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// 458 - Reading the Data 
// Story: Lateral Movement 
// by Alzrius 
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Silence was Lex’s only company as he considered what Garden Gate had told him.

Although the mare had barely been gone a minute, the lack of distractions or interruptions made that more than enough time for him to examine every scrap of information that she’d given him, integrate it into what he already knew, and extrapolate future possibilities accordingly. And then repeat the process, multiple times over. But despite his analyses, he was careful not to place too much trust in his predictions; even if he hadn’t spent his entire life trying and failing to apply this very formula to basic interactions with others, he’d still had his expectations confounded too many times to let himself think that he could flawlessly predict what would happen. But that didn’t mean that useful data couldn’t be derived, allowing him to adapt accordingly should his deductions once again be confounded.

The most useful of Garden’s information had been with regards to Princess Cadance’s abilities. As the only alicorn that Lex had never personally encountered, and whose capabilities were the least known to him, the information was quite valuable. He’d known that she, like himself, had forged an agreement with one of Everglow’s alien gods, and the Royal Sisters had alluded to her being able to bring the dead back to life. But now he had eyewitness testimony to the specifics of her powers, and what Garden had told him had been intriguing.

In her initial attempts to alleviate the suffering of the ponies that had arrived in Canterlot, Cadance had used the verbal and somatic triggers that were characteristic of thought-based magic. Indeed, while Garden had been unable to replicate the precise words or gestures – having seen them only once, when she’d already been exhausted – what little she’d been able to describe had sounded almost exactly like the divine spells that Lex himself had used on several of the sick ponies here, specifically the spells to remove disease and ease physical distress. That much hadn’t surprising; while not the simplest of spells, they were far from what Lex would call complicated, even if he still couldn’t use them with anywhere near the proficiency he could his thaumaturgical spellcasting.

But what had caught his attention was how Cadance hadn’t used those triggers when she’d called upon stronger magic to heal those ponies after her initial attempts had proven fruitless. Nor when she’d brought Pillowcase back to life. Instead, all she’d made was a simple prayer, calling out to Lashtada directly instead of reciting any liturgies or performing any rote motions, and receiving power in excess of what she’d otherwise displayed.

To Lex, that sounded extremely similar to how he could call upon the Night Mare’s power to take control of certain magical creatures.

But there were still minor differences, and those had earned his full attention. While the fact that Cadance had still called out a verbal prayer was notable, what Lex found far more interesting was the way Cadance’s eyes had apparently glowed white while she’d used that power. While Garden had mentioned that only in passing, Lex hadn’t failed to recognize the significance of what she’d described.

It was common knowledge among those who studied Equestrian magic that glowing eyes were characteristic of magic saturation. The physical nature of Equestrian spellcasting meant that, should a spellcaster push their limits and flood their body’s natural channels with more magic than they could easily process, the excess power would radiate throughout their physical form, pushing outward until it escaped the body completely. While the excess power could be shed in numerous ways – Lex had heard of everything from powerful but uncontrolled bursts of telekinesis to manes and tails bursting into flame – the most common was simply to release the overflowing power as harmless light, something that the eyes, with their photosensitive construction, were best suited for. 

In fact, his own ocular discoloration operated under the same principle, since his dark magic was also a form of physical spellcasting. But while his horn had channels that were optimized for its use, the same couldn’t be said for the rest of his body, despite – or perhaps because of – how often he’d abused it by generating excess magic and then feeding it into his thought-based spells rather than allowing it to escape naturally. The result was that his dark magic tended to manifest via his eyes whenever he called upon it. And quite often when he didn’t, since the excess power would radiate outward at the slightest instance of stress or tension, his body unable to fully contain the power that his horn otherwise could. In those instances, glowing eyes were his dark magic’s least manifestation; more often the energy would be great enough that it would generate black crystals outside of his conscious direction.

But Cadance had apparently been forced to push her body’s limits while calling upon her goddess’s power, which was something Lex didn’t need to do. While he could only call upon the Night Mare’s power to control the motor functions of certain creatures (even if the reasoning behind which creatures were affected and which weren’t was still maddeningly unclear) a certain number of times per day before it was exhausted, that power required no effort on his part whatsoever, unless he used his body to overcharge it the same way he could a spell. 

Then again, perhaps that was what Cadance had been doing? After all, his battle with Celestia and Luna had made it plain that the alicorns had some ability similar to his own, in that they could augment their spellcasting. Except, as much as it galled him to admit it, their aptitude for doing so exceeded his own, since they’d used that technique repeatedly with very little debilitation to show for it. Even Garden had described Cadance as calling upon her goddess’s power almost a dozen times, her eyes glowing each time she had, and only being slightly winded by it. Perhaps whatever power Lashtada had given her was minor in nature, and the alicorn princess had figured out that she could increase its potency with her own magic.

Without more data, there was no way to be certain. What was certain was that she’d been able to use that combination of magic and divine providence to bring a deceased pony back to life. But that was something she couldn’t do with impunity; Garden had sadly related how Cadance had confessed to only being able to resurrect ponies that had been dead for a few days, and then only for those whose corpses were intact. That was in stark contrast to the spell-imbued gem that the Night Mare had given him; he’d studied it over the last several days, and had verified what the goddess had alluded to, in that the spell was able to recreate the deceased’s form as part of the resurrection process. Moreover, it could restore somepony who had been dead for decades, perhaps even a century or two (though no farther, something that he’d confirmed with no small amount of bitterness, since it meant that he wouldn’t be able to bring back his parents).

There might be even greater significance to the Night Mare’s resurrection spell being so much stronger than what Cadance could do, Lex knew. But until he’d fully analyzed the magic within the ruby that the goddess had given him, he wasn’t in a position to fully appreciate what that might be. That wouldn’t take much longer now, though; he’d already made significant progress towards unraveling the spell’s construction. Just a little more time, and it would yield all of its secrets. Once that happened, Cadance wouldn’t be the only pony capable of bringing the dead back to life.

But until then, there was nothing more to be gleaned from what Garden had told him about Cadance, which left the remaining development that she’d brought to his attention:

Twilight Sparkle and her friends had returned to Equestria.

Garden Gate had apparently expected this bit of news to catch him off-guard, but nothing could have been further from the truth. From the moment he’d made the decision to curse Luna, Lex had been certain that she and her sister would make every effort to abrogate her punishment, and would doubtlessly recruit the younger princess to help them in doing so. It was exactly the sort of hypocrisy he’d come to expect from them, since Luna’s punishment had been entirely just. It had been to that end that Lex had poured as much power into his curse as he’d physically been able, strengthening it to the point that it had nearly killed him to do so in anticipation of whatever countermeasures that the alicorns would no doubt bring to bear. 

The problem was that an extent spell was effectively stuck in a defensive position. If someone tried to negate it and failed, then there was nothing stopping them from coming back and trying again later. Like a suit of armor being repeatedly struck by a weapon, it was only as strong as its ability to withstand the next blow, which meant that failure was inevitable if the opposing forces could attack without limit. If his curse could shrug off nineteen attempts to lift it, that would mean nothing if the alicorns made twenty.

While there were doubtlessly more sophisticated ways to overcome that particular problem, at the time Lex had only one solution available to him: to make his curse so substantial, so thickly concentrated, so overwhelmingly strong that no countermagic would have even the slightest chance of getting through. It wasn’t an artful method of ensuring his curse’s imperviousness, but in theory it would simply be able to overpower anything the alicorns could throw at it and then some. It would be a mountain, rather than a suit of armor, warding off their magic’s metaphorical spears and arrows. 

In theory.

In actuality, he had no idea if that would work. Certainly, he’d put enough power into it, but while he felt confident that Celestia and Luna would never be able to lift his curse on their own, he didn't know if Cadance’s goddess-given powers would be able to let her try and remove it. Or what would happen if she brought Luna to the Crystal Empire and bid her subjects to use the Crystal Heart to undo his malediction the way it had undone King Sombra. Although Lex had once gone to the Crystal Empire in hope of studying the Crystal Heart, he’d never had the chance to do so, having arrived shortly before the Empire was placed into stasis for a thousand years. So there was no way of knowing how well his curse would stand up to that relic now.

And then there was Twilight Sparkle. Even overlooking that she and her friends could command the Elements of Harmony – another artifact Lex had wanted to study in his youth, but been denied the opportunity to do so – the alicorn was a force to be reckoned with. She had literally every advantage on her side: like himself, she was a prodigy when it came to spellcasting. But unlike himself, it was also her special talent, her cutie mark elevating her natural ability to utilize magic. And whereas he had abandoned studying native Equestrian spellcasting, Twilight never had, possessing a strong command of it now by all accounts. She was also an alicorn, which meant that she had access to whatever form of magical augmentation that Celestia, Luna, and Cadance did. 

And she had also been to Everglow, learning the magical techniques and traditions of that world. Whereas Lex had invented thought-based spellcasting on his own, and was still trying to perfect the technique so that he didn’t need massive amounts of energy in order to prepare his spells, Twilight had readily accepted that world’s variant – and inferior! – methods of doing the same thing, using a spellbook as a focus for compressing the necessary energy within the structure of her thoughts. While Lex considered that to be an unacceptable compromise – simply take away the book, and those spells couldn’t be prepared unless another specialized tome with the proper formula was found – the fact of the matter was that so long as she had it she could prepare her spells at will, whereas he, at the moment, could not. And her skill with thaumaturgical magic, from what he’d seen, was comparable to his own.

All of that, in addition to whatever magic items she’d picked up during her time on that world. Or perhaps she’d learned the secrets of how to create those items herself. As much as it galled him to think that Twilight might have solved a puzzle that he was still working on, he knew it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, since despite how badly Celestia had corrupted her ethical development the younger princess still had an intellect comparable to his own. Or perhaps Twilight had simply convinced one of that world’s spellcasters to teach her. That was another area where they differed, Lex knew; his brilliance was in sharp contrast to his personality, whereas Twilight was somehow ingenious and gregarious at the same time. Maybe she’d even made a pact with a god the way he had…

But there was no way to be sure of any of that. Nor was any of it something Lex considered a priority, at least not at the moment. As much as it upset him to think of Luna evading justice for her crimes, the work he was doing here took priority. If they lifted his curse, there’d be little he could do about it for the foreseeable future. And if they couldn’t…

They’ll likely attempt to open a line of dialogue in hope of negotiation, he decided. There was simply no other acceptable route for them to take if they wanted it removed. As indolent and foolish as they were, Celestia and Luna had to realize that they had no just cause for attacking him, not when they’d been so clearly in the wrong last time. At least then they’d had the excuse of thinking that they were under attack, and that his protestations had been some sort of ruse. That wouldn’t be available to them now, leaving them with no pretext for commencing hostilities, particularly given that he’d had their wounds treated once the fight had been over and subsequently made no move to stop them from leaving. 

Of course, there was always the possibility that he was overestimating them. And if he was…if they, or rather, if Twilight Sparkle, with her Equestrian spellcasting, Everglow spellcasting, alicorn powers, magic-boosting cutie mark, enchanted items, and Elements of Harmony came to Vanhoover intent on a fight, while he had no way to recover his strongest magic…Lex knew what would happen.

He would lose.