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// 296 - Something Unforeseeable 
// Story: Lateral Movement 
// by Alzrius 
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Lex did his best to ignore the crowd of ponies as he continued to gesture and chant.

They’d formed a little while ago, drawn by the sound of his upraised voice as he’d known they would be. Fortunately, none of them seemed particularly inclined to try and get a close look at what he was doing, allowing Sonata and Nosey to keep them at a safe distance. Still, their presence put Lex on edge, making him briefly regret his decision to do this outside and not in the train station. 

He pushed the thought away, knowing that he’d made the correct decision. In terms of managing the risk of the ritual being interrupted, being outside carried a greater level of exposure, but less chance of something unexpected happening. Out here, there was no possibility of a lantern being kicked over and starting a fire, or a pipe bursting and flooding the place, or some other freak accident occurring. That was unlikely in the extreme, of course, but Lex had no intention of taking any chances where he could possibly avoid them, regardless of how improbable they were. Out here the only issue was crowd-control, and Sonata and Nosey were on that.

Of course, Lex knew that something truly unforeseeable was always a possibility – the way he’d been so completely blindsided by Xiriel was still fresh in his thoughts – but there simply wasn’t anything else he could do to control the local environment. Virtually none of his defensive spells had a duration sufficient to see him through the hours-long ritual, and the few that did were impractical for this particular circumstance. Placing an alarm around himself or Aria in case anypony got too close, for instance, would have been pointless, nor would placing a ward against scrying on her do anything. As much as it galled him, Lex had been forced to admit that there wasn’t anything he could do should a truly dedicated adversary (for whom the walls of the train station, he knew, wouldn’t have been an impediment anyway) decide they wanted to interrupt the ritual. 

If that happened, only Sonata would be able to provide any sort of serious obstacle, something Lex had found less than reassuring. He’d almost offered her some of his magic items, but reluctantly decided to keep them for himself; if someone attacked him from a distance, they’d help prevent a ranged attack from making contact. That, and he didn’t trust Sonata not to become distracted if he gave her the floating gemstones again.

Severance, he knew, would have been a far more potent guardian, but Lex had elected to have the scythe where it was, watching the western edge of the camp just in case there were any lingering ghouls or other horrors slithering out of Vanhoover. The possibility seemed increasingly remote now, but Lex was determined not to compromise the only other defender the camp would have while he and Sonata were preoccupied. That…and he couldn’t rule out the possibility that Severance’s very presence might disrupt the ritual. The sheer amount of magical energy that the weapon radiated was intense, and might have been enough to affect how Lex would be bending the ambient magical energy around Aria, making a difficult process even harder. Better, he’d decided, for it to remain on the other side of the camp.

Of course, none of this would have been an issue if he’d designed this as a spell in the first place, rather than a ritual. 

That was only to be expected, of course. Although the alternative format wouldn’t have changed how long this procedure would have taken, the consequences of disrupting a spell were far, far less prone to catastrophe than a ritual was. Lex had made sure, when designing his thaumaturgical spellcasting, to account for the possibility of something going wrong while a spell was being actively utilized. Specifically, when constructing the thought-forms that contained the magical energy within his mind, he’d made sure to conceptualize their structure in such a way that if they were breached or otherwise improperly actualized, they’d collapse in on themselves. The magical energy would be released in a diffuse scatter too widely distributed to have any actual effect. At least, that was what was supposed to happen; in theory a miscast spell could still have unintended consequences, but it was highly unlikely. Like a building undergoing a controlled demolition, the risk to himself and others was minimal.

But a ritual was different. The procedure manipulated the magical energy in the surrounding environment directly, without being contained within a conceptual structure. If he lost control of it, there was no telling how all of that power would manifest before it dissipated back into the local environment. But since Aria was at the center of it, she would almost certainly bear the brunt of whatever happened, and Lex knew that he’d likely be affected as well.

In spite of all that, Lex had still decided to enact Aria’s transmogrification as a ritual, rather than a spell, due to what he’d learned over the last few nights of examining the girls.

The most notable aspect of what he’d discovered had been when he’d looked at the magical pathways in Sonata’s body. With Nosey serving as a control specimen, he’d been able to examine the subtle differences between how her body and Sonata’s utilized magical energy. On their own, those differences were negligible, and could have been chalked up to the fact that Nosey was a unicorn and Sonata wasn’t, except that he’d been able to take what he’d observed and compare it to how the magical channels in Aria’s body functioned. That had been sufficient to let him hypothesize how Sonata had gone from being a Siren like her sister into being a pony like Nosey. Even better, that hypothesis tacitly endorsed his theory that the Sirens were themselves a type of pony, due to the gemstone in Aria’s chest having magical pathways that were startlingly similar to those in Nosey and Sonata’s cutie marks.

But what had been most notable had been what Lex hadn’t seen. Specifically, there had been no remnant – not even a ghost of a clue – as to what had changed Sonata’s body in the first place. He hadn’t expected to find an extant spell actively keeping her in her current form, certainly. But he had expected to find something, some trace of whatever magic had changed her from looking like Aria into how she was now. Certainly something more helpful than “it just happened,” which was the singularly unhelpful way that she’d described her transformation. But there’d been nothing, or at least nothing that he could detect with his enhanced circlet. 

While that had been vexing at the time, Lex had come to realize that there was an unexpected benefit to the mystery: if he couldn’t figure out how Sonata had been changed into a pony, then it was virtually impossible that anyone else would ever be able to undo that transformation. Certainly, some other polymorphic magic could be leveled against her, but such things could be countered in their own right, returning her to her original body…which for all intents and purposes was the body she had now. Whatever had changed her into her current state was not only permanent, in other words, it was irreversible.

That was a status that Lex had decided needed to be procured for Aria as well.

That, however, ruled out using a spell in order to change her. Spellcasting – the act of internalizing magical energy before directing it in a controlled release – was dependent on molding the gathered energy in such a way that its utilization made it take a specific effect. It was why a spell to create light, when cast, resulted in a source of illumination rather than creating a fireball. For most unicorns the process was physical, figuring out how to move the energy through their body’s magical channels and out of themselves via their horn. For Lex, it was conceptual, employing advanced thought-forms that were far more intricate than what his physical body could replicate. Sacerdotal thaumaturgy – the divinely granted magic that Cozy and Cloudbank had used – operated on a similar principle, albeit with far less understanding of what they were doing, since the energy was arranged by their deity and not themselves. But in all cases, the energy was configured in a specific way.

Once the spell discharged, that configuration lingered as a remnant in the local environment’s ambient magical energy. Like a hoofprint in the sand, it manifested in the form of an aura, still registering in the magical spectrum even after the spell had been discharged. Also like a hoofprint, it eventually faded over time, washed away as the magical energy that pervaded all things eventually eroded it down to nothing.

Except Lex wasn’t certain that last part was completely true. While an expired spell’s lingering aura eventually faded beyond what he could see, when he used his circlet to peer into the magical spectrum, his recent experiment with the girls had confirmed that it was possible to increase the acuity of what could be detected that way. This meant that – in theory at least – it was possible to detect an expired spell’s aura even after a significant amount of time had passed; not just minutes or hours, but days or even weeks, if not longer. Not just detected, but examined, studied…and undone. After all, if there were spells specifically designed to act as universal counterspells – like the spell he’d used to undo the physical enhancement spell that green dragon had used on itself, or, Lex knew, the more powerful version Xiriel had used against him during their fight – then it wasn’t impossible to create a spell that not only countered extant spells, but analyzed a trace aura and shaped itself accordingly to undo what the now-faded spell had done.

But Sonata had no such trace aura in her body’s magical channels, no matter how hard Lex had looked.

That was why he’d gone with making a ritual for changing Aria into a pony. Rituals, which were never internalized and were shaped on-the-fly to produce the desired effects, left no lingering aura. While that effect might leave a detectable clue – a ritual to set something on fire would still leave scorch marks – the direction of the energy itself didn’t result in any sort of magical signature. If spells were hoofprints in the sand, then rituals were waves that were simply a little bigger than other waves. There was no aura left to examine, and no way to formulate any sort of after-the-fact reversal. Aria’s transformation would be like Sonata’s: irrevocable.

After everything she’d gone through, she deserved that much from him, Lex knew. Her outburst before he’d begun had made it quite clear that she’d suffered greatly because of what had happened to her, and as far as he was concerned her sentence had been disproportionate to her crime. Deliberate mutilation was cruel, and cruelty was not just, even when presented in the guise of a criminal conviction. This alteration to her body, and the restoration of her voice that would be as a side effect of that, should be as stable as he could possibly make it. It would mean a period of heightened risk during the actual procedure, but that was acceptable. He’d be here, along with Sonata and Nosey, to minimize that risk, and once it was over Aria wouldn’t ever have to be afraid of going back to how she was now.

This was the right course of action. Lex was certain of it.

With a sharp gesture, he moved the ritual into its next phase, his voice rising. In front of him, Aria’s body slowly rose into the air of its own accord, the crowd gasping at the sight. Lex ignored them, continuing to direct the energy as Aria began to glow softly, light enveloping her until she was shining, unable to be seen beneath the radiance. More than a few of the nearby ponies turned away or shielded their eyes, but Lex kept his gaze on her now-luminous form, knowing that the light was a byproduct of the energy he was directing into her body, making it roll back her physical growth. Focusing intently, he made sure that every motion, every word he said was clear and precise, knowing that if he faltered even a little-

“Make way! Make way for the princesses!”

Years of discipline kept Lex from so much as flinching at the pronouncement, but it didn’t diminish the shock he felt. The voice wasn't one he recognized, but out of his periphery he could see several ponies in the crowd moving, parting to make room for an unfamiliar pair of pegasus stallions. Or at least, somewhat unfamiliar; their golden armor was unmistakeable, identifying them as members of the Royal Guard. And judging from how they weren’t crystal ponies, how they’d said “princesses” rather than “princess,” and that he’d never witnessed nor heard of Twilight Sparkle having a detachment of guards of her own, it was easy to tell who they were announcing.

Lex had known that something truly unforeseeable was always a possibility, and now it was happening.

Celestia and Luna had come to Vanhoover.