“Sonata,” barked Lex imperiously as he marched into the train station. “I have need of your talen-”
“Shh!” Sonata glanced at him just long enough to shush him before turning back to Nosey, who was looking at him with a slightly abashed expression for some reason. “We’re just getting to the good part!”
Being so completely dismissed left Lex momentarily nonplussed, and it took him a few seconds to recover. “Listen to me, there’s a situati-”
But he was again cut off as Sonata let out a loud groan, giving him an exasperated look. “Oh. My. Gosh. Is this something that totes has to be taken care of right now? Like, right now right now?”
Lex frowned at her uncharacteristic obstinacy. “Sonata, this camp needs to begin erecting defensive measures immediately. While the threat isn’t definitively imminent, there’s still a considerable degree of urgency.”
“Okay, I think that means ‘no,’ right?” she huffed. “So just hold your horses for a few minutes while Nosey catches me up.” She gave him an irritated look before turning back to Nosey…only to whip her head around to face him again an instant later, her annoyance suddenly replaced by amusement. “Oh wow, I totes made a funny! Haha! ‘Hold your horses’! Get it?” She grinned at him, clearly expecting a favorable reaction, and her smile dimmed slightly when his only reply was a blank look. “‘Cause we’re ponies,” she explained, her mirth diminishing. Clearly flailing, Sonata turned her attention back toward Nosey. “…and, you know, ponies. Horses. See why it’s funny?” But Nosey’s only reaction was a pained smile, and Sonata sighed in defeat a moment later. “…nevermind. Anyway, keep going.”
“Ah…” Nosey’s eyes flickered between Sonata and where Lex was standing behind her, uncertainty written all over her face. “This can wait until later. If there’s stuff you need to be doing now, I don’t want to keep you.”
“You can’t stop there!” protested Sonata before Lex could say take advantage of Nosey’s hesitancy. “That’s, like, a totes cliffjumper! I wanna know what happened next!” She moved slightly, so that she was blocking Nosey’s view of Lex. “C’mon, keep going! So there you were. Lex had just walked you outside the camp, and asked where you – the real you – were, and that monster, Cereal, said it had killed you…”
Lex considered interrupting again, but he couldn’t muster up the effort necessary to do so. As much as it galled him to waste more time, wasting what little energy he had left was even worse, and as loathe as he was to admit it, Sonata wasn’t wrong. It was unlikely that the few minutes it would take for Nosey to convey what had happened would prove to be critical. Besides, he thought to himself, I can still put this time to good use. Moving to one of the nearby benches, Lex climbed onto it and sat down before turning his attention to his saddlebags, fishing out one of the magical gemstones that he’d taken from Xiriel after the fight. Picking up the scarlet and blue sphere in his telekinesis, he activated his circlet’s ability to view the magical spectrum. Now was as good a time as any to start identifying what these things did…
“W-well, um…as soon as Xiriel,” she shuddered as she said the name of the monster that had hurt her so badly, knowing that she wouldn’t have been able to without Sonata’s magic calming her down, “said that it had killed me, it attacked Lex, using its magic to create acid mist right on top of him.”
“Wait, just like the dragon?!” asked Sonata, her eyes widening.
“Uh-huh,” nodded Nosey. “It even mentioned that, since it made me tell it everything before…” Her ears folded back as she said that, glancing around the interior of the train station. Right there. Right over there had been where Block Party – she hadn’t known that he was just a puppet for Xiriel then – had stood, casually asking her questions and listening as she told him everything he wanted to know, not realizing that he’d enchanted her. The result had been that she’d eagerly offered up not only information about her friends, but even the most personal, intimate details of her own life, not knowing that monster was going to use them against- Stop it! she screamed at herself mentally. Stop it stop it stop it!
Wrenching her gaze back toward Sonata, Nosey could see the concern building on her friend’s face. But for some reason that just made her feel worse, and all of a sudden she didn’t want to be asked if she was okay, quickly plunging ahead. “And, um, it knew that wouldn’t kill Lex. That he would turn into shadow and drop into the ground. But it wasn’t trying to seriously kill him anyway; it taunted him about the others, trying to make him mad. It kept talking to me while it was doing that, saying that Lex didn’t know I was still alive…that it was going to trick him into killing me…”
Lex glanced over at Nosey sharply. He hadn’t known that!
“Go on,” urged Sonata, clearly captivated by the tale. “What happened then?”
“Then Lex reappeared, and he was furious. He cast a spell, and…” She trailed off as she remembered what happened then. Even with Sonata’s magic keeping her artificially calm, the emotions were still fresh in her mind, and recalling them so soon after what had happened was almost overwhelming. “And I thought that he’d been tricked, and that I was going to die. I was so scared, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even close my eyes. But then…then I heard Lex say something else, and I knew he hadn’t been fooled.”
Sonata couldn’t help but fidget at the dramatic pause, hanging on every word. “What? What’d he say?”
Nosey nodded. “He said ‘give her back. Give me Nosey back.’ And just like that, I was free, Xiriel thrown out of me.” She shifted in place, moving just enough so that she could see Lex around Sonata. “I’d given up all hope, but he’d managed to see through everything and found a way to rescue me.”
“Wow!” Sonata all but squealed the word, glancing back to shoot an excited grin at Lex before returning her attention to Nosey. “What happened then?”
Lex, however, didn’t notice Sonata’s pleased grin. Nor did he see Nosey’s looking at him as she continued to speak, doggedly keeping his eyes on each magical gemstone as he examined them in turn, gritting his teeth all the while. Far from being pleased, Nosey’s recounting of his fight with the belier was instead making him acutely uncomfortable. As infuriating as everypony else’s unjust loathing toward him was, it was still something he knew how to handle, due to how often it had happened to him over the course of his life. Hearing Nosey now, listening to the open admiration in her voice as she described the battle, was an alien experience. The last time anything like that had happened had been when Sonata had proudly proclaimed him to be a dragonslayer in front of the ponies of Tall Tale, and their cheering and applauding had left him similarly dumbstruck.
That Nosey wasn’t in possession of all the facts only made it worse. Between her having lost consciousness during the course of the fight, and her inability to know what had happened with his shadow, Nosey had come away with a skewed perspective on the battle. To hear her tell it, he had brilliantly managed to outmaneuver the devil at every turn, seeing through each of its stratagems and countering them with penetrating insight and unmatched magical skill. There was nothing in her story about his having been panicked or helpless. Her throwing him the creature’s own magical gemstones was barely even mentioned. The injuries he’d sustained had all been calculated sacrifices on his part, endured deliberately so that he could cast the wound-transference spell to turn Xiriel’s own bloodthirstiness back on it in a stroke of poetic justice.
Nosey’s story made him sound like a hero.
That realization brought a wave of guilt with it, and for a moment Lex almost told her how the fight had really gone. How he had wildly underestimated Xiriel’s strength, that his battle plans had all been foiled by the resilient monster, and that he’d won by what amounted to little more than a stroke of good fortune. That because he’d fought so ineptly, the creature had not only been able to injure her repeatedly, but had tortured her practically right in front of him when it had shoved her leg into the acid mist. The very idea that she was grateful to him for just how badly he’d bungled the entire affair was a knife in his gut, twisting with each word of praise that spilled from her lips.
And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to correct her. He had only just realized that Nosey was his friend; that she was somepony who mattered to him for personal, rather than idealistic, reasons. The guilt of knowing that her admiration for him was misplaced was far and away preferable to seeing it be replaced with scorn or disappointment. And he had no doubt that’s what would happen if she knew how that fight had really unfolded; after all, it was how he felt about it.
Besides, it’s not like I’m deceiving her. She came to those erroneous conclusions about me all on her own. There’s no ethical mandate that I correct her mistakes with regard to her evaluation of what happened. The justification was paper-thin, and its nature as a rationalization was utterly transparent, but it was still sufficient to satisfy his moral framework, albeit only barely.
“…and then we came back here, and ran into you, Cozy, and Aisle,” finished Nosey.
For a moment Sonata just stared at her, her eyes wide and her jaw slack at everything she’d just been told. After several seconds she shook her head, blinking rapidly. “I can’t believe all that stuff happened and I had no idea! I mean, I was right here the entire time, but I…wait…hang on a sec…” She frowned as something occurred to her, doing some hard thinking before her eyes widened in horror. “So that devil thing fooled me too?! Like, when I was talking to you that morning when Block Party died, that wasn’t you?!” Nosey didn’t have a chance to answer before Sonata pulled her into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry! I can’t believe I didn’t realize what happened to you! I’m the worst friend ever!”
“Sonata, it’s oka-”
But the other mare wasn’t listening, releasing her and instantly turning around to face Lex. “And I’m the worst girlfriend ever too!” she wailed. “You were trying to figure out something super important, and I totes distracted you for being mean to Nosey when she wasn’t even Nosey!” She practically threw herself at him then, almost knocking him over as she embraced him. “I’m so, so sorry!”
Barely managing to remain upright, Lex gingerly put a foreleg around her as he hugged her back, closing his eyes. His girlfriend’s affection was a welcome respite from how terrible he felt listening to Nosey, and he spent a long moment indulging in it before speaking. “While I appreciate the sentiment, your recrimination is unwarranted. That creature’s deception was unparalleled. You couldn’t possibly have seen through it.” It seemed important to let her know that; as the one in charge, that particular failure was reserved for him and him alone.
“Yeah,” sniffled Sonata, breaking their embrace, “but I-, oops!” The exclamation came from her mouth just as the gemstone she’d accidentally nudged hit the floor, the orange prism clattering as it hit the ground. “Great, and now I’m being a major klutz too. Sorry!” She bent down to pick up the gem, but her hoof had barely made contact with it when she stopped, examining it with sudden interest. “Hey, is this one of those gem thingies that monster had?”
Nosey nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know what exactly they do, but they obviously did something.”
“That one grants mild improvement with regards to the direction and utilization of magical energies,” explained Lex. “Although it can’t imbue magical aptitude where none exists, it can still allow-”
“Hang on a sec,” interrupted Sonata, “I wanna try something.” Lifting the gem in her hoof, she tossed it up slightly…and giggled as the gem began to orbit her head. “Oh my gosh! That’s adorable! It’s like a tiny little moon!” She began to spin in place, trying to keep the gem directly in front of her, causing it to whirl faster as it tried to complete its revolution.
“Actually, its design is intriguing,” noted Lex. “Most magic items that enhance their users need to be in physical contact with them to-”
“Whew whew!” laughed Sonata, making what sounded like an appropriate sound effect as she kept trying to keep up with the gemstone’s orbit. On a whim she reached up to bat at it, and the gem deftly avoided the obstruction in its flight path, adjusting its orbit accordingly and earning a squeal of amusement from Sonata. “Look look look! It wants to keep flying!” Rearing up on her hind legs, she waved her fore-hooves at the gemstone, which began to bob and weave desperately to avoid her fumbling. Lurching forward, Sonata began to stumble around the train station as she pawed wildly at the shiny rock, laughing all the while.
Lex could do nothing but stare, utterly aghast at his girlfriend’s undignified behavior. A snort of amusement drew his attention, and he glanced over at where Nosey was covering her mouth with one hoof, trying not to laugh as she watched the one-mare show. The sight made Lex roll his eyes, putting the other gemstones away.
It was time to get back to work.