Aria stood there in silent surprise, watching the unicorn deftly lift Adagio off the ground. Heedless of her kicking and growling, her animalistic protests, Adagio’s captor stared at her. Even far down the street, it looked like she was studying her, watching the way Adagio squirmed with curiosity.
That wasn’t the plan. Adagio was in the clear, Aria was sure of it. It was like that mare had simply appeared behind her, stealing her away when she was only a hair’s breadth from freedom.
Other ponies walking the street paused or turned to watch the odd event, and as Aria watched, weighing her options, they slowly gathered around. A small crowd, an audience around a display.
None of them wore golden regalia. If Sonata could just run in, using the crowd for cover, body-check the pony aside, she could have Adagio freed and run to the forest in just a few moments.
So then, why did Aria’s hooves remain stuck to the floor? It was like she was rooted to the ground. Fear, maybe? Whatever it was, it felt like something heavy had drilled its way into her hooves, pulling her down. The thought of darting up there seem so distant.
Even worse, there was something off about the dark-coated mare. An extraordinary and uncomfortable sensation filtered through Aria’s body, focused almost entirely on her chest, and it wanted her to put space between the two of them. As much as possible.
With the thought of turning tail and retreating entering Aria’s mind, she found lifting her leg and turning about so much easier. The possibility made Aria’s heart sick, though. She had to try. Adagio was partly to blame for the situation, but Aria had promised to keep her safe.
Muttering some choice words she’d borrowed from Sunset, Aria swallowed. Bundling the frustration, anger, and fear for her sister’s life, she used the combined feelings to push aside the disquiet and march down the street in Adagio’s direction, leaving the stolen basket of apples where it sat.
Aria didn’t run. Though the mare’s attention was on Adagio, she’d only need to look past to see Aria rushing up. So she kept herself slow, tucked to the side and matching pace with the smattering of other ponies along the road.
She squeezed in alongside the growing throng of bodies. She kept her head down so as not to rise above the rest of them and draw attention to herself. If the mare was associated with the guard—which she likely was if she took immediate attention to Adagio—she’d recognise Aria if she stood out too much.
Even though she hung upside down, Adagio’s mane and tail dangling loosely to the ground, Adagio kept a firm scowl across her face. She squirmed where she floated, her shoulders wriggling and trying vainly to tug herself free of the magic tangling her together.
“Put me down, now,” Adagio barked, growling like a cornered animal. She had no chance of biting back, despite how ineffective it might be.
The mare snorted. “After all the trouble you and your friends caused?” Throwing her head back, she laughed. “Not a chance. You haven’t got to worry much about me, though. I’ll take good care of you.”
A sound rose in Adagio’s throat, and if it weren’t for the fact it was impossible, Aria would think she was about to spit on the other mare.
“My sister will be here any moment,” she said. “She’ll get me free, and—“
“I’ll just grab her, too. It wouldn’t be hard. Let’s be off.” The mare turned, facing away from Adagio. After a moment’s pause, she cleared her throat, and the crowd parted. The golem rose further up, and Aria and Adagio’s eyes met for a moment.
A pause, then a shared nod.
Okay, she was doing this then.
Shouldering through the mass around her, Aria took a few fast, bounding steps and leapt toward the mare, a hoof outstretched and aimed for the back of the mare’s head.
That dark, steely gaze snapped around, and in a hair’s width of time, Aria found herself unceremoniously tossed aside. She careened over the crowd, her mind struggling to deal with the sudden change in inertia, then crashed into the plaster and underlying brick of somepony’s house.
Aria fell to the floor, white chips and red dust raining to the ground around her until her glossy skin was covered with a thin layer of crap.
A shadow fell over her. The mare, while small, managed to loom over Aria. “Oh, good. You’ve also saved me the trouble of trying to chase you down.” She hummed. “The right structure and build, but I could swear the reports labelled you as dead.” She sniffed.
“What can I say? I’m pretty tough.” Aria stood and squared her shoulders, dipping her head and thumping a hoof into the road.
She didn’t have a run-up to build up speed, but the mare stood less than a whole body’s length between them. “Stupid, too. Put her down, or we do this the hard way.”
The mare rolled her eyes. “I just smacked you aside like you were nothing.”
Aria tensed her back legs, bracing them on the wall behind her, and then she pushed off and slid beneath the mare.
Another force smacked her in the side. A shimmering wall of magic punted Aria across the muddy ground, but she managed to close the gap enough she had a leg wrapped around one of the mare’s ankles. Rolling in the dirt, she pulled the other mare down. She landed with a thud and a yelp.
Without any of the hesitation before, Aria scurried up on top of the mare, trying to pin her down. She managed to get most of her weight on top of her, hoping what she’d learned from trapping Sunset with her weight proved true.
Instead, she learned that Sunset could probably have ejected Aria—or any of her sisters—at any time. A punch to Aria’s belly sent her skyward, spinning and tumbling through the air. She managed to spot Adagio scrambling on the floor for a split second, but Aria came falling down to Equus before she could see if she got up, where she was headed.
Pain was distant, a sensation Aria thought of rather than felt, but the sheer act of smacking her head on the floor still left her reeling. A fog flooded Aria’s head, connections between her mind and body flaring as the spindly legs down her throat slipped. It only took her a half-second to rediscover her grip, though, the spinning confusion passing as quickly as it came.
Aria tilted her head, burying her crown in the dirt, and spotted dark hooves pushing the strange mare back up. Mud and grit marred her dark, glittering mane, and Aria grinned.
The mare shot a broad smile back Aria’s way, and for a brief moment it was like looking into a mirror. Was that what it was like to be on the receiving end of Aria’s beat downs?
“I’m not going to give you credit for that one,” the mare said. “Though I do appreciate the effort.”
Slower that time, Aria rolled onto her front, but instead of standing up and towering over the mare, a force pushed down her back.
Her chin in the dirt, Aria could only use her eyes to look up at the mare. Remnants of the crowd remained, scattered around the street, leaving Adagio in clear view.
The two met eyes again, and Aria shook her head ever so slightly.
Their unspoken conversation caught the mare’s attention, and she glanced over her shoulder. The pressure on Aria’s back didn’t relent. “Are you going to try something stupid, too?”
“Don’t, ‘Dagi.”
One of the mare’s ears spun around, but her eyes remained on Adagio. “‘Dagi’?”
“I’m not going to leave you. That wasn’t the plan.”
Little by little, Aria slowly unhooked her smaller limbs from her body. The pressure on her back lessened, not because the mare let up but because Aria felt it less. “Get those apples back to Sunset,” Aria said. “I’ll be fine.”
The conflict turned Adagio’s confident scowl into something more uncertain, with slightly parted lips and a crease between her smooth eyebrows. “I’ll be back.”
Aria’s spider-like body disconnected entirely from her torso, and the small limbs slid out of her neck. Without the harsh grip on her body, speaking came easy again. “I know. I’ll be fine.”
The mare snorted. “Please. I’ll have both of you back to where I’m staying—“
The mare shrieked as Aria leapt forward and used her tiny legs to scurry up her leg. Her head lagged behind, inertia and gravity trying to keep it from following, forcing Aria to stare down her snout at the mare’s wide-eyed expression.
When the inevitable magic grip came, Aria pinched strands of hair as tight as she could. Rather than go flying, the hair went taut, yielding yet another cry from the mare. More of her mane filled Aria’s vision, but she held firm, closing her eyes tight to keep the strands from tickling her gemstone irises.
“What in the world are you?” The magic pulling on Aria lessened, as did the pull on the mare’s scalp, at least right until Aria used her other limbs to help pull herself along. The flat ends of each metal leg made an excellent pincer, yanking more of the midnight mane taut.
Aria had no idea what her game was at that point. She mostly wanted to buy time, and the focus on her convinced her she had it. She pulled herself along to the mare’s scalp, some of the silky smooth hair falling away where it came loose from its follicles or snapped in between. Once settled there, she could make out more around her, and giving a quick glance at where she thought Adagio stood confirmed that she’d taken the opportunity to run.
Hopefully, she grabbed the basket Aria left.
Aria twisted herself back around, doing her best job of tangling herself in the mare’s mane. Indeed, even her hair started getting caught in the growing rat’s nest. Facing the mare’s horn, she grinned and reached for it. “I always wondered how these work,” she said. She flicked it hard, and the magic around Aria’s little body totally fled.
That only lasted a moment, with the following yank pulling Aria free and a few hairs from both their scalps.
Aria flew for the third time that day, though that time she crashed through a closed window, mingling with glass shards that fell around her onto a carpeted floor.
Aria took a few moments to right herself. A little surprise filled her tiny gut, and she beamed at how she came in. She hadn’t planned anything else, working entirely with her stomach, and it seemed to pay off.
Well, until the mare made the small hole, Aria made much, much bigger.
With a yelp, Aria curled up. The sudden downward force of beating wings rolled Aria across the floor until she came to rest at the foot of a wardrobe, one eye pressed to the ground.
The other drank in the furious shadow towering over her, and she wanted nothing more than to swallow at that very moment.
A pegasus and a unicorn in one. Earth ponies, Aria could manage. Unicorns and pegasi, they’d hurt her.
That frozen feeling and intense desire to flee once more filled Aria’s very being.
“I’m not giving you credit for that on principle,” she mare growled. The humour and pleasantries had left her voice, leaving behind low fury.
A nervous laugh popped out of Aria’s mouth as she slowly righted herself. “It worked, didn’t it?”
An uncharacteristic yelp came next as she was lifted from the floor. She turned slowly in the air, all her limbs splayed out. Aria couldn’t even manage a slight twitch.
The wrongness from before filled the room. It felt more like Aria had fallen into midnight, with the only light coming not from the sun through the window but from the pair of blue-green moons before her, glaring beneath mad eyebrows.
It dissipated a little when a voice from outside shouted. Aria hadn’t caught what was said, but the mare turned to the broken window.
Holding Aria tight, she leapt through the window. Aria expected her to thud to the ground, creating small craters where her hooves landed. She drifted, gliding slowly and smoothly before coming to a gentle, flapping stop before a small gaggle of guards.
Two of them were panting hard, doubled over, while the others beside and behind them awkwardly stared at Aria.
She recognised the pegasus she’d snapped the wing of among them and felt tiny.
“Miss… Selene…” one of the panting guards raised his head. “Are you… hurt?”
Selene looked over herself, then patted her face and scalp with a hoof, dislodging some drying dirt from her mane and fur. “I am fine.” She glanced over her shoulder, looking down the street into the forest far in the distance.
“Your Majesty wants you back at the town hall,” one of the other guards said. “We have reports that the troublemakers—“
“They’re here,” said Selene, and she held up Aria a little higher as if she were ever hidden. “This one accosted me, and there is another. I think I know where she was headed.” The rest of her body turned. “We’ll be pursuing her.”
Silence fell over the group. Uncertain expressions masked the squad’s faces, and the more Aria looked, the more she recognised faces from the assault on Sunset’s tower.
“You’re scared.” Aria laughed and smirked. “The big one’s got to you, right?”
Selene flicked her head back around, squinting at Aria, then glaring at her guards.
“It’s not that,” said the first guard. His helmet’s brush seemed a little taller than the others, a strip of blue amongst the white. “But if she is there, we cannot guarantee your safety. We cannot allow you to go into the forest.”
With a sigh, Selene deflated. “I could just go alone,” she said. “But then I’d get you all in trouble.” She shut her eyes and clenched her jaw. It looked as if she were chewing on something until the muscles in her face relaxed, and a gentle smile curled up her lips.
Her eyes weren’t quite in agreement with the rest of her face.
“We have one of them. The rest will come.”