“C’mon, Lex, please?” whined Sonata. “Please ask her? Pretty please with a cherry, hot fudge, and sprinkles on top?”
“For the last time, no,” huffed Lex.
“Aw, why not give it a shot?” snickered Aria, making no effort to hide how much she was enjoying the exchange. “Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
“Yeah!” added Sonata. “The Night Mare has totes helped you out a bunch of times before! Like when she gave you that power that you used to stop that big squid monster when we first went to Vanhoover! Or when she gave you that big jewel that let you bring Cloudbank and everyone else back! So I bet if you asked her for some more magic now, she’d be super okay with it!”
Lex grit his teeth. “First of all,” he growled, keeping his voice low enough that only the two mares, walking at his sides, could hear him, “the ritual I use to summon the Night Mare into my presence isn’t one I can perform in my current state. Secondly, any boon I wanted from her would have a cost associated with it. And third, I am not asking her to give me the power to pull a rabbit out of a hat! That’s not even magic!”
“Yuh-huh!” insisted Sonata, pointing back at the theater they’d just exited. “Those guys on stage said it was!”
“Besides, how would you know?” grinned Aria, her expression sly. “It’s not like you can sense when spells are being cast now.”
Lex gave a wordless snarl at that, his eyes flashing green and purple as he glared at the beauty on his left. Aria, however, simply chuckled, pressing her side against his affectionately. “I’m just teasing,” she purred. “Honestly, that entire show was dumb anyway. Who puts on a magic show without any magic, in a world where every unicorn on the street knows at least a few spells?”
Cocking her head, Sonata wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Wait, so it wasn’t real? Not even the part where the guy put that assistant lady in the box, ran it through with all those spears, and then disappeared in a flash only to come out of the box a second later? I was, like, totes sure he had to have done that teleportal thingy, like Twilight did during the duel.”
His eyes changing back to normal, Lex was saved from needing to answer as a new voice cut into their conversation.
“Your Highness!” called Tranquila Rest, the Royal Leisuremeister, as she came trotting up to them. “Was good show, yes? Making your flesh all bumpy like goose?”
Lex snorted. “The most extraordinary part of that pageantry was how completely it relied on the willful suspension of its audience’s ability to think critically about what they were seeing.”
“Yeah!” cheered Sonata. “It was great!”
Aria had to put a hoof over her mouth to stifle her laughter.
For her part, Tranquila looked uncertain how to parse Lex’s answer, casting quick looks at his mares before seeming to decide that their reactions meant that her prince was satisfied. “Much good!” she pronounced. “Now, you take meal at special restaurant! Top floor spin round like whirlybird! Then go see show where ponies use trapeze! Fly without wings like WHOOSH!”
She added that last part as a helpful sound effect, rearing up and waving her forelegs around in a vague imitation of catching a swinging bar high above the ground, the burly mare grinning as she fell back onto all fours. “Is so exciting, make stress vanish, just like assistant in magic box! You want make much relaxing after!” She paused then, as though remembering something. “Ah, my prince, you will excusing me please? Must check hot tub in carriage again. Water still not perfect.”
A single nod was all it took to send the leisuremeister trotting toward their carriage, a luxurious conveyance that was, for all intents and purposes, an extravagant bungalow on wheels. Lex, however, was no longer paying attention to Tranquila in the slightest. “Aria, check again.”
The order made the Siren roll her eyes, but the corners of her lips turned up. “Right, right.”
Singing a few notes, Aria cast the spell to let her see magical emanations, glancing around surreptitiously as they walked toward. “Not seeing anything so-, wait.” She came to a halt suddenly, her eyes narrowing as she looked off to their right. “Over there,” she murmured quietly. “Near the ticket booth.”
Turning his gaze toward the now-empty kiosk, Lex clenched his jaw as he caught sight of the scrying sensor Aria had found.
That Aria knew the spell to look into the magical spectrum – a product of her learning to diversify her magic during her time in captivity among the sahuagin – was small comfort for Lex, since even though it had been several days since his failed ritual, his magical senses showed no sign of recovering. But it was better than nothing, since it meant that he could still check for instances of being magically spied upon, albeit by proxy.
Of course, that meant that he’d needed to endure both sisters frequently reminding him that he could have had her do that for him earlier if he’d simply asked them for help instead of shutting him out. It was utterly fallacious reasoning, of course; he wouldn’t have needed to have Aria search for magical signatures on his behalf if they hadn’t interrupted his ritual in the first place. But for whatever reason, the two of them were utterly resistant to reason on that point.
It had only been when he’d pointed out that he hadn’t known Aria knew that spell to begin with – neither Siren ever having told him the full complement of spells that they knew; Sonata had tried once, but her explanations had provided almost no useful information and frequently tended to run together (“I’ve got one to make someone like me, and one to make them think I’m, like, super hot, and one to make them really like me, and one to make them think I’m super duper hot, and one to make them like me and think I’m hot, and one to make them like me-, wait, did I say that already?”), whereas Aria had flatly refused to do so (“A girl’s gotta have a few secrets. It’s part of our charm.”) – that they’d stopped mentioning that. Even so, Lex had caught them smirking more than once when he’d given the order.
What had been more surprising, however, was finding out that scrying sensors were visible to the naked eye.
Despite having utilized scrying magic of his own, the slight visual displacement created by the presence of the sensor hadn’t been something that Lex had been aware of, though in hindsight it seemed obvious. Although it had no mass, the sensor’s presence still required it to displace information, routing light and sound that came into contact with it back to wherever its caster was. The loss of stimuli was infinitesimal, but while it wasn’t enough to affect ambient sound, it was just enough to create a visually-perceptible distortion around it, similar in appearance to a localized heat shimmer.
In other words, the same golf ball-sized ripple in the air that Lex was looking at right now.
“Ooh! I see it I see it I see it!” gasped Sonata, before standing up on her hind legs and waving. “HEY ADAGIO! IF YOU’RE THERE, WE MISS YOU!”
Lex grimaced. Although he’d acknowledged the pointlessness of pretending to be unaware that he was being surveilled – that had only been so he could work on a countermeasure in secret, and with that plan having gone so spectacularly awry, there was no reason to continue the deception – Sonata’s direct interaction with it still made him nervous; there was no guarantee that whoever was on the other end of the sensor was her sister, nor that they couldn’t be baited into taking action if she inadvertently upset them somehow. “I told you to stop doing that!”
His warning had little effect, however, as Aria sauntered closer to the magical relay. “I doubt that’s Adagio,” she mused, eyeing it with a lopsided smirk. “She preferred to take charge rather than hang back and watch. And besides,” turning so that her rear was pointed toward the sensor, she glanced over her shoulder, reaching back to give her flank a slap, “she’d want to try out the guy who was able to tame all this.”
“That’s enough, both of you!” growled Lex, his eyes and horn lighting up as he telekinetically tugged Aria back toward him, ushering her and Sonata into the carriage before climbing in after them, the chauffeur rushing around to shut the door and confirm their destination before returning to his post at the front of their transportation, giving the order to move out.
Inside, Lex scowled at the girls as they moved toward some couches. “Is it still present?” he demanded, looking around. While it was possible to see the sensor without magic, it was still hard to spot, compared to how looking through the magical spectrum made it stand out.
Singing her spell again, Aria looked around, then shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it. But that thing can move around, and I can only look in so many directions at once, so…” She shrugged, apparently unbothered by the idea that someone could still be watching them.
Her lack of concern for what was happening made Lex scowl. “I’ve told you before, don’t overtly acknowledge the sensor. The last thing we need is for you to provoke whoever’s on the other end of it.”
“I still hope it’s Adagio doing that,” sighed Sonata. “If it is, she might see how much fun we’re all having and decide to come home!”
“Doubt it,” snorted Aria. “She’s always got some scheme going. Remember when we got to Everglow? It was her idea to try and take over that castle in the middle of that Viljatown place, saying that once we’d enthralled whoever lived there, the rest of the city would fall in line.” She frowned at the memory, one hoof going to her throat. “Just look how well that turned out.”
“I guess,” pouted Sonata. “I still miss her though.”
Aria shrugged. “Yeah, well…we’ve got a dependable guy on the job,” she murmured, glancing at Lex.
Sonata smiled at that, also directing her eyes toward him. “We do, don’t we?”
Huffing, Lex sat down between them, still having no idea how to even begin fulfilling the promise that they’d beguiled him into making.
The rest of the ride passed in silence, and in short order they’d arrived at the restaurant. With Tranquila remaining behind to continue working on the carriage’s hot tub, the three of them made their way to the top floor – escorted by a maître d’ who’d been waiting for them, along with several members of the waitstaff who were eager to see to their every need – only to find the entranceway blocked by a group of ponies crowding the doorway.
Flustered, the maître d’ was already apologizing for the delay, but he hadn’t gotten more than two words out before a mare’s voice, filled with outrage, could be heard. “What do you mean you cancelled our reservation?! We made it five months ago!”
“Madam,” began the water in a soothing tone, “I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience, but as I explained to you before, we’re expecting guests of royal persuasion, and so somepony had to be bumped. Now, we’ll gladly compensate-”
“We don’t want compensation!” replied the unseen mare, her voice filled with righteous indignation. “We want dinner! This is amateurish, improper, unprofessional-”
“Madam, please, I understand you’re-” The waiter stopped in mid-sentence as he caught sight of the maître d’ frantically gesturing at him from the back of the crowd, his eyes widening as he spotted the trio of guests he was escorting, and he cleared his throat. “Everypony!” he called. “Everypony! Make way for His Highness! Make way for the prince!”
Turning around, whispers and soft mutterings erupted through the crowd as they turned around and saw who was there. The click of shutters could be heard as pictures were taken. Several ponies pulled out newspapers, glancing at the front page before looking up to confirm that yes, that was the actual prince in front of them now.
But Lex was completely unaware of all of that, instead staring straight ahead in shock.
Not all of the crowd had parted at the waiter’s announcement. Standing in front of him were three ponies, who presumably were the group that had been turned away in order to make room for himself and the Sirens.
The first was a middle-aged unicorn mare with the deep blue mane and tail, dark gray coat, and crossword puzzle cutie mark, still scowling at having been told that her reservation had been cancelled. Next to her was a unicorn stallion with a pale green coat, a blond mane and tail that were both cut short, and his cutie mark depicting several colorful pills, his expression far more placid than his companion.
But it was the third member of the group who held Lex’s undivided attention.
A unicorn mare, her coat was the color of coal, and her mane and tail were blonde. Her cutie mark was a magnifying glass over a newspaper. On her muzzle sat a pair of glasses, behind which her eyes were currently widening even as her jaw fell open.
On one side of him, he heard Sonata gasp. On his other side, he glimpsed Aria going rigid. Between the two of them, Lex simply stared at the mare who had, in the brief time that he’d known her, become an important part of his life, right before she’d cut herself out of it, her name coming to his lips unbidden now.
“Nosey.”