472 - Resurrection Now
“Go and wait in the parlor.”
Standing in front of the door to the guest suite he was staying in, River felt her heart sink at Lex’s command. During the trip back, she’d privately rehearsed how she would present the results of her expedition to him. First would be divulging the sheer number of Las Pegasus’s richest ponies that she’d brought back. Then she’d move on to revealing that Prince Blueblood was here as well. It was only after she’d made a big deal about how incredible of an opportunity that was that she’d cautiously mention Blueblood’s…unfortunate disposition. At which point she felt sure she’d be able to turn the conversation into a mutual brainstorming session between herself and Lex about how to deal with that, deftly integrating herself even further into his plans to secure the loan he wanted and in so doing move that much closer to being rewarded by him if and when he succeeded.
But now she could see those plans – which had already taken a major hit at Feather Duster’s casual revelation that Lex wanted to speak to both of them, to say nothing of letting slip what he wanted to talk to them about – crumbling down around her ears. It wasn’t the abrupt dismissal that made the blood drain from her face, however. It was the way Lex was looking at her, his expression far colder than his normal scowl, confirming that he knew what she’d told Feather Duster to do and was very displeased by it.
“B-but Lex, I brought the ponies you wanted!” she stammered, trying not to panic. “Almost twenty of the richest ponies from Las Pe-”
“Will they leave if I don’t meet with them immediately?”
Unable to help but wince a little, River shook her head. “…no.”
“Then the two of you go and wait in the parlor,” ordered Lex, causing River to bite her lip as his gaze moved from her to Feather Duster, who was standing behind her, and back again. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. And River…”
His expression didn’t change, nor did his voice grow any colder, but his eyes erupted into a flash of green then, purple contrails sprouting from the outer corners in what she knew could only be a manifestation of intense anger. “If I so much as think that you’ve attempted to intimidate, coerce, or otherwise manipulate Feather Duster between now and then, I’ll be extremely displeased.”
The threat was enough to make River feel dizzy with dread. As horrific as being confronted by a ghoul had been, the threat the creature had presented had at least been immediate and obvious. The prospect of Lex’s wrath, however, left her mind racing as she considered all the ways that he could use his magic to make her life one of unbearable torment. After all, if he’d been willing to hit her with a curse that destroyed her ability to enjoy the things in life that she valued most over a mere threat to get in his way, the idea that he could be even more upset now was enough to leave her knees shaking. “I won’t!” she whimpered, her voice pleading. “I swear I-”
Lex shut the door in her face.
“…won’t,” she finished lamely.
For several seconds, River could only stare straight ahead, fear eating her alive as surely as that undead pony had wanted to. She tried to think of something, anything, that she could do to avoid the horrible punishment that she was sure Lex was going to inflict on her ten minutes from now. But what could she do? Against his magic, and with so little time, what could she possibly do?
Nothing, she realized, a sickening sense of hopelessness washing over her then. There’s nothing I can do.
Feather Duster seemed to realize that also, because the corners of the mare’s lips were turned up ever so slightly as she gave a polite cough. “Miss Bank? The parlor is this way.”
Her steps faltering as though she were being led to the gates of Tartarus itself, River turned and slowly trudged after the maid.
Lex had already put River and Feather Duster out of his thoughts as he returned to his study.
Instead, he turned his attention back to the spell-embedded ruby that the Night Mare had given him. Telekinetically lifting it so it was level with his eyes, he regarded it – or rather, the resurrection spell inside it – for just a moment.
Then he began to chant the words to invoke its magic.
Now that he’d succeeded in unravelling the mysteries involved with using magic to bring the dead back to life, there was no reason to delay any further. His inability to resurrect all of the ponies who had died here didn’t change the fact that he still had the ability to revive one person. The only question left was whom to choose.
But the ethical quandary of selecting one individual to be given a second chance at life while so many others were denied was one that Lex found easy to navigate. Indeed, that was the sort of conceptual puzzle that had always come effortlessly to him, to the point where he barely had to consciously dwell upon it anymore. He simply applied to problem to his moral framework and immediately found the answer, the process requiring no more effort than it would have taken somepony else to cross an open threshold.
Pony lives were of immeasurable value. That was one of the bedrock truths that made up Lex’s view of the world. And because that value could not be quantified, one could therefore not assert that the lives of certain ponies were more precious than those of others. While the conduct with which ponies conducted themselves could be examined and critiqued for its adherence (or lack thereof) to moral guidelines – to say nothing of the interconnected web of hierarchies and meritocratic determinations that a dynamic society relied upon to urge its members to strive for new achievements – that in no way changed the intrinsic value of a pony’s life unto itself. It was the reason that no pony, not even the most heinous of criminals, could ever be put to death.
By that same token, everypony who had died where the natural extent of their lives would otherwise have continued was therefore entitled to be brought back to life. None could be said to be more deserving than any other in that regard. To allow some ponies to remain dead while others were brought back was therefore a failure on his part – albeit it less of a failure than to not bring anypony back at all – but the scope of that failure would be unchanged no matter who was returned to life.
Which meant that the answer as to who should be resurrected, Lex knew, was twofold in nature:
The first was that who he chose was entirely up to his personal discretion.
And the second was to rage against that aforementioned failure with everything he had.
His eyes flaring brightly, Lex grit his teeth as he began pouring magical power through his body and into the ruby.
The resurrection spell was one that, according to everything he’d learned, he’d never be able to cast on his own. But right now he wasn’t casting it on his own. All of the energy, and its attendant data, was already there, pre-cast and waiting to be unleashed within the gemstone. That meant that the bulk of the work was already done. All he had to do now was force even more power into the thing, overloading it with sufficient energy to carry out the operations it had been tasked to perform with greater alacrity than it would otherwise. Enough so that it would be able to bring back not just one individual but many! As many as he could compel it to revive!
Forcing power through his body into a magic item was, he’d learned, intrinsically more difficult than feeding it into spells contained within his thoughts. While the discrete nature of his thought-form spells were likewise built to only hold so much energy, feeding energy into them at the moment of casting allowed his physically-gathered energy to either merge with that of the spell as it was unleashed, enhancing it, or flow back into the thought-form before it collapsed, retaining it. Magic items, however, offered no such flexibility. Their preset functionality was designed specifically to hold only so much power, and so they inherently resisted having more shoved into them.
But that simply meant that Lex had to push back harder.
Finishing the chant, Lex raised the gem aloft as he invoked the final part of the spell. With no need for a body to work on, it required only that he name the individual he wanted to resurrect. And the first pony he wanted to bring back was…
“Cloudbank.”
A pony who had cursed him bitterly when he’d first met her, Lex had been surprised by how much he’d come to trust the pegasus in the short time that he’d known her. She’d volunteered for the incredibly dangerous task of wielding Severance in the battle against Tlerekithres. She’d been the first pony he’d inducted into the Night Mare’s faith. And she’d agreed to lead the doomed expedition back into Vanhoover. Her metamorphosis into an asset to everypony’s survival had been as notable as Garden Gate’s, save that she’d never lost her moral center to begin with.
Feeling the energy within the gem begin to ebb as it flowed out of its container and went to work, Lex poured more into it.
“Thermal Draft.”
The pegasus pony had been among the very first of Vanhoover’s population to support his efforts. Where so many others had derided or criticized him, she never had. Instead, she’d contributed whatever she could to helping him help everypony, from soothing him after he and Sonata had fought to saving his life during the battle on the docks. Her support had been steadfast, and it had ultimately cost her everything because he had lacked the imagination to see the enemy in their midst.
The spell very nearly went out then, and Lex snarled as he aggressively sent more power into it, his muscles burning, refusing to let it extinguish.
“C. Shells.”
He’d first hired her for passage to Vanhoover in exchange for repairing her damaged ship. Once she’d brought them to the city, she could easily have left. After the sahuagin had crawled onto her boat she would have been well within her rights to turn around and take herself and her crew out of danger. Instead she’d stayed, following him as he’d tried to rid the ruined city of the monsters plaguing it, committing not just herself but also the ponies under her command to the relief effort because she couldn’t in good conscience do any less.
The pain had grown significantly by then, the sheer amount of power needed to force the spell within the gem to triple its effectiveness requiring a massive toll on his body. But Lex ignored it, telling himself that he’d experienced far worse before. Instead, he said the next name that came to mind.
“Sandbar.”
A pony on C. Shell’s crew, the stallion had been one of the first to accompany Lex into Vanhoover. His bravery had seen him rewarded by nearly getting his throat torn out, saved only at the last possible moment. But the experience hadn’t soured him on joining his crew mates in doing all he could, whether it had been cleaning a warehouse or battling the monsters from the sea. And he’d never lost his benign disposition, always bragging about the scar he’d received rather than lamenting it.
His mouth filling with blood, Lex spat it out as he struggled to keep the spell from concluding. Just a little more! Just…a little…more…!
“Turbo.”
The second-in-command among Garden’s gang, he had been dedicated to his friends far more than to Vanhoover’s restoration. But that dedication had driven him to venture back into the city that they’d spent weeks trying to escape from, willing to put Garden’s wish to help ahead of his own safety. If he hadn’t redeemed himself for the things he’d done after the city had flooded, it was because he hadn’t truly had the chance to, unlike how his friends had all escorted sick ponies to Canterlot and then come back because they wanted to do more. It was a chance that Turbo should have had as well.
Lex’s world jumped upward then, and it took him a moment to realize that he had collapsed. But he didn’t feel any pain from the impact. In fact, he realized blearily, he didn’t feel much of anything…except the spell, reaching the end of its-
His eyes widening, Lex reached upward, straining with everything he had to keep it going. One more! There was still one more pony he needed to bring back! One more whom he’d let down, and who had paid for it with his life!
With his last ounce of strength, Lex forced the words past his lips.
“…Block…Party…”
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As it turns out, you can do a lot if you're willing to take Constitution drain.
10215636
"I'll speak to you in 10 minutes"
Bold words for a pony about to take ALL of the con drain.
Damn...I'd say it is a reckless move to do what he did but he undoubtedly planned for it though pushing himself this much before meeting with someone who intends to 'defeat' him is rather unfortunate
Still, I'd like to see the prince try to get past all of those whose loyalty and gratitude to Lex is all but cemented should his stunt succeed without a hitch. And even then, Garden should have plenty of knives stashed away.
Though I think the NMK are more than enough to deter him if not drive him away through sheer childish annoyance alone though that would risk Vanhoover losing out on the loans.
Still, if River doesn't end up out on the streets after this(or cursed to be subservient to Feather Duster), she would probably do everything she can to mitigate any issues just to get back in Lex's good graces...or at least out of his bad side.
Lex really should stop trying to roll to select options. The gem is there and will still be there, and the unknown returnees and visitors are there immediately?
If all the gem needed was magical power to keep going, then working out how big a magical storage gem would be needed for each spell would let him directly measure not only the amount of resources needed, but then trigger and handle such resources? Or at least if he ever manages to work out how to assemble such a powerful spell ever again, like his thought forms, by parts?
Bluebloods going to be all epithets than epitaph now.
10216041
On that note...
What if he had the "resurrection gem" connected to "the crystal gem" ?
10216917
Depends on how much energy it gets from familal etc love for good, as opposed to blind fath and bloodlust for evil?
10215636
10215677 Lex took some stat damage here, but nothing that serious!
10215773 Lex does often seem to find himself in exceptionally disadvantageous positions just when things seem to hit the fan, doesn't he? Funny how that seems to keep happening.
Of course, as the Night Mare (and a lot of other people) have been trying to get him to realize for a while now, if push comes to shove he'll have quite a few ponies who'll stand by him. The salient question is just how much Lex is willing to accept their help. He does seem to have made some strides in that regard, but it often comes with some steps backward involved, so hopefully he'll be in a place where he can bring himself to accept help from those he's ruling over, if he should find himself in need of it.
But that's getting ahead of things. Who knows, maybe the forthcoming encounters will be entirely peaceful and everypony will be able to get along without...
...yeah, no, there's no real chance of that happening, is there?
10216041 To be clear: the gem in which the resurrection spell is embedded is just a container. It holds a single casting of the spell, and then it's magic is gone, as is the gem itself. Lex was fully aware that once used it would be depleted, which is why he was so adamant about trying to deconstruct its mechanisms in hope of reverse-engineering it. Once he realized that it was beyond what he could do, he had no further reason to delay, and cast the spell...albeit after trying to push it to its absolute limits in an attempt to circumvent the "one person only" restriction.
As for the ruby itself, it wasn't magical per se. It's like writing a spell on a scroll (in D&D terms). The container might be of notable quality, but that's not where the magic is, anymore than the can that holds canned fruit is itself edible.
10216917 You mean "the Crystal Heart"?
That's...hard to say. The Crystal Heart is, by itself, a sort of amplifier. It magnifies and radiates the magic channeled into it, which explains why King Sombra wanted to possess, rather than destroy, the thing. Notice how, in the season nine premiere, he mounted it on two dark crystals, and we can see a black aura around it:
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/0/0d/Shining_Armor_and_Cadance_in_chains_S9E1.png
I'm fairly convinced that that's what Princess Celestia meant in the third season premiere when she said:
In other words, it absorbs emotions and turns them into power, though it apparently needs the architecture of the Crystal Empire itself to do so; hence why we can actually see the crystal ponies' energies filling up the streets of the Crystal Empire. That suggests why the Crystal Empire was built in a place that's normally a snowy wasteland: that material that makes up their streets and lets them power the Crystal Heart is presumably only found there. So it's difficult to say if, without some similar mechanism to feed power into it, Lex could have done the same now.
A draining act
To set things back.
A meeting with
A royal brat.
Karma knocks
For River Bank.
For river's plans
Have surely sank.
10217709 No spoilers, but it's possible that Lex's injuring himself here might be a factor in what's coming down the line.