The results of Lex’s spell were immediate.
He felt the magic race upward as he completed the casting, bridging the distance between himself and the descending scythe so fast that it might as well have been instantaneous. Then the amassed energy of his spell collided with the incredible power stored within Severance, and Lex held his breath, knowing that the contest would be resolved in a fraction of a second. Even so, that was enough time for him to silently will his spell to work, aware of what would happen if it didn’t…
And then his spell shattered.
Its structure broke apart as soon as it made contact with Severance, the gathered energy dispersing harmlessly as the scythe went right through it, none the worse for his attempt to destroy it. The weapon hadn’t even made a counterattack; it had simply received the spell without trying to defend itself, going through it with no more damage than a falling rock would have sustained if someone threw a pane of glass in front of it. Unimpeded in the slightest, the scythe continued its downward trajectory.
His one plan to deal with Severance having failed, Lex’s mind went into overdrive. With unimaginable speed, he weighed and analyzed every option, every variable, every piece of relevant data as he searched for an alternate course of action. Casting the spell again was immediately out; there was no chance of completing the requisite verbal and somatic components – for that or any other spell – before Severance closed the distance between them. Calling upon the tulpa in his shadow was unlikely to produce any response, since he still didn’t know what made it respond some times and not others, and even if it did react there was no telling if its response would be adequate or not. Creating more black crystals to block Severance’s path would be futile, since the weapon had already demonstrated that it could go through them with no trouble whatsoever. Grabbing it with his telekinesis again would only stop it if he channeled additional magic through himself, and the physical effort required to do that would take more time than he currently had. All of those possibilities and dozens more ran through Lex’s brain then, and all of them had no chance of stopping the scythe from slicing through himself and Luna.
All except two.
The first option was to simply abandon Luna. After all, she was the one the scythe was aiming for; he was simply in its way. Although Severance was now too close for him to dodge it completely, Lex felt certain that if he hurled himself to the side he’d be able to avoid a fatal strike. It was an option that would guarantee his survival if he simply admitted that he couldn’t save Luna, and instead cut his losses.
But just like when Xiriel had forced him into this same circumstance, where he’d needed to choose between saving himself or Nosey, Lex couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice someone else. It wasn’t that he cared about Luna the same way he’d realized he did for Nosey. Luna was an incompetent fool who had once betrayed her sister and her people, whose return had been notable only in how she’d wallowed in the same self-indulgent indolence as Celestia, and who had repeatedly refused to listen when he’d tried to talk her down from this fight. As far as Lex was concerned, Luna was an example of everything wrong with Equestria today. It was just that right now, however, none of that mattered. Regardless of how he felt about her personally, Luna was still a pony. That fact alone meant that her life had immeasurable value, which Lex was morally obligated to protect to the best of his ability even if it meant putting his own life at risk to do it. Which meant that his only choice was to use the second plan that he’d come up with.
Severance had closed to within a few feet of him when Lex made his move. Muscles heaving, he threw himself…not out of Severance’s way, but further into it as he moved from standing over Luna to being sprawled out on top of her, shielding the fallen alicorn with his own body. There was no guarantee that this would work, especially given that he’d just tried to destroy Severance, but the barbed wire around his left foreleg was still unresponsive as the scythe flew down…
And came to a complete stop a few inches away from him.
Lex didn’t let his chance slip away, casting his dispelling spell again as he strained to pull more magic into himself. The burn in his muscles was worse now, but he ignored it as he hurriedly gestured and chanted. He knew that Severance could easily cut him apart before he finished, that there was no way he could have stopped it if it tried, but the scythe remained still, making no move as it hovered over him. That’s right, Lex thought viciously. I’m still the Night Mare’s representative on Equestria! If you kill me, her interests won’t be served!
That was conjecture on his part, of course. Given that Severance’s overriding motive was to act in accordance with its understanding of the Night Mare’s wishes – wishes that Lex knew he’d been sidelining, such as his refusal to heed Severance’s insistence that he deal with Luna, or ignoring, such as when he’d offered to use the resurrection spell in the gemstone to bring back Silhouette despite how badly the barbed wire around his foreleg had reacted – it wouldn’t have been surprising if the scythe, and by extension the Night Mare herself, had decided to terminate both his relationship with the goddess as well as his life. But Lex had been willing to make a calculated risk that Severance wouldn’t do that. After all, he hadn’t formally renounced his connection to the goddess, nor reneged on his promise to gather worshipers for her. I simply haven’t made it a priority yet! smirked Lex as he continued casting. It was a technicality, but one that he suspected Severance – which as a magic item had an artificial personality, and so likely lacked anything that resembled a survival instinct or sense of self-preservation – would adhere to even at the risk of its own destruction.
A second later he finished casting the spell, murmuring the final words around clenched teeth as he poured as much power as he could into it. The ache was worse now, and he knew he wouldn’t have been able to do this at all if his stamina-enhancing spell hadn’t still been active, but there was no other choice. He wouldn’t be able to cast this spell a third time if this didn’t work. Although he could have used the energy he’d gathered physically to retain the spell, feeding it into the mental construct that housed its energy in a process similar to the reserve energies stored in his circlet, that simply wasn’t possible when he was already pouring everything he had into the spell’s overall power. Whether he succeeded or failed, this would be the last time he’d be able to try this.
Again, Lex unleashed his dispelling spell at Severance.
Again, it collided with the scythe in a split-second contest of power.
And again it didn’t work, the spell breaking apart as it tried and failed to disjoin Severance’s magic.
Breathing heavily, Lex could only glare at the weapon as it hung there, its continued existence mocking his efforts to destroy it. Slowly, Severance began to circle around them, and Lex knew that it was looking for a way to strike that would allow it to kill Luna without killing him. His heart racing, Lex flattened himself out, trying to cover as much as he could of the mare under him, but he knew it was no use. Luna was larger than he was anyway, and Severance’s speed and precision would be more than adequate to find an opening sufficient to inflict a mortal wound on the alicorn without doing the same to him. Once it did, Luna would die, and there’d be nothing he could do to stop it.
But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. Reaching out with his telekinesis, Lex wrapped the scythe in his aura, not having the strength to augment it again. “Don’t…you…dare…” he rasped, despite knowing that the scythe wouldn’t be intimidated. No one would have been, he knew, since it was obvious that he was nearing his limits, and Lex couldn’t help but note the bitter irony that – at least after that filly had healed him – his attempts to destroy Severance had depleted him worse than his fight against the Royal Sisters.
Worse, he realized an instant later as he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye, said filly and her friends were now on their way there! He could see them trotting toward him, their faces relaxed and their movements unhurried, clearly having no idea of what was occurring with Severance right now. But while none of them looked worried, the prospect of their imminent arrival made Lex’s anxiety skyrocket. If those foals realized that there was a conflict between himself and Severance, they’d try to interfere; after how they’d insisted on joining the battle against the alicorns, Lex had no doubt of that. And while he wasn’t sure if they’d side with him or Severance, either prospect would increase the chances that they’d be injured, or even killed. That could not be allowed to happen, and it was with resolve borne of rising panic that Lex turned his attention back to Severance. “Luna’s already beaten!” he snarled. “Stand down!”
But as sharp as Severance’s blade was, its reply – that mercy was a sin – was blunt. As if to prove the goddess’s approval of her weapon’s words, the barbed wire around Lex’s foreleg twisting ominously, the sharp edges pressing against his skin without cutting. The sensation made Lex grit his teeth, the unsubtle warning being-
Wait…
A warning. The barbed wire hadn’t actually injured him just now; it had only threatened to do so, which meant that he hadn’t actually run afoul of the Night Mare’s ire just yet. But Severance seemed dead-set on finishing Luna off. So if his protesting that was only warranting a warning from the goddess…
Suddenly Lex knew what he had to do.
“Luna has been beaten,” he rumbled again as he stood up, the tension in his voice having been replaced with conviction. Out of his periphery he could see Fruit Crunch and his friends getting closer, close enough that he knew they could hear him now, but he didn’t dare stop. “Her loss isn’t just my victory. It’s also the Night Mare’s.”
His telekinetic grip on Severance was enough to let him hear the weapon’s reply as it denied his claim, saying that he had only laid her low because she’d attacked him first. “That doesn’t matter!” snapped Lex. Off to the side, those five foals had come to a halt, watching the one-sided conversation curiously. “I struck her down while exalting the Night Mare’s name! I demonstrated that Luna isn’t worthy of godhood, while proclaiming that the Night Mare is! I made it clear for everyone to see that Luna is weak, and the Night Mare is strong!” He let that hang in the air for just a moment, and when Severance didn’t reply, Lex continued. “And I have no intention of showing her mercy.”
Turning his back on the scythe, Lex focused his attention to Luna. He had little doubt that if he didn’t levy a serious penalty against her right now, the scythe would do so on its own, and its attempt would be fatal. As much as Lex resented having his hoof forced like this, it was an outcome he could live with; although he hadn’t intended to levy any further penalties against the Royal Sisters for what had happened here – particularly since Severance had instigated this conflict – their refusal to back down despite his calls for peace made punishing them acceptable. Besides, the Night Mare doesn’t seem to care what happens to Celestia, so Luna can be the one to bear the brunt of the consequences for both of their actions.
Pointing his horn at the unconscious mare, Lex called upon his dark magic. At the same time, he made himself begin drawing in additional energy through his body. He knew he had already passed his limit, and that he could only even make the attempt due to the spell he’d cast on himself to boost his vigor, but there was no other choice but to do this. Not if he wanted this curse to work…
Fighting back a scream of pain as he pushed himself further, Lex pulled in more and more power as he concentrated on Luna. The agonies that raced through him then were familiar, feeling as though his organs were on fire even as his head throbbed so badly it felt as though he was being bludgeoned to death. But Lex didn’t stop, focusing even more intently on Luna as he kept pushing himself further. Sombra cursed an entire city and everypony in it! he silently screamed at himself as he kept going, pouring more and more power into his dark magic, directing it at the unconscious alicorn. If he could do that, I CAN DO THIS!
Slowly, her body still hanging limp, Luna rose into the air. Even as she did, a black aura manifested around her, causing the foals around them to cry out in surprise as it thickened and congealed around her body, until she was completely obscured within a dark cocoon. Not letting his concentration lapse, Lex abandoned any semblance of restraint, using everything he’d learned from his sessions examining Sonata, Aria, and Nosey as he forced the dark magic further inward, invading every part of Luna’s body. The blackness surrounded her further, compressing and sinking inward as he forced it into her, not willing to stop until he’d made her absorb it all.
The process took only a few seconds, rather than the hours he’d needed when he’d performed a similar – and yet very different – process on Aria. As soon as it was completed, Lex released power he’d been directing all at once, and collapsed to the ground in a heap, gasping for air. At the same time, the last of the dark magic sank into Luna’s body, and she fell to the ground, still unconscious. Barely noticing as Fruit Crunch and his friends helped him up, each of them peppering him with questions, Lex instead glanced back at Severance, weakly taking hold of it with his telekinesis. “Satisfied?” he spat.
The scythe didn’t answer for a moment, and Lex had just enough time to think that it was going to kill her anyway, before it admitted that it was. Outwardly, Lex’s only response to the thing was to release it from his telekinetic aura with a snort. Inwardly, however, he felt a wave of relief, only barely managing to suppress it as he looked back at what he’d done to Celestia’s sister.
She was smaller now, having lost a few inches of her stature. Her mane and tail – which had previously continued to flutter in the nonexistent breeze of their own accord – had become still, and their sparkling radiance had faded to a plain, dull blue. Most notable, however, were her sides, which were now smooth and lacking in the feathered limbs that had been there before. Compared to how she'd looked previously, her transformation was dramatic enough that Lex, despite the nauseating level of pain assaulting him from how badly he’d strained himself, couldn’t help but feel a flash of perverse pride at what he’d just accomplished.
Luna was no longer an alicorn.
Lex just opened up a whole aisle's worth of canned worms with what he did. And while he did this at great risk to himself, he just showed the ability to unmake the central figures to Equestria's monarchy and by some ambitious individuals jumping to conclusions, he'll be capable of doing the reverse to themselves.
Still, if the guards were awake now, they'd probably faint on the spot after what happened to Luna alongside Feather Duster inside the train station.
Now the main question is, does that actually do or mean anything? Lex might be powerful, but I doubt he could remove the innate magic Luna has. So she would still technically be an alicorn, just without the wings.
Well...shit...
On the upside, anyone below divine level watching this fight with any plans to try to manipulate Lex probably just crapped themselves.
On the downside, Celestia's never gonna forgive him this one, mind manipulation or not, and he's likely to have to deal with the possibility of the mane 6 trying to shove a rainbow up his butt when Twilight gets back from Everglow.
And there's the question of just how deep this transformation goes. Is she just a unicorn in appearance? Or did he actually undo her ascension? Or is it something in between, like her alicornhood is still inside her, just locked away behind Lex's curse?
The problem Lex now has is that he has used all his magic up, saved Luna, and left an unrestricted Severance and a Celestia alone to go Fallout on each other. Especially given Celestia has appeared to see Lex as an unrestrained Evil class Villain the same as all the others. Take out before they can spread to the rest of the world, especially Tirek etc.
Would he even get any XP, Level at all from this?
Welp, how Lex gets out of getting turned into a statue, made to face the wrath of any local gods or cosmic entities, slain, thrown into Tarturus, face the wraith of twilight or starwirl if he ever returned or otherwise punished or killed should be interesting in a chinese curse way.
hum a interesting approach but will it hold up???
In retrospect it shouldn't even be a surprise that Lex's spell failed. Severance is a artefact level magic item. Even with a 9th level spell by pathfinder's rules the chances of successfully destroying such an item are small.
9685655 This is indeed going to send shock waves throughout Equestria. Being able to, well, "de-alicorn" an alicorn? The symbolism alone would be enough to make everypony shiver, since the alicorns are the bedrock of Equestrian society, and have been for over a thousand years. Even more so than trying to take over Equestria, this will have serious repercussions.
One way or another, Lex has just made an indelible mark on Equestria. Let's just hope he's prepared for what comes next.
9685679 I expect questions of "what, precisely, happened?" will be very pertinent going forward. But as for removing her magic or not...well, we've seen plenty of magic that can do that in the course of the series, ranging from Starlight's ability to manipulate cutie marks to Tirek's ability to drain magic. Given how much power Lex was using when he cursed Luna, it's hard to know exactly what he did...but I imagine that Celestia and Luna, and Cadance, Twilight, and a lot of other ponies, will work very hard to find out.
Or, you know, they could just try and figure out a way to have Lex remove his curse.
9685913 You're definitely asking questions that Celestia and Luna will themselves no doubt be asking once they recover. But in the meantime, well, I suspect that you're right about Celestia not forgiving him this. She might be the exemplar of what a pony should be, but she's never been shown to trip over herself with trying to find redemption for Equestria's villains, and I suspect that she'll now put Lex in the "irredeemably evil" category unless given a very good reason to change her mind down the line.
As for what will happen with Twilight and friends when they find out about this...well, we'll just have to wait and see.
9685956 With regards to Celestia and Severance, the latter doesn't seem to care about the former, and the former is in no position to do much of anything at the moment. Of course, that probably won't change once she does recover; after all, Lex just defeated her and Luna in a fight, without using his artifact, and was able to level a curse of unimaginable consequences at Luna, which seems likely to have taken away at least some of her powers. So I don't think that Celestia will start another fight with Lex so easily.
But yes, Lex will get XP from this fight, as will the Night Mare's Knights.
9685961 He's certainly avoided any immediate repercussions of his falling out with the princesses. But there's no way this won't generate waves, some of which will likely turn into a backlash...
9686018 In terms of what he did to Luna being itself undone? Celestia and the other alicorns will doubtlessly try to find out, but how successful they'll be remains to be seen.
9686285 Lex's attempt to turn a 3rd-level spell dispel magic into a 9th-level mage's disjunction was always iffy. The major issue was that he has the ability to dump (Constitution modifier) levels of metamagic that he knows onto a spell that he's casting, without having to pay for the increased levels, up to (Constitution modifier) times per day. His normal Constitution is 14, but he has a permanent +2 enhancement bonus. He also used a spell to grant himself a +6 enhancement bonus at the start of this fight, which doesn't stack with his normal +2 bonus. So he effectively had a Constitution of 20, which grants a +5 modifier.
That would get his dispel magic up to 8th level. As for that last level, what he tried to do was use the Compact metamagic theorem (Eclipse: The Codex Persona, p. 57) to take voluntary damage in exchange for raising it up another level. But that's...not really allowable. Lex is a preparatory spellcaster, and doesn't have the Glory modifier (Eclipse, p. 60) for Compact the way he does for the Amplify metamagic theorem (Eclipse, p. 56), which is how he's able to spontaneously increase his spells in the first place. An alternate idea was that he was utilizing +6 levels of amplification metamagic, and paying for the last level of it via Glory, since that would be spontaneous, but that's an extremely dubious explanation; it essentially bends the rules just short of where they'd break, and isn't something that the GM would really allow.
And, of course, there's the question as to whether or not a dispel magic spell, amplified to that level, can function as a mage's disjunction. Just because you have the necessary metamagic doesn't mean that a lower-level spell, increased to the same level as another spell, will be as good as that spell. After all, a maximized cure light wounds spell is nowhere near as good as a cure critical wounds, even though both are 4th-level effects.
Of course, even if Lex had succeeded at that, he'd only have had a percent-chance of destroying Severance equal to his caster level, which is 13, and so is basically a one-in-eight chance of success. So really, the entire thing was a longshot attempt to make a longshot attempt. (Whoops, that should be 14, since he has that orange prism ioun stone, something I forgot to take into account in my other previous comments where I said he'd only have a 13% chance of success.)
Now, as the "GM" for this story, there's a certain amount of lucky die rolls I'm willing to accept with regards to what the characters try, as well as certain attempted actions that require some adjudication when they move into areas the rules don't clearly cover. But if they want to regularly pull off lucky rolls, then they're going to need to pick up an ability that lets them do so, and wild attempts to manipulate the system simply won't fly. Lex's attempt to destroy Severance was a good one, but it's not much of a surprise that it didn't work.
I'm not sure exactly what Lex has done here, though I admire his ability to rationalize to himself that Luna "deserves" this punishment as it solves his own dilemma of how to stop Severance from killing her. Lex is becoming more flexible already!
Not sure what Lex did here. I don't think even a Greater Bestow Curse would work, despite what Lex was thinking. It seems more like this might be something like Energy Drain, and with Luna pretty likely to fail the Fort save this is similar to a bunch of negative levels. If alicorn is a something that only characters who go through certain experiences acquire, then it makes sense that it functions somewhat like a prestige class, and Luna just dropped below the minimum levels needed to qualify.
Props for Lex to use Severence's programming against it. I always love it when protagonists pull those kind of shenanigans on robots/constructs. This also suggests that Severance doesn't really have any direct means of communication with the Night Mare. He's going off a few standing orders. Thinking back, this fits a lot with what we've seen of Severance's slightly robotic personality.
I believe Severance has no idea about Cadance's capabilities, let alone the Elements of Harmony. Whatever was done to Luna, I suspect Cadance might be able to fix it, and I'm extremely confident a Rainbow Blast will fix it (my guess is that an EOH blast combines something like a Heal, Break Enchantment, and Greater Restoration).
The question is, will Celestia and Luna be smart enough to learn from taking a spanking, heal up and regroup with the Mane 6 before trying to take on Lex again, or is Celestia going to be dumb and try for immediate vengeance?
9686743 With regards to Luna "deserving" this punishment, it's not so much a rationalization as it is Lex utilizing his prerogative (as one who would rule) to decide what justice is, in terms of handing out criminal punishments. Lex had always thought that the alicorns deserved to be punished, it's just that he had previously determined that he was in no position to deliver it at the moment, and so he had initially been leaning towards not doing anything more to either Celestia or Luna. Severance's insistence on killing Luna (and Lex's inability to stop it) made that a non-starter, however; Lex wasn't going to let another pony die under his watch. So instead, he decided to exercise his right to punish Luna for attacking him in response to Silhouette's death (under the auspices of his having told her that he hadn't sanctioned Severance's killing Silhouette). While it wasn't his first choice of handling what the alicorns did, his mantle of being the highest authority there means that he gets to decide how criminals are punished. Hence why this chapter noted that he could live with this; he wasn't contravening his moral code.
With regards to Lex's cursing Luna specifically, it's important to note that he dumped a lot of power into what he did. Normally, his use of curses is via the elfshot witchcraft power (Eclipse, p. 110), in this case paying 3 Power for a permanent curse. By itself, that's not as powerful as bestow curse; my guess would be around 2nd-level spell on the sorcerer/wizard spell list (compared to bestow curse being a 4th-level effect), but 1st-level wouldn't be unreasonable either. Since he's using a 3rd-level variant of bear's endurance (for a +6 enhancement bonus to his Constitution) to get his Constitution score up to 20, he was able to dump +5 levels of Amplify metamagic (Eclipse, p. 56) onto that via having the Glory modifier (Eclipse, p. 60) for Amplify. (He didn't technically need to do that, because witchcraft powers are spontaneous rather than preparatory, but it let him avoid paying an increase Power cost to use it, since he was starting to run low.)
On top of that, he also added his Compact metamagic theorem (Eclipse, p. 57) onto his curse. This was a bit trickier, since that's metamagic to reduce the level of a spell in exchange for paying a price for doing so. Technically, that won't help you if you don't know a higher-level version of a spell or power to begin with. However, unlike how d20 System spells are discrete effects with set levels, witchcraft powers are fairly flexible in what they can do, and don't have scaled effects for the same power (mostly). To that end, I made a call to allow for their powers to be increased via Compact so long as the corresponding price(s) are paid. That technically reverses the order of things (in that it pays a price to effectively raise a lower-level power to an equivalent higher level, rather than paying a price to lower a higher-level power to an equivalently lower level), but since it comes out to the same overall result in terms of levels, fit with the overall nature of Lex's "dark magic" (i.e. witchcraft), and made for a good part of the story, I allowed it. In this case, it gave Lex another +3 levels in exchange for taking:
(Note that it's iffy if you can stack multiple modifiers that have -1 level each; in this case, I made the decision that it was, given their cumulative effect.) The good news is that he still had more than 5 Power left after paying for that use of elfshot (thanks to using Glory with Amplify, rather than using it normally), so he didn't immediately lose consciousness (since otherwise he'd already have been fatigued). The bad news is that, in exchange for allowing him to use Compact in a way that it doesn't technically allow for it, I set the "level of the spell used" as being the modified spell level after Lex used Amplify on it. Since I held elfshot to be level 2, with +5 levels of Amplify, that meant that Lex took 7d6 hit points of damage (calling it 24) and 7d4 points of temporary ability damage (calling it 17). That's a lot.
Since he never takes ability damage to his mental ability scores if he could help it, that was distributed as follows: 6 points of Strength damage, 6 points of Dexterity damage, and 5 points of Constitution damage. That last one means that he suffered a 33 hit point reduction (since his normal Constitution is 14 with a permanent +2 enhancement bonus, and he's 11th level (since +2 ECL template doesn't count for hit point determination)). That's on top of his 24 hit points just now; remember that his (normal) total is 86 hit points. Given that he already had some hit point damage (Cleansweep healed a fair amount, but not all of it), laying this curse very nearly killed him. (Note that these totals aren't taking into account the net +4 Constitution bonus he gained from his 3rd-level bear's endurance.)
Of course, he's now also exhausted, which includes a -6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity, but those can't render him unconscious, even if he effectively has Strength and Dexterity scores of 1 right now. That, and he already had some ability damage from using his Skill Stunt (Eclipse, p. 44) with Use Magic Device to enhance his circlet to peer at Celestia's ability to use magic the previous evening (2 points of Strength damage, 1 of which he then healed because he slept).
The upshot is that, although it very nearly killed him, Lex got to lay down a curse that was effectively a 10th-level spell on Luna. "Effectively" meaning that effects modified by metamagic tend to not be quite as potent as powers built to a particular level (hence my note in a previous comment about why a maximized cure light wounds isn't as effective as a cure critical wounds, even though they're both 4th level). Even so, however, he's still hit her with an effect that likely surpasses what greater bestow curse can do (as an 8th-level spell effect on the sorcerer/wizard list).
As for the specifics regarding what exactly the curse does, and what would work to remove it, well...that remains unknown at this point. But I will say that what you've mentioned regarding the Elements of Harmony brings up how hard it is to gauge what we see on the show, since it's made no real attempt to be consistent with itself. A lot of people tend to presume that the Elements of Harmony are major artifacts with a caster level of 20+, something I'm not unsympathetic to, but that's still presumptive. Also, note that at this time (in this story's timeline) the Elements have been returned to the Tree of Harmony, and while we now know that taking them out temporarily wouldn't hurt it, at this point I don't believe the Mane Six knew that. Plus, the Rainbow Power appear to have been a one-off thing, since we've never seen it again (outside of Luna's nightmare in Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? (season five, episode thirteen)). So there might be an issue even if Twilight and her friends are recalled from Everglow...where they're searching for Pinkie Pie, Diamond Tiara, and Silver Spoon anyway, along with a way to cure Applejack of her alignment change thanks to Severance.
So yeah, there's a lot that we'll just have to wait and see how it unfolds...