, and although Lex had never been good at reading people, even he could understand the gesture. But far from being intimidated, Lex only felt angrier at the weapon’s defiance. “You think I’m afraid of you?” he growled, holding out a hoof – his left hoof, the one with the barbed wire that was the Night Mare’s holy symbol wound around it – towards the scythe in a threat of his own. “Do your worst! I crushed that monster that slew the others and sent you wherever you were! I can do the same to you! I-”
Suddenly, Sonata was in front of him. Before he could even blink, she stood up on her hind legs, waving at something behind him. “And that’s our fearless leader, Lex Legis, with his, uh, inspirational words of…inspiration! You all are a great audience! Stay right there, and we’ll be right, um, back after…after we get back!” She kept waving as she spoke, a rictus grin on her face as she glanced at Lex, canting her head toward the back of the medical tent in an exaggerated fashion.
Humiliated at his loss of control having been a public spectacle, Lex slunk in the indicated direction, his ears folded back and his eyes once again in their natural state, the black crystals that had been growing now crumbling to dust. But as miserable as he felt right then, he still kept an eye on Severance, which followed him at a slight distance. Fortunately, the scythe seemed inclined to cease hostilities as well, its red-hot glow slowly fading until all traces of its spontaneous thermal reaction were gone.
Sonata was the last one to join them, walking backward on her hind legs as she continued waving to the crowd of ponies. It was only after she’d joined them around back of the medical tent, with it between them and the assembled ponies, that she flopped down onto her back with a loud groan. Turning a critical eye on Lex, she huffed. “You just had to upstage me, didn’t you?”
He bristled at the rebuke. “Sonata, I-”
“I was joking,” she sighed as she climbed to her hooves. Looking at Severance, she frowned. “Look, I know you just got back and all, but could you give me and Lex a sec?” The scythe didn’t move for a moment, and for a moment it seemed like it was going to ignore her request, before it began to float away from them, stopping a few dozen feet further back. Giving the weapon a cordial wave in gratitude, Sonata turned back to her boyfriend, who tensed in anticipation of her chastising him over what just happened.
But no reprimand came. Instead, she walked over and nuzzled him, her happy-go-lucky expression changing into a look of concern. “Listen…it’s okay if you feel like crying.”
Confused and emotionally drained, Lex reverted to type, presuming the worst of her intentions. “Do not patronize me!” he snapped, moving away from her.
But Sonata was unfazed. “I don’t know what that means, but I’m being totes serious. A good cry will make you feel better.” She smiled at him then, a small one of understanding, rather than her usual boisterous grin. “I speak from experience.”
“I do not need to-, this is ridiculous!” Lex stamped a hoof in agitation. “Severance’s failure needs to be addressed! If you had heard the way it referred to Cloudbank and the others, you would have been furious too! You-”
“Lex,” she interrupted, “I’m trying to tell you: you didn’t sound furious just now. You sounded, like, heartbroken.” She could practically see the words striking home, his body going rigid. The sight was incredibly sad, especially after everything he’d already gone through to try and keep everypony safe. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly.
He was breathing heavier now, swallowing before he spoke again. “Do not….don’t you dare presume to tell me…” He couldn’t finish, a strangled sound coming from his throat.
Closing the distance between them, Sonata hugged him. For a moment he didn’t react, and she thought he might pull away from her again, but then she felt him curl a foreleg around her and hug her back. They stayed that way for long moments, him breathing deeply as she just held him, feeling tremors of repressed emotion run through his body. When they finally separated, she gave him a sad smile. He didn’t return the expression, keeping his eyes on the ground, but he seemed to be calmer, his breathing having slowed down.
“Listen,” she ventured. “You already told me what you need everyone to do, right? Trenches, fences, stuff like that? How about I go out there and get all that started, and you can stay here and rest for a little bit. No fighting with Severance or anything, just take it easy, okay?” He nodded, but still didn’t make eye contact with her. Knowing that was the most she’d get out of him, she leaned in and kissed his cheek before heading back toward the crowd.
“Sonata.”
“Hm?” Pausing, she glanced back at him. He hadn’t moved, facing away from her now that she’d started to head back. But she heard his next words clearly.
“…thank you.”
Lex berates Severance for what happened, although the real target of his words is clear.
He and Sonata seem a little closer now.
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That was a powerful and effective scene. I sincerely enjoyed it.
A sweet and powerful chapter. I just realized that Sev let a monster kill a cleric of the Nightmare. She won't be happy.
Sonata would be great as a morning show host.
Unless you are a Grogar class Necromancer, allowing your followers whose belief give you power to be killed that easily, is generally a bad move? Especially after the vault slice portable hole trick?
8852501
Eh, given that Severance is practically a literal extension of her will, and is pretty much 'programed' to follow her dogma to the letter, and that dogma includes a lot of 'only the strong deserve to survive' stuff, I imagine she'd be more pissed that Cloud didn't live up to her definition of 'strong' than that Severance letting her die, since if they weren't strong enough to live without its' help, they didn't deserve that help at all.
wow this is a vary powerful chapter.
and we kind of see a different side to Lex that he try's to hide.
8852781 A core tenant of the Nightmare's dogma is that in exchange for worshiping her, she will help protect you from terrible monsters. If ponies are strong enough to fight off all threats without her aid, at some point they'll realize they don't need the Nightmare.
8852260 Thank you for saying so! I know I say this a lot, but this scene caught me by surprise, as I didn't realize that Lex would be having a breakdown over what happened until he started screaming at Severance.
8852877 Lex feels things very strongly, and he's spent virtually all of his life trying to keep that under control. It usually doesn't work very well, and in this case we got to see a more intense example of that.
8853268
The characters, they have feelings. It's always nice when they insist on being heard.
8852630 I'm not sure that "allowing" is the best way to put it. As it stands, Lex was presuming that Severance actually had the ability to save the others in the first place, which is debatable. Of course, his accusations weren't really directed against Severance anyway...
8852501 Thanks! It's always very satisfying for me to be able to write a moving chapter, doubly so when others confirm that it was for them as well.
8852781
8853055 This gets back to something I've discussed before, which is the apparent paradox between gods cultivating worshipers (which, in Princess Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon, we're explicitly told is something gods do to gain power from that worship) and the Night Mare encouraging self-reliance among ponies. That is, self-reliance is presumed to be antithetical to worship.
The Guide flat-out states, with regard to the Night Mare:
...and also...
The problem is reconciling these disparate stances. I've said quite a bit about this before, so I'm not sure there's much to go over, save that I think that the Night Mare regards ponies in a Nietzschean manner: there are those who are - by virtue of their mindset, attitudes, and approach to dealing with the world - masters, and those who are slaves. The masters are meant to rule, and the weak are meant to obey. As the most exemplary among the "masters," I suspect that the Night Mare views her own clerics as being among those natural-born slaves, since masters don't bow their heads to others, even if they recognize those others are stronger than themselves. (Remember, it's about outlook, not power.) To that end, I suspect that she has more oracles, witches, and other types of non-worshiping spellcasters than most other gods. Likewise, I also suspect that a lot of "master mentality" ponies "worship" her in a manner closer to reverence, treating her as an ideal to be emulated rather than abjectly bowing and scraping to her.
One thing that should be noted is that D&D doesn't really lend itself toward deities simply showing up to save their followers from imminent threat of death. I suspect that if gods did that, they'd never get anything else done. The most liberal we've ever seen D&D be (that I recall), is in AD&D 2nd Edition, where divine avatars were (according to the entries in books like DMGR4 Monster Mythology), dispatched fairly regularly - to say nothing of omens and portents - depending on the deity in question. That was still usually done for no smaller than community-wide concerns, and also typically had to touch on the area of interest for the deity in question, but it was still there. That said, later editions dialed this back somewhat, at least in terms of explicitly outlining the activist nature of deities in the game.
The other thing that needs to be made clear (and I may touch on this in later chapters), is that Xiriel wasn't just some monster, but a devil who was (insofar as we know) in "good standing" among his peers in the Nine Hells. That's significant, because devils aren't just some collection of monsters; they have their own plane of existence that's totally under their control, headed by their own god (or, depending on how you view Asmodeus, god-like entity). So if the Night Mare personally showed up and simply smote Xiriel, there could be political consequences involved.
Now, that's not the case for Severance, as it's not a god unto itself, and was being wielded by mortals at the time. Still, this gets into questions of A) if it had the ability to necessarily take on Xiriel and not only win, but win without letting anypony die, and B) whether it would have been inclined to do so of its own accord anyway. While A remains nebulous, B seems much more clear, as Severance has repeatedly noted that it will abandon a wielder that over-relies on it. Given just how outmatched a group of level 2 characters would be against a CR 16 belier devil, it's possible that clause was tripped. Or maybe it never got that far, since Xiriel acted very decisively to kill everyone.
Of course, we might get some more clarity in future chapters. Severance still has more of its story to tell, after all.
8853363
I could see this. Doesn't the Nightmare also believe that masters are supposed to protect slaves from external threats though? I thought the point of the Nightmare's dogma was that the weak should surrender totally to the strong, and in return the strong would protect the weak. If the strong don't protect the weak, why would anyone weak ever worship the Nightmare?
Oh totally. And of course, the Nightmare can't even visit this plane herself. I wasn't wondering why she didn't personally intervene, just why it sounds like Severance just floated aside and let the cleric be murdered.
Interesting, it sounds like you're saying there's a separate rule Severance in particular has. Even though he's the holy weapon of the Nightmare, this is still a possibility, and it does explain things a bit more. Still, it kind of opens up the question of "over-rely." Clearly Severance was aware that Cloudy and her entourage stood zero chance against Xiriel.
Severance kind of reminds me of an honest version of the One Ring from LoTR, where a bearer of the ring other than Sauron will be able to use the ring to protect themselves most of the time, but against a really massive threat, the ring will deliberately try to slip off and abandon its wearer. Being fair to Severance and the Nightmare, they made it clear back in the beginning to Lex the main reason he was getting Severance was a magic conduit, it's on Lex if he wants to take the risk of using Severance for more than that.
That's a really good point. A mortal party of 2nd level adventurers, even wielding a major artifact weapon of a god, are still going to be casually stomped by a Bdellavritra. Perhaps Severance could have teleported Cloudy away immediately, but that's about it.
The thing about Cloudy is that she's not just a cleric of Nightmare, she's the cleric of Nightmare, the single greatest success on this plane of getting Nightmare's church established. Severance was smart enough to personally take on her education, now all that time has been wasted and the Equestrian church of the Nightmare is back to square one. Actually, it's much worse:
Every single pony that heard that will never put their faith in the Nightmare again. If the living power of the Nightmare will abandon you the moment things get too tough, why on earth would you worship such a god?
We the readers know that the power of the Nightmare helped in other ways, and was critical to defeating the kraken. But almost everyone is going to assume that since monsters only get defeated when Lex is around, and when Severance but not Lex is around ponies die, the Nightmare is weak and Lex is strong.
If I was the Nightmare I would figure out a way to get Cloudy raised, whatever rules I needed to bend to do it. Send Severance to beg at Cadance or Luna's feet. Either that, or write off Equestria entirely and shatter Severance as a punishment for failure.
If Cloudy doesn't get raised, I do hope we find out what happens to her soul, it will certainly be interesting.
8853277 Also, as always Sonata's perspective is the best. I love her imagining Lex and Severance as "guy friends," discussing hoofball and scratching themselves.
Suffice to say, the camp ponies' views of Lex are going to be very mixed after that emotional display, especially after he just gave out the one piece of information that he had explicitly told Nosey and Sonata not to reveal.
Granted, 'monster' is rather vague but given how...'imaginative' ponies are, they'll probably come up with something but I doubt any creature their minds create could compare to Xiriel and his cruelty.
Also, I forgot about Severance's ability to alter a wielder's mind by touch...which made my comment about Sonata petting it like a dog many chapters ago really awkward. Still, I'm kind of curious on how Sonata's personality would change, would she be like Applejack and send Cozy to the Everglow as punishment for what she said to Lex, or maybe, become like her sisters...which is just as worrying.
Lex better inform her about that before some innocent gesture later warps her personality should Severance decide that it needs another wielder to carry out its mistress' wishes.
8853800
My interpretation of the Night Mare's dogma is that the central tenet can be summarized as "only the strong survive," with a racial focus on wanting the ponies, as a society, to therefore be strong. She also recognizes that strength is exercised by dominating and controlling others (not by manipulation either, but by open rulership). While she does lionize loyalty, that doesn't mean that she'll necessarily protect her worshipers from anything that threatens them. From the Guide:
That's central to what happened with Cloudbank and the others: their deaths were a failure. But the failure wasn't Cloudbank's, but Lex's. Remember, he's the one who asserted temporal authority over Vanhoover, he's the one to whom Severance was granted and given instructions to assist, he's the one who sent Cloudbank on that mission, and he's the one who didn't realize that Xiriel was there. Lex regards the deaths of those ponies as a failure on his part, not the Night Mare's, and despite his breakdown I suspect he doesn't really blame Severance (very much) either. To his mind, he was the one who failed to protect the ponies he needed to protect. Wouldn't the Night Mare see it that way as well?
That's another aspect of this that should be talked about. Severance didn't proactively cut Nosey/Xiriel down when the possessed pony appeared before them in Vanhoover...but not only did Cloudbank never try to launch an attack, there's nothing to suggest that Severance had any special insight into what was happening. Even then, it didn't exactly do nothing. Remember what Nosey said back in Chapter 213:
So basically, Xiriel showed up in Nosey's body, spent a round or two corralling the ponies and taunting them before slaying them all with its blasphemy spell-like ability. At that point, Severance did attack it, but it was plane shifted away.
Again, don't necessarily assume that Severance knew what they were dealing with. Xiriel was inside Nosey's body, and there was no easy clue as to its true nature, with no indication that Severance has any special abilities in that regard. That said, the issue of over-reliance has been there for quite some time (it's first mentioned in Chapter 90), and it's always been Severance, not the Night Mare, that's pushed that particular prohibition, always without clarifying it. (Indeed, its enforcement of that particular warning has often seemed quite plastic...)
Well, the One Ring's duplicitous nature was because it had a particular agenda it was trying to forward, and would leave you if it saw a chance to advance it. In Severance's case, it's forthrightly pointing out that while it will allow its wielder to utilize its power (otherwise what's the point of having it?) it won't stand for them relying on it "overly." Exactly what that means isn't clear, but in general it seems to be suggesting that it will not allow itself to become a crutch whereby its wielder stops improving themselves.
So far we haven't seen anything to say that Severance can teleport, per se. Though moving between planes seems to be something else again.
You're not wrong - though I suspect Severance remembers that Lex was still the one who got Cloudbank to follow the Night Mare, even if he's incredibly lacking in charisma (and Charisma) - but leaving aside issues of whether or not it could have saved her to begin with, I suspect that it wouldn't want the Night Mare's initial cleric to be a weakling anyway. There's only so much that tenets can be bent in favor of pragmatism, after all.
(It should be noted that I'm slicing this both ways, citing whether or not Severance could have saved Cloudbank as well as whether or not it would have. I bring that up because both are viable areas of examination and critique, at least in the abstract; in terms of what we actually know happened, it honestly looked like Xiriel struck so decisively that the latter question is moot.)
Leaving aside that Lex is the one who's the mortal representative of the Night Mare (re: Cloudbank's speech in Chapter 158), I question whether or not everypony will see it that way. Even if we overlook that it was rather obvious that Lex was blaming himself for that failure, rather than Severance (and that he was quite clearly distraught by it), his statement wasn't so much that it "abandoned them," but rather that it should have died to protect them, and that he's enraged that it survived them. There's no statement in there that it abandoned them.
Again, I disagree with your conclusion. I think you're reading too much into everypony associating Severance with the Night Mare, rather than associating Lex with her. Cloudbank practically said "he's the Chosen One," after all, and didn't mention Severance to begin with. That, and as I mentioned, Lex didn't say that the scythe abandoned them, just that it should have laid down its "life" (being a weapon it's not technically alive, but that's a semantic detail) to save theirs. So overall, I really don't think that it's quite as dire as you mean.
Was it Severance's failure, or was it Lex's?
That aside, what you're outlining here is an idea I've seen a lot when it comes to the combination of A) interventionist deities, who B) want to recruit more followers. It's basically the idea that "they should be throwing miracles around left and right, trying to drum up worshipers." It's not one I agree with, as it basically inverts the relationship between who's a god and who's a follower, holding that gods want followers so badly that they're essentially reduced to begging and bribing. Yes, having access to a potential new world of followers is nice, but that doesn't mean that they need to start panicking and bending the tenets of their faith when the hit the first proverbial bump in the road.
The Night Mare flat-out told Lex that she has other potential irons in the fire where Equestria is concerned (Chapter 44), and while she seemed to grant his counterpoint that he was the best among them, she never came across as desperate for access to that world. Interested yes, but not scrambling for a way in like Kara was. Moreover, and I can't stress this point enough, Cloudbank's death isn't her problem so much as it is Lex's problem. Lex is the one who offered to set things up for her in Equestria, and he's still alive. Cloudbank's death is something he has to deal with, and do so in a way that still champions the Night Mare's ideals. The president of the company doesn't start allocating emergency funds because the new branch's general manager just had their first new employee get in a car wreck. They trust that the manager will be able to figure things out.
I'm going to keep mum on that for now.
8853810 I had to restrain myself from making quite a few more jokes where that idea was concerned.
8854313 Well, everypony knows that there are undead ponies in the city, and given that Lex is quite clearly having a breakdown I wonder if they'll just attribute them to what happened. That, and we never got a good sense for whether or not anypony knew about the sahuagin and the other sea monsters.
There's a bit of nuance to Severance's ability to shift its wielder's alignment that I didn't touch on in this chapter, which is that they have to actually be "wielding" it. That is, they need to be actively trying to make use of it, rather than just touching it. Hence why Rainbow Dash didn't suffer an alignment penalty when she forcibly took the scythe away from Applejack near the end of The Apple Falls Far From the Tree. So for the most part it seems like Sonata's probably fine...though I wonder how much the scythe listened to Lex when it came to Cloudbank...
8855670 Hmm. It sounds like from Severance's perspective, it saw Nosey show up, and initially assumed she was just betraying them or something, even when it taunted them. An evil Nosey sounds like something Cloudy and her friends could handle on their own. When Xiriel insta-killed the party with a blasphemy, Severance realized something was up but by then it was too late. Can't really fault his actions there.
I can also see the point of view that if the Night Mare has other options to expand Equestria, it may not be worth it for her to go to extreme measures to rez Cloudy.
And sure, Lex will blame himself for everything, he always does. But Cloudy did make that public speech as the cleric of the Night Mare, and now she's dead. People might also blame Lex for her death, but they will definitely judge the Night Mare by the performance of her sole living representative. The whole point of worshipping such a god is strength to prevail against any and all odds, and apparently the Night Mare didn't provide Cloudy enough strength.
Of course, there are plenty of mitigating factors, and I'm being unfair to the Night Mare, blaming her for her new cleric being wiped out by a major devil. But the kind of LE worshippers the Night Mare most craves are generally unaccepting of mitigating factors, or passing blame up the chain. In Lawful Evil organizations, saying "it was my boss's fault I failed" usually just means the boss is blamed as well as you, not forgiving the minion for failure.
I think to the average pony in the crowd, there are many takeways to seeing Lex, the chosen of the Night Mare, angrily blame Severance for not finding a way to prevent his team's deaths, while clearly also blaming himself, but either Lex the chosen of the Night Mare screwed up, or Severance is not that good tool, there's no take-away here that doesn't make the Night Mare an unattractive prospect to worship.
Perhaps Severance will insist Lex make a public speech saying "hey everyone, sorry I blamed Severance or the Night Mare, it's only my fault, certainly not the Night Mare's, you should still consider worshipping her." I don't know how receptive the audience will be to giving the Night Mare a second chance though.
8856056 To reiterate: this isn't the Night Mare's setback. This is Lex's setback. The Night Mare basically told him, "you've made a promise to me. Now keep it," when she first gave him Severance and his additional powers. Given that he's still alive, this is a problem that he has to solve in order to keep his promise to her. She's not going to help him do the job he said he'd do for her, particularly since she champions self-reliance.
More than that, though, is that Cloudbank isn't the Night Mare's sole representative. Don't forget that, during her speech, she flat-out stated that Lex is the one that the Night Mare chose, right before he turned around and made enough food for over a thousand ponies who had been living on scraps before then. I also question whether or not this failure will necessarily be cause for a loss of faith among the ponies of Vanhoover. To paraphrase Rory Mercury, it's not that they died, but rather that they lived as long as they did. Lex, after all, is the pony who marched a small army out of Vanhoover, distributed food and medicine, and removed the dictatorial former leader from power. He's had setbacks since, to be sure, but for the most part he's still accomplished a lot, and at this point I suspect that everypony there has lost someone already.
Besides, look at how many times Princess Celestia has failed, and she still has the reverence of her people.
Overall, I'm not seeing this as being the major loss of face that you are. Cloudbank, admittedly, did characterize the Night Mare as being the goddess who has your back when you need her, and I'm sure that there'll be some expectations-fallout from what happened, but you're reading a lot more into it than I think is due. I don't see the ponies in the camp as believing that the Night Mare was going to guarantee them all safety in any situation so long as they worshiped her. They just know that she handed out magic to help protect her clerics, but magic is just magic; having it is not a certainty that you'll win.
8856551 Yeah, we may have to agree to disagree on this, though I do agree this will also greatly lower everyone's confidence in Lex as well.
Part of this is that most Equestrians aren't used to the idea of D&D gods, they're used to powerful beings permanently on display who personally intervene in combat to protect their subjects. Lex had done this, and kept the stereotype alive in the minds of his followers, but the Night Mare has not. I think ponies view a cleric of the Night Mare carting around Severance as almost the same as the Night Mare herself personally traveling with Cloudy, and they wouldn't understand the distinction of "the Night Mare could have saved Cloudy but choose not to for necessary complicated reasons" and "the Night Mare wasn't strong enough to protect Cloudy and friends."
Celestia is very different from the Night Mare in this case:
Celestia gives out second chances to others, Celestia obviously cares about her subjects and tries to help them in all the little ways an LG ruler does. And she doesn't ask anyone to worship her in exchange.
A big difference between good and evil gods is motivation versus results. Good gods believe if you tried your hardest, even if you failed, it's ok, Evil gods only care about if you succeeded or failed. That in turn invites their followers to view them through their own lense. If Celestia (or say Iomedae) tried but failed to help, they would likely be forgiven by their followers. But the Night Mare doesn't tolerate failure, it's in her doctrine, so does she really expect her followers to tolerate it in her?
None of this may matter if there are no other potential clerics of the Night Mare in camp, and instead some other being beings proselytizing the Night Mare somewhere else.
8856600 Looking back through several chapters, I'm honestly not sure that everypony in the camp would explicitly connect Severance to the Night Mare anyway. Cloudbank never mentioned the scythe in her speech to everyone. Lex certainly hasn't gone out of his way to explain its origins, and it hasn't developed a working relationship with anypony else. So the idea that the camp ponies would see the scythe as being the Night Mare's personal stand-in seems to lack support.
Likewise, you're reading too much into what I said about the impact this may have on everypony's view of Lex. Certainly, it won't be without impact, but I suspect that what everypony wants to know is whether or not he cares just as much as whether or not anypony died under his watch. Lex holds himself to the standard that he's personally responsible for what happened, but he has incredibly high standards. Everypony else is likely to realize that, when you aren't personally there, bad things can happen and there's nothing you can do about it. Sonata flat-out said that what happened wasn't his fault, and while he disagrees, the average pony is likely to be more sympathetic to her view than Lex's. They're going to remember that he was injured and resting from making food for all of them, and that everypony knowingly went into a dangerous situation fully understanding the risks (at least, as far as they know).
The idea that this would generate a massive public backlash against the Night Mare is one that honestly seems less and less plausible the more I look at it. Given that the vast majority of ponies only knowledge of her is what they heard from Cloudbank's speech and literally nothing else, I think you're seeing what you expect to, rather than extrapolating from what's been established in the context of the story.
So he's talking to inanimate objects now? Or rather, animate objects.
9219047 To be fair, Severance has always been able to talk back.