Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“So, um…the trains will probably start running again pretty soon.”
“…”
“I mean, I don’t know that for sure or anything. It just seems like that’s something that L-, that would get taken care of right away, now that there aren’t any more monsters to deal with, you know?”
“…”
“I’m just saying, in another day or two, we’ll be on our way back to the Crystal Empire.” Aisle forced himself to smile, not letting himself be deterred by Cozy’s unresponsiveness. “We’ll be sitting in nice, padded chairs as the attendant asks us if we want to use the dining car. The scenery will fly by while we get further and further away from here. And in just a few days, you’ll be home.”
That seemed to do the trick, as the ghost of a smile appeared on Cozy’s face. “Home,” she murmured, looking at the ground. Emboldened, Aisle put a foreleg around her, and was rewarded as she closed her eyes and leaned against him. The sensation sent a shudder of relief through the cursed stallion, though he tried to suppress it as much as he could, not wanting to do anything that had even the slightest chance of upsetting Cozy even more. The last few hours had not been kind to her. Mostly because Sonata had not been kind to her when they’d bumped into each other a little while ago.
It had been dawn by the time they’d made it back to the camp. Despite the urgency of the situation – Cozy having been convinced that the attack magic they’d overheard Sonata use was because Lex was attacking her – exhaustion, hunger, and the difficulty of pulling the shoddy sled that held Pillowcase’s body had reduced their speed to a crawl. By the time they’d gotten to within a stone’s throw of the frayed tents and shoddy lean-tos at the outermost edge of the place, they’d barely been able to stay upright as they stumbled forward.
That had been when Sonata, apparently heading out in the company of a few other ponies, had found them. The reunion had not been a pleasant one. Although Cozy had expressed relief that Sonata was alright, the moment she’d mentioned that she’d thought that Lex had attacked her had been all it had taken to set the former Siren off. Sonata had unleashed a barrage of verbal abuse that made her rant at the train station the previous evening, when Cozy had insisted that Lex didn’t love her, seem tame by comparison. No punches had been pulled: Sonata had viciously gone after Cozy’s courage (“you ran away just before things got bad; no wonder your husband was the one who went out looking for medicine while you stayed behind”), her virtue (“we should’ve had you wag your tail at the ghouls, since it worked so well on Aisle”), her faith (“do you think the reason Lashtickles keeps hanging you out to dry is because she’s, like, a big old weakling, or because she just doesn’t care?”), and anything else she could think of. She had concluded her tirade by reiterating that she and Lex were deeply in love (“he told me again last night that he totes can’t be happy if I’m not with him. And then we made out!”) before telling Cozy exactly where she could shove her opinions and trotting off, quite obviously pleased with herself.
Cozy, for her part, hadn’t uttered a word after Sonata began going after her. Aisle had tried to stick up for her, but Sonata had refused to let him get a word in edgewise, holding forth with a level of fervor that Aisle, in his current state, simply couldn’t begin to match. When Sonata had finally moved on, having taken her pound of flesh, he had been left feeling utterly demoralized, and he could only imagine that Cozy was feeling ten times worse. He’d guided her to an empty tent – little more than a filthy blanket strung up on two sticks that had been shoved into the ground – and settled her down there, placing Pillow’s body just outside. Since then, he’d been trying to make her feel better, with little to show for it until now.
“When we get there, we’ll go before Princess Cadance,” he continued. “She’ll bring Pillowcase back to life, and lift that curse on me, and then the three of us will all start building a new life together.” He gave her a slight nuzzle then, and smiled when she returned the gesture. “It’ll be a little awkward at first, but we’ll figure it out. I’ll get a job at a grocery store up there, and you and Pillow will go back to selling beds and cushions, and everything that’s happened here will be just a bad memory that can’t hurt us anymore.” As the words left his mouth, he was surprised by the sudden surge of longing he felt for the scene he was describing. Vanhoover had been his home for his entire life, but now…now he just wanted to find some peace of mind again, and he couldn’t imagine doing that here. Not after everything that had happened.
Even if the city was safe now, Aisle doubted he’d ever be able to truly feel comfortable here again. He’d managed to piece together, from Sonata’s diatribe, what had actually happened here last night. As insane as it was to think that Lex and a few other ponies had been able to defeat thousands of ghouls all on their own, Aisle couldn’t bring himself to disbelieve it. He’d seen bits and pieces of what Lex was capable of in the time that he’d known him, and the idea of him fighting an army of the undead and winning wasn’t unimaginable. But at the same time, that didn’t erase the memories of how things had been before Lex had arrived, or the friends that were no longer here. After so many nights of staying awake, hyper-alert for the slightest sound of a monster in the shadows, of huddling close with friends who hadn’t survived the ordeal, Aisle honestly couldn’t see himself living here without wondering if there was another ghoul lurking somewhere, waiting to lunge out of the darkness.
Vanhoover, the city where he’d grown up, wasn’t a place where he felt at home anymore.
The realization was heartbreaking, enough so that he could feel his eyes growing moist, but he blinked them away, staring straight ahead. He’d lost a lot, but it wasn’t like he’d lost everything. “We have a future together,” he said, needing to hear it out loud. “We have a future, and we’ll be happy together in our new home. So that’s why…” He paused as an idea came to him. It was completely insane, and probably inappropriate, but he rushed forward with it before he could lose his nerve. “So that’s why, even if it makes things more complicated later, I want to ask: Cozy, will you marry me?”
He looked down as he asked-, no, proposed to her, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest. She’d leaned her head against his chest, and he couldn’t see her expression from his angle, not able to judge her reaction. Several seconds went by where she didn’t move or say anything, and he wondered if maybe she’d fallen asleep. “…Cozy?”
“Yes.”
Now it was Aisle's turn to pause for a long moment. “…did you say yes because I said your name just now, or did you mean-”
Cozy looked up at him then, and even before she spoke again her smile told him everything he needed to know. “Yes, I’ll marry you, you silly stallion.”
She leaned up and kissed him then, and he closed his eyes as he stopped thinking about everything that wasn’t her. When their lips finally parted, he found that he was smiling too. More than that, he suddenly found himself feeling a little playful. “You realize, if Pr-, when Princess Cadance brings Pillow back, you’re going to have two husbands.”
Cozy’s cheeks darkened at that, but her smile widened, and she glanced down at the holy symbol around her neck. Lifting it with her hoof, she contemplated it for a few moments before replying. “Lashtada’s okay with that,” she murmured demurely. “And…I think I am too.”
“That’s it there, see?”
“Oh yeah! Awesome work, DJ!”
Disc Jockey grinned awkwardly at Sonata’s praising him for finding the nearest farm, not able to bring himself to say that he hated that abbreviation; it only fed into people misunderstanding what his special talent was. But for a lady like her, it’s fine. It wasn’t just that she was the most beautiful mare he’d ever laid eyes on, but also because she was one of the heroes that had saved them all. Not sweating the small stuff while he helped her out was the very least he could do.
After the battle last night, he hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d seen the entire thing, from start to finish, and it had been incredible enough that he’d known there was no way he’d be able to settle down before morning. That was why he’d been awake when Sonata had come around right when the sun was rising, looking for some ponies to help her out with getting food. Disc Jockey had jumped at the chance to help pay back Vanhoover’s heroes, as had several other ponies, and now here they were. I just wish my mom had seen it that way, he sighed to himself as they approached the farmhouse. Honestly, this isn’t anything like what happened with those other ponies that went back into Vanhoover. He’d been here before, after all…even if it had been under different circumstances, as evidenced by the sack full of bits on his back. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Huh?” blinked Sonata. “Whaddaya mean? The plan is we go and buy food.”
“Well…yeah, but these guys aren’t exactly going to throw the doors open and welcome us in,” answered Disc Jockey awkwardly. “I mean, you know…not after before…”
“Aw, don’t worry about that,” answered Sonata breezily, her voice filled with nothing but confidence…though it would have been more reassuring if her eyes hadn’t been glued to a nearby butterfly as she spoke, giggling as she watched it land on a nearby flower. “I’ve totes got that covered. I’m, like, brilliant, you know.”
“Well, yeah, but-”
“Like, last night after all the fighting was done, Lex had just gone to sleep, right? And Aria was all like ‘I’m totes gonna cuddle up with your boyfriend ‘cause I’m his bodyguard and all.’ And I’m just like ‘nuh-uh! Your fat behind can’t even fit in our tent!’ But she was all ‘I can if I curl up around him reeeally tight, but there won’t be any room left for you.’ And I’m totes about to tell her no way when Nosey comes up to us, and she’s still all freaked out from what happened with Xi-, er…because she had a bad dream, I mean. She had, like, a super bad dream before. So she says ‘hey, can I sleep in your tent with you guys?’ And I’m like ‘sure thing, bestie!’ And then I look at Aria, and I’m all ‘two against one, so ha!’ And so she was the one who had to sleep outside! And best of all, when I left this morning, Nosey was still there to make sure she can kiss-block Aria! So double ha! I mean, yeah, Nosey might be a little clingy herself right now, but that’s just because she’s all shaken like bacon, and once she’s back to normal she’ll knock it off.”
She nodded firmly at that, before glancing over at Disc Jockey. “See? Totes brilliant stuff.”
“Uh…” Disc Jockey blinked, completely lost for words. “Yeah…” He glanced around for help, but everypony else seemed to be just as lost as he was. “Er…so, what do we do about the farm ponies here if they don’t want to sell us anything?”
“Oh, what, that?" She waved a hoof, unconcerned. "Don’t worry. They will.”
“But what if they don’t?”
“I’m a Siren,” grinned Sonata. “I’ll change their minds.”
Aisle asks Cozy to marry him, helping to resolve her issues with her faith's stance on polygamous relationships.
Meanwhile, Sonata does her best to contribute. Will she help resolve problems, or is she about to make some new ones?
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And my name!
9043689 D'oh! Fixed now.
The happier sonata gets, the easier it is for her to, help people think the right way?
A fantastic chapter, as there was plenty of wonderful Sonata dialogue. She was quite cruel to Cozy, enough that I wonder if part of it was displaced anxiety about Aria and Nosy more than anything else. Was "Lashtickles" deliberate on her part?
I too, hope Cozy and Aisle get to achieve their dream, though I suspect the first husband won't be so easily resurrected by the Princess. Does Cadance even have the levels to raise the dead?
9043729 Just like Sonata, you might have Aria on the brain.
9043916
Or maybe she's just had it with Cozy questioning her and Lex's relationship to the point where the first thing she thought when they heard her in trouble was that Lex was attacking her.
strung
Missing something in between there.
For a moment I thought I missed a chapter when I read this one but I suppose having part of a chapter with Sonata verbally tearing down Cozy would have made the entire chapter be about her(not that it's a bad thing of course) though the bits and pieces of Sonata's tirade reminds us of her previous life as a Dazzling and vicious they are, even if it's just with words. And given how 'pure' ,as Mihr stated, the ponies are, Sonata's barbs hurt Cozy a lot more than she thought but Sonata might have relished that fact if she knew.
Still, good on Aisle for sticking by Cozy though I was pleasantly surprised when he proposed to her. Now I'm rooting for them to get a happy ending. Likely at the hooves of the soon to arrive Princesses...well unless they misconstrue Severance's patrol of the shambles of a camp filled with scattered remains of the ghouls. Might be a good thing Lex didn't go on the food run if that happens.
As for Sonata, it seems that she bending Lex's rule of using her powers only at 'appropriate times'. It's likely not what Lex had in mind but I suppose if Lex was here in her stead, he would likely pressure them into giving him what he wants in exchange for the bits as well to a responsibility to the welfare of their fellow ponies or something along those lines.
Plots thread on. What will the husband think if he comes back?
a good chapter i like it.
this is true but you are vary close to a heard the difference and or loop hole 2 stallions one mare and that is only if Pillow Case agrees and that is if he is normal if and when Lex brings him back.
so many if's
9045648
If Lashtada had her way, she'd make the whole Crystal Empire one big herd, Relatively speaking of course.
As for the part with Lex resurrecting Pillow, that depends heavily on Lex managing to reverse engineer the magic in the gem before Cozy and Aisle leave for the Crystal Empire though Pillow would make a good test subject should Lex accomplish this.
9043876 Certainly, that's her go-to under normal circumstances.
9043916 I thought you'd like that.
It's a toss-up whether Sonata butchering Cozy's goddess's name was on-purpose or not. She's been shown to be bad with names before, but on the other hoof she's pissed at Cozy, so we can't really rule out either possibility. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if she was using Cozy to vent some of her stress over the last few days; Lex is the love of her life, and given that the only people she was close to before she met him were her sisters - who spent most of their time picking on her - the idea that she might lose him, or never really had him (to hear Cozy tell it), is bound to upset her quite a bit.
As for whether or not Princess Cadance can bring back the dead...we'll have to wait and see.
9044271 Thanks for catching those typos! They're fixed now.
The structure of this chapter, in terms of Sonata's lashing out at Cozy being presented as something that happened in the past, was due to how the previous chapters were laid out. Namely, that "the present" is Lex having woken up considerably after Sonata set out; since Cozy and Aisle were heading toward the camp while Sonata was leaving it, they would have had to have run into each other fairly early on. I suppose I could have set the chapter a few hours prior to that, but I don't like doing that. Hence, the encounter was presented as something that already happened.
As for how vicious Sonata was, well, she was a member of the Dazzlings, after all, and we saw how they treated people like Sunset Shimmer. While Sonata's contribution to the infamous "hallway" scene might have just been "too bad! So sad!" she still knew what she was doing. In this case, she just did it even more, being wicked angry at how Cozy keeps attacking the relationship that Sonata considers to be most important to her.
As for Aisle...well, here's hoping what he's proposing can work out. If it does, this might have certain effects on the social fabric of the Crystal Empire, since what he's talking about is a central tenet of Lashtada's religion, and that's the religion that Princess Cadance herself practices...
Sonata is hopefully trying to implement Lex's philosophy regarding extenuating circumstances justifying the use of coercive measures...even if she couldn't reiterate that sentiment to save her life. Still, she's good at intuiting her way through a situation, and this is something that has to be done, so maybe she'll come away from this without Lex cursing her again?
9044697 I suspect it will be an adjustment for him.
And the plot threads have been on for a while now! I was a little worried that readers wouldn't remember that Cozy was uncomfortable with how Lashtada's faith emphasized free love - since that was mentioned back in chapter 176 - which is why I brought it up again in the author's notes.
9045648 Thanks!
As for whether or not this will become a "herd," well...I said before that I didn't care for the concept, but that was specifically with regard to simply presuming it to be true where the show had established no such thing. If it's introduced in the course of the story, well, that's a horse of a different color now, isn't it?
9047103
Oh, for sure, but she also wants children to be cared for fiercely. Someone who sleeps around gets them made, but once they (children) happen, she expects them to pivot into parenthood seriously until they are an adult and can get with making kids of their own.
What would a god be without some demands?
9047107
i have saw this post i would go back and edit it and remove the huge spoiler.
9047285 For what it's worth, that's not meant to be a spoiler; I'm not saying that's what will happen. Rather, I'm saying that in the event that it happens, that'll (probably) be how. That is, it's me trying to say that nothing has been ruled out or eliminated.
9047110
I bet she does; divine daddy (and mommy) issues are just the worst.
9047473
got you sorry.
9047080
Ah. I had heard they might or might not be using it, it was just 5E wasn't doing a lot of planar stuff. Sounds like my info is outdated, I might check out Tome of Foes.
#20MoreFinderWyvernspurBooks
I never minded Primordials, they're just the elemental equivalent of archdukes of hell or empyrial lords, I believe.
Because it's a example of what Heaven is willing to do to gain all this knowledge. This one example failed, but its pretty reasonable to assume they had plenty of other beings over the years doing other research on the planes. Take what we know of the three books and treat them as a representative sample of all the lore in the library of heaven. Probably Tabris's tomes are more complete than the average tome, but there are probably millions of lesser books written by celestials who got less details in exchange for not falling from grace in the process of writing their works. A wise researcher spending enough time in Heaven's Library is going to be able to piece together information from those many lesser tomes, even closely guarded secrets like how to destroy an evil artifact.
Sure, they will add new things, but "fill in the gaps" means that the old, intermediate technologies will also be discovered. Eventually the most efficient technology physically possible for a task will be used to complete that task, regardless of the initial method first discovered.
Yeah, we might have to agree to disagree here.
My apologies, it's actually in the Spymaster's Handbook. It's called "Recall Intrigues."
Oh of course not. But Aria wasn't really accusing him of deliberately misleading him, she doesn't really care about intentions or motivations, only results. (I think that's a key factor in an evil character).
Oh I think he can pull it off still, he's a genius like you said. It's just that I think he wouldn't have exerted himself like this if Aria hadn't called him on it. I mean, there's certainly a strong moral argument to make that breaking ones word can be necessary for the greater good at times, and fixing the voice of a dangerous criminal is arguably not as important as feeding and sheltering his people, even with the added danger that breaking his word sets as a precedent.
That's the rub.
BTW, I loved that part where Aria said she'd have to squeeze really tight around Lex just to mess with Sonata. Does Aria think Lex is attracted to her? Its pretty obvious to us that Lex isn't, and Sonata is to insecure to realize it, but I can't tell what Aria thinks.
Extreme circumstances do tend to follow him a bit though.
9049955
I'd posit that they're more like gods, in terms of power, simply because of the number of times they were portrayed in 4E (as I recall) as having fought and lost an ancient war against the gods. They were essentially D&D's own version of the Greek titans, down and out but still looking to make a comeback.
And right away you've lost me, because the story strikes me as being a parable of precisely why Heaven won't do something like that again: the knowledge collected turned out to be dangerous in and of itself, creating an evil artifact that essentially spread the corruption is documented to anyone who tried to read it, and causing the chronicler himself to become fallen, necessitating his exile. This doesn't mean that Heaven closed the metaphorical doors, of course; they're still active and engaged with the rest of the cosmos. But that no longer means "we have to gather information that lets us understand evil in order to combat it." They'll have knowledge that's been gathered for them incidentally during their various planar excursions, and collected from other intermediaries ranging from mortals to gods, and I suspect that they'll still have some sort of direct information-gathering apparatus (albeit one that takes care never to expose any of their number to too much evil for too long), but that strikes me as the sum total of it.
That's why I don't think that you can say that the sum total of the wisdom that Heaven's collected will be equal to what's in the Book of the Damned; the idea of "it's all still there, but more diffuse, and so gives the same level of knowledge without the risk" doesn't strike me as being plausible. The same level of knowledge won't be there, because numerous different reports about the same subject ultimately won't provide the same degree of knowledge that direct interaction and observation would. You can still get some information that way, to be sure, but not nearly enough to have all the answers to particularly esoteric lore about some specific evil.
I look around me and I see that isn't so. Even leaving aside that "efficiency" is going to face various factors that change its definition between one environment and another (e.g. a fuel source being abundant in one area is highly scarce elsewhere), the idea that the "best tool for the job" will eventually win out is one that looks good on paper but in point of fact tends to break down the more you zoom in from the macro-scale. That's because local concerns - be they religious, ideological, economic, etc. - will interfere with this. Sometimes they'll be small-scale and/or short-term, but in other cases they'll be large enough and last long enough to completely change what you'd expect. You can have an animal that's practically tailor-made to be slaughtered for food, for example, but if it occupies an important spot in a porminent religion then the people who follow that religion won't touch it, and if there are enough such people in the area then it won't be offered as a food source at all. Hence, again, why the "humanocentric" view of technology isn't really helpful; humans aren't the best example of meritocracy where technological progression is concerned, just the best one that we know about.
Reading that over, I'm left shaking my head. I recall how the older game materials, such as S1 Tomb of Horrors that essentially bypassed the characters altogether, having the players look at illustrations of rooms and being read boxed text, and then told to describe what their characters were doing. There were no knowledge checks to be made, and that high Intelligence score didn't provide any sort of help with that. You had to narrate your actions, and the GM declared the results accordingly. Now? We have game mechanics for identifying game mechanics, not so much removing direct player observation and interaction from the equation as systematizing it. We've really come a long way, but I'm not sure that it's been entirely in the right direction.
In the case of this story, that's not going to be much of a help, at least not insofar as Mihr is concerned. Leaving aside the fact that he doesn't actually have Knowledge (local), that use is only for active effects that you can observe while they're being used. More than that, it's an unreasonable expansion of what I think is already one of the more unreasonable skills; the idea that you can arrive at a place you've never been to before - or even heard of - and make a Knowledge (local) check to learn what you "already knew" is one that's been ruffling feathers since it was laid out, and using it to be able to identify "class features from any other class" that doesn't grant spells isn't an improvement. If you're from a rural area out in the middle of nowhere, and you've never even heard of a "gun," let alone a "gunslinger", are you really able to make Knowledge (local) checks to identify their abilities when one stumbles into your town? Now it's a sudden retcon about "having heard something third-hand one time" or something else equally implausible which the game rules nevertheless merit.
Be that as it may, it doesn't work here; the premise that ability is based on - that having knowledge of a small number of discrete classes is enough to quantify the abilities of everyone everywhere - isn't true in this story. Virtually everyone who has game stats has them built via a class-less supplement, which undercuts the idea that their abilities can be identified simply because they are part of specific packages of abilities that are grouped by "class" and level. That's especially true given that the nature of what those abilities represent can vary wildly even when they use the same stats (typically represented by Eclipse's specialization and corruption to tailor them individually).
I know, but it's ironic to think that she's holding him to a promise whose circumstances have rendered its timely completion incredibly unreasonable, considering that she knows full well just how crazy things have been. The idea of force majeure causing a party to suspend completion of a contractual obligation is fairly standard for most agreements, but Aria is refusing to recognize it and Lex quite clearly hates to admit failure of any sort under any circumstances, so they're both ignoring what would be obvious to anyone else.
Aria has been playing her cards close to the proverbial vest, here. We know that Lex found Aria's features to be beautiful (from chapter 86: "But it was its face that horrified Lex the most, not because it was hideous but because it was beautiful. Even despite the lips pulled back in a snarl and the way its eyes were narrowed in a glare, there was an attractive femininity there that was impossible to deny." I wrote that because, in Rainbow Rocks, when Twilight was researching the Sirens before leaving Equestria, the book she read from openly identified the Sirens - who were still in their hippocampi bodies at the time - as being "three beautiful but dangerous creatures"). Likewise, Lex inadvertently revealed that to Aria in chapter 112 ("“I think you’re pretty,” blurted Lex. “Wh-what?!” Aria’s train of thought derailed immediately, Lex’s unexpected compliment having taken her completely by surprise.") So it's pretty clear that Lex does see some beauty in Aria's current form, and let her know about it.
The real question is what does she think of him?
No bees needed here.
I love my people friends. Much better than my animal friends.
How many of them?
Hmmm, Lex would probably be careful about this. The convincing them to sell probably isn't unethical in and of itself, but convincing them to sell for too little definitely will be.
9221489 Doggone it! Typos eliminated with extreme prejudice!
As for what Sonata's doing, well...hopefully she's been made aware of the fact that this is supposed to be a fair deal for all involved.