The stunned silence that reigned in the wake of Lex’s pronouncement was finally broken by the sound of Sonata’s laughter.
“Oh wow!” she chuckled. “Okay, you totes had me for a second there! I mean, I actually thought you were serious! Whew!” She punctuated that last part by wiping her hoof across her forehead in an exaggerated manner. “Who says this guy doesn’t have a sense of humor, right?” she snickered, nudging Aria.
But unlike Sonata, Aria wasn’t laughing. “Y-yeah…right…” The cause of her concern wasn’t hard to figure out: despite Sonata’s attempt at levity, Lex’s expression was devoid of anything that remotely resembled mirth.
Nor was he content to allow Sonata to misinterpret his statement. “I’m in no way joking, Sonata.”
“Oh come on!” she giggled. “Don’t say that!”
Lex sighed. “Sonata…”
“Don’t say that,” she repeated, her grin smaller now.
“For what you’ve done,” Lex continued, “the two of you-”
“Don’t say that…” interrupted Sonata, and this time all trace of disbelief was gone from her voice, openly pleading now.
But Lex was pitiless. “The two of you will be permanently turned to stone,” he finished.
Blinking back tears, Sonata swayed in place, looking like she was about to collapse. “Lex…come on…y-you can’t-”
“So that’s it then?!” In contrast to her sister’s growing heartbreak, Aria’s expression was a mixture of fear and anger. “We mess up one time – one time! – and you’re going to kill us both, just like that?!”
“This is not the first time either of you have made serious errors in judgment,” shot back Lex immediately. “Only the most egregious. Moreover, petrification is not death. Being turned to stone does not compromise your body’s functionality; it merely arrests it, placing you in a state of suspended animation. From your perspective, it will be no different than entering a dreamless, never-ending sleep.”
“But…but…” Making no attempt to hide her distress, Sonata flailed for something, anything, to change Lex’s mind. “But what’ll you do without us here? Who’ll be your spokespony without me? Or guard you at night without Aria? Or…or…”
“I’ll navigate whatever issues come up in the wake of your sentence being carried out,” replied Lex evenly.
“So that’s what losing us means to you?” hissed Aria, her face now twisted with hate. “That without us here, you’ll just ‘navigate whatever issues come up’?! Last night you were telling me how much you love me, how sorry you were that you hurt me, and today you’re not just getting ready to throw me and Sonata away, but kill us altogether – oh, excuse me, ‘put us in a state of never-ending sleep’ – and your only reaction to losing us is that there’ll be ‘issues that come up’?!” She raised a hoof then, pointing at him balefully. “I thought that wretched queen who took my voice away was a cold-hearted monster, but you’re worse! At least she didn’t make me fall in love with her before she got rid of me!”
Lex’s response was to simply look at her impassively.
Somehow, that infuriated Aria more than if he’d said something heartless or cruel. “WELL?! SAY SOMETHING ALREADY!”
His eyes alternating between where Sonata was starting to sob quietly and Aria’s towering wrath, Lex’s composure didn’t waver. “The sentence will be carried out at the earliest available opportunity.”
Almost choking on her fury, Aria called the deadliest spell she knew to mind. “You’re not going to get that opportunity, you-”
“W-wait!” hiccupped Sonata, throwing herself at her sister when Aria began to sing the words to a spell. “Aria, wait!”
“Lemme go, Sonata!” roared Aria. “If he thinks I’m just going to stand here and let him turn us to stone then he’s got another thing coming!” Struggling to get out of her sister’s grasp, Aria shot Lex a vicious look. “Last time I wasn’t being serious, but this time will be different, do you hear me?! THIS TIME WILL BE-”
“ARIA STOP!” Holding onto her sister for dear life, Sonata lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t think he’s being serious!”
The words made Aria freeze in place, paralyzed by the sliver of hope that her sister’s words sent through her. “What…?”
“I don’t think he’s being serious!” repeated Sonata, voice still a whisper. Risking a look back at where Lex was continuing to watch them calmly, she swallowed nervously before continuing, desperately hoping that she was right. “Look at him! He already said a bunch of times that he was going to turn us to stone, but he hasn’t actually done anything! None of that chanting or waving a hoof in the air or anything! His eyes haven’t even changed color!”
“I…” Aria’s rage began to ebb as she realized Sonata was right. “S-so what’re you saying?” she whispered back, glancing between Lex and Sonata. “That this has something to do with all of those weird rules he has about everything?”
“I don’t know! But there’s got to be some sort of reason for it! Lex, like, never hesitates when he says he’s going to do something!” Sonata’s voice was frantic, desperately clinging to the idea that maybe there was some way out of their current predicament.
“Or maybe he’s just waiting for us to let our guard down,” muttered Aria, no longer sure what to believe. “Maybe this is all just some vicious, spiteful game he’s playing.”
“Lex doesn’t play games!” Desperately searching for some sort of clue, Sonata looked back at Lex, raising her voice back to normal levels. “Why stone?” she asked abruptly.
His brow furrowed slightly. “What?”
“Why stone?” repeated Sonata. “I mean, I know you don’t kill ponies, but why not – I dunno – why not banish us to some other world or take away all our memories or change us into muskrats or something?”
“Because petrification is the apex of responsibly confining someone without causing them to suffer,” answered Lex, the reply coming easily now that he knew what she was asking. “Banishment means being sent to a remote location, which impedes the state’s duty of care to prevent unforeseen dangers from befalling someone so condemned as well as keeping third parties from interfering with their sentence. Likewise, removing someone’s memories is not only a grotesque violation of an individual’s sense of self, but does nothing to remove their intrinsic capabilities, and so accomplishes comparatively little in terms of mitigating whatever danger they pose to themselves or others. Similarly, polymorphing someone is both cruel and irresponsible; even leaving aside the potential conservation of non-physically-dependent magical abilities, the effect on their identity-”
“Great, wonderful, so you think that turning people into rocks is the best way to punish them whenever they do something wrong,” snapped Aria. Lex’s arcane explanation had done nothing to calm her nerves. “I’m amazed this place isn’t full of statues already!”
Lex’s eyes narrowed. “It’s far from an ideal punishment. The total inhibition of cognitive function means that its use as a method of reform is completely nil. Hence why the use of petrification as an instrument of criminal justice is only allowable when the subject in question cannot be put to death but is too dangerous to be allowed to retain any autonomy whatsoever.”
Sonata bit her lip, trying to parse what Lex was saying. There was some sort of clue in there, she felt sure. Some sort of hint that he was trying to give them about why he was talking about turning them to stone without actually doing it. But even though she was already thinking so hard that she could feel her brain starting to hurt, nothing was coming to her. It was in desperation that she threw another question out there, just trying to keep him talking before he decided to act on what he was saying. “So, um, do we get to choose what pose we’ll be in when you do it?”
Aria gave her a look of disbelief. “What does that matter?!”
Sonata threw her forelegs in the air in exasperation. “I’m just asking! It’s not like you’re helping any! Besides, if we’re going to become statues or whatever I’d like to at least look good!”
“Well I’d rather look like I went down fighting!” snarled Aria.
“Great! Then you can…can…” Sonata couldn’t finish. “That’s it,” she murmured, her eyes going wide. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?” snapped Aria nervously. “What are you talking about?!”
Sonata didn’t answer her, turning her attention back to Lex. Wiping her eyes, she let out a breath, forcing herself to stay calm. “You know what?” she began. “You keep talking about turning someone to stone when they’ve, like, done some totes horrible thing. But that’s not all you can use it for, right? You could also use it in a fight. Like, if you’re fighting something like a dragon, or a devil, or a big ugly squid monster, you’d want to use a spell that can one-shot ‘em by turning them into stone, wouldn’t you?”
“…or a princess,” murmured Aria, eyes widening as she suddenly saw what her sister was getting at.
Sonata nodded vigorously. “That’s right! You said that what we did was just as bad as Luna, but you didn’t turn her to stone! Or Celestia! In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that! Lex…” She took a step closer to him, hope written all over her face. “Do you actually have a spell to turn people to stone?”
“Or a curse?” added Aria. “Or some ritual thing?”
Lex gave the latter mare a response first. “Curses are designed to impact an individual’s quality of life, which requires that they be cognizant of the condition that they’re afflicted with, and so necessarily rules out petrification as something they can accomplish,” he explained. “As for a ritual, those aren’t well-suited for carrying out criminal justice. Utilizing ritual magic is an inherently fragile undertaking, and a condemned individual is likely to do everything in their power to disrupt the process. Moreover, since there’s no way to tell how a disrupted ritual’s energy will manifest – and because the individual so condemned will be the one to bear the brunt of whatever happens – that subjects them to a level of risk of such a degree that it violates the state’s duty of care toward its people, which includes the criminal population.”
Sonata nodded impatiently. “Right, so that’s a ‘no’ to both of those, isn’t it? What about just casting a plain old spell? Can you turn someone to stone that way?”
Lex didn’t answer immediately, instead looking at her in silence. Several long seconds went by as both mares waited for him to reply. Finally, he opened his mouth.
“No.”
Sonata collapsed with a cry of relief, smiling even as her eyes started watering again. “For realsies?”
Aria could only stare at him. “‘No’? That’s it? Just ‘no’?” Her eyes narrowed, remembering how he’d thought up that ritual to call Harrowing Ordeal in just a few hours last night. “You’re not working on one right now, ready to spring it on us tomorrow morning?”
Lex shook his head slowly. “I can assure you, I’ve looked into that particular venture before, and developing a petrification spell would require significant time and material resources, neither of which I have in abundance at the moment. And even if I did…” He stopped then, and Aria had the impression that he was choosing his words carefully. “Such an instance of thaumaturgical development would be necessarily proximate to preparations for allocating the requisite energies involved in actualizing the cognitive structures required to transcend the immanent-transeunt divide.”
Before Aria could even begin to try and wrap her head around what he’d just said, Sonata threw herself at Lex. Throwing her forelegs around him, she buried her face in his chest. “I knew it,” she sniffled. “I knew you wouldn’t do that to us!”
Any lingering doubts she had were wiped away as she felt Lex gently nuzzle the top of her head, one foreleg pulling her close.
But the same couldn’t be said for Aria. “So you deliberately gave us a punishment that you knew you couldn’t carry out?”
“Strictly speaking, your sentence is suspended due to difficulties with practical implementation,” answered Lex softly, not looking up from where he was still holding Sonata.
Aria felt herself start to shake, the tension of the last few minutes starting to flow out of her. “But wh-” She had to stop, licking her lips and taking a deep breath before trying again. “What about all that stuff about how you couldn’t just let us off the hook? That we did the same thing as that Luna lady so you couldn’t do something with no force or effect?”
“This has force and effect, Aria.” He looked up at her then, still embracing Sonata. “Your sentence is suspended, not revoked. When I acquire petrification magic – which I will, since I determined that it was a necessity for dealing with extremely dangerous criminals long before I’d met either of you – I will use it on the two of you.”
Sonata lifted her head, looking up at Lex with a gentle smile. “You say that now, but there’ll be some other loophole or something that’ll come up then, won’t there? Like, you’ll find some reason to forgive us the same way you forgave whatshername, Fencer.”
Lex made sure to keep his expression neutral. “The possibility of my granting the two of you clemency prior to implementing your sentence of petrification remains entirely hypothetical.”
Now it was Aria’s turn to throw her forelegs up. “So this was all just one big show! You could have told us right from the beginning that you weren’t going to do anything to us, but instead you completely ambushed us out of nowhere with a bunch of crazy-talk and let us flail around trying to figure out what to do even though you were never…never going to…”
By the time she realized what she was saying, the irony was so obvious that it made her blush, her ears folding back. For his part, Lex simply gave her a flat look, while an embarrassed giggle escaped Sonata’s lips.
“Alright. I get it,” admitted Aria in a small voice. At long last she trudged over and stood in front of Lex, shamefacedly looking down. “Payback’s a nag, and so am I.”
“You are,” admitted Lex, even as he reached out with his other foreleg, pulling her to him alongside Sonata. “But that doesn’t change how I feel about you.”