//------------------------------// // Call and Refrain // Story: The Eighteen Victims of Reinshore // by JackleTheKitsune //------------------------------// Call not my name, it has no sway. Call not for mercy, lest I answer neigh. Fear not my steps, I swear they are light. Fear not my visage, darker than the night. “When it comes to first impressions Reinshore made quite a large one on me. Not the postcard overview of their Seapony’s Seaboard, nor the picturesque olive shingles they shelter their roofs with. No, the biggest impression Reinshore made upon me that first visit was that it was most certainly not canterlot, not the city we had besieged, not where I was supposed to be.” The prisoner started only to be interrupted by his audience’s mumblings. “Wait the wedding? This has been going on since the wedding?!” Dust Cover stomped her forehooves looking every bit the angry mare. Her gaze hardened at the less than subtle roll of her unwanted companion’s eyes. “Were you expecting ‘On a dark and stormy night’?” the sarcasm cut her from her rage. “It may bring you some satisfaction that the impression I made on Reinshore was in the form of a ditch eighteen times my length that was only brought to an end due to it reaching the edge of a cliff. The sea below swallowing my broken body more readily than the hard rock I had come across. I would later come to find out I had come across the stones of Widow’s Watch, the most cursed place in Reinshore.” “Widow’s Watch, where twelve of them disappeared!” Dust Cover interjected, a hoof raised in an almost comical fashion. “Yes, I see you have heard, and i guess I can’t fault you from not containing your outbursts but again I shall continue… Unless of course you have anything else you’d like to add?” It took a moment of contemplation, Dust Cover sitting there as the changeling before her stared with his large pupiless eyes. “What can I call you?” she finally offered. Two slow blinks served as the beginning of her answer. “I am a monster, a changeling, my designation in the hive is not important and you wouldn’t understand it anyway. Why would you want to know the name of a monster?” the puzzled tone of his was the first change from cold and raspy Dust had managed to extract from him. “You are almost certainly a monster, but I’m not, and i want to know. Maybe just to try and understand why, but i can’t wrap my head around it while you stay so noncommittal. What can I call you?” She tried to ignore the sound of breathing behind her as she awaited her response. “Call me Prisoner, it is the most fitting name you could come by.” With his tone shifting lower his head followed, and Dust could feel the sad motivations behind his words. “As I impacted the sea, salt stinging the cracks along my every inch, I was surprised to see three suns. Surely I had heard of seeing double but the idea of three puzzled me. Limp, I fell deeper into the abyss, knowing that maybe I would find a nice firm rock to hold me as I drowned looking up at those three suns. But as my vision swam, so did two of the suns, growing closer and gaining a form behind them. They heralded a lithe figure the likes of which I had never seen. Surely my imagination, some hallucination as I slipped towards the Final Clutch.” “The Siren was real then?” Her whimpered words and darting eyes gave the familiar spike of fear he had come to know so often. “She was more than real, she was beautiful.” A sigh passed his lips before a smile graced them. “I awoke in a cage, what I would later learn as a lobster pot from long ago she had found while circling a sinking boat. The thick dripping stalactites and faint glowing mushrooms made me think I had somehow made it home to the hive. I wanted so badly to be at the hive, to have made it back, the confusion of Canterlot to be over, and everypony celebrating. Instead I saw her eyes, two suns blazing in a dimly lit cave, somewhere below the waterline.” His breath hitched for a moment, as if he has just seen the most ghastly thing behind her. Dust’s head snapped around before she could think more on it, but all that stared back at here were the stairs she had descended to get here. “T-tell me more about the Siren, and don’t freak me out like that!” His laughter started low in his throat, sickening sounding gurgle that only made him hack and cough as it grew louder. “If that much alone unsettles you, you might want to run sooner rather than later miss.” “J-just get back to the siren!” she demanded thought it may have been more a demand to herself than anypony. “As you wish. I was rather surprised to see this creature, and she never explained where she came from, just that she had always been there. The Siren of Reinshore. It was several weeks later that I would learn her name was Serenade. Serenade she, she kept me as a curiosity at first. Prodding and poking me, never saying a word to me for that first week. Finally I felt my chitin healing, my reserves doing their job. I made my escape, waiting till she had dove into a pool from what sounded like it was around the bend. Too long it took me to find it, too long did I wait to set out. I had done no more than submerge my neck when she slowly slid along the surface towards me, her eyes holding mine.” “And?” she had gone back to writing, letting her curiosity distract her from the darkness of the cell. He wondered if she could still hear the breathing. “She spoke to me, soft sweet words the likes of which i would have sworn were as convincing as the Queen herself.” “‘Do not leave, I am so very lonely, and you are hurt. Do not leave.’ her words were simple but effective.” he mused. “Every thought I had of leaving, my duty to the hive, my urge to return slipped from my mind. She led me back to my cage, gave me some wet plants to pad it with, and retreated to a small wading pool below the mushrooms. Her dark blue scales caught the dim light just perfect, making the entire cavern seem brighter. I wanted nothing more than for her to speak to me again, something burned at my mind, begging for her words.” “She stared back at me, her eyes seemed to lazily run over me for a minute before she sighed like a small tea kettle. ‘You were at this Canterlot weren’t you?’ she asked me. ‘You attack ponies, make them angry and scared?’ I thought back to my training, I knew to divulge nothing, admit to nothing, give her nothing, and yet, those eyes. I don’t even recall putting up a fight, I just had to tell her, it was so important she understand.” “She enamored you, without a song?” Dust looked skeptical but attentive, she might as well have forgotten she was sitting in front of a jail cell. “Not yet, her song came after just a moment, but between those eyes and her voice, she might as well have. But, and I’m sorry to interrupt your notes, have you noticed the breathing lately?” her reaction was instantaneous, she whirled to look behind her hoping again that she could find nothing there. But she didn’t.