Previous Chapters Next
Close
1 - Sunset5,062 words
2 - Adagio5,146 words
3 - Sunset5,021 words
4 - Aria5,196 words
5 - Sonata5,062 words
6 - Sunset4,991 words
7 - Aria5,608 words
8 - Sunset5,180 words
9 - Adagio5,100 words
10 - ???5,220 words
Intermission I - The Royal Train Carriage1,866 words
11 - Sunset3,132 words
12 - Sonata5,063 words
13 - Adagio5,002 words
14 - Aria2,416 words
15 - Sunset2,576 words

5 - Sonata

“Sonata… Dazzle.”

“Nada.”

Trotting through the underbrush further down the valley from the tower, Sonata thought long and hard about what she would say next. “Sonata… Bright.”

Aria chuckled from elsewhere in the forest. She was far enough away Sonata didn’t have an intuitive sense of exactly where she was, and the way her voice bounced off the trees and valley walls made it hard to pinpoint a direction.

She was somewhere east of Sonata, though. She was sure of that.

“Definitely not.”

“Is that another dumb joke?” She leaned down and stuck her nose into a bush, sniffling through the earthy roots.

There was silence, then a long, unconvincing, “No…”

Sonata came back up with soil and leafy debris stuck to the tip of her snout. “Because Sunset said I’m not dumb! I’m just empty.”

Aria’s chortle carried through the forest much clearer that time. She was definitely to Sonata’s left by about a ten-second gallop.

“Spacey,” Aria said. “She said you were spacey. And for the record—“Sonata stumbled back when Aria came out before her and not to her left. “Getting mixed up like that way makes you a little dumb.”

Sonata pouted and lowered her head, and the saddlebag slung over her shoulders slumped with her. “But you love me, right? That’s the important thing!”

With a sigh, Aria rolled her eyes. “I guess I do. Can’t be leaving you out here on your own. ‘Sides…” She leaned in, pressing her snout to Sonata’s. “I’m definitely stronger, so if you get stuck or weighed down, I’ve gotta save your flank.”

The thump delivered to Aria’s chest shoved her backwards, making grooves in the dirt and roots where she slid. She just laughed, and Sonata grinned at her before continuing on through the woods.

Sonata kind of understood why Sunset and Adagio had sent them both out. She understood what ‘independence’ was, and she and her sisters had shown it in spades as far as she was concerned. She even helped make Adagio’s new leg and helped Sunset with the new-new one, at least until Sunset had shooed her out.

It was also a nice day, even if it was a bit chilly. At least Sonata assumed it was chilly from the lingering frost in the shadows. She enjoyed wiping it away when they passed by bigger patches, leaving long, streaky arcs on their canvas. Any especially large patches were blessed with a rendition of the sisters and Sunset etched into it with a few simple lines and circles.

As the pair walked, Sonata reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a hoofful of pages. This was the big thing Sunset wanted her to do, and it was to be responsible. They contained details on various plants and rocks and some other little squiggles and shapes Sonata didn’t quite understand, except for the little stars and big circles beside and around a few illustrations. The rest were written words, but neither Sonata nor her sisters could comprehend them. It took Adagio a painful minute just to read one word. ‘The.’

Sunset did understand it, and before they set off, she had tried to explain what was said on the pages, but most of it went over Sonata’s head.

Sonata figured it probably went over her sisters’ heads too. There were a lot of long, fancy-sounding words in there for flowers and flower bits.

Fortunately, Sunset had been sweet enough to circle out the things they were looking for and then shooed Aria and Sonata out extra fast when they tore the pages from the book they were in.

“That one looks pretty, doesn’t it?” Sonata asked, holding up one of the pages of flowers to Aria. The one circled on it was a flower with broad, purple petals and narrow middle. “I think that it’d look good on you.”

“Eh, not sure it’d fit the rest of my ‘fit,” Aria said. Her saddlebags were a little larger, but she had more loops to strap her bags to that better balanced out the weight. Sonata was okay with that since it meant she didn’t have to pull the cart as much. She hoped.

“Maybe if we make your clothes more flowy or something. I think it’d be a good choice. All Sunset wants to do is squish them down a bunch.”

She’d seen the tub and buckets Sunset had built and gathered outside of the tower. The awning she built over them was actually kind of cute, but that was the best she could say about it. Sonata suspected they would be working there frequently, and the idea of spending time under a makeshift tent didn’t seem like a lot of fun. Especially since she’d be turning lots of flowers into coloured goo.

Maybe she could find a flower for Sunset that she wouldn’t render down.

They followed a curving path marked out by only a few rocks piled on top of each other. It wasn’t an obvious track and was only periodically marked by the piles, but after just an hour or so of walking, Sonata noticed most of the low-lying plants weren’t quite as wild there. Any streams they crossed usually had stones in the water to step on, if they were deep enough, or the occasional plank of wood.

While Sonata did as she was told and stuck to the path, Aria wandered off into the forest occasionally, looking for some of the other things they needed. In her case, it was usually mushrooms.

“What about Sonata Sunburst?” Sonata asked.

“Dweeby sounding.” Aria shook her head. She looked off to the side, her eyes locked onto something that Sonata couldn’t quite spot.

“More fun friends?” Sonata asked.

Aria’s ears had directed themselves to where she was looking, though one twitched to Sonata when she spoke.

“Not quite,” Aria answered. “Keep going ahead. I’m gonna go check something out.”

Sonata saluted and smiled, and she got a quick smirk back before Aria vanished into the woods through a pair of bushes.

Slowing down, Sonata took up the slack her sister had left her with by lifting her head and turning it slowly from side to side. She wasn’t sure what all the tricks Aria had to spot things were, but Sonata knew just looking left to right and back again would help her spot something if it snuck up on her.

If she had looked down, she would have spotted the sudden drop.

Sonata toppled hoof over flank, initially head-first, but she began to tumble sideways after a few collisions with the ground. Something in her was too startled to even scream, and she held her eyes wide as she fell, watching the twisting, twirling greens and browns in front of her in some vain attempt to keep herself oriented.

After a few moments, she skidded to a halt, her snout sinking into the mud at the bottom of a small stream. She watched the water flow around and over her nose for a few moments, then gingerly pulled herself to her hooves and looked down at herself.

Her clothes had taken a few scrapes, leaving scuff marks and dirt tracks on the surface, but were otherwise undamaged. It still brought a frown to Sonata’s face, though, as any amount of damage and staining to something so new and pretty was awful.

She brushed some of the leaves and twigs that stubbornly stuck to her off, then looked back up from where she’d come from.

She was at least walking in the right direction. She could see wooden posts on one side and ropes attached to hooks hanging from both the posts and a pair of trees she’d walked past. Following them down, she found a lot of wood planks scattered around her, with some frayed and rotting rope ends.

She was at the bottom of a shallow but steep ditch, and the rock and dirt walls looked impossible to climb.

Still, it wasn’t the end of the world. She could just follow the stream in either direction, or…

“Aria!” she called out, looking up where she’d come from.

A few moments passed, and Sonata called out again. “Aria!”

It took a full minute to pass before Aria poked her head over the ditch with a frown deep enough that it creased the skin of her face.

“…Really?”

Sonata had the sense to look away from Aria before she smiled up at her.

Aria leaned over a little more and tentatively put a hoof over the edge of the ditch. “Great,” she muttered. “I’m gonna need to find a rope or a way around or something. You stay right there.”

“What about the stream?” Sonata asked. “I could follow it. It must go somewhere, right?”

Aria blinked. “Ugh, maybe? I saw something...” She then shook her head. “Nope. No. You stay perfectly still until I get back.”

“But—“

“No buts!” Aria stared Sonata down until she sat on her backside. “Good. I’ll be quick.”

With a huff, Sonata slouched, then nodded. “Okay.”

With a returning nod, Aria disappeared from the edge of the ditch, and Sonata could only track the sound of her footsteps for a few seconds.

She gave it a few seconds more before standing up and trudging upstream.

The ditch’s shape softened and muted much of the forest’s sounds, and all she could adequately make out were her own hoofsteps and the water bubbling over the rock and dirt. The route meandered uphill, and after a while, Sonata’s sense of direction was hopelessly defeated, meaning all she had to guide herself was the stream’s direction of flow.

Eventually, she encountered a small cliff with a shimmering curtain of water flowing over the rocks above her. She carefully put her hooves onto them and hauled herself up, climbing sideways like she was ascending a narrow, wet staircase. There was an awkward moment she realised she couldn’t go forward anymore and had to find her way up by backing herself up, but after some wobbling, she managed to reach the top, where her hooves splashed into a fetlock deep pond.

Sonata stared across the pond, standing as still as the world around her. She didn’t pay much mind to the ruddy green frogs lurking just beneath the surface, their heads poking out, or the single duck relaxing by the water’s edge. Her gaze instead crossed over the pond, to the stream feeding into it and beyond to the rocky tower that barely broke above the treeline.

That wasn’t Sunset’s tower. There weren’t any metal doohickies sticking out of it.

All thoughts of being lost left Sonata’s mind, and she crossed the pond, disturbing its inhabitants with a briefly muttered apology. The lounging duck flapped off while the frogs merely glared at her passing.

The tower’s base was hard to make out at first, but eventually, Sonata made sense of it through the moss and dirt covering the lower third of the structure. It looked like it was made the same way as Sunset’s tower, using rocks of the same size and colour. Sonata couldn’t see a door on her approach, though as she walked around the tower’s edge, she was greeted with a long, straight wall that abruptly ended in a pile of stones. A grey, desiccated tree lay in the hole in the wall, and beyond that was more wall and another mossy-based tower.

Curiosity bit at Sonata’s brain, and she almost danced on the spot as anxiety also tried pulling her back to the stream. She thought she could outsmart Aria if she found a way back, but now that she was so far away, it would make sense to just go back the way she came. Aria would be mad if she was already back where she fell, but at least she’d know where she was.

However, the lure of the unknown was too strong for Sonata’s anxiety to win, and she clambered onto the log and over the wall.

Once inside, the sun struggled to penetrate far. The walls to either side continued on, but when Sonata crouched, she could easily make out the bends in the corridor and the doors to the towers. The one to her right was shut, but the one to the left was broken and had been left open.

Aside from her echoing hooffalls, there was no other sound within those walls. She clenched her jaw as she realised she couldn’t even hear herself breathe, then relaxed when the second realisation that she didn’t need to followed hot on its heels.

When Sonata poked her head through the doorway, she struggled to not imagine the tower being the same as Sunset’s. The rotten, fractured furniture was different, but the size and shape of the round room was the same, including where the stairs were located relative to the door and the angle they spiralled upward.

There could be another attic of goodies. And more importantly to creatures other than Sonata, probably a way to see where she was and try to navigate back home, or at least back to Aria.

The second floor was more of the same, with more stairs leading up higher, though this level was lined with racks holding rusted weapons. Spears, mostly, but she could see a sword turning to powder sitting to one side.

Sonata otherwise ignored them, and instead of climbing the stairs, she took one of the doors on either side, giving it a mighty shunt when it only budged a few inches.

It swung open and slammed against the rock, sending dust and goodness knows what else falling from the ceiling, and the sunlight beaming briefly blinded Sonata. She winced and put a hoof over her eyes to shield them as she stepped out onto the parapet, trees to her right and an honest-to-goodness castle to her left.

Her eyes clicked as she rapidly blinked, then stared at the structure. It was much taller than the wall and only a little taller than the towers. It was also in considerably worse condition, but it was recognisable for what it was. It consisted of three faded white spires, each crumbling and lacking what must have been mighty spikes, as well as walls to join the nearer two. The wider, taller one in the middle of the structure probably rose another few storeys above the tree line, and there were hints of more structure that Sonata simply couldn’t see from where she stood.

Hanging off one of the spires was a tattered rag whose colour had been eaten away by the years, but she could make out the lilac or fuchsia dye through its browns and blacks. It fluttered in the breeze that broke through the walls, and one tattered end flicked toward what looked to be an opening.

“Sonata, Treasure Hunter,” she muttered to herself, waiting momentarily for Aria’s teasing.

She grinned and clambered over the parapet before dropping to the ground inside the outer walls with a heavy thud, her hooves leaving deep holes in the dirt.

It was nice to actually pass through a door, as worn down as it and the stairs leading up to it were. The wood was dark and felt spongy to the touch. It strained against Sonata’s efforts as she forced it open, but it wasn’t until she noticed that she’d bent and snapped the wood inward that she realised it was supposed to be pulled, not pushed.

“Oops.”

The next two doors that Sonata walked through were thankfully open, though the second led to a curtain that hadn’t been quite as severely beaten by the elements. It felt nice to touch as she brushed it out of the way, and then she stopped in a vast, tall room. At the far end, some light trickled in through a pair of stain glassed windows, casting shades of pink and purple across the floor, while just below were a pair of grand, well-carved stone chairs. Some of the filigree was still there, gold and silver inlaid into grooves, but most of it had long since been removed.

What Sonata focused her eyes on was fed by the beam of light that struck through the ceiling, giving the rest of the room a golden glow. The stone beneath her hooves was covered in dirt and soil, but where the beam landed, the earth was the thickest and provided a bed for a small field of vibrant, purple flowers with broad petals and a narrow middle.

Sonata rushed over to the flowers, then pulled out the page she had taken and compared the sketch to the plant. They looked precisely the same.

Bouncing on her hooves, Sonata struggled to put the page back into her bag, while at the same time, she lurched forward and began picking some of the flowers with her teeth. She held the stems in bunches and pulled, sometimes snapping the stem and sometimes uprooting the entire plant, before shoving them into her pack. In just a few minutes, she had cleared half the narrow field, and her bag was overflowing with petals and roots.

Once Sonata couldn’t even balance another of the plants in the back without more tipping out, she stopped to fasten it shut. It took some straining and awkward twisting, but she managed to close the buckle.

“There you go!” Sonata declared with a cheerful note. “All strapped in for the walk home. It’s going to be a little while.”

She glanced back to the rest of the bed, tilting her head. She considered stuffing the other bag with the remainder but glanced at the colourful banner she’d shoved aside. Not only was it brightly hued despite the dim light, but it was also pleasantly patterned with repeated checkers. The edges were frayed, and it drooped in places, but metres and metres of the middle were spared the wrath of moths and time.

“And you,” Sonata started, “Can go in the other side. I’m sure Sunset or Rarity will like you.”

Using her teeth again, Sonata gripped one edge of the sheet and pulled. It tore free of a few of the rings that held it to a railing just a little too high to make out, but only a small length of it fell. So, she gave it another pull, then another, each time getting a few more tears.

The fifth pull, however, made an ugly groaning sound. The cloth fell around and on top of Sonata, briefly shutting out the world around her, and then she felt something hard slam the middle of her back, pushing her flat to the floor. Meanwhile, another clang in front of her sent a buzzing sensation through her body.

After waiting a few seconds, ensuring everything was silent again, Sonata tried to lift the banner off herself. She freed her head and peeled the fabric off her front, but her back legs wouldn’t cooperate and let her walk out of the bundle.

Looking back, she could see why, and the image made her wince.

The rusted pole that held up the banner had landed end first on top of Sonata. While it hadn’t pierced her clothes or rubber skin, it had left a severe indentation where its weight pressed down into her, and her back was bent at an angle that she was pretty sure would be bad for anypony. She gingerly let herself back down with her front legs, lying on the floor. Something creaked and groaned inside of her, though she didn’t get the function of her legs back once she was down again.

The anxiety returned, but Sonata scolded it and banished it to the back of her mind once more. She was awake and could still see and move half her legs. That meant she could perhaps work on a solution.

But first…

“Aria!”

Her voice rang out through the room, and after waiting for a few seconds and receiving no call back, she shouted a second time.

There. At the very least, she tried to call for help. If Aria was coming, she could at least try and figure out what was wrong with her in the meantime.

Sonata unclipped the pack around her middle, which had survived unscratched in the accident. She pushed it away, then rolled onto her side by using her front legs. The rod must have been heavier than she expected, as it stayed in place rather than moving with her.

With a smile, Sonata pushed herself onto her back. Her back half didn’t quite follow, however, and twisted around as it lagged behind, and the pole remained on top of her.

On her back, Sonata had nothing she could push against to roll herself further. What she could do, if she heaved herself up just enough, was get her fetlocks around the pole and shove it the last foot or so off her.

It slammed against the ground with another clang, and Sonata fell back, letting her head rest against the large, dark stones.

“Sonata Dumbass,” she muttered to herself, then giggled. “I’m sure Aria will find this funny.”

By throwing her legs around above her, Sonata managed to once more roll onto her front, but again her back half remained slightly twisted, refusing to follow her. Using all her strength, she lifted her front half up enough that she half-walked, half-dragged her butt across the floor. She teetered and wobbled as the dead weight didn’t follow her as expected, and she was constantly adjusting her position to account for the odd centre of gravity.

As Sonata reached the door, slowly inching her way forward, she began thinking about how she would try and make her way out and home.

She didn’t know if and where there was an entrance to the outer walls. She could have tried her hoof at climbing the walls if she had her back legs to work with, but the prospect was out of the question at that moment. Not only that, but it would take her hours to make a trip that previously took her minutes.

Slumping to the ground, Sonata put her hoofs to her head and thought, long and hard, about what else she could try, where else she could go.

Sparing a look at the stone chairs, she thought she could at least think to herself somewhere more comfortable and less pitiable.

So she crawled back and struggled up the dais. She got her hooves to the back of one of the thrones and dragged herself up it, twisting her body so that her non-functioning legs bunched up beneath her and caught on the lip of the seat. Half-turned as she was, she dragged herself further up to sit on the throne, though some of the stone that made up one of the arms seemed to crack and slip beneath her.

She managed, eventually, to sit down with her back to the throne. It was long and large, much too large even for her to sit in normally, let alone the awkward, uncomfortable position she found herself in.

With a whine, Sonata threw her front legs over one side of the throne and slouched off the arm. She shut her eyes tight. “Stupid, stupid. Aria said wait and I had to be stupid.”

When Sonata opened her eyes again, she noticed the break in the stone arm was relatively clean. It was smooth, even, and perfectly perpendicular.

She leaned forward, pulling herself along to do so, and inspected the hollow space beneath where the stone was. The inside wasn’t remarkable, except for a perfectly circular stone.

When Sonata touched it, it pressed down. So, she pushed it harder. It sank with the pressure, then clicked into place once it was flush with the rest of the hollow.

Right as it did, the chair rumbled, shaking Sonata with it. The sound of grinding rock came from somewhere behind her, but Sonata wasn’t able to pull herself from the seat before it tilted back with a crack, and she was tumbling down for what was most definitely too many times that day.

The seat hit something hard and pitched forward, ejecting Sonata from it and sending her careening down a jagged incline. When she landed at the bottom, she had only a half-second to see the chair fall toward her, then land hard somewhere south of her chin.

With a shriek, Sonata shut her eyes and held up her hooves to shield herself far too late. That was how she remained for a short time, her chest rising and falling in the memory of breath before she carefully cracked one eye open.

The sun didn’t penetrate to where Sonata was, but enough light bounced off the walls that her eyes could manage. She could still feel herself, at least. She could feel her face, and the ground under her, and her rapid fake breathing sounds.

As she tilted her head forward, she shrieked again.

The top half of the throne had landed on her midsection, and she made out the rough, light texture of the silicone inside her where it had sheared through her skin. She twisted, pulling herself along, and found that her back half didn’t follow. It poked out from either side of the chair, and she saw one of her legs kicked out to the side, totally limp.

Shutting her eyes tight, Sonata rolled over and pulled herself away, scrambling across the smooth, slick floor as quick as she could. Despite having her eyes shut tight, all she could see were her rear legs severed from her, sticking out into the air.

Before she began admonishing herself again, Sonata collided with something with a muted thump and a scraping sound across the floor. A few small items fell onto her head, two bouncing off, then one sticking fast into her skin.

Sonata instinctively rubbed her head and pulled free the last thing to fall.

Despite the rust that coated it, she recognised the scalpel for what it was. Sunset had several for her work, and she’d watched Sunset cut away at Adagio’s hip to smooth out the rubber. Glancing over to the other things that fell to the floor, she saw more instruments that looked similar to Sunset’s own, though their proportions and exact shapes were markedly different, either more bulbous or broader.

Looking up, she realised she was underneath a wooden table, reinforced with iron bars stretching across its middle.

She smacked the table again, and something else nearly tipped over the edge. A ceramic bowl with a sun and moon motif is painted on the outside. Above that was a strange tangle of metal, some still shining, but much of it rusted. She made sense of at least a little of it, especially the dangling cables.

Shuffling over, Sonata put her torso beneath the table’s edge and swung at its legs again. She missed a few times before adjusting herself enough for the bowl to fall. With a quick swipe, she hugged the bowl to her chest, though its contents fell out and scattered across the floor.

With gems of varying colours and cuts surrounding her, Sonata thanked her lucky stars.

Sonata’s legs didn’t feel quite the same. It was like she was talking to them, and they took a few seconds to give her some lip before obeying her.

But they did obey her, so she could walk, albeit at a slower pace.

It had taken her over an hour, but Sonata had managed to fix herself up as best she could, clipping her spine together with a bend of metal she found and socketing one of the gems into the brace. The big, mostly intact banner was good enough to keep both halves together, tied tightly around her chest and under her tail.

It wasn’t comfortable, but it worked.

She stood at the front entrance of the keep, just beyond the outer walls. It was just her luck that there was an actual front gate, which had long fallen off its hinges, proving only a mild obstacle she had to climb over.

Aria was ahead of her, walking along a worn-down road that disappeared beneath the undergrowth. She wore her usual scowl, and this time there wasn’t a hint of familial love behind it.

“I told you to stay put,” she said, her voice flat.

Sonata pursed her lips and nodded. “I know.” She sounded whiny and shook her head to avoid worrying about what that meant.

Aria glared at Sonata for a moment more, and her expression softened. The scowl remained, but her eyes didn’t look quite so cross. “At least you’re safe, I guess.” She looked up and over Sonata. “What is this place?”

“I think it used to be Sunset’s, maybe?” Sonata said, following Aria’s gaze. “There was a whole thingy in there like the room we woke up in. I had a bit of an accident and was able to fix myself up and—“

“Whoa, hang on. You had an accident?”

Sonata nodded, then shyly pointed to her back with a leg. As Aria walked up, she looked over at her sister. If she had the biological means to do so, Sonata was sure she’d have turned green.

“‘Nata, this isn’t a small accident...”

“I’m all fixed up now!” Sonata said, perhaps a bit too loud and quick. “I think. I should let Sunset look at it, though.”

“Yes,” Aria said. “You should. Let’s get back.” She sighed as she yanked Sonata’s front legs, and Sonata almost tripped over her back set. “We—I can finish searching tomorrow. Maybe I can actually make some progress while I’m not having to babysit you.”

Sonata beamed, shook her leg out of Aria’s grip, and unhooked one of the straps covering her pack.

With a sigh, Aria turned around and stared at the overflowing bag. Some of the flowers had most certainly been squished, and the strap at the back had torn before Sonata had tied it back together.

The wide-eyed look on Aria’s face bounced between the bag and Sonata’s bright grin. “I guess you’re not totally useless,” she said at last. “I thought we’d be out ’til dusk before we actually got anywhere.”

It was Sonata’s turn to widen her eyes and gasp. “Dusk! Dusk!”

Aria narrowed her eyes.

“Sonata Dusk!” Sonata shouted. “That’s my name.”

Author's Note:

This one took a little longer than anticipated! My partner was visiting for all of February, and then I had a little accident about a week ago. Got there eventually!

534 views

105