Chapter 12: Lunch
Chapter 12: Lunch
It did not inspire any confidence in me what I’d seen in my short journey to discovering where Princess Luna was. For starters, nobody seemed to know exactly where she was at all and it was only on my third attempt at asking one of the castle’s maids in the hallways that I learned where the princess’ chambers were.
It took nearly half an hour just to get a possible location of Princess Luna’s whereabouts and to add insult to injury, her room wasn’t even located on the same wing as Celestia’s chambers. To make matters even worse, I noticed that there were no guards apparent as I approached the Moon Princess’ room.
Knock, knock, knock…
A few seconds passed before I heard, “Come in.” I could just barely make out the muffled voice through the door.
I opened the door and was met with a peculiar sight. In the middle of the room, atop a massive pillar-laden bed, Princess Luna was sitting or maybe lying down while looking in my direction. A fleeting glance around the room was enough to tell that she was at least being accommodated as much as I’d expect given her Princess status, but it was odd to me that she was just idling about; had I been in her position, the last thing I’d want would be to sequester myself to a room, no matter how extravagant or luxurious it may have been.
“Hello,” I said.
“Greetings,” she responded and at that moment I started noticing the differences between her and Nightmare Moon. Like how her voice wasn’t as deep and free from underlying malignant intent or how her coat was a shade of purple just shy of the pitch-black that Nightmare Moon had.
“Doth thou require our assistance? For what purpose has thou approached us?” Princess Luna asked.
“To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to actually get to talk to you. But since I’ve made it this far and you’ve already decided to… entertain a conversation with me, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about yourself.”
“We would not be opposed to a simple conversation,” she said as she lowered her head to rest on her bed. At that same time, a flash of light blinded me momentarily and when my sight returned I saw a chair had appeared a few feet away from the bed.
It was a bittersweet feeling to have not spent even a minute talking to Luna and already learned of yet another power of hers to add to the catalog. So far my understanding of her abilities included: superstrength, superspeed, flight, sealing magic, celestial magic and now there was either conjuration or summoning magic that could be added to the more-than-likely incomplete list.
“Thanks,” I said before getting to my questions. “Now, the main reason I decided to come look for you was to ask if you’ve eaten anything since your return. I was chatting with one of the cooks while making my own food in the kitchen and he made a passing comment that he hadn’t received a single order from the chef he works under about a meal for you.”
“Thou dost know we art an immortal alicorn, correct? We have no need for mortal sustenance.”
“You know, I actually said something along those lines when I was talking to Baked. In any case, what I really wanted to know is if you’ve actually gone out of your way to not receive any food. Like, have any of the castle servants asked if or what you’d like to eat? Or have you simply turned them down by your own choice?”
“This isn’t to say that I can completely relate to your situation, but I wasn’t exactly well received by the majority of ponies when I first started living in the castle. Please excuse me if I’m imposing, but… after reading about your history, I’d like to think I can imagine how you’d be received much worse than me,” I said.
For a time, the lunar princess just stared at me expressionlessly. I was beginning to feel sweat start to form from the thought that I’d insulted her when she sighed. “T’was it that obvious? We know not whether to laugh or cry to behold one such as thyself being the first to notice.”
The look of intense melancholy that shined through her eyes made me break eye contact as I said, “So they have been ignoring you, are afraid, or it's something else. Whatever the case, presuming you haven’t eaten anything since your return, do you want me to make you something?”
“Perhaps. T’would depend entirely on your ability to satiate my palate. Doth thou presume competent enough, sir… pony whose name I’ve yet to learn?”
“My name is Victor Hex, I’m a human, and yes… I’d like to think I’m not arrogant for believing I’d be able to make food that’s good enough for you. As a royal alchemist, I think of cooking as just another form of alchemy and even if I’m more proficient in making potions and the food that I regularly eat, it shouldn’t be much of a problem to adjust to your requests,” I said, fully believing everything.
“Royal alchemist?” Princess Luna’s head rose as her eyebrows reached their peaks. “Art thou jesting with us? Thou hasn’t a trace of magic in thine body. Wait… How dost thou not have a trace of magic in thine body? Tis an impossibility!” Before I could even perceive her movements, she had risen from her resting position to all fours.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a thing that’s unique to me. Technically speaking, I’m an extradimensional alien from a different dimension where magic doesn’t exist at all. Also, before you ask, I don’t know how or why I was brought to this world,” I said, sighing as I was reminded of the countless questions and tests Twilight had conducted to verify the truth of my statements.
At the thought of her, I made a mental note to ask Celestia about her whereabouts whenever the opportunity arose. Ever since she’d left for that festival she’d mentioned, I’d not seen nor heard from her and I could clearly recall that the event she left for was only supposed to take a few days for her to get through. She didn’t even look like she wanted to participate, so I couldn’t imagine what might be holding her up from returning to drown me in more questions.
“Verily?” Princess Luna asked. When I nodded, she continued, “Then we simply must see your skill firsthand. Let us go henceforth to the kitchen and after a meal, then the laboratory!”
Much like I didn’t expect that I’d be getting to talk to her at all, I never would have imagined a situation where the princess was actually interested in talking with me all the way from her room to the kitchen. Like Twilight, she was the second pony I’d found who found potent interest in my existence.
…
“You want something novel?” I took a second to consider her request before asking, “How about a bread-bowl soup?”
When she nodded excitedly, I shrugged and started pulling out the required ingredients. Since I no longer cared to try using my new Abilities in the kitchen, I spared no effort in spamming Automation to prepare the food faster than anyone else could.
“Oh dear, you’re making another one of those strange dishes again, aren’t you?” Baked Fresh asked as he looked nervously between the ebony princess who waited from the other side of the room and the rapidly changing ingredients that were quickly processed and incorporated into the food I was making.
“Call it strange if you want. Until you try it, you just won’t understand how amazing a cheesy broccoli soup tastes when eaten straight out of a bread bowl,” I said, right as I got through the most time-consuming part; picking out the last ingredient.
“Thou’s power mirrors those of chronomancy! Fascinating,” Princess Luna said as she saw the various pieces of diced raw vegetables get turned into a steaming soup in the pot after I used an instance of Automation. She wasn’t really wrong, since the most impressive part of my Automation Ability was the aspect of it that let me skip the time involved in any manual process.
It took a minute for the soup to come together and two for me to finish my own dish as well as “magic” up a bread to turn into her bread bowl. In more or less three minutes total, we found ourselves in the dinning hall right outside the kitchen with our food plated in front of us.
I ate a forkful of my alfredo seafood dinner and waited for Luna to take a bit of her own meal before asking, “So? How is it?”
“Tis most… unusual, though not without its own merits. We quite like it,” She said as she telekinetically manipulated a spoon to drink the soup. Her face lit up when she paired the soup with bits of bread that she cut up with a floating pair of fork and knife. “Thine food tis much more complex in flavors than we anticipated.”
“I’m glad you like it,” I said before properly getting into enjoying my own meal.
Every so often, Princess Luna or I would pause to ask or answer a question. My questions revolved around the extent of her abilities and hers would reflect regarding the extent of my Automation’s utility.
Everything was progressing swimmingly as I tentatively ignored the mostly negative attitudes of the ponies that passed through the kitchen. At best a servant or staff that passed by would ignore myself and Luna, and at worst… I had to physically restrain the urge to roll my eyes as the height of melodrama played out from behind Princess Luna in the form of horrified expressions and almost palpable fear wafting off of the same ponies who gave me similar reactions.
Then Celestia walked into the dining hall, escorted by a host of personal guards and the executive chef of the castle with her meal.
“Oh? I didn’t expect to see you out and about at this time, sister,” were the first words to come out of Celestia’s mouth. She then turned to me and with even more surprise, said, “And eating a meal with Victor in the dining hall as well? This is a most unusual turn of events.”
“We weren’t expecting one such as himself to be approaching us either, but his company has thus far been most appreciated. Quite the interesting, er… man, he is,” Princess Luna said. And no, her praise did not cause my face to light up; everyone in the room was just hallucinating if they tried to tell you otherwise.
“You,” Celestia looked at me. “Went out of your way to look for her?” She looked back at her sister. After turning to me again, she asked, “Why?”
“After you, she’s the next best person for me to learn more about Alicorns and since you’re always busy, I thought I would go see if she was available,” I said, lying by omitting the original reason I’d gone to Princess Luna in the first place.
I don’t think it’d end well for me to say the truth and potentially undermine Celestia’s competency if she’d been unaware of her sister’s treatment. It’d also be bad if she did know what was going on, actively did nothing about it, and then I brought attention to the matter against her wishes.
“What do you want to know about Alicorns?” Celestia asked as she started eating her salad.
“Summarily, it seems that from our conversation he wants to know nearly everything there is to tell regarding our kind,” Princess Luna said. “In the short time we’ve spoken with him, he’s asked us about everything ranging from anatomical questions to historical ones.”
“I thought your attention was completely dominated by those machines you constantly work on. Even for my little ponies, very few would find any interest in studying equinology,” Celestia said.
“What can I say?” I gestured helplessly. “I’m an alien in a world full of different sentient magical creatures. It’s hard to put into words just how interesting I find even the most mundane things about ponies like yourselves. Especially after having my brain picked endlessly over the last couple of weeks with Twilight.”
“Speaking of, do you know what’s been holding her off?” I asked. “It’s been well over a week since I saw her off and from our last conversation it didn’t sound like she wanted to be far from the castle for long.”
“My student has taken a permanent residence in Ponyville,” Celestia said. “Ever since she became the Element of Magic, she has been studying the Magic of Friendship alongside the five others who make up the Elements of Harmony.”
Ping…
I dropped my fork as I struggled to keep my expression as still as possible. It was taking all of my willpower to not let my impulses drive me into laughing in the face of the most inane sentence I’d ever heard.
Study the Magic of Friendship? By virtue of my Runesmithing Abilities, magic as I understood it could not possibly get that abstract. Magic was about manipulating and transforming the free-floating energy that made up the fabric of reality. Magic was about bending the laws of the universe to your will. The world was supposed to be running on a hard magic system, not a soft one with ambiguous potential.
“Is that so? Well, I guess I'll have to visit her the next time I get a chance,” I said after ensuring that my countenance wouldn’t break.
“Are you too caught up with your next project?” Celestia asked as she dabbed her mouth with a napkin, having finished her meal. “With your abilities and proficiency in alchemy, you wouldn’t even need to ask for time off to go visit her if you just left us with the amount of potions you’d normally make for the time you plan on being away.”
With a nod, I said, “I’ve been making very good progress with my goals lately and I don’t want to ruin the sort of flow-state I’ve fallen into. I think it will be another week or two before I think I’ll be ready to take a break from my projects and visit her.”
“What are these goals and projects thou art pursuing?” Princess Luna asked as she too finished eating the last piece of bread from her bread bowl.
“To be honest, I have too many to count. But, the earliest I plan on getting through before taking a break include: Rounding out the last of the gains I can make from physical training before the diminishing returns become too cumbersome to continue. I want to finish the music studio and exoskeleton suit I’ve been building for the last couple of days. Lastly, I’ve come across a kind of casting system for magic that in theory I should be able to use. I want to see if I can actually put that theory into practice and cast something simple like a fireball spell.”
“If there was ever anyone with the ingenuity to pull that off, it’d have to be the creator of the Magic Engine,” Celestia said as she smiled at me. “Please inform me if you manage such a feat despite lacking a thaumatological system. It could very well revolutionize the study of magic as we know it.”
“Sure thing,” I said, and with that, we said our farewell and went our separate ways.
I didn’t mind sharing the secrets of Runecrafting with anyone. Not like anyone but me would ever likely understand the meaning of the archaic script. And really, it was in Understanding that there were any benefits to be reaped from studying the art of Runesmithing. In the unlikely case that someone managed to crack the meaning for themselves, there wouldn’t really be much of a point to using Rune-based magic if one was inherently capable of evoking magic by themselves in the first place.
Using the language of runes was just a proxy for natural spell casting; at least that was the theory behind it. To compare casting with runes with normal spellcasting would be like comparing writing code in C++ to writing code in binary. Where a unicorn would logically be able to sequence the transformation of magic as if they were writing in a C++ within a fully fleshed out Code Editor, the way Runecasting would work for me would be like slaving away on a Notepad trying to hardcode a barebones program in binary.
I really hoped it wouldn’t be that bad. But the knowledge of the Ability in my head said otherwise…
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I can see Luna inquiring about the possibility of him installing an Astrometrics star lab / observatory / chart of their star system (like in Star Trek) after seeing his lab and beginning to perceive his potential. It could be a nice way for ponies to come see parts of the sky at different times of day that they normally don’t -something like a tourist attraction to promote the Night Princess.
11720619
A game station so Luna gamer takes the stage!
Welp, now Luna will take the place of twilight in a similar manner, then twilight will lose most of the joys of inventing that now Luna will, so long Twilight, you have another destiny chosen by others for you anyway,
As usual really good writing. Good job.
And the narrative and the lore is interesting too 👍.
11720634
Forsooth, yon Lunar l33t shall pwn all noobs!! 
great chapter
Using that programing analogy does bring up some interesting ideas. For example, anatomically, if regular spellcasting is like C++ or Java or Python or other advanced programing languages and runesmithing is like Assembly, then what in a pony's body would be the compiler?
Tremendous. Can't wait till the next chapter
Excellent.
Things are proceeding smoothly.
Which means things are going to go so much more Pinkly when he reaches Ponyville.
Best I can match the thinking, is that magic casting is internalised to the entity, there are a collection of cerain energy manipulation systems that allow greater outputs, but basically the magical capacity is literally the capacity of the body before it fails under the strain.
Runecasting projects outwards, the energies are manipulated externally to teh object and so far higher overall energies can occur, but teh runes are fixed in place unless certain extremely obscure designs are implemented, dynnamically active signalling strip line circutry etc, which generally limits the runic ability, trading adaptibility and variation for raw power.
As for using Notepad for Binarry?
If youre flicking switches like that, it would be nice to have the CPU manual and the circuit diagram available. It wouldve been eaven nicer if these had been graphical interfaces back when the tech became available on home computer in the late 70s etc.
Hmmm...
If I've got the timing right, Victor is going to get to Ponyville after "The Ticket Master" and "Applebuck Season," and should be there around the time either Gilda the Griffin or Trixie Lulamoon arrive in Ponyville.
Pinkie Pie will want to throw him a party, of course, and Rarity is likely to have at least heard of the Royal Alchemist and may have even seen his picture in a newspaper or periodical. Fluttershy is likely to be fascinated with him as a new creature, and of course he already knows Twilight, so the only two of the Mane Six who might have any problems with him initially would be Rainbow Dash and Applejack.
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I can see Victor Hex subtly encouraging these subsequent tourists to consider signing up for either the Lunar Guard, the Midnight Akademie, or a Night Club, just to subtly increase the number of ponies that are willingly out and about after dark so that Princess Darth Goth can see them enjoying her precious moon and stars...
Want to see Victor try to understand Pinkie's nature.
I don't know why, but I can't stop grinning when ever reading this story, there is just something incredibly captivating about It.
great chapter!!!!
keep it up!
11720677
Maybe some connection between brain and horn, as the horn is the final execution step most of the time, ignoring relics or atrifacts.
The School of Friendship was later defunded for not providing adequate math or general science education.
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Despite everything, I feel that although friendship is one of the aspects of the Twilight school, it is still an educational institution, and being Twilight... Twilight, Does not include things like basic sciences or even much more advanced things.
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*Does not
Plz fix urself
But yeah her brain wouldve had to of gone very mushy to skip over all the math and sciences .
Ok, here is my giant freaking problem with this. After finishing the entire chapter I find that this guy FIXED NOTHING! He didn't fix Lunas lack of guards problem. He didn't fix her lack of staff problem. He didn't fix her lack of food problem. He had a casual conversation with a cook asking what she eats, then left. He makes her soup, then talks with Tia and then leaves.
So Lunas issues are still there because no one knows. Except him and he is too scared of Tia to tell her.
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Monk