//------------------------------// // Dusk Requiem (Sonata Dusk) // Story: Siren's Call // by Thornwing //------------------------------// I could barely remember the last time I stood on four hooves. The happy memories from long ago mixed with the bitterness and regret I held for my actions that led to today. As soon as my hoof touched the floor, I wanted to burst out in tears of joy. One look at the Warden brought all the bad feelings back. I felt terrible seeing the damage that Adagio had caused. I wanted to crawl into the corner and hide from the pain I felt welling up inside from empathizing with her victim. All the heartache we caused through the years could be summed up in this moment. Grateful as I was for not being immediately tossed back in jail, I knew I had to muster up the courage to help Twilight and Sunset, and most of all Adagio. She had to be stopped; the curse had to be broken. Lunch helped settle my nerves. More than anything else, I enjoyed the opportunity to bond with a new friend over an incredibly yummy cupcake dessert. I don’t know what drew me to Pinkie Pie, but I felt a connection right from moment I sampled her frosting. Maybe something about her reminded me of my sister, Strawberry Fields. She always used to make the best pies and cakes. Standing on the platform and saying goodbye so recently after I’d had a chance to say hello got me thinking. None of these ponies, outside of Twilight and Sunset, had ever met me. Other than what they had read about or been told, no pony knew who I was or what I had done. There was a good chance I could start over with a clean slate. I no longer looked like a siren, and I finally felt like I was in a position where I could fit in again. No more hiding away or being shunned; no more using magic to force others to do as I pleased only to have the love they offered feel hollow and meaningless. No longer would the hunger and thirst to feed on their hate and contention drive me to do bad things. I actually had a chance to find real love. For that, I was grateful. I lugged the pack that Pinkie helped fill onto the train. Smells from a dozen different berry flavored rock candies brought back memories I’d long since repressed. The country I found myself in wasn’t all that different from my former home, but going off the map in Twilight’s castle, there was quite the distance that separated us from the open meadows and berry fields my family used to tend. Long after the train left the station, I found myself hanging out the window and waving back at my new friend with a grateful smile fixed across my muzzle. “Sonata,” Aria said, pulling gently on my tail, “please sit down and get your tail out of my face.” I brought myself inside, but left the window cracked open with a hoof hanging out to dance in the wind. “Sorry, Aria,” I said, tucking my tail on the other side away from her seat. Normally she would have punched me, or yelled, but there seemed to be something different about her, something that I hadn’t witnessed in a very long time. Maybe the soft purple fur wrapped around her body kept her from lashing out like the cold siren scales always seemed to encourage. Twilight sat across the gap next to Sunset, both facing back at us. I could read from her cautious smile that she still didn’t trust us. Not that I could blame her; we did quite the number on their group back at the Battle of the Bands. She raised a hoof to her mouth and gave a little cough, clearing her throat. “So, we’ve got a decent ride ahead of us. Would either of you care to shed some light on the situation? A little backstory would be nice.” “What is there to talk about?” Aria said. “You know the history, or at least you should if you’ve read the books I’m sure Starswirl wrote about us.” “It seems that there wasn’t a whole lot that he wrote on the topic, and it certainly doesn’t cover the parts about a magical contract with Discord, or how your coltfriends turned into windigos.” Twilight motioned toward Sunset, shaking her head. “He also didn’t leave a whole lot of information about the portal that led to the human world, unless I just haven’t gotten my hooves on it yet.” “I learned most of what I know by trial and error,” Sunset said. “Mother said she found a few more references buried in the Canterlot Archives after I left, but I’m not sure where she learned about the windigos. She may have just figured that out for herself when Discord arrived today, at least she never told me about it until a minute or two before I brought it up with you.” “Well, who better than to help fill in the gaps in our history than the ponies that helped create it?” Twilight feigned a laugh and ended in a sigh. “I can tell you what happened with Discord,” I said, still waving my hoof lazily out the window, “but it might help to know where it all began.” “That sounds great, Sonata,” Sunset said, inching forward in her seat. “I would love to hear what happened, if you don’t mind sharing.” “Not at all,” I said. “Maybe Aria can help tell the story too?” “Go ahead, Sonata,” Aria said with a yawn. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’m feeling pretty tired.” She stretched and settled back into her seat. “How about you start, and I’ll add what I can as you go, that is, unless I fall asleep first?” I smiled and nodded. “I guess I’ll start from the beginning.” I reached up and closed the window, giving a cheerful smile to my audience. “A long time ago, in a valley not so far, but pretty far away, there lived a group of ponies…” Twilight sat back and clapped her forehooves together. “This is so exciting. It’s like I get a history lesson straight from the author of the book itself.” I tried to set the scene as best I could. “In the years that followed the destruction of Dream Castle in the heart of Dream Valley, the core group of earth ponies resettled at Paradise Estates in the western foothills of the Smoky Mountains. It was a rough couple of years, breaking in new fields and planting our crops. For the most part, we lived in peace with our neighbors and the other tribes, prosperity followed in due time. I was born shortly after the first crop came in. A lot of other ponies were as well, including Aria and Adagio. “Every evening in town, all the ponies would gather together and share stories, sing songs, and partake in each other’s company. The three of us got our names from parents who were grateful for the songs that helped them recover after all the trouble they had been through together. From the very beginning, the three of us shared in that bond. “As the years passed, the population grew, and small groups of families left the Estates to venture out into the wild to make their own way. One such family was my own. Aria and Adagio’s families came with us, but settled far enough apart that we didn’t see each other every day. We made our home along a small river not far from the ocean, the Smoky Mountain peaks barely a set of bumps on the eastern horizon. “My five older sisters kept me company when I wasn’t able to play with my friends, but I always felt left out in a way, seeing as they were all much older than I was. Strawberry Fields was five years older than me and the rest even more. I was always the foal, coddled and kept safe, but never really trusted with anything important. My biggest job came down to singing to the berry plants every night before my mother tucked me in bed. “As I grew older, I spent most evenings lying in the fields, watching for the stars to fill up the sky, and signing to myself. Once in a while, Aria would come to visit and we’d lay in the fields together enjoying a warm summer breeze. Adagio never really liked to gaze up at the stars, but she did enjoy the singing. She would join us on occasion. Whenever the three of us got together, our parents would let us stay up late so we could talk and sing long into the night. Sometimes we would fall asleep on the hill overlooking the raspberry plot. We were young and didn’t have a care in the world.” Aria shook her head. “If there was anything to complain about, it was that all we had were each other and our families. Sonata had five older sisters, but I had six older brothers, so I was always picked on for trying to prove I was just as strong or smart as they were. Being a young filly didn’t really help. I had to work for everything I had and rarely got a break. Adagio was an only foal, and her parents treated her like a princess. She never had to work. In fact, she pretty much got whatever she wanted. It always seemed strange to me how she never remained happy despite having everything a filly her age could have wanted.” I nodded. “Even being so close, we all led very different lives.” Aria turned back to me, and I continued the story. “We knew we were destined to be a team. Each of us received our cutie marks on the same day, at the same time, performing for our families during a special get together we held a few times a year. Our talents never really focused on farming, but our voices helped keep our loved ones entertained. That far away from town, it counted for a lot. “My family raised berries, Aria’s farmed grain, and Adagio’s grew the vegetables—they planted fruit trees as well, but they took a few years to really start producing. All of us pooled our resources to bring the harvest into town a few times a year. The first couple seasons that I traveled back to the Estates, I got to sit in the wagon. As I grew older and came into my own, I had to pull a cart as well. One by one, all my sisters married off, the load getting heavier with each one that left to start her own family.” “Yeah,” Aria said, “It would have been convenient if they had all married my brothers, but they found other stallions and my brothers found other mares. Each time there was a wedding, we had to pick up more of the slack. I know we both looked forward to the day when we would find a stallion of our own, but it seemed like such a hopeless dream seeing as we only went into town a couple of times a year, and spent most of that time helping our parents sell the crop in the marketplace. “Adagio’s parents hired out a lot of their seasonal work, but I was always too busy to flirt with any colt that came to plow or buck at their farm, even if it was only a few miles down the road. That didn’t stop Adagio. She drove her father crazy with the way she always toyed with the help. But that all changed one year on our final trip to the Estates. “We’d finished the last of the harvest, and all of us made the trip into town to sell off our surplus and prepare for winter. Adagio spent the whole trip boasting about how she’d messed around with the colt her father had hired to help on their farm while Sonata and I pulled our own carts. She teased us by snuggling up on her coltfriend’s flank right under her father’s clueless muzzle.” “Anyway,” I said, trying to keep the story focused on the point I was trying to make, “Adagio convinced us to go out with her coltfriend and a couple of other colts he introduced us to in town.” “That’s where things went south,” Aria said. “How so?” Twilight asked. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” “Not if you recall how the story ends,” Sunset said, shaking her head in reply. “Oh… right,” Twilight said, blushing and hanging her head, sheepishly staring at the floor. “We had an amazing couple of days together.” I hung my head thinking back to that time. “He was everything I ever wanted, kind, generous, handsome…” “We didn’t have sex, or anything like that,” Aria said, breaking me out of my waking dream. “Well, at least Sonata and I didn’t. Our new coltfriends were really nice, and they made sure we were taken care of. Honestly, I thought I had found the pony I could finally settle down with.” “And then Adagio got in a fight with her coltfriend.” I didn’t know why, but I found myself tearing up. “I’m pretty sure it was all Adagio’s fault, but since we were friends, and the colts were all friends, we each stuck to our sides. The breakup got ugly. That’s when Discord showed up.” “He hit up Adagio first, and she convinced us to go along with the plan.” Aria paused and shook her head. “He told us he could make it so that we could use our voices to make anypony love us. All we had to do was agree to the terms. Adagio agreed without blinking an eye. I’d never even heard of a siren before. For all I knew, it was a fancy name for a good singer. I had no clue they were some kind of half-fish and half-pony beast.” Light brown, with a dark mane and tail—I couldn’t get the image of my old coltfriend out of my head. With every tear I shed, I felt the pain of betrayal sink into my own heart. “The very nice and very handsome colts that we’d met and hung out with never saw it coming. Discord used our desire for affection and our recent fight against us. Their hearts went cold as he helped us drain all the love from within them to create the magic that fueled our song: the curse of the siren’s call. “The magic changed them, us as well. Cold as ice, they made their way to the mountain peaks while we turned our fins to the sea. We never saw them again.” Aria laid her hoof over mine. She remained largely unshaken, but deep down inside, I knew she felt the same way as I did. She held it together long enough to continue the story. “Using our powers at first seemed fun, and exciting, that is until we realized we would need a continual supply of magical energy to satisfy our desire for unnatural love and attention. Discord knew that the only way we could recharge our magic was by making all the ponies that we loved miserable. By the time we realized what he’d done, we were already lost in the magic of the siren’s call. We had no choice, we couldn’t go back. We were hungry, and we needed to feed.” “We turned jaded, and bitter,” I said, recovering from my tears and trying to refocus. “The magic created a vicious cycle where we used it to make ponies fight, which continued to fuel our magic and kept us fed. It took a while to learn how to use our powers, so the villagers were able to fight back. We tried to go home, thinking that somehow our families wouldn’t find it strange that their daughters had become monsters. That lasted long enough for us to ruin our parents lives and make them all hate each other. “Our hunger grew, and so did the threat we posed to the town. Little by little, we destroyed the lives of every pony we came across, that is until we faced Starswirl.” Aria stuck out her hoof, pointing over at Sunset. “You may think he overpowered us, but he didn’t. He only outsmarted us. He came to the fight armed with earplugs and that blasted mirror portal to the other dimension he created. Before we even knew what hit us, we were stuck in strange new bodies, forced into magical rehab, and locked away from everything and everypony we ever knew—the hollow constructs of our friends and family all around made us even angrier.” I helped lower her pointing hoof. “He was nice enough to give us some basic instructions, but we didn’t really pay them any attention until the world started the first cycle, four years into our term. The biggest condition for our release was that we give up our magic. Going by the fact that the curse was a contract, and we weren’t really in control of our own actions while we were cursed, there wasn’t much hope for that happening. From that point on, we settled in for the long haul.” Aria clenched her hooves to her chest. “After the Battle of the Bands, I finally realized that the curse had been broken. It’s like I woke up from a bad dream. I knew I had to get out of the prison, and I finally had the chance to make it happen, but the portal was closed. That’s when I came to you, Sunset.” “I’m glad you did,” Sunset said. “But how did you know I was a pony?” “Because you had magic, Equestrian magic. We weren’t sure at first who in your little group controlled it, but when we easily overran the rest of your band, it became pretty clear who the real pony was.” “Actually, it was Twilight’s magic that started all of that,” Sunset said, leaning over and nudging the Princess. “If it wasn’t for her Element of Harmony, none of us would have been able to ‘Pony Up’ when we played.” Twilight nudged Sunset back. “Actually, it all comes down to the power of the magic of friendship. Each of the elements derive their power from that. As far as we know, it’s the most powerful force in Equestria, if not the universe.” “Well, Discord might prove you wrong on that count,” Aria said, tapping her hoof nervously on her seat. “If he’s got the power to create sirens and windigos, I’m not sure what the magic of friendship has on that.” “Actually, Discord was defeated by the Elements of Harmony, not once, not twice, but multiple times. He’s actually come a very long way since you last dealt with him. My friends and I helped turn him around, and we now consider him mostly reformed.” Twilight chuckled a bit followed by another sigh. “He does have his moments though.” “I can’t forgive him, not after what he did to our coltfriends, or to us.” Aria crossed her forelegs and slumped back in her chair. “It would be nice if he could make things right again, but I’m not so sure that he can.” I shook my head thinking back to the lessons that Starswirl gave. “Some of what Starswirl taught during his time as headmaster and warden gave us a glimpse into the old world, and by all we can tell, the windigos were defeated and sealed in a cave high in the snow capped mountains overlooking Paradise Estates. I’m not sure why he didn’t send them through the portal, unless he wasn’t able to open it again when he needed to.” “They’re probably dead, but that’s where Adagio is headed to try and recharge her magic, along with ours.” Aria held her head in her hooves and rocked from side to side. “Why won’t this nightmare ever end? I just want to be free.” “Speaking from my own experience, I know how you feel,” Sunset said. She got down off her seat and made her way over to Aria. Aria looked up, the pain and hurt she felt quite evident in her wet eyes. Taking a hoof from each of us in hers, Sunset pulled us into a group hug. “When I thought I was all alone, a good friend helped me see how wrong I was. With her help, and the help of all my friends, I turned my life around. Now, it’s my turn to help you. I believe in the magic of friendship, and I know if we work together, we can help Adagio too.” “I hope you’re right,” I said, leaning over her right shoulder. “Adagio is my friend, even if she doesn’t always do the right thing.” Aria whimpered and moaned from Sunset’s other shoulder. “Just promise that, if you get the chance, you’ll destroy the gems, once and for all. I can’t go back to living under the thrall of the siren’s call. No pony should ever have to suffer that fate.” Twilight watched out the window, quietly studying the view ahead. I turned and saw the distant hills rising up into mountain peaks, our journey not quite finished, but getting closer with every passing minute. All I could think of was Adagio, all alone, and wishing I could persuade her to abandon her plans. If the magic of friendship was indeed as powerful as it seemed, we had a chance. I just hoped we would make it in time.