Somehow, Lex managed not to pass out.
The amount of strain that he’d put himself through made that a minor miracle in and of itself. His muscles were spasming painfully, his blood was pounding in his ears, and his legs were refusing to heed his commands as he attempted to back stand up. But at the moment Lex was less concerned with all of that than he was with the sudden pillars of blue fire that erupted around him as the resurrection spell, complete now that he’d ceased feeding energy into it, took effect.
Surrounding him in a radial pattern, the columns of azure flame emitted no heat, nor did they scorch the floor or ceiling. Instead, an intense cold filled the room, as though the fires burned away warmth rather than radiating it. But the chill lasted only a moment, vanishing as the flames suddenly extinguished themselves, leaving a group of ponies in their place.
Five ponies. Not six.
But Lex didn’t even have to look at the dazed figures surrounding him to know who among the ponies he’d named hadn’t returned. Indeed, the knowledge came to him immediately, causing Lex’s eyes to close as a powerful sense of regret fell over him. He knew who hadn’t been brought back, and in doing so had leveled a crushing indictment on him.
Spells that were cast directly on another person always created a residual sense of feedback. More accurately, there was a brief moment where the interaction between the energy you were unleashing on them and the magical channels in their body could be “felt,” for lack of a better term. While that was barely perceptible for spells that were concerned with elementary interactions such as causing physical damage, it was more pronounced when the spell in question attempted to cause some more fundamental change. Sonata and Aria were easily able to tell when someone had managed to resist being enchanted, for instance, even if few ponies had the inner strength to do so.
But this time, Lex had keenly felt as one of the six individuals he’d named rejected the magic that he’d sent out to bring them back. That was one of the secrets that he’d unlocked while deciphering the resurrection spell in the gemstone; souls could only be invited back to life, not compelled. And now, one of them had refused that invitation, electing to remain in whatever ephemeral realm they’d moved on to rather than return to life in the mortal world. And as for which one…
“What happened?!” demanded Turbo, turning to look every which way. “Where are we?! We-”
“Lex!” yelped Thermal Draft, rushing over and kneeling down beside him. “Are you alright?!”
“If he’s not, then we need to move,” replied C. Shells firmly. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he’s the only one who has a chance of taking on that crazy mare.”
“Who?” asked Sandbar, blinking in confusion.
“Who do you think?” snapped C. Shells. “That blonde unicorn with the glasses! The one who made that Severance weapon disappear!”
“I’m guessing that we’re safe for the moment. This place looks too clean to still be in the city.” Cloudbank’s voice was calm as she went and helped Thermal Draft get Lex upright, a rueful smile on her face as looked at him. “You knew we were in trouble and got us out, didn’t you?”
But Lex didn’t return the expression. “No,” he muttered, feeling utterly wretched. “I didn’t.”
Block Party had refused his resurrection, and even for Lex it wasn’t hard to imagine why. Being possessed for barely a day had been enough to severely traumatize Nosey. How much worse had it been for Block Party? How many horrors had he been forced to endure over the course of the weeks that Xiriel had taken over his body, leaving him trapped within his own mind as the devil used him to perpetrate atrocity after atrocity? How gruesome had his death been, finding that he was himself again at last, only to feel a noose tightening around his neck during his last few, panicked moments?
You could have saved him from all of that. The voiceless words from his shadow didn’t take Lex by surprise. The guilt he felt over not having rooted Xiriel out immediately wasn’t new; it was simply thrown into sharper relief now. Even beyond death, Block Party had been so scarred by what had happened to him that the prospect of coming back to life had been more than he could bear, and that knowledge tore at Lex now. Even with the Night Mare’s magic, you couldn’t make restitution to the person who’d been victimized the most, continued his tulpa viciously. And you could have avoided that if you’d just done more.
Aware that something was amiss, but not knowing exactly what, Thermal Draft and Cloudbank shared a concerned look. “Lex?” asked the former gently. “What’s wrong?”
But the words had barely left her mouth when the door suddenly swung open. “What’s all the noise?” complained Aria. “Just because you like to get up at the crack of…” Blinking as she saw how many ponies were in the room, she raised an eyebrow, giving them all a once-over. Maybe it was because she’d just woken up, but something about them seemed familiar. But she dismissed the thought, glancing back at where Lex was sandwiched between two mares. “You having a party or something?”
Thermal Draft frowned, spotting the rumpled bed through the doorway behind the knockout who had just come in…and who was apparently very familiar with Lex. “Who’re you?”
“And are you single?” muttered Sandbar, eyeing the newcomer shamelessly. “And do you have a thing for guys with scars?” One hoof coming up to rub at his neck, he paused, eyes widening as he couldn’t feel the rough patch he’d grown accustomed to. “Hey, my scar! What happened to my beautiful scar?! It was a chick magnet!”
“Yeah, the kind of magnet that pushes things away,” snorted C. Shells. She knew that was catty, but at the moment she didn’t care, feeling suddenly agitated. Something wasn’t adding up about all of this…
She wasn’t the only one who noticed something wrong, as Turbo was also peering into the room that admittedly very attractive mare had come from. But unlike Thermal Draft, his eyes were on the window, the new girl’s referring to it being morning having caused alarms to go off in his head, alarms which grew worse as he saw how dark the sky looked. “It was the middle of the day a second ago,” he noted, his voice growing tense.
Aria, however, had stopped listening after hearing the challenge from that mare who had questioned her. And it was a challenge; she could read it from a dozen different signals the other girl was giving off, ranging from the tone in her voice to the way she’d started leaning against Lex a little more. But rather than grow irritated at the little upstart, Aria grinned, sauntering forward. “I’m one of the girls Lex is sleeping with,” she drawled, chuckling as she saw the stunned expression that got from whoever that was. “Why? You want in on our little arrangement?”
Cloudbank gave her girlfriend a sour look as Drafty began to sputter, but knew there were more important things that she had to focus on right now. “Lex, that mare who attacked us, she-”
“I know,” sighed Lex. Forcing himself to stop focusing on the self-loathing he felt for not being able to do anything for Block Party, Lex straightened up. “All of you listen to me,” he demanded, and although he was still too enervated to put much force in his voice, everyone else quieted down immediately. Stepping away from Thermal Draft and Cloudbank, he crossed the room, turning to that he could face all of them directly.
“I need to tell you all what’s happened…”
Silence reigned in the wake of Lex’s explanation, everypony struggling to come to grips with what he’d just told them.
C. Shells was the first to recover. “We were…” Her voice faltered, and she needed a moment before she was able to bring herself to try again. “We were dead?”
“But…I don’t remember anything,” muttered Thermal Draft, clinging to Cloudbank, who was likewise holding her tightly. “One second we were all in Vanhoover, and then the next…”
Lex frowned. Their behavior had suggested as much, but their lack of memory about whatever afterlives they’d experienced between their deaths and resurrection wasn’t among the knowledge he’d gained from studying the Night Mare’s gem. The spell had only dealt with functionality with regards to reconstructing the body and bringing back the soul; the particulars of what happened to the soul while it was gone was beyond the spell’s parameters.
“Fencer helped fight off an army of ghouls?” Lex had included a brief summary of what had happened while they had been gone, but that hadn’t helped Turbo believe everything he’d been told. “I want to see my friends,” he demanded, suddenly needing confirmation that they were alright.
“I’ll have someone take you to them,” replied Lex dismissively, not bothering to look at Turbo as he started toward the door, fighting down the urge to grunt as his legs protested the exertion. “Right now I’m late for a meeting.”
“A meeting?” echoed Sandbar incredulously. “You just brought all of us back to life, and now you’re going to go to a meeting?” That just seemed wrong somehow, like a magician making a castle disappear before announcing that their next trick would be to pull a plain old rabbit out of a hat. “What, is it a meeting with Equestria’s princesses or something?”
“He defeated the princesses, remember?” murmured Cloudbank, taking deep breaths to keep herself calm. “Or at least Celestia and Luna.”
“And you turned Luna into a unicorn?” asked C. Shells with a wince. “Don’t you think that was maybe going a little too far?”
“Excuse me?” snapped Aria, having stayed during Lex’s recap of what those five had missed. She was a little surprised herself that Lex had apparently brought several dead ponies back to life, but only a bit. After everything else he’d done, this was just the latest in his string of incredible accomplishments. But at the moment she found herself getting upset at the reactions she was hearing. “You all were killed, and this guy just gave you a second chance, and the first thing you do is complain about what he’s been doing in the meantime?!” She glared at C. Shells, who looked properly abashed, before turning her eyes toward the rest of them. “I don’t think I’ve heard one ‘thank you’ out of any of you, either. There are a lot of other ponies he could have brought back besides you, you know!”
“Don’t chastise them, Aria.” Lex’s own rebuke was surprisingly lacking in force, sounding almost resigned as he trudged out of the room. “If I hadn’t failed to adequately provide for their safety in the first place, it wouldn’t have been necessary to resurrect them.”
Thermal Draft cringed a little at that. “Lex, wait…”
“I have a meeting.”
Without another word, Lex was gone. Aria paused just long enough to shoot one last glare at the others before following, leaving the five ponies alone in the study.
After a pregnant pause, Sandbar licked his lips. “Hey, Cloudbank?”
The mare in question glanced over, a little surprised to be called on. “Yeah?”
“If I worshiped the Night Mare, would she give me the power to turn monsters into hot chicks the way Lex did for Aria?”
After a long moment, Cloudbank glanced over at C. Shells. “Slap him for me, would you?”
Out in the hallway, Aria caught up to Lex easily. But before she opened her mouth, Lex was already speaking. “Find one of the servants. Have them see to whatever those five need.”
He was mildly surprised when she didn’t complain, instead nodding. “Fine, but this is going to get around fast,” she warned him. “Right now almost everyone here adores you, so you’re going to need to explain to them why you brought back those ponies and not anyone else instead.”
Lex clenched his jaw at what sounded to him like a suggestion that he’d acted unethically. “It was in no way immoral for me to exercise sole discretion with regards to whom I resurrected! Any implication that it would have been more just to bring back a different group of individuals-”
“Okay, this, right here?” huffed Aria, cutting him off. “This is what you don’t want to do. In fact, you know what? How about you let me figure out what to say to everyone while you go to your meeting?”
Lex gave her a glance, making no attempt to hide how suspicious he felt about how helpful she was being all of a sudden. But as unusual as it was, it wasn’t completely unlike her; Aria had made herself useful when he’d delivered his address to everypony several days ago. If she said that this would be a sensitive social issue for everyone, then there was a very real chance that she was right. And since Sonata wasn’t here…
“Fine,” he answered after a moment’s consideration, hoping Aria was being sincere.
“Great!” she chirped, leaning in to brush her side against his. “So, bringing the dead back to life, power meetings, what’s on the agenda after that?”
Lex didn’t break his stride as he answered her. “Breakfast.”