The Jackelope Valley Festival

by Froborr


Eight: The Heart of the Desert

"Wow," said Lyra, trembling in the aftermath of the jackelope's cry. She barely registered Thunder Axe's question as she turned slowly, feeling the thrill of magic shimmering around her. "Girls, are the rest of you seeing this?" A fountain of magic--pure, wild, full of joy--poured out from an otherwise unremarkable point in the ground, curling and growing and swirling across the desert floor. Or it should be, at least; only a tiny fraction of the Heart's power was actually free, while the rest was being pulled upward. Lyra craned her neck, trying to see where the octarine fountain led--

"I don't see anything," said Raindrops, "but I feel something. The air here, it's... alive."

"Yeah," said Thunder Axe. "It's a good word for it. The air in the rest of the valley is--"

"--dead," finished Raindrops. "That's why I've been itching so much. On top of the heat, I mean."

"Hey, Lyra?" asked Vinyl Scratch. "Did you know that you're glowing?"

Lyra blinked and looked down from her examination of the sky. "Uh, so are you." It was true; an electric blue aura surrounded Vinyl, and occasional multi-colored sparks sizzled from her horn. Lyra supposed she probably looked the same, though her aura would be mint green. Meanwhile, Thunder Axe's hooves were glowing like they did while she played her guitar, and Raindrops crackled with the occasional burst of electricity.

"What IS this?" asked Thunder Axe.

"Magic," said Vinyl Scratch simply. "A ton of it."

"A natural font," Lyra explained. "Not all of the world's magic comes from living things, you know. The land itself generates magic, too--and just like some living things generate much more magic than others, so do some places."

"So..." Thunder Axe said slowly, "this is like the land equivalent of a draconequus?"

Lyra nodded. "Hmm, I wonder..." She bamfed her lyre into her hooves and plucked a couple of notes, then hummed experimentally. "Yeah, no wonder there's legends about a curse. There's some kind of really powerful fire magic caught in here, resonating up and down like an echo."

Raindrops' jaw dropped. "You're saying the ECHO of one of... her... attacks is enough to keep this place a desert for a thousand years?"

Lyra was glad Raindrops hadn't used her name. Here, in cloudless desert under the hot bright sun... "Why didn't you tell anyone about this place, Vinyl? It's the geomantic find of the century!"

Before Vinyl could answer, the jackelope moaned again, softer and sadder than its previous cry. All three of the other ponies immediately rushed over to the jackelope where it was bound on Raindrops' back.

"He doesn't look good," said Thunder Axe.

The jackelope whimpered in agreement. Lyra noticed, looking closely, that the sounds were coming from his vinrating horns, not his mouth. They really were tremendously like a crystaphone...

She stretched out her hoof toward the iridescent, pearly horns, and the colors seemed to swirl together to meet her. She almost imagine she could hear the faintest shift in the jackelope's music...

"Well, he wanted to come to the Heart," said Vinyl Scratch. "Maybe he needs to actually be in it?"

"Worth a shot," said Raindrops, and walked directly into the font of magic. "Oh." She said. "That's nice..."

Lyra watched as Raindrops seemed to get just a little taller, as if she'd been slouched the entire time Lyra knew her and only now stood up. The jackelope's moaning stopped, and his breathing became a bit less labored, but after a while it became clear nothing more dramatic was going to happen.

"I don't think it's enough," said Thunder Axe. "We need more."

"More what, though?" asked Vinyl.

"Why can't you tell us what you need!" Raindrops demanded, stamping her hoof in frustration.

"...Maybe he did," Lyra said slowly. "Think... was there anything in the dreams? Anything that happened since?"

They fell silent, thinking.

"I don't think it was anything in the dream," Thunder Axe said after a while. "I've been running through it in my head, and we've done what it asked."

"The only other thing that the jackelope's done is... swap us around," said Vinyl. "No... not swap us," she continued, realization dawning. Her eyes twitched side to side as she put ideas together. "He blended us!"

The jackelope sighed again, a complex musical tone that began at their ears and vibrated down through their hooves.

"Of course," said Lyra. "It's not just that each of us is a combination of mixed things... it's what we can do together!"

"What we can..?" Thunder Axe started. Her eyes widened. "Oh. Oh!" She drew her guitar from where she had carefully slung it across her back.

"Right," said Lyra. "Why else bring three musicians?"

Vinyl grinned broadly. "I think it's time I told you what I was planning to do here..."


Strawberry Cheesecake struggled to keep from rolling her eyes in frustration at the gray Earth pony mare in front of her. I guess that fiasco with the jackelope wasn't enough. No, one of the Daughters of Discord is missing only hours before their concert, and on top of that I have to deal with this mare's complaining? "I'm sorry, miss, but I just don't understand what the problem is."

"I thought Stage 5 was going to be all rock music," the mare said flatly, for possibly the thirtieth time in Cheesecake's hearing alone.

"Yes?" said Cheesecake. "We're starting for the day in a few minutes. I think the Neighsayers are opening the stage."

"I know. I memorized the program."

But we only gave them to visitors this morning--ugh...Cheesecake, by dint of enormous effort, did not bring a forehoof to one of her suddenly aching temples. "Okay, let's try a different approach. What are you expecting from the rock music stage that isn't there?"

"Rocks."

Before Cheesecake could respond, a strange crackling noise echoed through the festival grounds. One by one, at each stage, a piece of Vinyl's own sound equipment she'd mixed in with the festival's turned on.


"You can do that?" Lyra asked incredulously.

"Normally?" responded Vinyl, her horn pulsing with electric-blue light. "No way, not even close. But here? Shyeah, no prob." She concentrated, and the aura around her horn grew bigger and brighter. Across the festival, faint blue light spread from Vinyl's familiar, personal equipment to all the festival sound systems, until every speaker in the valley was under her spell.

"Why?" asked Thunder Axe.

"Because they're never going to let me be a performer," said Vinyl. "And the world needs to hear what I've discovered."

She concentrated again, and a low bass tone began.

"Oh no," said Lyra. "Not that... wobble thing again?"

Across the valley, from every speaker the festival had and the Heart of the Desert itself, the beats began, sounds as much engineered as they were performed, an edifice of interlocking beats slowly built up, layer by layer, by Vinyl.

"Ow..." moaned Lyra.

"Hey, that's kind of cool," said Thunder Axe. She flapped her wings a few times and gently let power flow into her guitar, shrieking out the opening riff of "The Ballad of Jackelope Valley." "You planning on joining in?" she asked Lyra.

"Right," said Lyra, summoning her lyre and strumming her own version.

"What should I do?" Raindrops shouted over the swelling tide of music.

"Uh..." answered Lyra.

"Oh," Raindrops said, though Lyra almost couldn't hear her over the music. "Right. I'll, uh, hold the jackelope and make sure he's okay."

Raindrops stood in the fountaining magic of the heart of the desert. The three pony musicians stood in a triangle around her, facing her, belting out the ballad. Vinyl provided the bass line, as well as feeding their music into the the festival sound equipment. Thunder Axe traded the melody back and forth with Lyra, whose lyre should have been drowned out by the big, magically amplified sounds of the other two--but the horns of the jackelope shimmered, and sang along, and folded the music together so that somehow, impossibly, it worked.

But then the wise, soft tones of the jackelope's theme began to falter. Lyra played his refusal, while the bass thrummed and thumped like the hoofbeats of doom and Celestia's wrath blared from Thunder Axe's guitar. She cried out as a burst of lightning leaped from her guitar to the jackelope. Light flashed, a massive white jagged column of lightning wreathed in flames that shot from the jackelope high into the sky.

Across the dry lake bed, Dusty saw it as, having finished treating his cuts and scrapes, he was once again in pursuit of the jack-nappers. A moment later he felt it, just as every other Earth pony in the valley felt it: a dry, broken land, screaming as the moisture and life it desperately needed was snatched rudely away.

Up in the festival grounds, the unicorn Soundcheck, one of the festival techs, saw it while she investigated the spell that had let someone hijack all the sound equipment. A moment later, she felt it, just as every other unicorn in the valley felt it: a wave of dark magic, as if some terrible spell had been stretch out and snapped back with all the elasticity of Tartarus itself.

In the Heart of the Desert, Raindrops was nearly blinded by it. A moment later, she felt it, just as every other Pegasus in the valley felt it: a near-solid wall of heat, like swooping from a nice cool downdraft directly into a blazingly hot thermal.

"...I think that might have been the wrong song," said Lyra.

"You think? YOU THINK!?" shouted Raindrops. Sweat ran down her flanks from the suddenly rising temperature. The desert was rapidly turning into an oven while the morning dragged on.

"...Sorry?" offered Lyra.

Raindrops snorted.

"It was doing a thing, though," said Vinyl. "Dunno what, but something."

"So we need to figure out the right song, right?" asked Thunder Axe. "But how?"

Raindrops sighed. "I guess that's what I'm really here for--carrying things and pointing out the obvious. Or haven't you girls noticed how dark it's getting?"

She pointed upwards, and the other's eyes followed. Ominous-looking dark clouds were streaming in from the east, but seemed to be piling up against some kind of invisible, curved wall surrounding the valley. As the ponies watched, the clouds broke over the top of the wall, which turned out to be a dome, throwing a shadow over the entire valley. Within moments, they had blocked out the sun.

"Did... did we do that?" asked Lyra.

"Don't you get it?" Raindrops jabbed a hoof at Vinyl. "Your instrument."

"I don't have an instrument," answered Vinyl. "I work with pure sound."

"Which is another word for moving air," countered Raindrops. "Wind." She pointed at Thunder Axe. "Lightning, obviously." And finally, she gestured at Lyra. "Little tinkly noises? Gee, what does that sound like?"

"'Little tinkly noises!?'" Lyra stopped when she saw Raindrops' expression. "Yeah, okay, I get where you're going with this. He doesn't just want us to help him."

"He wants us to help the valley!" Vinyl said, understanding blossoming on her face. "We have to play the rain."

Thunder Axe's eyes widened in awe. Then she grinned. "Even Awesome Sauce's never done anything like this! Wait'll I tell her!" She stroked her guitar's string, and it sparked and sang. Thunder rolled in response.

"But what song?" Lyra asked.

"You're not playing a song," Raindrops answered. "You're playing the rain. Just... take what rain feels like, and play that feeling."

Thunder Axe played a low, distant chord, a rumbling punctuated by bright flashes. Vinyl listened for a moment, then joined in, amplifying the rumble and adding motion and energy. Last of all, Lyra joined in with delicate, falling arpeggios. The jackelope's horns glowed with rainbow light, swirling and shimmering all around Raindrops, and the sky darkened steadily as black, rain-pregnant clouds blotted out the sun like the wings of Luna herself.

But no rain fell. After nearly a half-hour of continuous playing, the musicians broke off, panting.

"Nothing," said Raindrops. "The air's dry as ever."

"It's that fire spell," said Lyra. "It's just too strong. Maybe if we had the Elements of Harmony here..."

"I don't know if the jackelope would last long enough to go get your friends," said Vinyl. "He's not looking so good..."

Raindrops had to agree. The jackelope felt heavier by the minute, and his breathing was growing rough and ragged again. "What if we could get outside the fire spell?" she asked. "Those clouds are outside its reach, right?"

"Yeah," said Lyra, "but we need the magic of the Heart to fuel the song. We can't reach it from out there."

"Maybe you don't need to," said Thunder Axe. "Vinyl, your spell is still sending our music to the festival, right?"

"Yeah," said Vinyl. "But that's still inside the valley. And anyway, I had to prime the equipment to receive the spell, that's why I used my own."

"Could you prime something else now? Like, say, the jackelope's horn?"

Vinyl grinned, though her tiredness was showing. "...I can try." She closed her eyes and grimaced. The aura around her horn--which had not completely gone away since she first linked the festival's speakers--flared up again.

Lyra watched sympathetically. She had seen before how hard keeping up multiple spells--or even one very complex spell--could be, and Vinyl's magic capacity wasn't exactly huge to begin with. Still, she obviously had a knack for musical magic--almost the inverse of Lyra's own magical music--and after a couple of sputters, a wavering column of light extended from her horn to the jackelope's, electric blue swirling into their rainbow iridescence.

"Whew," said Vinyl. "Okay. If you're going to want me to play while we keep this up, you'd better do what you're going to do fast. I dunno how long I can keep it all going."

"Okay," she said. "Now all we need to do is get the jackelope outside the valley."

"That's miles and miles!" protested Raindrops. "Do we have enough time?"

Thunder Axe grinned. "Miles and miles across... but those clouds are pretty low for cumulonimbuses. I'd say six, seven hundred feet to the lower edge, tops."

"Ah," said Raindrops. "You guys play, I carry. I get it." She almost managed to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "It's what I'm good for."

Lyra sighed. "Raindrops," she said, "you're the first of us the jackelope called, the one who found him in the first place. None of us would be here without you."

"Yeah, I'm the one who found him, so I could be the one to carry him back." Raindrops shook her head. "I get it, okay? You felt my temper when the jackelope switched us around, and you nearly killed Dusty! That's me all over--the big, angry, dangerous one. I'm just the muscle."

Thunder Axe snorted. "Is your special talent whining? Is that why your cutie mark looks like tears?"

The others stared at her in shock, while Raindrops stomped one hoof and shook out her mane.

"Thunder Axe--!" started Lyra.

"No, wait," Thunder Axe said. "I just meant--"

"Whatever," said Raindrops. "There's no time." She flapped her wings and took off, slowly circling higher. But when I get back...

Below her, the musicians resumed their song. This time, they started with "The Rains of Castamare," then segued into "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," and then something else Raindrops didn't recognize. She struggled slowly higher, the desert falling away below her. She saw Dusty, now halfway across the old lakebed, drawing steadily closer to the trio of musicians--not that it would help him, now that Raindrops was carrying the jackelope away.

No matter how high she climbed, she could still hear the music--at the moment, Led Arabian's "Rain Song," that had to be Thunder Axe's pick--relayed through the jackelope's horns and Vinyl's spell. As she rose higher, however, it began to be harder to hear, compared to the sounds of wind, thunder, and lightning. It was very strange; the air in the desert was mostly still, with a bit of thermal updraft from the heat, but as she approached five hundred feet she could see the clouds swirling, lightning splashing against the invisible dome of Corona's spell and splintering across it in jagged purple lines. There must be tremendous winds just beyond the dome.

Raindrops lowered her head and dove slightly, then swooped upward for the last few dozen feet. She expect to feel something when she hit the dome, but all she felt was the difference in the air, a powerful torrent of wet wind that threw her sidewise into a waterlogged stormcloud with a squelch. Raindrops picked herself up and steadied herself against the cloud, staring into the wind. Over its howling, she could barely hear the music, but it sounded like a repeat of "Rain Song." They're running out of things to play, she realized. "Okay, Raindrops," she said to herself. "You're a weather pony. Make some weather!"

Wings flapping furiously, she worked her way up the side of the raincloud to its top and pushed it down, toward the dome. Around her, the storm was growing more and more intense, though it had yet to drop a single drop. The music, meanwhile, was...

"Seriously, Lyra? I thought we agreed to never mention that again!"

Despite her annoyance, Raindrops found herself singing along under her breath as she worked. With great effort against the wind, she pushed the raincloud against the dome, then with a powerful thrust of wings and forehooves, shoved it through.

Or tried to. The cloud split in two as soon as it hit the dome, and the two halves skidded away over the top of it. Raindrops' momentum carried her through, and smacked her into the dome--into, not through.

Standing on nothing, she pushed a hoof against it. It gave very, very slightly, but the harder she pushed the harder it pushed back. "Now I'm locked out of the valley, too!?" She reared up and brought her hooves down against it, hard. Nothing. She tried again, several times, punctuating her blows with snippets of the song Lyra was singing. "Though I've bungled! All my bangles, left my life twisted and mangled! The rain helps me to untangle! All the things that trouble! Me!"

Still nothing. She collapsed against the dome, panting, as sudden light and heat washed over her. She looked up at a tear in the clouds, through which she could see the fiery noon sun glaring straight down at her. "I'm sorry," she told the jackelope. "We tried our best, but it's all coming apart."

The rift was kind of pegasus-shaped, she noticed, although that gap there could be a horn--

You could never have succeeded, a voice said, and like one of those pictures that looks like a vase at first, and then becomes two mares facing each other, the rift wasn't a rift with bright white sunlight pouring through anymore, it was a shining white pony, her eyes blazing white and her mane wreathed in flame.

"You," Raindrops said. "No! You can't be here!"

Yet I am, the other said. Now tell me, little pony, who are you to challenge me?

"It's not you," Raindrops said "Not the real you. The real you would recognize me as one of the ponies who beat you!"

Beat me? Little pony, I am the Sun itself, I cannot be beaten!

"No you're not," said Raindrops, straightening to stand upright on the dome. "You're--you're just a spell, an echo of old magic, like a mirage. You're empty--I can see through you!" And she could. Very faintly, she could see black clouds and bursts of purple and yellow lightning through the image of Corona.

The translucent alicorn floated majestically down to tower over Raindrops. Yes, she laughed, I am empty. Emptiness itself! I am Fire, and Waste, and Desolation, the pitiless Sun and the scorched Earth! She took a step forward, and despite herself, Raindrops took an instinctive step back. I am Desert Itself, tiny pegasus! And what, pray tell, are you, that you dare challenge the Flame?

Raindrops looked up at the alicorn. Her mind was suddenly whirling nearly as fast as the wind whipping the stormclouds.

"We have to play the rain."

"You're the first of us the jackelope called."

"Is your special talent whining? Is that why your cutie mark looks like tears?"

"You're a weather pony. Make some weather!"

And what, pray tell, are you, that you dare challenge the Flame?

The pegasus smiled slowly up at the shimmering, shifting image of the alicorn. "I'm Raindrops," she said.

She reared back, raising her hooves once more, as sudden light flared from her cutie mark. Then she brought both hooves down one last time.

A great bass ripple rolled like thunder out from her hooves, spreading out across the entire dome while lightning screamed and licked at it. Then the bass roll and shrieking bolts were joined by a fountain of delicate arpeggios as, without any further thus, the dome came apart in a thousand thousand tiny shining shards.

The echo of an alicorn screamed.

Raindrops fell.