Silence. A dark, almost eerie silence enveloped Adagio as she strolled down the empty streets of Canterlot City. The formerly bustling city was a ghost town now, and it felt genuinely haunted. Not that Adagio believed in the supernatural. Nothing more supernatural than herself, anyway.
She shivered as she walked, unable to shake the cold. It didn’t matter to her that it was August, that the sun was beaming down and baking the empty, silent world around her. Her blood was cold. She had all the power in the world, more than she had ever had before, but she couldn’t escape the cold. It was deep in her bones, in whatever was left of her soul.
The silence persisted as Adagio proceeded along her way, the sound of her heels against the concrete lost in the nothingness surrounding her. Her world was tinged with dark, bloody red, almost obscuring her vision. She could barely see, but she didn’t need to. There wasn’t much worth looking at these days, not after Adagio had done her work.
She stopped before Canterlot High School with a sigh. How she longed to hear herself, hear the velvety smoothness of her own voice. But she couldn’t. Such was the price of the power she now wielded. It was more than any Siren had ever even dreamed of consuming. It was worth it.
Or so she told herself.
There was nothing with Adagio. There was no one. The world was hers, that much was true, but the world was also empty. The others were gone. Adagio was the last of her kind. She took no joy in that fact, nor did she lose any sleep. This was simply reality, the logical conclusion of her path. She knew it would end this way, for this was the path of a hunter like Adagio. She was the apex predator and, with nothing to put her in check, she ravaged the world.
But was it worth it?
Adagio stared at Canterlot High, the school that had caused her so much trouble. This was the last thing she had to remind her of the Battle of the Bands, how she had lost it all. The school served little more purpose these days than to memorialize Adagio’s mistakes. It was a monument to her failure as the leader of the Dazzlings, and its rubble would serve as a monument to her success as a solo star. Adagio stooped down and grabbed a rock, which she charged using the power she stole from Pinkie Pie. The stone glowed orange, even as Adagio tossed it at the glass front doors of the school. The rock sailed through the sky, crashing through the glass. Adagio turned to face away, to avoid dust in her eyes, and let out a sigh.
She couldn’t hear it, nor could she see it, but she felt the explosion. The air rushed past her, with enough force to push a lesser woman forward a few feet. But Adagio remained, planted like a tree, as the wind and debris sailed past her. She didn’t need to turn to see the school reduced to rubble. She did what she always did: she kept looking forward.
Her eyes fell on a statue in front of the school, the large, bucking alabaster stallion standing atop its podium proudly. Adagio strolled forward and placed her hand against the face of the pillar, sinking up to her elbow in the statue. The portal to Equestria.
It occurred to Adagio that she could’ve gone home. Had she just swallowed her pride, shelved her predatory instincts, asked the Rainbooms for help, she and her fellow Sirens could have returned to their homes. It didn’t have to end the way it did.
Except it did, and Adagio knew it. She knew what she was. There’s no escaping your nature, and Adagio understood that. She never tried to avoid what she was, it’d be foolish. A waste of time. She was a hunter, plain and simple. And so, she hunted. Adagio nodded solemnly to herself, knowing what she must do next. She put one foot through the portal, then an arm, finally pulling herself through. It wasn’t until she was consumed by the statue was she able to admit to herself what had been clawing at her mind these past months.
Her sisters were right.