Machine pistols. Extra ammo. Water bottle. Fire ax.
Luna glowered as she packed. Efforts to find the sirens before the concert had been a bust. What’s more, the hunters were practically leaderless with Celestia still in pony-land. Luna was the official second, but even she could recognize well-intentioned nepotism for what it was. They missed the sirens, and now suddenly learned the concert time got kicked up so the plan to jump them right before was dead as well.
“It comes down to flying by the seat of our pants,” Luna grumbled, feeling through her pockets for the essentials. Keys, lip balm, switchblade. “It always comes down that way. Just frantically winging it and hoping for the best. How have we survived this long? One of these days… brr…”
She shivered, and her breath misted in the air. Great, the heater was on the fritz again. More bills.
Luna hesitated. Odd, that it got cold so quickly.
Odd was bad. Her instincts yelled. Luna dropped to a crouch, drawing one of the pistols.
Her brain pondered the instincts, and approved. Outside, the slow emergence of spring was turning snow to slush. No way this sudden cold was normal. Luna touched the frost-glazed window and smiled when her fingers met glass. Ice on the outside meant the instigator was likely outside, too. Good – there was something inherently creepy about fighting inside your own home, and bloodstains were a bitch to clean.
No point in waiting. Luna got her heaviest jacket and briefly pondered clambering out a window in case the doors were watched.
...Nah, best to pound through. If there was an enemy, crawling out would make herself vulnerable.
“Seat of our pants,” Luna muttered, unbolting the side door as quietly as she could. An attempt to gently shift the door revealed it to be jammed tight.
Luna grunted impatiently and gave it a fearless kick. Ice cracked around the edges and the door flew open, with Luna following. She pointed her gun forward, then to each side. Nothing. Not even strange footprints in the snow. Maybe she wasn’t targeted after all, and the freakish cold had covered the city. Hard to say which would be worse.
Maybe she had just forgotten to look up. Luna raised her gaze and pistol as motion above the awning caught her eyes.
Not something Luna had seen before, and she had seen quite a bit. It was like the front half of a horse made of ice, while ethereal wisps and snow trailed where the back should be. Its front hooves pedaled as if in a constant trot, and its eyes glowed with wintry white.
“Kelpie?” Luna ventured, then shook her head. “Wendigo? Wendigo sounds right, we’ll go with that. Thanks for the cold, ass-brain, it warned me you were here.”
Another one floated towards her from over the garage. Luna drew her second machine pistol. Light weapons, maybe not so great against ice monsters.
Time to find out. Luna aimed one-handed, leveling a gun at the closer wendigo just in time to see its eyes go black.
Noise like a distant wave filled her ears, accompanied by Luna’s own voice. “Let’s be real. Mom and Dad would still be alive if they had stopped at one child.”
Luna flinched, then grinned back savagely. “Cool, you can stick creepy thoughts in my head. Guess I’ll feel bad while I blast you.”
She fired, but yelped as the gun kicked back in her grip. Three scattered bullets went wild.
Not weak, just… got distracted. The wave was getting louder.
Luna steadied herself. Glanced nervously to the side and saw the other wendigo approaching, eyes black. “And if I had died with them, Tia would have gotten the life she wanted. Husband, baby, dog. Not some man-child sister who sits with her Cheetos and video games while Tia makes like an adult.”
She felt queasy. Something black and horrid churned within her breast. Luna crouched, then fell to one knee. Hard to even hold at that… God, she sucked.
“No,” Luna manged, though her grin was turning rictus. “You’re not sticking it in, you’re dredging what’s already there. Like the sirens. But instead of anger, you do hate.”
The wendigos floated towards her, lowering down to touch the snow. It got colder as they drew near, and the wave became incredible. “I blew it. The lives of my whole family, down the drain. Even now I’m still dead weight Tia refuses to cut loose. She won’t be young forever. But she has time. She can find her husband, carry a child… she can have all that if I do the right thing for once in my miserable life. If I stop ruining things for her and… go away…”
Luna folded down. One pistol dropped to the ground. The wendigos and their black eyes were close enough to touch.
...Couldn’t rightly miss at this range.
Five seconds of unleashed automatic fire broke into the wendigo on her left. The small bullets bounced and ricocheted off its icy flesh, but most carried chunks with them, and these chunks broke off more. The thing neighed, rearing back and cycling its fore hooves, giving an even bigger target.
Something snapped in the fourth second. A jagged crack split the creature’s frame in two, then six, then broke it apart as the bullets hammered home.
No wendigo remained, just shards of falling ice. The other’s reaction was slow, perhaps stunned at the reversal.
Luna dropped the spent pistol and snatched her fire ax from its holster. She got in a solid, two-handed chop, cracking the neck before the wendigo drew upwards and away.
Luna seized the foreleg with her left hand, using the other to give another chop. Her toes left the ground and her grip began to slide, but still she reared reared back and delivered a third. This brought an ominous crack, and the wendigo jerked and fell.
It twitched on the ground, and the black eyes glared back balefully. Hairline creases had appeared down its neck on both sides.
The tide was falling. The voice, a whisper. “I’m like her shadow. If her shadow was a love-blocking douche who drove up the electricity bill.”
“You know,” Luna said, though she did not stall her final swing. Metal struck ice, and silence fell. “Shit like that used to keep me awake for literal weeks, and that’s just me kicking it on myself. It’s always funny when some piss-ass monster thinks it can do worse.”
A car horn blared from the street. A purple sedan from some decades past, pulling up squarely in front of the driveway.
Luna sighed. She approached at a jog, pulled open an unlocked door, and clambered in next to Harshwhinny.
“Could’ve warned me about the wendigos.”
“No I couldn’t,” Harshwhinny replied primly. “Something’s wrong with my signal, and I think it’s all over the city.”
Brown-sugar lips stretched tightly with characteristic annoyance, as though Harshwhinny spoke of nothing more dire than a student prank. “Such is a common symptom of major magical up-swells. I’m sure Professor Whooves is at his machines, tracking it and postulating theories while we do the work.”
“And you came to help me first?” Luna gave her a cheeky grin. “I’m touched.”
“You were the closest,” Harshwhinny announced. “And you seem fragile to their influence. I came as soon as I had dealt with mine.”
Luna crooked an eyebrow. “Huh. What did they say to you?”
Silence passed as Harshwhinny drove swiftly down the black asphalt. At least it wasn’t snowing.
“I said, what did–”
“Do you not think it odd that they found us at our homes?” Harshwhinny cut in tersely. “Yet I don’t see them attacking the city at-large. Unsettling. We need to rally the other hunters and move in.”
Luna gazed out the window, following the logic and coming up short. She snorted as Harshwhinny stopped for a red light… but a ticket would slow them down even more, so maybe it was the right move. “Canterlot University is in the wrong direction from the mountain, and Sunset doesn’t have wheels.”
Harshwhinny released a huff. “I said the other hunters, not your indulged children. I consider it for the best that she remains far from the action.”
Sunset was in the thick of the action. She raised her shotgun, heard the tide. “I knew the concert was today, and I’m still screwing things up. This is going to be the time, isn’t it? When I finally get my friends killed.”
“Get bent!” she snarled. Her hands trembled. Shotguns didn’t care – the blast broke apart the wendigo’s front, but more closed in from around. “Wallflower, how’s it coming?”
“Excuse me,” Wallflower mumbled as she slipped between two wendigos, arms filled with Applejack’s toolbox. Louder, she answered. “I got the stuff! Sorry, sorry, I didn’t think it’d need maintenance so soon.”
The hunters clustered around a dull brown van with an open hood and “free candy” spray-painted on the side. Applejack stood guard on its left and beckoned to Wallflower. “Girl, I’m curious what you expected from a van that cost less than your Gamestation.”
Applejack raised a beefy arm to parry a wendigo’s hoof, then countered with a baseball bat in her other. She noticed Wallflower’s downcast look and gave a smile. “Lesson learned, and no hard feelings. Fact is, we’d be stuck like a pig in tar right now if y’all didn’t buy us these wheels. Just got to get ‘em turning.”
Wallflower wasn’t a handyman like AJ, but she’d taken auto classes and knew her way around a fix. She got to work, unmolested by the circling wendigos, and Applejack stepped around towards Sunset.
...Pretty Sunset. “Could’ve had her. Or Adagio. Pretty girls, and they would’ve given you a fine time for a little while.”
Applejack’s face twisted. Black waves crashed in her mind. “‘I don’t have time for dating,’ what a dang lie. Y’all know they would have moved on before long. Soon as Sunset sees the right guy she’ll remember she’s straight. And Adagio? You’re just flavor of the month to her. Two weeks and she’d have been bored. Stupid, ape-armed, redneck Applejack, of course they’re too good for you...”
A wendigo reared on her left.
“AJ!”
Sunset’s call roused Applejack just as the ice-solid hoof slammed on her forearm. She dropped the bat, staggered, then grabbed the wendigo’s head and heaved it to the ground.
The shotgun went off at a more distant foe. The wendigo was scrambling to its hooves, and Sunset ran to Applejack’s side with fear on her face. “Sweet Celestia, it got you good. Can you still stand? Can you make it inside?”
“I’m fine.” The arm stung, but Applejack used it to snatch up her bat without pause. “I’m...”
She trailed off, distantly realizing a horse’s stomp could easily snap bones. And this one hit her dead-on. Most people would have a third elbow right about now.
Heh. ‘Ape-armed.’ Applejack smiled grimly as she planted a boot on the fallen monster and swung down
“Man, you’re tough.” Sunset chuckled – a melodic tone that cut through the waves and whispers in Applejack’s mind. Wendigos weren’t so tough around friends.
Thinking her own voice might have the same effect, Applejack returned the laugh. “I need my guns out the back.”
Sunset thumbed a few more shells into her shotgun and nodded as she racked them in place. “I’ll give you as much time as you need.”
Applejack hustled to the van’s rear doors and threw them open. Guns, ammo, Twilight’s science hoo-ha, and guns. The hunters had made this vehicle their own.
…Sunset was so cool under stress.
“I’ll give you as much time as you need.”
She was talking about the guns, of course. Of course. Yet a distant smile hovered at Applejack’s lips as she grabbed her revolvers. And when she went outside and the tidal voices returned, they didn’t bother her one bit.
Twilight hadn’t gone out with the rest of them. Instead, she hurtled back to her laboratory at a run. She needed readings. Scans. If some mega-demon was on its way, they needed to know what it was made out of. With that would come its weakness. Research, solution, application. Once she had its number, this ‘Tirek’ would just be Monster Variant #79. She kept track.
Of course, all that entailed actually reaching the lab. Twilight was not built for running, or even a sustained brisk walk. Her breaths began to come hoarse and low, and she wondered if the bus would really have been so terrible. But she forgot her rubber gloves, and no way was she touching anything public without–
“Need a lift?”
The car was ridiculous. A tiny, beetle-backed machine with a horn you actually had to lean out and squeeze. The driver…
Twilight fidgeted with her glasses, wondering if Wallflower broke them worse than she thought. Hooray for duct tape. “Mister Discord?”
“You’re heading to your lab, right?” The teacher grinned, revealing one sharp canine over the lip. “Work a science miracle? Save us all? Something like that?”
Twilight drew up. She tried to look suspicious, but aching lungs bid her gasp. “Yes, but...”
Discord shrugged, and had already kicked open the passenger door. “But Sunset thinks I’m a freak-monster; yes, I know, and I lower her grade in petty retaliation. Now’s not the time. I know enough to know that Canterlot is about to have a big problem, and requires an equally large solution. Hop in.”
“I have my taser with me,” Twilight said, folding her arms.
“That’s… nice?”
“And I know the exact route home. If you try to detour, you’ll get to meet him.”
Discord tilted his head. “Him?”
“Lord Zappington the Third. My taser.”
“Fine.” Discord beckoned impatiently. “Get in. The longer we stall, the more likely some horrid calamity will strike in the meantime.”
Twilight squinted, but the man had a point, and she wouldn’t do much good if she was too exhausted to work. Something fluttered in her stomach… mere nervousness. Twilight walked guardedly around the passenger side and climbed in. Food wrappers, stale fries, and cola stains. The bus would have been more sanitary.
She gingerly used a tissue to hold and buckle the seat belt. “What’s your angle?”
“Everyone thinks I have an angle!” Discord courteously squeezed the horn twice and verbalized, “Honk-honk” before turning into the main street. “Right now, my angle is a very straight one that leads directly to your lab. You’re smart enough to stop what’s coming, you just need to invent the solution.”
Twilight was unused to such praise – she blushed, fighting to keep up her suspicious demeanor. Discord saw, and promptly erupted in a coughing fit to hide his grin.
“Actually,” he murmured, loud enough for Twilight to barely hear, “Perhaps you already have.”
“On in five, Dajy-o!”
Sonata squealed at her own joke, but did not enter the changing room. Adagio could hear the idiot prance away, and frowned at her own label. Too easy to call her that. Sonata was as dangerous as any of them.
...Even if she behaved like an idiot. An endearing idiot. When war found their mansions, the sirens had always turned to Sonata for cheer… but no, no point in thinking of the past. Their camaraderie had been an illusion, and nothing more.
Adagio felt hollow with her gem off. Salt-voiced and heavy. She turned it over in her fingers, peering into the facets. A tiny, blinking wendigo stared back from each one with cold hate, and Adagio smirked.
“Ah, so that’s what it is.” Adagio cooed, stroking her finger along the gem. “The souls of wendigos. Power and hate. I wonder how many of you are crammed in there.”
She mused, then shook her head. “Did the sirens do this? No, they had no means. Neither does Tirek, else he would devour you for himself. Which leaves… of course.”
Adagio chuckled, smugly proud of her deduction. “You did this yourselves. What harm is a frozen prison to those clawed by eternal ice? You serve Tirek willingly. I’d wager you were the ones who brought in my sisters, too. Bridging your old breadwinners and your new. You ones here bound yourselves to restore our power, so that we might restore his.”
The gem grew cold enough to pluck her fingers, but still she stroked. “We had always thought you mindless carrion. You delightful little fiends, when did you become so clever?”
The tide moved in her ears. It brought her whispers of civilization in ruins, and Tirek astride the whole world. Visions of mad blizzards and gales wormed into her mind, blanketing a north lost to starving half-men… but never starved, oh no. Then there would be no hate for the wendigos.
Adagio laughed, cruel and loud. “All that would not give you even one shred of joy. You pathetic vultures, your greatest victory would leave you as frozen and pained as you are now.”
The gem had grown so cold that spindly frost formed upon its facets, hiding the souls from view.
“You sense not all is right,” Adagio purred. “But who knows? Perhaps at the end of all this, you’ll finally be happy.”
By that, she speculated they might be destroyed and reborn in some paradise, but no point in bringing it up. Her heart burned to gloat – to rub her coming betrayal in the faces of these helpless prisoners. Harmless, surely. But if there was the slightest chance they could warn their fellows…
Well, the stakes were too high. But goodness, it would feel good. She would just have gloat later to the gang.
...If they ever spoke to her again.
Adagio pushed the thought from her mind. She strapped the gem to her neck, cold enough to feel through its lace choker.
“Showtime.”
She came to the stage. It was an outdoor concert, yet the air was strangely warm by Canterlot Mountain. Crowds had arrived despite the accelerated schedule, ready to party.
The sirens grinned and laughed. Adagio did so loudest of all, and her sisters did not realize she was laughing at them and at the brooding evil she sensed beneath the mountain.
What came next was child’s play. She would drain magic from the crowd, and keep it. And as her sisters channeled it to Tirek, she would drain that, too. It was all the same. They wouldn’t even notice once it left their bodies. The riot would be… well, if she was perfectly honest, fun, but no danger in and of itself. Then she could biff Aria and Sonata over the head once the hunters showed. No magic, no Tirek. He would yet lurk, but that sounded like a Twilight kind of problem.
“Are you bitches ready for some music?” Adagio said huskily into the microphone, drawing wild cheers. She had missed this so much. The adulation, the power…
Temptation flared, then smoldered. Her die was already cast. Yet as the speakers came to life with dull, throbbing bass, Adagio’s enticement only grew. She would be glutted on magic and possessed a gem to channel it. Why not keep both? Rewards, justly earned. Not even Sunset could begrudge her, once she learned how useful this would be.
Adagio sang the grungy metal the witless crowd adored, and devoured the green mist of their anger.
“Bring the rage and bring the pain,
Step on insects, kill for gain.
Tirek rising in our mind,
Coming up, the world to find...”
She dreamed of violins and pianos, and songs to make one weep for joy. Like how Mother Hydra decreed, so long ago. Sing to inspire song; harmonize to inspire harmony.
There would be riches, of course. A… great many riches. But these would come from sponsors and royalties, not hypnotized dupes. Rewards, justly earned. Adagio grinned as she sang, so losing herself in the fantasy that they reached the first refrain before she realized something was wrong.
Her lips kept singing. Her eyes looked around. She should feel the magic flowing through her. The warm, heady high of stolen power.
No warmth at all, here. Actually, it was quite…
The gem at her throat began to hurt, its cold deepening through its cushion. She should take it off… no, then Aria and Sonata would see. So strange. She had the power, so where was the magic?
Waves filled Adagio’s ears, loud enough to drown even that awful bass. The gem glowed frozen and white, and a thousand copies of her own voice whispered as one. “The power was never yours.”
She missed a beat. Aria glared. With no better ideas, Adagio kept singing.
“Not a sin if we don’t cry,
Not a crime if watchers die,
Tirek rising, king of lies,
Tirek rising, Tirek – rise!”
“You are mere conduits. You feel the power, yet it is OURS. WE launched your sisters’ fame. WE shaped ourselves to their intent and made music the humans adore. WE flowed out through your voice and goaded your friends to sleep. And now WE seize the magic lured by OUR music and give it freely to HIM.”
Wendigos could not feel anything but hate. Not even amusement, so it was perhaps Adagio’s own imagination which lent their whispers a mocking tone. “WE KNOW, little siren. WE KNOW your treachery and WE do not care. You were never necessary. And now, HE rises.”
The stage trembled… the rioting crowd? It seemed too rhythmic.
The obnoxious base boomed out an instrumental, covering Adagio’s words. “Not necessary? Then why did they bother?”
“No talking during the solo,” Aria grunted.
“Guys,” Adagio said, but had no follow-up. The shaking was getting worse. She grinned weakly. “Are we… like, done? I don’t want the mountain falling on me.”
Sonata rolled her eyes and grinned. “Hakuna your tatas, he’s coming out the other side. Try not to embarrass me in front of the boss, will you?”
“Keep singing!” Aria yelled over the bass. “These songs act like worship to him, it’ll increase his power.”
“Do we want that!?” Adagio shrieked.
Aria gave her a disgusted look and turned away. “It’s either that or he thinks we betrayed him at the last minute. I don’t know about you, but I’m on the winning team.”
The instrumental was coming to an end. Aria returned to her microphone stand. She made to snatch it, then jerked back as a dagger twirled in from the side. Its blade caught the microphone handle, breaking it apart and sending pieces to the wind.
Adagio was not subtle. She let her hand drop slowly from the throw, and slipped another knife from her boot.
“Enough of this,” Adagio said coolly. Steady-handed and swift, she raised the blade to her own throat and slashed off the choker. The gem struck the ground, and she crushed it beneath her boot.
Shock on the other sirens turned to… cold smiles. Not quite what Adagio had expected. Deathly blue glowed at their throats as they drew knives of their own, while the crowd roared blindly beneath.
And at the foot of Canterlot Mountain
The low clawing which had been hidden by the concert grew to a frenzy
And snow shook from its highest peak as the mountain’s side burst.
Colossal hooves crushed trees
Curled horns scraped the sky
And Tirek bellowed his name as he reentered the world.
“Hokay. The reception’s not so bad up here.”
Nurse Redheart stood on top of the school with a phone to her ear, using binoculars to watch the distant events unfold. The connection was pretty crappy and garbled, but it was with Miss Harshwhinny so whatever.
“Yeah, I see it. It’s not good… how big? Well it couldn’t step on a skyscraper, but it could use one as a stripper pole.”
“Charming,” came the droll reply. “What does it look like?”
Redheart hesitated. “Like, uh… like a centaur, except with a cow. And the top half isn’t human, it’s like an anthro cow.”
“I don’t know what ‘anthro’ means.”
“Look it up online.” Redheart allowed herself a smile. “And yeah, it’s mostly black, but has huge, ripped red muscle-arms. And it’s… sort of making a sun between its horns? And now it just shot the sun into the sky as a beam, you know, kinda taking a practice shot. Now it’s beating its chest like an ape and YES, I’M BEING SERIOUS! Would I lie about something like… THAT WAS YEARS AGO, LEARN TO TAKE A JOKE!”