“ARIA?!”
Lex’s brow furrowed, looking at how his girlfriend was staring at the Cripple in slack-jawed surprise, whereas it was glaring back at her with a look of hatred. A moment later it occurred to him that Sonata was calling the thing by name. “Wait… you know this creature?” Even as he asked the question, his brain was already spinning, trying to figure out how Sonata could possibly know some Everglow monster. Maybe she had met it during her time there, as improbable as that seemed?
But his theory was blown out of the proverbial water a moment later when Sonata turned to him, still visibly shocked. “It’s…this is Aria. Aria Blaze. One of my sisters.”
“What?!” Now it was Lex’s turn to look shocked, turning his gaze back to the monstrous creature, looking it over again.
Over ten feet long, the thing’s bottom half was that of a fish with light violet scales. But its light purple upper body was that of a pony, save for the mulberry-colored fins on its hooves, head, and running down its back. 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. Worst of all was that, as much as he wanted to disbelieve his girlfriend’s claim, Lex could see the resemblance between this monstrosity and his beloved. For all that their bodies looked nothing alike, he could see how their eyes were the same shape, how their muzzles resembled each other just slightly. In that instant he knew that Sonata was right; this thing was her kin.
Intellectually, he had always known that Sonata hadn’t been born a pony. She had never hidden the fact that she had been born as a Siren on Equestria – let alone that she had spent time as a human on that “Earth” world – but that had never been anything more than a footnote in Lex’s mind. He had never had much use for the past, whether his own or anypony else’s, save for whatever data could be taken from it that could be put to practical uses in the here-and-now; as such, his girlfriend’s true nature was a detail without any salience, and thus easily ignored…until now.
Now he had no choice but to confront the hard truth that the pony who meant more to him than anyone else…might not really be a pony at all.
Struggling with that thought, Lex only barely noticed as the Cripple – as Aria – surged towards Sonata as though to attack her. But she was still held fast within the Night Mare’s power, and he idly raised a hoof, bringing her to a halt, thrashing uselessly in anger. “Don’t you call me that!” it, no, she rasped. “You don’t get to call me your sister after what you did!”
Sonata stepped back, more under the verbal assault than the aborted attack. “What? What’d I do?”
The question seemed to enrage Aria, and she struggled more, though still without any success. “You abandoned us! No, you betrayed us! We could have won that fight and taken over that castle and made everyone there adore us! It could have been the start of our taking over that world! But instead you turned on me and Adagio and we were all captured!”
Lex looked at his girlfriend. “What is she talking about?” He was only half paying attention, trying to solve the problem of Sonata’s racial heritage, but that was no reason to neglect what was being said.
She gave him a rather helpless look in reply. “She…we’d, like, just gotten to Everglow, and were making trouble again like we always did, taking over some big castle in Viljatown.”
Lex’s eyebrows rose slightly. “You attacked the heart of the imperial capital?” He knew that Sonata had been in some sort of legal trouble when he’d met her, and that it had something to do with causing an incident with the local officials, but he’d had no idea it was for something so serious!
“I guess. But Aria and Adagio were being, like, totes mean to me, just like always.” Sonata seemed to recover her poise somewhat as she remembered that, shooting Aria a frown. “So I decided I’d had enough, and split.” She paused long enough to stick her tongue out at her sister. “Best decision I ever made.”
“You selfish idiot!” raged Aria. “Do you have any idea what they did to me after we were captured?! Do you?!”
“No, I don’t, and I don’t care either,” replied Sonata flippantly, turning her nose up, before something else occurred to her. “And now that I think about it, why are you being all whispery like that? It’s really weird. Just talk normally.”
“I CAN’T!” Aria’s whisper was throat-scratchingly raw, as she leaned her head up and pointed a hoof at the base of her neck. Both Lex and Sonata looked closer, noticing the horizontal scar there. Lex frowned deeply, immediately understanding what he was looking at, but Sonata only cocked her head in confusion.
“What the heck happened to you? Did you get that in the fight just now?”
“They cut my throat, you moron!” hissed Aria. “They took away my voice! I pleaded with them not to! I begged them to stop, but they held me down and put me to sleep and when I woke up, I couldn’t talk anymore! And it’s all because of you!” Tears had begun pouring down her cheeks, and her whispers were ragged, but the look of hate on her face had only grown more profound, and Sonata fell back under its intensity, her face turning pale as she fully realized what had happened to her sister.
“I, I didn’t know…” she sputtered.
But Aria wasn’t finished. “After that they sent me back here, completely alone. I couldn’t sing, couldn’t speak, couldn’t use any magic at all. Do you know how hard it was just to survive? I was reduced to living on seaweed! SEAWEED!” She let that hang in the air, seething for a moment, before she kept speaking. “But I still had my gem,” she said, tapping the jewel on her chest. “And eventually I realized that I could still whisper, even if I couldn’t speak. And you know what I found, Sonata? That even if I can’t sing anymore, there’s still other kinds of magic out there. It’s crude, compared to what I could do before, but it’s better than nothing.”
Lex tilted his head to the side, looking at the gemstone embedded just below the scar on Aria’s neck with an intrigued expression. A mental command was all it took to activate his circlet, and a few moments later he’d confirmed that the jewel was magical in nature. But while it was not-inconsiderable in strength, the actual type of magic wasn’t clear. That might be significant, he decided. Aria didn’t have a cutie mark that he could see, so if he wanted to investigate his new theory – that Sirens themselves were some sort of mutated ponies, which would mean that Sonata had been one of his kind all along – then that gemstone would likely be a salient point.
Satisfied for the moment, Lex turned all of his full attention back to his captive. He could still feel her trying to shake off the power binding her, and mentally reinforced it, crushing her resistance as easily as he would have a paper cup. “What about those creatures you were with? Tell me why you were working with them.”
“The sahuagin and the rest arrived after me,” replied Aria, unable to resist Lex’s command. Only her eyes showed any defiance. “I don’t know where they came from, just that a couple of them appeared out of nowhere one day and tried to kill me. I returned the favor, but more showed up later, armed with nets. They dragged me back to their village and told me that I could either serve or be eaten. I chose to serve.”
Lex narrowed his eyes at the account. She’d provided extremely few details, and he had the distinct impression that she was holding back as much as she was able, purely to spite him. For a moment he considered interrogating her further, but a sudden wave of nausea dispelled that idea, reminding him that he was hurt badly. He’d need to finish pumping her for information later.
Oblivious to Lex’s thoughts, Sonata licked her lips. “Listen, Aria...” she faltered for a moment at the dark look her sister threw at her, but forced herself to keep going. “What happened to you was totes awful, but it wasn’t my fault!” The light from the burning building – which by now was starting to go up in its entirety – highlighted the pleading look on her face. “Even if I had stayed with you guys, it wouldn’t have changed anything for you.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Like, yes I do! Every time we’ve ever caused trouble it’s come back to bite us! We tried to take over Equestria and we got our butts kicked, and then we tried to take over Earth and got our butts kicked! You always called me the dumb one, but when we tried to take over Everglow, even I could see how it was gonna end, and I was tired of getting my butt kicked!”
“So that’s your excuse for stabbing us in the back?”
“Huh? I didn’t stab anybody, I just went over to the other side,” frowned Sonata in confusion, before shaking her head. “Whatever. Look, my point is, we’re no good at trying to take over places that begin with an ‘E,’ and probably not anyplace else either, so I wanted to quit. And you two made it super easy, with how awful you always were.”
“You deserved it,” snapped Aria sullenly. “Having to listen to you struggle to put a thought together was always the worst.”
“Well having to hear you complain all the time was worser than worst,” shot back Sonata instantly, not realizing that she was falling back into old habits.
“Both of you, be quiet,” ordered Lex. The two of them gave him identical pouts in response, but complied. Satisfied, Lex turned to Aria. “You will stay here until I return.”
He’d started to turn towards Sonata, but she spoke up before he had a chance to open his mouth. “What do you mean ‘return’? Where are you going?”
Lex pointed to the burning restaurant behind her. “First, I’m going to go retrieve our gear before the fire consumes it-”
“You can’t go back in there! That place is on fire! Like, you know…a lot!”
“I have an enchantment on myself that protects me from damaging heat,” said Lex, forcing himself to speak calmly. He felt slightly less exhausted than he had a minute ago, and suspected it was because the Cri-…because Aria’s spell of fatigue had worn off, but that didn’t mean that he felt at all more energetic. Quite the opposite, his wounds seemed to hurt worse with each passing moment. But this time will be different, he vowed to himself silently. This time I won’t need somepony else’s help to survive.
Sonata looked uncertain, looking him over in clear concern. “Okay, but-”
“After that,” he interrupted, “we’ll need to think of a way to put this fire out. If it spreads, it could cause severe damage to Vanhoover. Once we’ve done that, then we’ll go back to the shelter and figure out what to do next.”
“What about me?” asked Aria, still frowning at him.
“I’ll deal with you later,” replied Lex grimly. Without another word to either of them, he strode into the burning building, walking right through the flames without the slightest show of concern.
Silence reigned for a moment as the two sisters watched the building burning, before Sonata finally spoke. “So…what does seaweed taste like?”
Aria’s only response was to grit her teeth and bring a hoof to her face in exasperation.