Vanhoover’s restoration was proceeding ahead of schedule.
In the ten days since he’d renewed his efforts to reverse the city’s decline – ten days since Cloudsdale had arrived, and Nosey had left him – it had become clear to Lex that the initiatives he’d directed everypony to pursue were paying off greater returns than he’d initially calculated. Not just one or two of them, but all of them were succeeding beyond his original projections. More than that, early evidence suggested that the promising results weren’t temporary aberrations, but substantial dividends that could be sustained, at least for a while.
Most surprising was the number of ponies that were coming to Vanhoover from the northern villages. Given that there were numerous small farming communities spread out across well over a thousand square miles of territory, all of which Lex had directed Sonata to visit in order to distribute rainclouds and inform them of Vanhoover’s market being open, he had been certain that it would take her more than a month to complete the task he’d given her. But judging by how the trickle of ponies coming into the city to sell their produce and buy essential goods had suddenly become a flood, she was somehow accelerating that timetable by a considerable amount. He had no idea how she was doing it, but there were now scores of ponies from dozens of villages coming to the camp to conduct business each day, and that number was growing rapidly.
Nor was the increase in commerce limited to the northern villages. Ponies from Tall Tale were making the journey up the coast in ever-increasing numbers. It wasn’t just freshly-constructed boats that were carrying them there; the Tall Tale ponies had broken out rowboats, canoes, and in some cases even rafts in order to bring goods to Vanhoover. Nor was all of their merchandise timber products like Lex had originally mandated; just like the Flim Flam Brothers, a lot of ponies had realized that the camp’s spartan living conditions meant that there was a high demand for everything.
But unlike the con artists, the ponies of Tall Tale weren’t interested in gouging the survivors of their sister city’s fall. Quite the opposite, they sold their wares – which ran the gamut from blankets and pillows to inkwells to hats and much more – at discount prices, eager to help out the camp ponies. More than a few went one step further, donating what they could and refusing to take any bits for them. Others were simply contributing free labor, helping to build temporary houses for everypony or going into Vanhoover armed with cleaning supplies to help return the buildings there to habitable conditions.
The surge of assistance from the Tall Tale ponies, according to Aria (who overheard a great deal while overseeing the safety of the teams of ponies who went into Vanhoover), was entirely due to Ribbon Cutter. Apparently emboldened by seeing how well Lex’s instructions to give Vanhoover right of first refusal on all of Tall Tale’s lumber exports had worked, she’d taken it upon herself to figure out other ways to play a more active role in Vanhoover’s recovery. Since she didn’t have the budget to engage in any sort of direct action, and wasn’t comfortable throwing her weight around without Lex’s explicit backing, she’d instead started a massive campaign urging the public to do what they could to help out. Even C. Shells’ remaining crewmembers were pitching in, ferrying ponies back and forth between the two cities using River’s boat.
The result of the influx of commerce and support meant that the camp was more vibrant than ever. In fact, it was rapidly going from being a camp to being a small village in its own right. Gone were the filthy tents and rickety lean-tos, replaced now with rows of wooden houses. Far from being grand structures, the houses were all small and extremely simple affairs, being little more than single-room units equipped with bunk beds or hammocks and maybe a table and chairs, but that same simplicity meant that throwing them up had become quick and easy. Since each one could house several ponies, more than half of the camp’s population was now living indoors for the first time since Vanhoover had flooded.
The result was that those ponies who had survived the fall of Vanhoover were now in a state of semi-permanent euphoria. In less than a month, they’d gone from being homeless, sick, starving, and despondent to having plenty of food to eat, homes in which to live, paying jobs to work, and doctors on call to treat their wounds. “It’s not just them seeing the light at the end of the tunnel anymore,” as Garden Gate – whom had taken it upon herself to patrol the camp-turned-village to make sure no one else got up to trouble the way the Flim Flam Brothers had – had told him when reporting in one evening. “As far as they’re concerned, they’re out of the tunnel now. Because you led them there, Lex.”
Of course, she hadn’t needed to add that last part. The ponies he was governing had made their feelings about him exceedingly clear.
Lex couldn’t go outside now without ponies cheering when they saw him, which he had no idea how to respond to. The same was true for the smiles and waves he now received whenever he walked down what was becoming the new village’s main (and so far only) street. And those were the mildest reactions.
At the more extreme end of the scale were things like the young couple who had bashfully asked for him to officiate their wedding. The request had caught him completely off-guard, and he’d managed to extricate himself from the situation only by fumblingly giving them an excuse: that he’d need time to draw up the proper paperwork for their marriage license. Another incident had been a young stallion who had wanted to paint a portrait of him, a request that Lex had flatly refused. He’d come to regret that a few days later, as the artist had apparently decided that he’d turned him down because a mere portrait wasn’t grandiose enough. Now one of the houses in the middle of town had its back wall dominated by a mural of him standing on a rocky outcropping, surrounded by a legion of ghouls as he roared in defiance and lifted Severance high above his head in preparation for a strike, Garden Gate behind him with her knives at ready and gemstones circling her head while Sonata and Aria (the latter depicted as a pony, and both of them dressed in provocatively-torn clothing for some reason) laid on their sides and clung to his hind legs. It had been immensely embarrassing…though not nearly as much as being told by expectant parents that they were going to name their child after him. That dubious honor had happened no less than three times now.
And there was growing interest in the Night Mare now too. Over two dozen ponies had begun to seriously inquire about the goddess, wanting to know how she could help them grow stronger so that they’d never again be helpless the way they had been during the recent spate of disasters. Lex had so far managed to mollify them with what little he knew of the Night Mare’s religious tenets, but he’d now exhausted his repository of doctrinal lore, and the nascent worshipers were eager for more. It was a situation that he knew he’d need to address, and soon.
The Night Mare’s Knights were impatient to learn more too, but despite their name what they wanted wasn’t more information about the goddess (except for Fiddlesticks, to his mild surprise). Rather, they wanted him to teach them more about using their powers. It was a request that Lex was having a hard time refusing, as the children had proven surprisingly dedicated to his lessons about ethical conduct. While he still wasn’t sure how much they truly appreciated what he was teaching them, they’d at least managed to grasp the basic concepts of his moral framework, and could work their way through basic thought experiments about handling moral dilemmas. Very soon, he knew, it would be time to put a focus on practical applications of their powers…especially since the children had started asking him to teach them how to cast spells now too.
Of course, the last ten days hadn’t been entirely problem free. The influx of new ponies from the northern communities, Tall Tale, and the train service had caused several flashpoints to erupt.
In one case, a corps of workers had come back from Vanhoover early due to one of their number being injured. The pony in question had been an earth stallion suffering from some ugly-looking burns and a few bruised ribs, wounds that the doctors had pronounced to be painful but not truly serious. Lex’s relief at that had been matched only at his puzzlement about how the pony in question had managed to acquire those injuries…which had turned to rage when he’d received his answer.
Apparently, the injured pony was from Tall Tale, and so when Aria had escorted them into Vanhoover all he’d known about her was that she was the most beautiful mare he’d ever laid eyes on. He’d spent most of his time on the job inventing excuses to talk to her, refusing to take her irritated rejections to heart. But he’d crossed the line when he’d started touching her, first brushing her fore-hoof with his own, and then pressing his side against hers later on. In both cases, Aria had acted with more restraint than Lex would have thought, chewing him out viciously but not otherwise lashing out, at least until he’d tried to nuzzle her. At that point, she’d used her magic to unleash a cone of fire that had ignited his tail, sending him into a panicked frenzy that had only ended when he’d fallen down a flight of stairs…though that last part might have something to do with the spell Aria had cast to make the floor at the top of them extremely slippery.
Lex had been apoplectic at the news, but not at Aria; while her retribution might have been excessive, it had quite clearly been warranted. Instead, he’d marched into the injured stallion’s room in what had become the medical wing of River’s manor, and had proceeded to make it clear to the injured pony that Aria was his, and anypony who didn’t respect that would pay the price for it. By the time he’d finished making his displeasure known, the offending stallion had been reduced to whimpering and begging for forgiveness.
Of course, Lex had been anything but forgiving.
After having Cleansweep heal the stallion’s injuries, Lex had made him apologize to Aria. She hadn’t been mollified, making it clear what she thought about the pony’s statement of remorse…at which point the curse Lex had placed on the stallion had activated, causing him to suffer a severe bout of nausea whenever a mare expressed anger toward him, though out of consideration for the gratuitous injuries that Aria had given him, Lex had elected to have that curse remain in effect for only one year. Even with that leniency, however, Aria had been delighted by what he’d done, and when Lex had ordered the offender to be sent back to Tall Tale immediately, she had insisted on accompanying him down to the docks, berating the moaning stallion the entire way.
Curiously, she had been quite amorous that evening.
A more serious incident had been a fight that had broken out near the mass grave where the ghouls had been buried.
While not originally marked, many of the survivors had taken to decorating the site as a way of honoring the numerous ponies who were missing and would likely never be found. A few of them had encircled the area with rocks, denoting its boundaries. Others had written small messages on markers – often small pieces of wood that could be set into the ground as makeshift signs – and placed them around the edges of the site. There were quite a few there now, with phrases such as “forever in our hearts” and “gone but never forgotten” on them.
But while the ponies who had been stranded in the camp had come to grips with the fact that many, or even most, of their family and friends had died gruesome deaths – to say nothing of having become monsters themselves – the ponies who were only now returning from having escaped Vanhoover weren’t nearly ready to accept that brutal truth. So perhaps it was understandable, if still unacceptable, that a few of them had become extremely distraught when they learned that some of the ponies who hadn’t made it out had been sliced to pieces by the pony who was now being hailed as a hero. The fact that those ponies had become flesh-eating undead didn’t seem to register to them, the thought apparently too horrible for them to fully comprehend.
To that end, when several of the distraught mourners had begun loudly cursing Lex for what he’d done, several other ponies had tried to set them to right, only to end up upsetting them further. That a fight had broken out, Garden Gate had assured him, wasn’t anypony’s fault; it was just that the ponies who found out what had likely happened to their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and beloved friends needed to unleash their grief and their anger somewhere. Given that she’d been there to stop the fight from growing into a riot, and had kept anypony from getting seriously hurt, Lex had been inclined to trust her judgment, and had let the matter drop without penalizing the ponies involved.
But as bad as those incidents had been, it was the money situation that troubled Lex the most.
River’s financial institutions had now been emptied in their entirety. Worse, he had already gone through more than half of her liquid wealth, and the remainder was being depleted at an increased speed as more and more ponies came to Vanhoover. But that simply couldn’t be helped; Lex knew that it was vital that his administration continue to purchase food and essential supplies in order to guarantee them to the populace. Likewise, he still needed to pay for ponies to perform various tasks, not only to incentivize them but also make sure that they had the money necessary to restart the local economy. Scaling back on spending was absolutely out of the question…but if would happen anyway if River didn’t come back with rich Las Pegasus ponies soon.
Though when she did, he still intended to have a talk with her about her treatment of Feather Duster…
But that aside, Vanhoover’s finances were rapidly reaching a critical state. Enough so that Lex was seriously contemplating having to put his backup plan into effect. But that was something that he wanted to avoid if he could at all help it.
While the land north of Vanhoover was home to many agricultural communities, Lex was fully aware that farming wasn’t the only industry practiced there. The Unicorn Mountains, which formed a natural barrier separating that region from the rolling fields of central Equestria, were mineral-rich. But only for certain kinds of minerals…specifically, silver and gold.
Since the eastern slopes of the Unicorns ran almost directly into the long chasm that was Ghastly Gorge, setting up mining operations on the easternmost part of the mountains was impossible. That meant that the mining towns responsible for retrieving the buried metals were all on the western side of the mountains, within the territory that Lex was already working to spread his influence over. But it wasn’t just the mining operations that Lex was concerned with…it was the minting of coins.
Bits, the currency used in Equestria, were made out of electrum, the alloy of silver and gold. Supposedly that particular combination of metals had been chosen to honor Celestia and Luna, seeing the two materials as representing how the Royal Sisters ruled over the day and the night. But Lex was less interested in that than he was in the fact that the minting operation – the enterprise that was actually in charge of making Equestria’s money – was merely a few short miles away from Vanhoover.
It was an operation that Lex wanted to avoid if at all possible, at least for the immediate future.
Seizing Equestria’s supply of money would bring some immediate revenue, but the shockwaves that it would send throughout Equestria’s economy would result in any short-term gains being wiped out by long-term losses. Any hint that the production of new units of currency had been interrupted would cause everypony to start hoarding their bits out of fear that it would become difficult to acquire more. That would depress spending, which would in turn cause negative inflation, driving prices down. And while Lex had no doubt that some ponies would think that was a good thing, he knew better. Negative inflation meant that overall revenues would fall, since businesses would take in less money, and so in turn would have less money to pay their employees with, quite possibly leading to more disincentive to spend, hurting economic demand…something which would, he knew, eventually come back to hurt Vanhoover quite badly, since a lack of demand meant that there’d be less incentive to ramp up production on supplies, which was what Vanhoover needed. It had been a minor miracle that such a thing hadn't happened already while the region had been isolated; fortunately, most ponies apparently didn't know where the mint was, and so hadn't realized that there'd been a temporary interruption of Equestria's generating new currency. But Lex doubted that would remain true if the stallion who had defeated Celestia and Luna suddenly seized the means of monetary production.
River, Lex knew, was fully aware of this, since finance was her special talent. She had very briefly mentioned it to him before she’d left, and had been visibly relieved when he’d made it clear he wouldn’t seize the Equestrian mint unless there was no other choice. But he’d also made it clear that doing that would be largely dependent on how well she was able to bring in rich ponies from Vanhoover, and soon.
All of that weighed heavily on Lex’s mind…but not at the moment.
Now, in the predawn hours of the eleventh day after River had left, Lex was thinking of only one thing: the large spell-embedded ruby that the Night Mare had given him, currently floating in his telekinetic aura in front of him.
He had finished studying the magic within the gemstone, having finally unearthed all its secrets about how resurrection magic functioned. But that knowledge brought with it no sense of triumph. Quite the contrary, what he had learned filled him with frustration and bitterness, causing him to grit his teeth as he stared at the gemstone, certain that somewhere, in whatever planar realm she called home, the Night Mare was laughing at him.
There would be no mass resurrections for the ponies of Vanhoover.