It was exceptionally rare for Prince Blueblood to find himself in a situation egregious enough to leave his noble self speechless.
It had happened when he’d come back from his ski trip to Mount Everhoof to attend Princess Cadance’s wedding – making sure to time it so that he’d arrive fashionably late – only to find that the “change-things” or whatever they were called had made an absolute mess of his city! The sight of that disgusting green goop everywhere, quite literally staining the splendor that was Canterlot, had almost made him faint in horror! The shock had been so great that he’d been forced to immediately take a long vacation to Trottingham to recover!
Then there had been that time when Celestia and Luna had vanished, forcing him to cancel his photo-safari to Somnambula – which, in all fairness, had been rather boring anyway, the mythical “sphinx” proving as elusive as it had ever been – and rush back home to find out what was going on. Fortunately, his senior royals had returned by then, but Blueblood could still remember being positively aghast to learn that upjumped rube Twilight Sparkle had been placed in charge! The thought of how his city must have suffered under her mismanagement had left Blueblood so despondent that only an extended stay at Rainbow Falls’ most luxurious spa resort had been able to cure him of his malaise.
What arrested Blueblood’s thought processes now, however, wasn’t an assault on his refined senses. Not because there wasn’t anything uncouth before him; the battlefield in front of him was filthy with dust and dirt and whatever those ugly black crystals were, and the conduct of both participants had been gauche in the extreme. But for the first time in a very long time, Blueblood had something more important to worry about.
Namely, that Lex Legis was staring directly at him, thirty feet away and closing fast.
“Sire?” came a reedy voice. “Sire? Shouldn’t you advance and break your opponent’s momentum?”
There was an odd tension in his valet’s voice that pulled Blueblood out of his paralysis, swallowing heavily. “Of course. I was just about to do that, you-”
The insult that he’d meant to level at his incompetent retainer died on Blueblood’s lips as he glanced over and saw that, rather than standing a tail-length back and to the left of him as a proper servant should, his valet had backed over a dozen feet away from him and was still retreating. Nor was he alone in doing so. All the rest of his attendants, as well as those tiresome hangers-on from Las Pegasus, were distancing themselves from him, glancing wide-eyed between himself and the pony stalking toward him.
Sputtering, Blueblood turned back toward the pony in question, trying to think up the perfect set of blistering invectives that would let the misbegotten ruffian know precisely what would happen to him if he dared to pursue his ill-fated course of action.
But when Blueblood locked eyes with Lex again, now only twenty feet away, all that came out of his mouth was a whimper.
Blueblood had been shocked to the point of mild nausea when the duel had, unthinkably, actually commenced in an open exchange of hostilities. While he knew that Princess Twilight invoked no real awe compared to his illustrious self, the fact that Lex Legis hadn’t balked in the slightest at fighting her had rocked Blueblood to the core. At that moment, he’d finally realized just how badly he’d misjudged Lex’s character.
This wasn’t some crazy pony on a course of unchecked social suicide.
This wasn’t some doltish boor who didn’t understand what he was getting himself into.
Rather, this was somepony who knew full well that he was challenging the core institutions of Equestrian society. Who truly believed that he could stand up to the weight of over a thousand years of tradition and emerge triumphant. Who was willing to get his hooves dirty in barbaric acts of violence in order to achieve what he wanted.
Which meant that Lex Legis hadn’t been posturing when he’d accepted Blueblood’s challenge. He’d accepted it fully intending to fight the duel, rather than engaging in brinksmareship while planning to avoid it. And as Blueblood had watched Princess Twilight struggle against the would-be usurper, he’d come into the full, visceral horror of exactly what he stood to lose if Lex Legis emerged triumphant.
That knowledge was all that kept Blueblood’s hooves rooted in place as Lex closed to within ten feet of him, his instincts screaming at him to run. The brute had a wild look in his eyes – which were glowing in those ghastly colors again – and his lips were drawn back in a vicious snarl, striding forward in a heavy lurch that was almost a jog. And his right foreleg, the one covered in jagged black crystals, was rising up and winding back…
“B-BACK!” yelped Blueblood, his voice coming out a few octaves higher than he’d intended. “BACK I SAY!”
And without waiting for Lex to respond, he lowered his horn at the reprobate and called upon his magic.
Although his jaw was clenched so hard that it made his teeth ache, Lex kept careful count of each passing second as he advanced on Blueblood.
Sixty seconds. He had sixty seconds to either make the useless fop surrender or knock him unconscious. And that was if Twilight had been telling the truth about how long it would take her to return. Her habitual disinclination to control tactical information suggested that she was, but Lex didn’t want to take a chance if he could help it. Which left him with precious little time to bludgeon the quivering stallion in front of him into submission.
Because, as much as it galled him to admit it, Lex knew that he needed to accept Twilight’s interpretation of the rules.
Her assertion – that she and Blueblood could swap in for each other during the course of the duel, since they both could be identified as “The Royal Personage” – was utterly fraudulent, of course. The illogicalities in what she’d suggested were both numerous and glaring, to the point of being an insult to his intelligence. By all rights, he should have insisted that her vacating the field be taken as an immediate forfeit.
But Lex knew he couldn’t do that. Not when the entire point of this exercise was to gain legitimacy as a prince. That was the only way he’d be able to secure the loan that he wanted now that Blueblood had poisoned the minds of the Las Pegasus delegation against him. That meant that his victory here had to be beyond all possible reproach, regardless of how thin it was. There couldn’t be even the slightest shadow of a doubt about the validity of what he achieved here today. Otherwise this would be all for naught; even if Twilight didn’t press a claim that the duel wasn’t conclusive, Celestia and Luna would. Lex felt sure of that, especially given what River had told him about the amount of influence royalty wielded among high-society ponies. That would ruin what he was trying to achieve in a way that no mere personal animus could. It was fine if they rebuked him, so long as they acknowledged to the rest of Equestria that he had earned his place among their ranks.
Which meant that one way or the other, Blueblood needed to be overcome before Twilight returned.
Fortunately, the dandy seemed to have no idea how to react to being put on the spot, simply staring at Lex with a dumbstruck expression as the distance between them shrank. It was only when his valet muttered something to him that Blueblood seemed to realize what was happening, choking out a reply before gulping and lowering his horn. “B-BACK!” he shrieked. “BACK I SAY!”
The beam of magic he unleashed then was thin to the point of being dainty, the sort of energy blast that would have been useful for zapping an irritating horsefly, but not much else.
Lex was injured and exhausted. He was also clad in numerous magical defenses, ranging from the protective spells he’d long since woven around himself permanently – and which the Night Mare had augmented when she’d bestowed her power on him – to the cloak and amulet draped over him to the dusty rose prism orbiting his head alongside the other gemstones. And while he knew full well that a skilled combatant could pierce his defenses, Twilight being one of the most recent to do so, River’s description of Blueblood had made him sound like anything but.
As such, Lex wasn’t surprised in the least when Blueblood’s anemic magical beam hit him in the chest with all the force of a lightly-thrown pebble, bouncing off without inflicting so much as cosmetic damage.
Blueblood had just enough time for his eyes to widen, lips curling back in a grimace. “Wha-”
Then Lex’s punch connected with the side of his face.
The blow knocked Blueblood into the dirt, his cry of pain muffled as his he hit the ground muzzle-first. But he immediately scrambled back onto his hooves, panic driving him as he stumbled away from Lex. “S-stay away!”
“Yield!” growled Lex, keeping pace with the terrified prince. “Now!”
“I can’t!” wailed Blueblood. “I’ll lose-, NO! NOOO!!!”
The hysterical scream was prompted by Lex telekinetically grabbing Blueblood’s foreleg, bringing the panicked stallion’s retreat to a sudden halt. Terrified, it took Blueblood a moment to remember that he could counter with his own telekinesis, and his horn lit up a moment later, the golden aura clashing with the Lex’s purple one. The latter disappeared immediately, and in his fear Blueblood didn’t realize that it had been released on purpose, his eyes immediately darting back upward-
This time Lex’s punch collided directly with his nose, which arced blood as his head snapped back.
“YIELD!” boomed Lex, the voice following Blueblood as he turned and ran blindly, thinking only of escape, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to block out the pain that was rapidly becoming his whole world.
That pain grew worse a moment later as he charged headfirst into the mound of black crystals that Lex had conjured before. Bouncing off, he dumbly regarded the black barrier with watery eyes for a moment before picking himself up, knowing that if he stopped moving for even a moment the monster chasing him would-
Lex’s gauntleted hoof impacted Blueblood’s face for a third time, smashing the other side of his head against the unmoving mountain of black crystal.
“YIELD!!!”
For a moment Blueblood couldn’t answer, couldn’t even understand what was being said, his vision swimming in a way that made him feel sick to his stomach. He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, only for a renewed sense of panic to rush through him as he felt a foreign object in his mouth. Doubling over, he spit it out along with a mouthful of blood, only belatedly realizing that it was one of his teeth.
His head was abruptly yanked back, Lex having curled one hoof his horn and pulled it like a lever, standing upright as he reared back his crystal-clad foreleg for another blow…
And that was all Blueblood could take.
“Th-thtop!” he wailed, barely able to make the words come out right, his nose throbbing in agony. “I gib!”
Lex didn’t throw his punch, but he didn’t lower his hoof either. “Louder!”
“I GIB!” cried Blueblood, all dignity gone as he began to sob. “I YIELB!”
Still not lowering his hoof, Lex’s head snapped around, eyes searching Blueblood’s retinue until he found his valet. “Confirm this!” he demanded.
To his mild surprise, the effete stallion replied immediately. “Prince Blueblood yields!” he yelled shrilly, before looking at the rest of the royal retinue, his eyes wide. “He yields the duel! We’re free of him!”
Jubilant cheering immediately erupted from Blueblood’s entourage, more than one maid shrieking joyfully as the stewards cried out in exultation. Several began dancing spontaneously, either alone or grabbing one of their fellow servants as they celebrated without restraint. Caps were thrown into the air as horns launched fireworks.
The jubilation was no less wild among the Vanhoover ponies, roaring at the top of their lungs in triumph. Pegasi shot into the sky, whistling and clapping as they flew in loops, Straightlace and Thermal Draft leading them. Earth ponies reared up, slamming their hooves in applause as they whooped and hollered, Fruit Crunch pounding the ground before grabbing Hopscotch in a hug and whirled her around, the two of them laughing as her back legs left the ground. Unicorns lit their horns as brightly as they could, Garden Gate’s aura shining as she tossed Fiddlesticks into the air and catching her again, the filly shrieking happily at the impromptu flight, while Feathercap waved his binoculars wildly. Lyden howled, the sound long and triumphant. C. Shells and Ocean Spray kissed passionately. Sandbar and Funshine stood on their hind legs and chest-bumped each other. And River, knowing that it was her job to formally as Lex’s representative to formally declare his victory, yelled “He wins! Lex wins!” over and over.
But not everypony celebrated. Clustered in a small group, Twilight’s friends backed away from the joyous crowds, moving in the direction of the only other ponies who seemed perturbed by what was happening: the ones from Las Pegasus, who blinked and watched the proceedings with blank expressions.
For his part, Lex had just relaxed his aggressive posture when he spotted Sonata and Aria breaking through the crowd and making a beeline for him. “Find Cleansweep,” he instructed the two, raising his voice as they galloped toward him. “Before anything else, I want her to heal Blue-, oof!”
His instructions were completely disregarded as the two mares tackled him, sending the three of them rolling across the ground before they came to a stop, the two mares on top of him.
“You totes did it!” cheered Sonata.
“You’re a prince now!” purred Aria.
“Master Legis!” called Feather Duster, still cradling Tiddlywinks in her hooves – the baby shrieking with delight at the sound of so much laughter – as she flew over the three of them. “Congratulations!”
“Find your daughter and have her fix that idiot’s injuries!” scowled Lex, pointing at Blueblood as best he could from beneath the two Sirens, who were already nuzzling him amorously. “And the two of you, control yourse-”
But once again he was interrupted as a flash erupted at the edge of his vision, instantly fading away to reveal a panting purple alicorn, her face falling as she looked around. “No!”
Sonata and Aria hopped up at once, interposing themselves between Twilight and Lex. But they didn’t have a chance to say anything before another voice spoke up. “EVERYPONY!” came the shrill tones of Blueblood’s valet, rushing out onto the dueling ground with a bundle carried awkwardly in one foreleg. “EVERYPONY! MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE? EVERYPONY!”
It took a moment for everyone to quiet down, but when the silence fell it was sudden, and the valet adjusted his volume accordingly as he strode toward Lex. “As per the terms of the duel, agreed upon by all parties, Prince Blueblood shall immediately turn his royal titles, and all of their attendant privileges and responsibilities, over to Lex Legis!”
Grinning so widely it must have hurt his cheeks, he quieted as he turned toward the pony in question, holding the bundle toward him. “Your Highness, if I may?”
Climbing to his hooves, Lex eyed what the stallion was offering him, and gave a single nod.
The valet shuffled forward, Lex holding still as the smaller stallion telekinetically removed his cloak first, then his circlet, carefully passing them to Aria – the pony closest to him – before revealing what he’d been carrying:
Prince Blueblood’s mantle and crown.
Slowly, reverently, the smaller stallion laid the violet cloak over Lex’s back, affixing the clasp before moving the crown over his head.
But before he could lay it down, his aura – a thin, pasty beige – was overwritten by one of thick, roiling purple.
Blinking, the valet looked at Lex questioningly. When he received a smooth stare in reply, he bowed, releasing the crown, leaving it in his new lord’s magical grasp.
For several moments, Lex held the sapphire-and-platinum regalia in front of himself, looking it over as though examining it at length.
And then he placed the crown upon his head.
“I GIVE YOU,” called the valet, his voice once again stentorian, “PRINCE LEX LEGIS!”
The cheers seemed ready to resume, but before anypony could take so much as a breath, Lex raised a hoof, calling for silence. When he received it, he lowered his hoof slowly, letting his eyes sweep over everypony assembled, looking them all over one at a time. It was only after he'd met the gaze of everyone watching that he spoke a single word.
“Kneel.”
Some ponies obeyed immediately, as Garden Gate, River Bank, the Night Mare's Knights, and many others fell to their knees without hesitation.
Others obeyed more slowly, the Las Pegasus ponies all glancing at each other in confusion and anxiety before they slowly knelt down.
A few didn't kneel at all, Twilight flying over to join her friends, watching the coronation with gazes that alternated between worry and sorrow.
But nopony dared to say anything, silenced by the magnitude of what was happening.
Nopony except one, as Sonata leaned over to her sister and spoke in a whisper as soft as it was profound.
“Who's Neil?”