CHAPTER ONE.
Of The Coming Of The Lyre; And What Befell Ponyville On The First Playing.
Would that evil reveal itself as readily as Nightmare Moon or Discord! Yet these challenges were not truly evil -- adversaries, mayhaps, or opponents -- but not evil per se. Neigh, I now know, from the sorrows of firsthand experience, that evil comes wrapped in the innocent smile of a child or a steadfast friend; and speaks with the voice of an angel.
Though I did not know it at the time, our doom was sealed but four short months ago. An acquaintance named Lyra Heartstrings, a unicorn of stout heart and no small musical talent, arrived at the library. While skilled in the craft of music and song, I never knew her to pursue matters scholarly; yet she came, and spent many an hour poring over tomes regarding the restoration of antique musical instruments. From restoring the lustre of brass to ensuring warmth of resonation, every book was checked out and duly read, Miss Heartstrings' face a testament to consternation.
Would that I had minded my own business! Alas, compelled by the curiosity which has ruined me forever, I asked:
"Miss Heartstrings, why the sudden interest in restoration of musical instruments?"
Her response was unsurprising. "I just bought a lyre from a traveling salespony. It seems quite old, perhaps even ancient. I want to play it, but I need to make sure it's in playable condition. Wanna see?"
I nodded in assent,and with her unicorn magic -- at that point still clean magic, I might note -- she lifted a lyre from her saddlebag. What I saw was unsettling to the core. A lyre it was, but it appeared to have been made of some sort of porous ivory. No, no! It was not ivory, I realized, it was bone -- but twisted and fashioned into a sinuous and curvilinear shape not unlike the horns of a great minotaur. Instantly, I felt a morbid sickness overtake me; for I was gazing upon the bones of a creature which had once been, yet I was also gazing upon the bones of a creature which could never have been. For unlike the heathen bone art of cannibal jungle tribes such as the Mareawak or Tupony, these bones were not carved into their undulating, helical arcs; rather, they appeared to have been warped into such shapes, bowed and tortured but not broken. Much like the skeleton of a beast afflicted by rickets, the morbid bone frame of the lyre was forced into its shape, with the craft of an artisan, belied by the malevolance of an archfiend and the indelibility of the ravages of time itself.
My unease and disorientation grew stronger as I noticed an intricate series of interlocking glyphs carved upon its exterior, in strange concentric spirals running perpendicular to the axis of the lyre itself. As a student of magic, I have been taught of runes both fair and foul; yet these were no runes I had ever seen before. The script was at once angular and flowing; giving the impression of constant rippling motion when seen with the periphery of one's vision, yet arresting to a crude and jarring halt when subject to the focus of one's sight. The symbols seemed arcane -- no, no! they seemed mocking -- as if they danced in the absence of being noticed, but became chillingly disanimate when viewed directly. I must sound a fool, dear Princess, but know that these etchings were more than etchings; they were the ossified, incarnate crystallization of maleficience.
"Pretty neat, huh?" Lyra said obliviously. As the sun lazily seemed through the window curtains, casting shadows along the body of the lyre, I noticed each etching seemed to alter when a shadow passed over it.
Prudently, I avoided comment on the horrific lyre itself, choosing rather to inquire as to its origins. "You said … a traveling salespony sold you this?"
Upon hearing this question, Lyra's normally fixed smile was briefly shaken by a fleeting, reflexive grimace. "Yeah … he looked … really weird. His face … his face was almost … flat."
"Flat, you say?" Desperate for some sort of logical explanation, I pressed on. "As a cat's face? Like Opalescence's?" I briefly imagined a pony with Rarity's cat's face, and the thought seemed too ridiculous to bear. Oh, if I only knew then what I know now!
"N... no. Flat like …. like, flat. Like --" she said, gesturing to one of my many shelves,"-- like a book flat. And his hooves seemed … fake. Does this make sense? As if he were wearing hooves over his hooves. And he spent an awful lot of time rearing on his hind legs."
I tried to visualize such a ludicrous image, abhorrent to ponydom and all things natural. I had heard of Miss Heartstrings' condition, one that was delicately euphemized as eccentricity; yet, from my own dealings with my fast friend and cohort Miss P.D. Pie, I know that the mercurial whims of an artist are no reason to discount them as madmen. I thus pressed her to continue.
"So, yeah, he looked weird. But the second he saw my cutie mark he came to me and said: Ma'am, I can't help but notice your special talent is playing the lyre. It just so happens I have a lyre with me! I picked it up in Innsmouth. Yours for two bits! Two bits, Twilight, two bits! For this piece of art! I don't care how weird he looked; this was a steal."
I did not know how to respond, merely nodding timidly. The instrument -- or should I call it an artifact? -- seemed wholly and unequivocally evil. I wanted no part of it; yet, my friend required my aid and succor. Shuddering at the prospect, I told myself that the magic of friendship would undoubtedly prove stronger than whatever arcane hexes laid upon this fell device. What foolish temerity I had to make such a claim!
After what seemed like an interminable eternity in the presence of that fell instrument, I was relieved to know that Miss Heartstrings had found the information she needed. She bade me farewell, and with no small amount of denial, I wished her well. She promised me she would return to the library the next day to play for me. Oh, how I prayed she would forget!
Yet my fears proved founded, as the next afternoon. Miss Heartstrings returned, her vile lyre in tow. A small crowd of fellow ponies gathered to hear her play. Unlike me, they seemed oblivious to the sheer and palpable malice that seemed to radiate from the accursed instrument.
Perhaps my training in the ways of magic have made me aware of such things, I thought to myself. Or perhaps, I thought, I am simply going mad. Oh, what a child I was, to conflate sensibility with madness! What a fool I was to deny justification to the fear that gripped every fiber of my being! What irony to know now that my last wholly sane moment was spent fearing I had gone daft!
As the afternoon grew late and the shadows grew long, Miss Heartstrings strung her instrument and began to pluck each string with her telekinesis. The result was a jarring cacophony, offensive to the ears and wholly contemptuous toward aesthetics. The crowd was nonplussed, stunned into silence at the soul-rending noise that insinuated itself into our ears and memory. This was not reflective of Miss Heartstrings' considerable talent.
One would expect us to leave upon hearing this mockery of music, yet we all stood, enduring, as if rooted by some unknown compulsion. Fixed, too, sat Miss Heartstrings, frustrated by her inability to perform. Suddenly, as if inspired by a muse, Miss Heartstrings did something unorthodox. She began to strum each string with her front hooves.
Had you witnessed this, my dearest Princess, you would have made a statement that if our Creator had intended for us to manipulate objects with our forehooves, that we would be given the natural implements to effect these desires. Moreover, my dear Celestia, had I stood at your side, steadfast in your radiance, I would have agreed.
Yet now, I can despairingly confess, I know that there is no Creator -- at least none with any regard for ponykind other than detached and indifferent contempt -- for what benevolent deity would allow such perversions as those I have witnessed? Bones that bend without breaking, and hooves as prehensile i as a pony's lips? What would be next? Earth ponies that fly? Ponies on two legs?
Miss Heartstrings' ungentle caresses of the strings with her hooves produced a sound that was slightly less unpleasant than her prior attempts; yet the sound was by no means considerable as music. Yet it was at this strange moment that something truly inexplicable occurred.
Hitherto, the crowd had stood, transfixed and enduring the torturous sounds. At this point, the sun dipped below the horizon, its long red rays receding from the land, as dusk encroached upon the red earth. As darkness enveloped the lyre, a peculiar change occured. At once, additional harmonies crept into the tune played by Miss Heartstrings. The song grew more beautiful by the second, an entrancing and enrapturing tune and an exemplar of aesthetic perfection.
Indeed, the song seemed too perfect, with complexities and variations in tone and pitch that appeared ... alien. The melody was otherworldly, as if bells and bagpipes and the sighs of angels were encapsulated within the vibration of each string. It was a hyperperfection that seemed to be radiant and diffusive, as a creeping colour out of the Everfree Forest itself.
I noticed myself reflexively swaying back and forth, as a metronome, in tune with the music. In the periphery of my suddenly hazy and rose-tinted vision, I noticed that everypony else was swaying too. As reeds or rushes we swayed; like cattails in the summer breeze, we undulated to and fro in perfect unison. I dimly recall musing that a passer-by would have found the scene unsettling; yet I also knew that any passer-by would be ensnared by the otherworldly scene and would join the mesmerized throng.
It was then that I became aware that we were all humming -- again, in perfect harmony. The tune was all things at once; a child's music box, a mother's lullaby; an angelic choir and a funeral dirge. My sight became dominated with visions of perfect beings; perfect yet dead, animated corpses which did not decay yet were bereft of life. The visions began to change into a dark tableau of a world I had never seen, through eyes that were clearly not mine. I saw dim shapes, bipedal like Spike. Yet they were not like Spike; for through their eyes, I walked, but in a manner bereft of stability. It appeared that my weight shifted from side to side, unbalanced, as if I had no tail to counter my own body weight. I felt deformed and incomplete, like a pegasus with stunted wings.
This hallucination sickened me. I began to grow nauseated, as the constant rocking back and forth, from my left to my right and back again, created a lurching sensation within my roiling intestines. What am I seeing? Through whose eyes am I seeing? I recall thinking. I was shown scenes of a hopelessly advanced and decadent civilization; glittering spires under a landscape bereft of nature, and countless numbers swarming to and fro. As Ms. Heartstrings' otherworldly song bleated and groaned, this image was painted across our collected vision, and the burgeoning crowd could do little else but sway and moan as their memories were tinged with the memories of others.
Whether a moment or an eternity passed, I cannot say, my dearest Princess. Time and indeed memory stretched and compressed, like so much dough in the hooves of an inexperienced baker. My awareness was kneaded to and fro, and the interstices between that which I have relayed to you is forever lost. Perhaps it is for the best; for when I came to my senses, many hours had passed, and I had a lingering feeling of dread. Indeed, I felt as if I had seen horrors beyond compare, and while I was unable to recall them to mind at that moment, I knew that I had seen them. From my cursory observations of the remainder of the crowd, it was evident that they, too, were waking from a bad dream which they could neither remember nor truly forget.
When the music stopped, and we were collectively released from the iron grip of the song, a sudden enervation struck us all to a pony. Exhausted, though all we had done was sway and hum, we went home and each of us drifted off to sleep in the hopes that a good night's rest would refresh and invigorate us, and that we would be able to make sense of the night's events in the morning.
If only we knew how futile our hopes were. Our sleep -- and I say our, for I have corroborated this with my fellow ponies -- was fitful and plagued with horrible nightmares, of great lanky beasts with outstretched claws. In my dreams, these beasts were looked pale, bloated and diseased; mange had claimed most of their hair. Their skulls bobbed on their necks at strange angles; perpendicular to their necks, with great bulbous foreheads and flat, nearly concave faces. They were as giant fetuses, but with keenly sharp eyes and a propensity for mischief. They would chant horrible fragments of phrases, revenants of a bygone era; shards of a language they themselves had forgotten. They screamed in shrill voices words like tekel-li and giddi-yap; words that held no meaning, save that they were atavisms so esoteric and ancient as to be obscenities.