//------------------------------//
// Adagio 
// Story: Aftermath 
// by Rose Quill 
//------------------------------//

I bent over, panting. We had raced away from the stage as fast as we could. I was simply furious! Those…those children had taken our wonderful victory and thrown it down in ruins! And destroyed our Songs as well! The rage in my chest was being rapidly overtaken by another feeling, however.

Hollowness.

I hadn't ever felt this empty before, not even when we had wandered the world after our initial banishment and went without feeding for a while. This did not bode well. How would we survive now? And was the thrall we held over some people still stand? Thank goodness that I had looked ahead and stashed money in a bank decades ago. We had enough to get by on and even if the deal we had on our apartment went up, we’d still have a roof over our heads. 

Contracts are the noose by which humans hang themselves.

I saw my sisters standing nearby, panic and worry clear in their eyes. Sonata had her hand pressed to her belly, wincing slightly.

“Dagi,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”

I didn’t know how to assure her. We were SIrens! We had wreaked havoc over both Equestria and the seas of this world and fear was something we drank like a fine wine, avarice was a light snack, and anger or strife filled us like nothing else.

I looked at her, and I wondered what I should do.

“What are we going to do. Adagio?” Aria asked with none of her usual sarcasm. “We need our Songs to feed.” In her eyes, I saw confusion and she looked at me for guidance.

“We don't need them to feed,” I said shakily. “It just makes it easier. We need to stay calm. We’ll go grab the shards after everyone leaves the arena. Maybe they can be fixed.”

“By who?” Aria shouted. “It's not like we know a lit of folk that specialize in magical gem repair!”

“It’s better than nothing!” I shouted back. Fear was chopping my temper even shorter.

“Stop it!” Sonata yelled, hands in fists and tears in her eyes.

I froze and looked at her. She had never raised her voice once in my memory. She looked on the verge of breaking down.

Truth be told, I wasn’t far behind.

And in the back of my mind, a little voice started taunting me, smug and biting.

This is all your fault. You did this to them with your leadership. You brought them down with your arrogance.

You’ve killed them.

As those words filtered through, I sagged back against the alley wall and slid down it as tears began to fill my eyes.