545 - Twist of Fate
With a heavy crash, the mass of black crystals slammed down on Twilight’s position for the second time in less than a minute.
The impact wasn’t nearly as thunderous as the previous one had been, owing to the amassed tonnage only falling a few feet as Twilight’s shield spell collapsed, but to Lex it struck with much greater force than before.
He’d done it.
He’d made his haphazard, half-formed plan work.
He’d defeated Twilight Sparkle.
Despite his still feeling the residual damage from yesterday’s battles and resurrections, despite Twilight’s intuiting that he had almost no thaumaturgical magic left, despite her unexpected use of summoning magic forcing him to improvise, he’d managed to direct the flow of the battle to the end he wanted. Moreover, there had been no interruptions or interferences, meaning that there were no grounds for anypony to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory. He’d won the duel, and with it a crown of his own, one that the princesses would have no choice but to recognize.
Smirking at the thought, Lex ceased adding more black crystals to the enormous mass he’d already conjured, and the wave of weariness that ran through him then almost caused his knees to buckle. He could already tell that he wouldn’t be physically augmenting his magic for a while after this, not that it mattered too much since he’d used almost all of his dark magic in that last attack. Not to mention the wounds he’d taken from Behemiel’s attacks – translated back into physical injuries now that he’d returned to physical form – were starting to ache as well, though at least that he could ameliorate those, fumbling through the weak healing spell that the Night Mare had given him.
Once it was cast, Lex glanced back at where Twilight had been smashed beneath the conglomeration of black crystals, pausing just long enough to confirm how many seconds had passed. As severe as dropping what was effectively a small mountain on her appeared, he’d been very meticulous in gauging how much damage she’d take, wanting to conclusively incapacitate her without putting her life in jeopardy. To that end, he’d projected how much force he’d need to bring to bear against her defenses – broadly calculating how much her magic items and alicorn-granted earth pony toughness would insulate her from fatal injury – and for how long. And now they were approaching the limit of that duration.
Striding forward, a thought was all it took for Lex to dissolve the field of spikes that he’d raised, doing the same thing to the portion of the black crystals that had driven Twilight into the ground. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessary for him to drag her unconscious body forward and deposit it at Blueblood’s hooves; he could just as easily call him and everyone else over to see that she was beaten. But Lex had every intention of-
She wasn’t there.
Freezing in place, Lex stared at the hole in the ground where Twilight should have been, trying to make sense of what he was – or rather, wasn’t – seeing.
Hurriedly activating his circlet to examine the area for residual magic, Lex tried to figure out what had happened. Had she transmogrified herself into some alternate form in order to slip the band he’d put around her wings and escape? She had mentioned turning herself into a breezie once. Possibly a speed-enhancing spell to let her rush away in the instant between when her shield had collapsed and the mass of black crystals had come down? Or maybe she’d cast some sort of illusion, creating the appearance of falling into his trap when she’d actually avoided it altogether?
No, he decided uneasily. None of those make sense. Twilight was skilled, but he’d been putting too much pressure on her shield for her to keep it up while also casting a polymorphic spell; she’d have had to have dropped the former in order to use the latter, meaning she would have been crushed before being able to escape. If she’d created an illusion to avoid his trap then she never would have bothered wasting energy putting up a shield, or at least not for as long as she had; she’d have simply made it look like she’d either been defeated immediately, or only have put up a token struggle to prevent him from becoming suspicious. And even if she’d enhanced her speed to the level necessary to take advantage of the fraction of an instant between when her shield had fallen and the black crystals had come down, she’d still have torn her hooves to shreds running over the field of spikes he’d created.
Not to mention that his circlet wasn’t detecting any traces of those types of magic anyway. All that it was picking up were the remnants of her shield spell and those of a recent attempt at teleportation, the latter of which was clearly from when she’d initially fallen victim to the curse of dimensional impermeability that he’d laid down. But then where was she?! Where-
“NNNRRRRRAAAAAAUGH!”
A flash of light and a howl of pain made Lex spin around, just in time to see Twilight fall to the ground a short distance away from him, landing right outside of the anti-teleportation field he’d laid down.
Twilight groaned as she climbed to her hooves, panting for breath as she looked around. I made it! she realized shakily. I’m back!
That her plan had worked was, she knew, nothing short of miraculous. She’d essentially teleported under circumstances that left her with no ability to reach her destination…or any destination. With Lex’s curse trying to snap her back to her starting location, and her spell’s safeguards trying to move her somewhere else when they detected that location was occupied, she’d had nowhere to go in the most literal way imaginable.
The result was that, for a few seconds, she’d been stuck outside of physical space with no way back in.
It had been a torturous experience, and one that Twilight already knew she never wanted to go through again. There’d been nothing to see since there was no light, or even a medium for light to travel through, nor anything to hear since the same was true for sound as well. There’d been nothing to kick off of or push against, no sense of up or down, and it had only been when she’d felt an intense sense of discomfort radiating from her chest – and rapidly growing stronger – that she’d realized that she couldn’t breathe either. Worst had been how she hadn’t been able to move, since there was no space for her to move in, and yet she’d had a dim sense of intense pressure all the same, only she hadn’t been able to tell whether it was focused inward or outward, leaving her feeling like she was being stretched out but also compressed at the same time.
Needless to say, it had not been a pleasant experience; even now there were painful spasms shooting through her muscles with every move she made, her joints ached like she’d tried to bend them all the wrong way, and her head felt like she charged a brick wall full-tilt. But it worked, she reassured herself as she took a deep breath, savoring the sensation of being able to do so. It turned out okay, and now-
“Are you insane?!” Lex’s voice drew her back to herself, frowning as she turned to regard the incredulous look he was giving her. “You deliberately teleported under conditions where you had no viable point of return?! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?!”
A small part of Twilight was impressed at how quickly he’d figured out what she’d done. The rest of her was focused on finishing what she’d started. “I do. But right now, I’m fighting for what I believe in, as well as everyone who believes in me, which means doing everything I can even if it’s risky. I thought that you, of all ponies, would understand that.”
An ugly look crossed his face then. “Dedication alone isn’t worthy of being lauded,” he spat. “It only has merit if what you’re trying to achieve is virtuous, and there’s nothing virtuous about your conflating friendship with leadership!”
His eyes flared as he spoke, and not just because of his rising anger; Twilight saw black crystals form around the end of his right foreleg, stretching from his hoof halfway to his elbow. A gauntlet, she realized. Just like the one Starlight said he used when he finished their fight yesterday.
With her headband on, that was enough to kick the analytical part of Twilight’s brain into overdrive. Her eyes flickered over to the massive pile of black crystals that Lex had dropped on her mere moments ago before returning to him. She’d heard the strain in his voice before, when he’d been trying to crush her, but even though he’d stopped he was still breathing heavily now, sweat gathering on his brow. Although he’d surprised her by using a thaumaturgical spell to trap Behemiel in ice, he hadn’t used one since, relying entirely on his dark magic. And if he was going to start physically attacking her next…
“You’re wrong, Lex.” Canting her head toward where everypony was watching them, Twilight kept her eyes locked on his own. “It’s because of my friends that I was able to become a princess, and it’s thanks to what they’ve taught me that I’ve been able to help protect Equestria and everypony in it, not just from monsters and disasters, but from anything that makes ponies unhappy.” Slowly, she extended a hoof out toward him. “I know you don’t have much magic left. Please, stand down. Let me show you how to be a great leader and a great friend to everypony here.”
If her words had any effect other than to make him angrier, she couldn’t see it. “I will not yield,” he rumbled darkly. “Administrating to a society means doing more than protecting it. The welfare of the people is more important than their happiness. And you” – he extended his gauntlet-clad hoof toward Twilight then, mirroring her posture, but the message his gesture sent couldn’t have been more different from hers – “are unfit to be a princess!”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” replied Twilight steadily. “But when this duel is over, and you’re making peace with Celestia and Luna, I promise I won’t give up on teaching you friendship lessons.”
Then she started casting.
Lex immediately rushed toward her, his foreleg cocked back for a punch, but in his fatigued state he wasn’t able to reach her before she got her spell off. Immediately, she felt the magic of her dispelling spell impact the band he’d conjured around her middle. Like before, his magic warred with hers in a silent struggle. Unlike before, hers was victorious, the ring of black crystal disappearing a second later, freeing her wings.
She’d just finished extending them when Lex closed the remaining distance to her, leading with a heavy swing of his gauntleted hoof. But Lex had never been a brawler, and his exhaustion did him no favors, allowing Twilight to duck under the wild punch easily. Rather than fight back, she instead focused on getting into the air, flapping her wings heavily as she kicked off the ground, this time pulling her legs up before Lex’s desperate backswing could catch them.
And then she was flying upward, leaving him behind as she ascended out of reach. Rearing back, she sent a beam of magic directly at him, watching as he tried and failed to dodge out of the way, the hit almost knocking him off his hooves. He backed off then, and even if Twilight hadn’t noticed his lack of a counterattack – or even turning back into a shadow – the desperate anger and bitter frustration on his face told her everything she needed to know.
Knowing that he wouldn’t stop until he was, as per the terms of their duel, incapacitated, Twilight was already planning out her next phase of attack. Another lightning bolt would be too much in the state he’s in, but if he doesn’t have any way of attacking me up here, then that’s no problem. I can just wear him down gradually with my Equestrian spellcasting, and I still have some alicorn magic left-
Out in the crowd, Spike suddenly let out a belch of green flame, a scroll falling into his claws.
Unrolling it, his eyes widened a second later. “T-TWILIGHT!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “THERE’S AN EMERGENCY IN CANTERLOT!”
Twilight knew that she should have taken care of Lex before responding, that whatever was happening could likely wait a few minutes for her to finish the duel. But Canterlot was where she’d grown up. It was where her parents lived. Where Celestia and Luna lived. If it was being attacked…if some new monster had shown up…
Willow’s words in the aftermath of the lhaksharut’s attack came back to her then.
“There’s another type of inevitable, called maruts, which are almost as powerful as lhaksharuts. They enforce a different natural law, one that Princess Celestia is already in violation of: that all mortals must eventually die.”
Spinning in the air, Twilight turned her full attention toward Spike. “What is it?!”
Scanning the message, Spike shook his head. “I’m not sure…something about some member of the Royal Guard going crazy and attacking some ponies.” Although he wasn’t yelling quite so loud now, his voice carried easily, everyone falling silent as they listened. “One pony…” he gulped before continuing. “One pony is critically injured. Princess Celestia is sending a pegasus chariot to your castle. She wants you to get Soft Mane out front to meet it.” He looked up then, his face stricken. “Immediately.”
Twilight felt her blood turn into ice-water then. The map! she wailed silently. I KNEW there was a reason it didn’t tell us to bring Spike and Soft Mane with us to Vanhoover! If she had just left them back in Ponyville, there’d be no problem! Spike would have received the message and gotten Soft Mane ready on his own! But now…!
Trying not to panic, Twilight put her hooves to her headband, as if she could increase its output by touch. What do I do?! I think I have enough alicorn magic left to teleport myself and Soft Mane back home, but that’ll mean forfeiting the duel! But if I don’t, somepony might die because Soft Mane won’t be there to save them! How can I…
Then inspiration struck.
“Lex!” Twilight yelled suddenly. “I want to postpone the duel! You’ll agree to that if it’s to save somepony’s life, right?!”
“No.”
Twilight almost fell out of the sky. “What?! But you were just talking about the welfare of the people being the most important thing! How can you-”
“The welfare of the people is the most important thing,” shot back Lex, glaring up at her with no visible sign of delight at her dilemma. “And if you don't assist with helping whoever's injured, I'll be the first to condemn you. But I am NOT under any obligation to make it easier for you to discharge your moral duties, especially not at my own expense!”
For a moment, Twilight couldn't say anything, knowing that Lex was right. He wasn't actually preventing her from leaving – that anti-teleportation field of his couldn't have been that large, since it hadn't stopped her from teleporting when she'd rescued Behemiel – and he didn't have any reason for agreeing to postpone the duel instead of having her forfeit if she left, which she knew she had to do. One minute, she felt certain. I can't teleport all the way back to Ponyville in one go, but if I use all of my remaining alicorn magic, I can increase the range of my teleporting and get Soft Mane and me back home in a short series of them, and then I can do the same to come back. I'd only be gone for one minute! If only there was some way to pause the duel, or have someone else fill in for her while she was…was…
“The Royal Personage!” she blurted.
Below her, Lex raised a brow. “What?”
“The duel states that you're fighting the Royal Personage!” hurried Twilight. “That's how I stepped in! Even if I leave, there's still one pony here who can fulfill that term!”
Before Lex could respond, Twilight reached out and grabbed Soft Mane in her telekinesis, the half-human/pony yelping as she was lifted into the air and pulled toward the distraught alicorn. “Blueblood, I'm sorry, but I just need you to last for sixty seconds, then I'll be back!” Knowing that she'd waited too long already, Twilight cast her teleportation spell, focusing her alicorn magic into it and whisking herself and Soft Mane away.
Surrounded by his retainers and admirers, all of whom were suddenly looking at him, Prince Blueblood could only blink. “...huh?”
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Damm, he’s too exhausted to give a free trip to the stratosphere.
Damm
Fine, agree, smack Blueballs with a fish, he cries and gives up, Lex wins. Bonus points for Luna's crazy fanatic being the one to hand him the victory.
Also Celestia being in violation of the mortals must die rule (itself a load of bull) is BS in my opinion. Just because she might not die of old age doesn't means she isn't perfectly killable through other means. And as much as she goes around making enemies and storing them away for rainy days, one's bound to decide not to mess around and just stab her someday.
Edit: On the other hand, DON'T agree. By the same legalese loophole she's using (again) to sub out, she could technically come back with Celestia, Luna, Cadance or Shining Armor to sub in, and with how manipulative she's being to try and fulfill her "friendship mission," I'm not 100% sure she WOULDN'T try to pull it, or that given Celestia's feelings towards him that she might go jump in if she got wind of things.
Hmmm, I see three ways lex will win
Blueblood loses in 60 seconds
Twilight wins
someone is renamed lex legis
That ending!
If Blueblood somehow lasts that long then I'll be impressed. I mean, he could forfeit but with the knowledge that doing so would take away everything he ever felt entitled to so he'll probably stand his ground, especially if he believes that Lex's exhaustion will be in his favor. Though the most likely course of action he'll commit is stalling for time by throwing threats and insults followed by some bargaining and begging.
Well, after trying to wrangle his retainers and admirers into fighting Lex for him instead.
Still, it was a pretty damn close call for Lex there. If that scroll wasn't sent through then it would have undoubtedly meant his defeat or at least handicap him even further in his duel with Blueblood. While I am relieved for Lex, I can't help but worry who Silhouette had hurt and curious if the guards had managed to subdue him or not. I mean, Silhouette is obviously more skilled but with his physical and mental condition, even Royal Guards can overwhelm him through sheer numbers alone.
All Mortals must die is a get out by the Gods because they restrict themselvesso much they get fed up of unrestricted mortals levelgrindingto where theyre killinggods instead.
Last I saw, you can have about 2^5 million entities running active, nevermind save statesat zero clock.
Peoplehate that absolute power means you already havedone everythingpossible. Such as taken everything from everyone you dont like.
Still, Blueblood could delay long enough at thispoint? He just has to RUN?
10577535
Dude if you've lived long enough to become powerful enough to kill gods without becoming one yourself, you're doing immortality wrong.
ok if you are going to play this card this works both ways Lex can also have a second as to the terms of dueling.
Yes Twilight,
Fighting THE royal personage.
As in 1.
Meaning that Twilight are in violation of the terms by switching for another combatant.
10577312
10577212 Well, Lex is pretty well tapped out on magic and stamina, but it seems like he might have a little of both left. Surely that'll be enough to deal with the likes of Blueblood, right?
10577602 That would be fair, but the terms of the duel specify Lex as the individual challenged. Twilight is reaching for the same technicality she used to take Blueblood's place to begin with, and it's highly dubious that it would work how she's proposing. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how Lex reacts to this.
10577950 That's probably the most straightforward take on what happened. It's one thing for Twilight to use a technicality to take Blueblood's place in the duel. It's another thing entirely for her to act like she and Blueblood are a tag-team that can swap in and out with each other.
10577246 Hopefully Lex will have that easy of a time dispatching Blueblood. But with how exhausted, injured, and low on magic he is, that might be harder than it seems. Of course, Lex is nothing if not used to fighting even when he's running on empty...and Blueblood doesn't seem used to fighting at all.
That said, if Lex allows this to happen the way Twilight is proposing - and that's a big if - then he'll need to win fast. Twilight could conceivably bring back more members of Equestrian royalty with her, but it would be kind of a moot point. Lex is in no shape to fight anyone who's combat-worthy at the level he usually operates at. Twilight could come back alone and he'd have no real means of overcoming her now. Which Twilight, of course, knows, and so she's going to teleport to Ponyville and back as fast as possible...
10577535 Technically, the rule about "all mortals must die at some point" isn't set by the gods. It's that the inevitables are the self-appointed guardians of what most people consider to be natural laws. The rule about mortals not being allowed to live forever is, strictly speaking, something that mostly comes up with regards to mortals who look like they've beaten issues of senescence and don't have any deadly prospects in their foreseeable future.
Most of the time, that sort of thing comes up with regards to the more successful liches, vampires, and other intelligent undead. Which isn't to say that maruts (the only type of inevitable concerned with enforcing mortality) are a huge force in keeping those creatures' numbers low across the multiverse; they're way too outnumbered on that front (for a rough comparison, think about the general population of a major city versus its police population). But they've probably bumped off a lot of the ones whom mortal heroes would otherwise have missed.
10577416 One of the subtler aspects of what happened in this chapter is that it actually showcases how the battle between Lex and Twilight wasn't only about their duel. Rather, it was about the wider impact of their respective types of (Equestrian) magic; essentially, their fight had started before the duel was ever even issued.
Lex's use of "the magic of isolation" was in cursing Luna. In doing so, he broke Silhouette's ability to have faith in her as a divinity (along with Luna's own), which had the unforeseen effect of driving Silhouette to a point where his actions ended up interrupting the duel.
If Twilight had put more of her faith into the magic of friendship, however, that interruption wouldn't have happened. If she'd gone with her instincts with regard to the map sending just her and her friends - Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity - to Vanhoover, leaving Spike and Soft Mane behind, then those two could have handled the potential interruption on their own. But Twilight was, at the time they left, still doubting herself after what had happened with the lhaksharut, and so let Soft Mane talk her into bringing them along too. In other words, she doubted the magic of friendship, and so the effects of Lex's magic of isolation succeeded in interrupting her at a critical moment.
Twilight effectively won the duel; she had Lex dead to rights, with him having no real way to counterattack or even defend himself. But in a wider context, Twilight let the magic of friendship falter, and so Lex's magic of isolation was able to intervene at a critical moment, giving him another chance where he shouldn't, by all rights, have gotten one.
If that all sounds rather indirect and unforeseeable, well...that's sort of how destiny works.
10577552 There's actually an interesting discussion to be had there with regards to how much extremely-high-level play should be tied into divine ascension, and various editions of D&D have had (oftentimes wildly) disparate takes on it over the years.
For instance, AD&D 1st Edition and D&D Third Edition both allowed you to gain infinite levels (the former having some restrictions depending on your race and class), but treated divine ascension as something that basically took you out of play (i.e. you became an NPC) even though there were stats for the gods. AD&D 2nd Edition and D&D 4th Edition both put hard caps on how many levels you could gain (30 in both cases), with the former also treating divine ascension as retiring your character (and having, despite what a lot of people think, limited stats for gods) and the latter treating it as a character arc that you were on when you hit your level cap. Pathfinder 1E did much the same, capping you at 20 levels and 10 mythic tiers, the latter of which effectively made you a "small god" without fully ascending.
Only the BECMI incarnation of D&D allowed for play to continue after undergoing divine ascension (the "I" in "BECMI" standing for "Immortals"). Before you hit the hard level cap (36 for humans, with demihumans having a lower cap but still having heightened experience point requirements), you could start fulfilling the requirements to become an Immortal, which in turn had another 36 ranks (in six categories of six ranks each). It was rather elegant in its design, I think, even if it didn't get very much official support.
10578541
And honestly this is why I'm not so happy with Twilight right now. She's pulling shady legal trickery...when she doesn't have to. If she can teleport all the way to Ponyville or Canterlot and back and still have energy to finish Lex, then she could finish Lex without "legally" cheating by subbing in Blueblood(pathetic as he likely is) and THEN teleport her and Soft Mane out. Again, while he's likely a paper tiger, she's still subbing in a fresh combatant where Lex has no provisions in the conditions for one himself. And if BB turns out to be secretly a powerful combatant, that just makes it worse. Just another way where even if she wins the duel she's still damaging herself on the public relations front by making the royals look like they'll change the rules on a whim to get their way.
10578642 Well, the issue of why she didn't simply finish the duel as fast as she could and then head to Ponyville was addressed in the story, though it was perhaps a tad more oblique than it should have been: while Twilight felt confident that Lex didn't have much in the way of fighting back, she still needed to actually incapacitate him (i.e. render him unconscious) in order to actually win.
While she could have simply blasted him with lightning bolts, she didn't want to risk killing him outright (similar to how Lex didn't want to use his icy prison spell on another pony). And while Twilight had less lethal means of attacking, she wasn't sure how quickly she'd be able to win in that case; Lex seemed like he was tapped out, particularly since he hadn't turned back into a shadow, but Twilight had already been surprised more than once over the course of their fight. So while she felt confident that she'd win, it might have taken a while, causing a delay in healing whoever it was Soft Mane is being called on to treat...and if they're in such bad shape that magical healing is urgently needed, then their situation is apparently rather dire.
Not to mention, in the event that Twilight needed to use more of her alicorn magic to finally put Lex down, there was a risk that she wouldn't have enough left to augment her teleporting to a degree sufficient to let her get back to Ponyville with Soft Mane in the first place. That's less likely, since by her estimation she has just enough left in the proverbial tank to make a round trip, but again, she's not entirely sure how much more she'll need to defeat Lex without killing him in the process.
All of that, together, added up to Twilight simply not being certain that she'd be able to prioritize defeating Lex and then still having enough time and energy to get Soft Mane where she was needed. Throw in Twilight's sudden guilt that she could have avoided that if she'd stuck to her proverbial guns and left Soft Mane and Spike at home, and the fact that she'd be potentially gambling with someone else's life, and Twilight couldn't in good conscience take that chance. So she went with the weakest attempt she could at having her cake and eating it too (since that cost her nothing compared to simply forfeiting) and did what she knew was more important.
10578530
So if someone changed their name to lex legis, they can be a free substitute?
10578852 That'd be even more dubious than what Twilight's doing, since "The Royal Personage" at least denotes a status that can't be easily taken on and discarded (i.e. royalty) the way a change of name could be. It's not as though Equestria has legal forms to denote a change of name the way the real world does.
That, and I suspect Lex would never accept that anyway.