"Just relax." Master Scrivener's rich, buttery voice usually did relax Daisy Chain, too. Even with all the assignments she'd been messing up lately, a smile and a few words from Scrivener served to settle her stomach better than anything she'd ever known.
Usually.
"Let us know when you're ready," the kapellmeister went on.
The afternoon sunlight splashed across the practice room wall in front of her, but Daisy wouldn't let herself think about that. This was all way too important for her to waste time noticing the dust motes dancing in the beam coming down from the window or the bright patch creeping slowly over the white paint, bringing light to what lay ahead and shadow to what lay behind, the constant motion--
"Daisy?" This time, Scrivener's voice startled her, made her jump in place and snap her head around.
The old earth pony blinked at her, his face showing nothing but concern. Beside him, though, Glottal Stop and Metonymy wore the same pursed lips and half-lidded eyes they always seemed to have on whenever Daisy was in the same room as them. "Whenever you're ready," Scrivener said again.
Giving a nod that she had to admit was more a twitch than anything else, Daisy forced her ears not to fold when the music started: a simple, mid-tempo, four-beat pattern with a slight shuffling rhythm. Her two fellow students began to bob almost instantly, Glottal's wings ruffling and Metonymy's horn weaving back and forth like a metronome.
Daisy tried to follow their motions, tried to feel it in her fetlocks the way Scrivener always said that earth ponies should, and she almost thought she was maybe feeling something when the kapellmeister began to sing, the first syllable of his first line catching the upbeat perfectly:
"Relax, my dear,
For you've naught to fear.
It's as simple a task as breathing.
Recall the days
When your foalish ways
Let you sing through the pain of teething.
Rejoice and shout
All your heartache out,
All the struggle and strife of living.
Renewal dwells
Where the music swells:
You shall find the world more forgiving!"
Glottal Stop and Metonymy had started a little dance behind Master Scrivener, and a shiver ran up Daisy's spine as she realized she was kind of doing it, too: her hoofs were moving more or less in time to the music, at least. And when the pegasus and the unicorn came in on the chorus, the harmony of their tenor and soprano flowed over Daisy's ears as sweet as a cup of cool water on a summer afternoon:
"It's fulfilling,
If you're willing.
Every answer you could need
Shines around you
To astound you
As you blossom like a seed!"
The air itself swirled, the earth beneath her swaying in ways that Daisy hadn't felt since, well, that she hadn't ever felt. The music swung into a jaunty key change, and Daisy's fetlocks told her they were coming to the second verse even as Scrivener launched into it:
"Allow your voice
To proclaim your choice!
We shall welcome you openhearted!
Awaken now!
Let us show you how!"
Sensing her cue, Daisy leaped in, let her full contralto ring:
"I am! I will! Just teach me where to start!"
The meter, the rhyme, the rhythm: she knew it was wrong the instant it came out of her mouth. But by then, the trumpets were screeching to a halt, drumheads tearing and violin strings snapping, Daisy's mane standing on end to hear the whole invisible ensemble crash into dissonance, unable to accompany her line. Glottal and Metonymy both staggered backwards as if they'd been hit in the face with multiple snowballs, but it was Master Scrivener's wince that stabbed into Daisy's heart like shrapnel flying from a shattered cymbal.
Horrible, horrible silence stretched to fill the practice room, Daisy's whole body frozen in place, until--
"Impressive," came a scratchy voice.
Daisy could almost hear her neck creak as she craned around to see a gray earth pony stallion standing in the shadows over by the door. "And she brought it all down with a single line of iambic pentameter. You were right about this one, Scriv."
Scrivener's sigh folded Daisy's ears. "First time in my life I've ever hoped to be wrong," he said, but Daisy couldn't look away from the stranger. How long had he been standing there? Why hadn't he been pulled into the musical number, especially one strong enough to affect a clod like her? And more than that, why did the unlit candle of his cutie mark make her chest go tight?
Master Scrivener moved to the gray pony's side, his face serious. "Daisy Chain, I'd like you to meet my brother Snuff. He...he's with the Versebreakers."
Two gasps echoed Daisy's own, and she was pretty sure she took the same step back that Glottal Stop and Metonymy did. "A versebreaker?" Daisy could barely say the word. "Here? But--!"
"Calm yourself, Novice." Scrivener's mouth went sideways, his gaze sharpening. "We of the Bardic College are close allies with the Versebreakers and always will be. We share a common goal, after all: to make Equestria's musical interludes safe, fun, and beneficial for everypony everywhere."
Shaking, Daisy heard the words but couldn't quite process them. All her life she'd heard nothing but snide remarks and fearful whispers about the Versebreakers. "Monsters, my mother calls them," she heard herself say, then she dropped to her haunches and clapped her front hooves over her snout.
Scrivener's next sigh was largely drowned under Snuff's bark of laughter. "That sounds like Chain Verse, all right." He shook his head. "The debates your mother and I got into at school, well, we usually left a few pieces of furniture unbroken."
Unsure if she was still breathing, Daisy could only stare some more. Snuff cleared his throat, his shoulders shifting. "Look, kid, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're a natural. And like Scriv says, we're all on the same team here." He swept a hoof around the room. "Bards step in and help good musical numbers get better, and us Versebreakers see to it that the bad ones get derailed before ponies end up throwing themselves off roofs or under trains or the like." He gave a slippery grin and jabbed an elbow into Master Scrivener's side. "What's the motto, Scriv?"
A very similar grin pulled at the kapellmeister's snout, and the two old ponies recited in unison: "No operas here!"
"But--" Daisy wanted to say so many things--object to the idea of bards and versebreakers being anything other than mortal enemies; swear to Master Scrivener that she'd try harder next time; wail and rail against the truth that she felt as undeniable and uncomfortable as a popcorn kernel between her teeth. "I...I'm a versebreaker?" she finally managed to squeeze out.
Snuff shrugged. "A natural," he said again.
Scrivener stepped toward her and rested a hoof on her shoulder. "I'll explain things to Chain Verse, Daisy, but your mother loves you. She'll understand." He gave yet another sigh. "Eventually, I'm sure." He sat and gestured to his brother. "But for now, the sooner you begin your training, the better for all of Equestria."
"But--" Daisy shifted her gaze from Snuff to Scrivener to Glottal Stop and Metonymy, but the looks her two fellow students were giving her--eyes wide, nostrils flared, lips curled like they'd caught a sudden stink--made her pull her eyelids shut. "I'm sorry," she said, not really sure who she was talking to.
"Don't be." Snuff's rough voice reminded her of Scrivener's now that she had her eyes closed. "Maybe you're not gonna get invited to a lotta parties, kid, but you're gonna save a lotta ponies' lives." Something bumped her shoulder, and she blinked to see him standing right in front of her, his grin more solid than before. "Scriv already had your bags packed up; they're out in the cab waiting for us." He turned for the door and started out.
Daisy looked back once more at Master Scrivener. He nodded. "It's for the best, my dear," he said.
Her legs prickling like they'd fallen asleep, Daisy pushed herself to her hoofs and followed her new master out of the practice room.