When it came, the goddess’s answer was more dramatic than Lex had thought it would be.
That it was delivered via the barbed wire wrapped around his foreleg was no surprise. Either she’d find his ceremony and its attendant offering lacking and have the metal cord finish its slow amputation of his limb, or she’d be mollified and make its continual contraction relent. That much was obvious.
As such, when the wire ceased to squeeze the bone in his leg Lex couldn’t help but feel a rush of relief. His leg was still a mess, of course; deep, grisly furrows had been dug across every inch of it, and in several spots the bone was visible. But with the wire having ceased its agonizing ministrations, there was every reason to believe that healing magic would work n-
Before he had time to complete that thought, the wire began to move again. Everypony gasped at the sight – including Sonata and Aria behind him – and even Lex was shocked as the metal cords began to writhe vigorously, rushing across his leg as quickly as the teeth of a chainsaw. For a split-second Lex felt a rush of panic, expecting to see his leg go flying. But then he realized that he wasn’t in any pain. In fact, his leg hurt less now than it did before the wire started tightening…
The mystery was solved a second later as Lex watched the barbs pass through the lacerated substance of his leg. Rather than aggravating the wounds they’d already dealt him, the jagged metal edges closed the torn meat in their wake, knitting flesh back together without leaving so much as a scar. Like a filmstrip played in reverse, the wire reversed all of the damage it had dealt him over the last day, until it at last came to a stop, painlessly wrapped around his now-repaired leg.
Lowering his hoof from where it had been raised the entire time, Lex could only stare at the undamaged coat covering his equally unhurt skin. Even the echo of the pain he’d been enduring was already fading, as though it had all had been an illusion. But a glance down showed that the bloody paper towels were still there.
The feeling of relief returned then, but Lex couldn’t bring himself to feel any sense of gratitude toward the Night Mare. Rather, it was the same sense of exhausted satisfaction that he felt whenever he’d solved a particularly difficult problem. The irritable goddess had been pacified at last. Now he could get back to more important th-
“Whew! Alright!” This time Sonata’s voice wasn’t a whisper, but was raised in an exuberant cheer, one accompanied by applause as she sat on her haunches and clapped her fore-hooves together. “Did you guys see that?! Let’s all give it up for the Night Mare!”
Lex shot her an incredulous look, vaguely appalled that she was treating this like some sort of spectacle. “Sonata, what are you doing?” he whispered. For all that he didn’t like the Night Mare, he still respected her, and treating what had just happened with all the gravitas of a rabbit being pulled out of a hat struck him as undignified in the extreme.
But apparently Aria didn’t share his view, because she was also applauding, giving the crowd a confident smirk. “You all see that?” she called. “You see what Lex’s goddess can do? Now just think of what she could do for you if you impress her like he has!”
Lex was about to order her to shut up when he heard hooves clapping in the crowd. Stunned, he turned back toward everypony in time to see smiles start to break out among the gathered ponies, hooves coming together faster as they began to applaud in earnest. It wasn’t shared by everyone, but even as he watched the applause began to spread, with more and more ponies clapping or stomping their hooves. A few even cheered, and Lex was shocked to hear not only the goddess’s name being called in what sounded like adulation, but his own as well.
Sonata’s whisper almost made him jump when it reached his ears. “Raise your hoof again.”
“Huh?” Lex could barely focus on what she was saying, still trying to figure out what had just happened. Why had Sonata and Aria’s applause carried so much weight with everypony?
“Raise your hoof again,” repeated Sonata. “The one with the wire around it.”
Having no idea why she was recommending that, Lex nevertheless raised his foreleg into the air again. Sure enough, the cheering swelled in reply, the applause growing louder. Lex could only stand there, utterly nonplussed by what was happening.
“Now say something triumphant.” This time the whisper was Aria’s.
“Huh?” Lex glanced back at her, confusion written all over his face. “About what?”
Aria looked at him like he was an idiot. “About what just happened! Say something like…like…‘the Night Mare takes care of her own.’ Say it like you’ve just won a major battle.”
Absolutely nothing about that made sense to Lex. Even leaving aside how crass her suggestion was, the idea that this should be characterized as some sort of achievement rather than a transaction was mind-boggling; he’d made an oath to the Night Mare, and she’d responded positively. What about that was like winning a battle?
But while Lex found her suggestion no less absurd than staging a fake coup, he couldn’t deny that she and Sonata had been successful in working the crowd so far. That, and his own curiosity about what was happening, made him turn back toward everypony. Licking his lips, he took a deep breath. “The Night Mare,” he called a moment later, “takes care of her own!”
It was all he could do not to gape when the crowd went wild. By now, the ponies that were cheering definitively outnumbered those that weren’t, showing no sign of stopping as he stood there with his hoof raised. What was going on?
“See?” Although she was still whispering, the joy in Sonata’s voice was unmistakable. “See what happens when you give everyone a reason to like you?”
“Yesterday they were all afraid of me,” he whispered back, remembering what Sonata had told him about how everypony had reacted to his defeating the princesses. According to her, she’d practically needed to beg them to come back. And yet now they were celebrating him over something that was – from their point of view – an altogether minor event. “Why does this change things?”
Her answer came without hesitation. “Because no one’s forgotten everything you’ve done for them, you big goof! Saving them from Block Party. Bringing doctors and medicine. Making all that food. Buying more from the train. Defeating the ghouls. I mean, yeah, the princess thing scared them, but it’s not like those two were their favorite ponies anymore since they weren’t around when everything fell apart. Now that you’re actually talking to everyone, they’re totes ready to give you the benefit of the doubt!”
Lex wasn’t so certain of that. There were still a not-inconsiderable number of ponies in the crowd that weren’t cheering, or that only seemed to be doing so reluctantly. Still, the fact remained that the majority of the camp ponies seemed to agree with what she was saying.
“You can put your hoof down now,” came Aria’s whisper. “It’s time to move on to the next part of the show.”
Trying not to grimace at her insouciant way of referring to what he was doing, Lex lowered his foreleg. The crowd’s cheering immediately began to ebb, though it took several seconds to die out completely. That, however, gave Lex more than enough time to listen as Sonata and Aria offered advice about what to say next.
“At this point,” he announced after they finished, “I would like all members of the medical staff who aren’t occupied with patient care to come up front.”
Renewed murmurs went through the crowd, as everypony started turning to look for any doctors and nurses in their midst. Several, almost all of them near the back, slowly began to make their way forward. A few rushed back to the medical tents, calling for their colleagues. A few minutes later, a collection of ponies in lab coats and scrubs were standing in front of the platform. It didn’t escape Lex’s notice that more than a few of them were among those ponies that hadn’t been applauding before. But that wasn’t something he could focus on now, as Sonata and Aria were whispering in his ears again.
This time, however, the lines they fed him made his jaw clench. Only the fact that the last few minutes had gone so well kept Lex from eschewing their advice completely, and he forced himself to remain calm as he turned to face the assembled medical practitioners. “If everypony would direct their attention toward these ponies,” he called, indicating the doctors and nurses in front of him. That was completely unnecessary, of course, since everypony present was already watching the proceedings. But Sonata and Aria had insisted that he call for everyone’s recognition.
But it was the part that came next that made his stomach churn.
“I am…” The words wouldn’t pass his lips, almost causing him to choke as he couldn’t bring himself to go on. But barely a second had gone by when Sonata and Aria started whispering to him, all but pleading for him to continue. Taking a deep breath, Lex tried again. “I am…pleased and proud…to congratulate…”
He couldn’t go on. Every word felt like acid in his throat. Although he’d practiced saying something very much like this in the wake of the battle on the docks, telling the ponies involved in the fighting that they should be proud of themselves, that had been in the context of another of his innumerable social experiments, trying to measure the differences in their reactions to the perceived praise. And it had only been “perceived” praise; Lex had at no point said that he was proud of them.
That, however, was exactly what Sonata and Aria were telling him to say now. “It’s, like, a totes good idea to let these guys know that you think they’ve done a great job,” had been Sonata’s position. “Since, you know, they have.”
Aria’s take had been more straightforward. “They did everything you told them and didn’t get killed in the process, so just throw them a bone already.”
But Lex couldn’t bring himself to do so. It was one thing to have a spokespony that rephrased his words into something that the masses found easier to understand. Or even to have two ponies help him to read the mood of a crowd. But it was something else altogether when those two started telling him to say something that was completely contrary to his actual opinion. Regardless of whatever accolades it might win him, Lex Legis did not pander.
Looking back at everypony, Lex abandoned the script that his mares were telling him to follow. “No,” he said finally, in a voice that swept across the crowd. “I’m not.”
Confused murmurs broke out, and not just from the assembled masses. “Lex?” called Sonata nervously. “What’re you doing?”
“Get it together!” hissed Aria. “Everypony here is ready to adore you! Don’t you dare screw it up now!”
“The two of you are here to assist me,” whispered Lex coldly. “Not to dictate my words. Your job is to find a way to make what I say understandable and palatable without compromising its message, not to decide what the message is. If you can’t do that, then be quiet.” Neither replied to that, which was all that Lex needed. Turning back to the doctors again, this time Lex said what was in his heart.
“Disregard what I said earlier,” he announced loudly, bringing all eyes back to him. “I am neither pleased nor proud to be up here lauding your efforts like this.” That got a round of confused muttering from the crowd, but Lex kept going.
“The truth is, when I consider all that you’ve done since you came to Vanhoover, I feel ashamed.”