//------------------------------// // I - Bitter Draught // Story: Shackles Unseen // by TheApexSovereign //------------------------------// As Adagio Dazzle burned eternally in the light of her failures, she wondered if life would ever deal her and her sister-sirens a fair hand, and then laughed bitterly. It came out a strangled cry.     It's easy to paint failure as a natural part of life when you're not burning alive. When you're burning alive, it's far easier just to take the pill and beg for a merciful end.     Though Adagio Dazzle was never one to beg, or take the easy road for that matter.     As the sensation of what could only be described as having one's skin peeled off with a salted red-hot butter knife tore across every nerve in her body, Adagio's naturally stubborn mind refused to accept the screaming passing through her ears as a reality. Her little troupe was much too proud to scream, and on top of that, screaming was a reaction to pain, which in turn was a variable of defeat or weakness. The magic washing over her in a mighty, hot rush simply did not exist in Adagio's mind. It just wasn't possible, they did all the steps; they hooked their claws into that little school, consumed the Equestrian Magic within, beat those miserable Rainbooms back. Their reward?     Pain. Immeasurable, writhing, torturous pain. It just didn't make sense to Adagio. The plan was flawless. Her plan was flawless. This hurts too much to be real, she argued. It's just the Equestrian Magic settling in, that is all. For how could one react to such a pain without dying? Nothing but the white light engulfing her answered, in its own screeching voice.     Perhaps, Adagio mused, she was, in fact, dying, as the last minute that transpired came to her in fits and flashes: the sirens were all shrieking, a horrific trilogy of hellish wails that filled the blood-red skies of Canterlot City. The sound of their voices in unison mingled with the deep rumble of a bass, the smashing of drums, the crash of a tambourine and the joining of two powerful voices that made for a melodious and ethereal battle.     A battle of the bands, thought Adagio, as she felt the short-lived Equestrian Magic in her veins smolder and burn away like the bacteria infesting a broiling steak. The pain was pure agony, yet she refused to spare the primal sound ripping from her throat any thought. Rather, her memory hearkened back to the last words she remembered speaking before...before whatever is happening to her now happened:     “So the Rainbooms want to turn this into a real battle of the bands?”     A challenge posed, she remembered, right down to that cocksure smile, a dare for those weak human girls to face off against a trio of juiced-up monsters ripped straight from their mythology books. Adagio, and her fellow sirens, she suspected, hardly saw this as a battle at all in truth, not even a scuffle. Yet it may as well have been the greatest battle this world had ever seen, considering the powers at play.     Equestrian Magic. The phrase seemed so enticing rolling off Adagio’s tongue amidst the weeks of planning after that fateful night in the cafe. Now it was the instrument of their downfall, a maelstrom of color and sound that enveloped and obliterated the sirens’ familiars like they were no more than glass, before continuing to hail down from the heavens unabated and consume their masters as well.     Unfortunately, the Dazzlings did not have the luxury of shattering. Sonata is screaming, I can hear it. Aria may be as well. But I’m not. I won’t. I’m stronger, I’m not weak.She ignored the raw tenderness blossoming in her beloved throat, her “weapon of war” as it were.     The light around them grew brighter, and it only became whiter and hotter and whiter and hotter until the whole of existence was nothing but. This must be what Tartarus feels like, an annoying voice rang in Adagio's mind. Perhaps I am already there. Then suddenly it ended, vanished, swept away and discharged through the air like the cloying victory the Dazzlings had tasted not a minute ago. Blackness dusted with silver took over the sky once more. The pain, the agony, it all parted with it, though the trauma, at least for Adagio, lingered on the surface of her mind. She permitted only a lone a shuddering gasp before steeling her heart and thrusting any lingering thoughts from moments ago into a dark corner in her mind. It's a good thing they didn't hear our screams, the annoying voice rang in Adagio's mind. In a brief lapse in sanity she wanted it purged, only to realize with acidic bitterness that it was her own.     The rest of the world made its worm-crawl back into reality, with Adagio finding herself and her cohorts on their knees, just barely obtaining support on trembling elbows. A surge of heat rose within Adagio's stomach, and for a glimmer of hope and, unbeknownst to herself, desperation, she thought her Equestrian Magic remained. Any notion that such a miracle occurred was expelled, among other things, when that same heat rose up her gullet and came spewing out her mouth. From there, the trio’s stomachs left them all at once and their dinner came surging back up.    None of the sirens, least of all Adagio, heard the triumphant hurrahs the student body were shouting to the Rainbooms as they stepped down the hill and weaved through the crowd, nor could they make out the crude comments and jeers pelted at the girls already beaten to the ground and forced to their hands and knees. Perhaps no words were necessary; they all meant the same in the end:     We bet our entire plan on Sunset Shimmer’s insecurity. We failed.       It was as simple to comprehend as it could be, but Adagio Dazzle considered herself too proud to even consider admitting that aloud. Sunset should have fallen after what we said to her. When an epiphany hit Adagio in that moment, a cold and mocking realization that the sun always rises after it sets, her very core seemed to be set ablaze. Moments later, that fire turned out to be a round of dry heaving, forcing her to topple over on her side and moan pathetically as she clutched her belly.     Oh how the mighty have fallen, she mused venomously.     It took a few moments for Adagio to find her strength again, at least enough to merely crack her eyes open. Her sight of the roaring student body was partially obscured by a pair of black leather boots with violet toes. Immediately she felt a rage swell in her breast, and, fighting against the burn in her stomach, the Dazzling leader unceremoniously leapt to her feet, wobbling back a little from sudden lightheadedness but regaining her footing without embarrassing herself further. She wiped her arm across her mouth. “Get up, girls,” she commanded, trying to muster an imposing tone but it came off slurred and feeble.     So very feeble. “Get up, you fools!” she repeated, loudly and, unintentionally, desperate.     Despite her words, Sonata was done, beaten; she just curled up on the ground, hands moving to cover her ears as that poxy-faced Applejack and thrice-damned Twilight Sparkle knelt over her. Adagio couldn’t see beyond the backs of their heads.     Always the fighter, Aria gnashed her teeth together and forced herself to one knee, but collapsed into the same pathetic submission as her cohort. Adagio rolled her eyes; they felt like bowling balls in her skull. Weaklings! she thought sourly.     “I’m not beaten yet,” Adagio snarled, shifting her weight to her other foot. She opened her mouth to sing, hand clutching the pendant pulsing at her throat. “Aaaah, aaaah! Aaaah, aaa—”     A fist connected with her jaw, so fiercely it struck that Adagio’s head almost twisted around before she fell to her back. For the longest time she heard only an incessant ringing in her ears, but it gradually cleared up to the sound of those Rainboom girls talking.     “...want to know, was that really necessary?” asked the posh-sounding voice of Rarity, their keytarist.     “Well, she started singing!” Shimmer. She sounded quite defensive. “I didn’t know what else to do.”     “Well, can’t say Ah really blame ya,” said a third voice. “Who knows what they’re still capable of?”     The sound of footsteps rumbled through the wood, an earthquake in Adagio’s ear, and stopped at the back of her head. “I don’t think they can do anything for a while.”Sparkle… “But we should still exercise caution. Here, can you help me out girls? Rarity, Applejack, grab her by the ankles and under her arms. Rainbow and Pinkie, get the other. Sunset, help me with this one. And try not to drop them! We don’t need them hurting anymore than they already are.”     Adagio felt a pair of delicate hands grope her under her arms and lift, then another pair wrap firmly around her bared calves. She dreamed she was flying again before darkness took her.     She dreamed of a sky drenched in blood and the smells of aged wine and silk and sex. Scores of men and women alike were groaning all around with as much vigor as one whose mind is so simple. The droning would be occasionally pierced by someone crying out her name, thick with tears and reverence.     “We will be adored,” the song echoed in the mind of Adagio Dazzle. We are adored, now. But she looked to her left, then her right. Where is Aria and Sonata? she wondered. Where were her two companions and why weren’t they basking in the plunder of their victory? Adagio would have called out their names, but when she tried to speak a broken sound escaped her throat.     Adagio blinked her eyes once, and true to that overused saying her vast crimson sky was replaced with a dark wooden one. Instead of millions filling her world, she heard only two: at her left, the quiet little snores of Sonata Dusk, and her right, the slow and measured breaths of Aria Blaze. All at once the events over the past twenty-four hours, from the pomp she boasted upon arriving at Canterlot High, to her losing her dinner before the entire student body, flooded her thoughts, and realization dawned on her:     They lost their one chance to restore their ancient Equestrian Magic. And worse yet, they’ve been found out. A thousand years of hiding and Equestria has found them.     When Adagio blinked, she felt tears batted away. Was I crying just then? Pain gripped her by the heart, pain borne of a genuine ache and the reality of her failure beginning to weigh. I must not let them see, Aria and Sonata. I am their leader, the Magnificent and Powerful Adagio Dazzle. If this is to be our final resting place… no I won’t let it be.     When she tried to move, Adagio found her limbs uncooperative. She was slow to register the feeling of two hands laying upon her arm. Nearby she started hearing voices, and she sensed something cold and nourishing put to her lips. Whatever it was tasted like nothing, but it was enough to satisfy an emptiness in her gut she never realized she had. Too feeble to speak, Adagio allowed her arm to relax and she shut her eyes. The last thing she remembered seeing was red and yellow striped hair accompanied by a smiling orange face. She wondered if that was her mother, and continued to listen to the voices out of her sight prattle on in hushed whispers. After a time her world darkened and became red once more.     Everything was black when Adagio opened her eyes again. Immediately she fell into a panic, her breath quickening and her hands grabbing at whatever they could find. They only found a velvety softness that was draped over her legs, a blanket it would seem. Is this the Afterlife? she wondered, recalling her hearing about how death was like a warm blanket that engulfs you forever. It was meant to sound comforting, but Adagio always found it to be a truly horrifying fate. She was of the ocean, and she belonged underneath the bed of sand that she and her sisters in all but blood once ruled over.     The world returned to her in small increments, and slowly the vague outlines of two familiar persons huddled up beside her came into clarity. They were all sharing an actual blanket, violet colored, her favorite, and was large enough to cover the three of them. She drew small comfort in that, being beside her companions and, supposedly, alive and well. A coldness swiftly blossomed in her chest at the realization that they were alive and well, and in someplace totally unfamiliar. She scanned the area, the outlines of a simple pair of chestnut bedposts in her sights first. Beyond that, not much else; the drapes, a similar violet as their comforter, were drawn closed, barely shielding the room from completely filling with sunlight, and adjacent to that, beside the door, was a simple wooden bureau.     With only escape running through her mind Adagio moved her elbows beneath her, pushing them against the yielding softness of the bedding. She barely rose half a foot before collapsing into the mattress. Adagio puffed and sweat, and her arms felt enormous, too heavy to even move again.     How did we get here? Adagio felt her temples begin to pinch; if there was one thing she could never stand, it was not being ahead of her enemies. What happened at the finals? She tried to remember, to recall everything that happened after that Rainbow girl’s fake and self-congratulating performance.     Her memories came in stuttering flashes: the Rainbooms transforming, the "real" Battle of the Bands, Sunset Shimmer...     Horror. Adagio remembered the clouds parting, the furious white eyes, and the pain that followed. Oh, Gods, the pain…     Fear swept over her in a sweltering rush; beneath the sheets she could feel sweat trickling down her legs. I am Adagio. I am Adagio Dazzle, Magnificent and Powerful. I don’t cry and I don’t scream and I will never let anywhere become my resting place. Adagio would have cried out, if she still had her voice. No one came to help her that time, to put something cold and nourishing to her lips again. No one came to comfort her. No one ever did, not when she could say otherwise; she would not allow it. To be a leader, to be Adagio, is to appear strong and fearless for those who followed her, never the other way around.     Alone in the dimness, Adagio drifted back into sleep. Her senses remained just long enough to detect an arm wrapping comfortingly around her. She allowed it, too tired and weak and afraid to care.     Adagio dreamed again, this time not of her utopia but of that one Rainboom, Fluttershy was her name, standing over her and gently sliding a spoon past her lips. At least, she assumed that was a dream, for why would the Rainbooms help them? The idea became less likely as other girls came and went between periods of darkness. They would put more spoons in her mouth, in her teammates’ mouths, slide a fresh pillow underneath her head to replace the old one. One time she swore she could see Princess Twilight Sparkle from the corner of her eye, legs folded as she sat on a stool and wrote in a journal of some kind. Sometimes she would hear them talk to one another, the Rainbooms. She could never make out what they said, it was always in a hushed whisper.     Though from the urgency in their whispers, it would seem like they were always in constant argument. Presumably about the Dazzlings, since heated discussions always occurred in their presence. They’re trying to figure out what to do with us, Adagio decided. That's why they're keeping us close by, and alive. They want to do something with us. It pleased her to have at least figured that one out; her critical thinking skills were, however slowly, coming back to her.     This was great, all things considered. Given the situation, they might be all Adagio has left.     She spent her last moments of consciousness wondering why the Rainbooms had not tried removing her pendant, as she fell asleep massaging the cold gemstone clenched in her fist. Maybe they hadn’t figured it out yet… she mused. Hoped.     She later woke to something blessedly familiar and torturously aggravating.     “Dagi, you awake? I’m so hungry.” Someone was jostling her by the shoulder. “Dagi,” the person whined.     “Stop,” Adagio croaked. It was an unexpected pleasure to hear her own voice again, hoarse as it may be. But her thoughts immediately turned to more pressing matters the first instance her wits allowed it. What's the hour? For how long was I asleep? The curtains closed prevented her from knowing that. The damnable weight of lethargy was still heavy on her fatigued mind and body.     Curse it all, why am I so weak?     The jostling of her shoulder grew slightly more vigorous. “Please don’t fall asleep, Dagi,” the voice whispered. It sounded urgent.     Another familiar voice joined hers, glum as ever. “Seriously Adagio, I can’t sit in this bed any more. I swear I’m just going to stab the next Rainboom that comes in here and break for it, with or without you.”     Adagio could not resist the smile that pulled at the corner of her mouth. “Enticing idea,” she mumbled. With that, she fought a vicious battle against her drowsiness and pushed herself back, sitting up against the pillow. A sickly wet-warmth stuck her clothing to her back. One of her hands moved to remedy her discomfort while she knuckled the sleep out of her eyes with the other. A sudden chill struck her as she did, and Adagio realized she was wearing a deep-purple tank top.     When her sight returned to her, Adagio found Aria and Sonata kneeling in front of her, wearing identical tops and matching sleep-shorts. The first thing that caught Adagio's ear was how clear and firm their voices were.     “How long have you two been awake?” she asked, voice still containing a bit of a rumble.     Aria jerked a thumb in the direction of her fellow siren. “Sonata’s been awake for about an hour. I’ve been up for a lot longer. I dunno how long, but at least when the sun was still up.” Aria then looked over her shoulder, at the door across from them; bright orange fingers were slipping through the crack at the bottom. She leaned in closer, and spoke in a low voice, “I pretend to sleep whenever those Rainbooms come in. Call me paranoid, but I don’t want them doing anything to me if they found out I was up, not until you guys were awake too.”    Adagio allowed herself an amused smile. “That was surprisingly patient of you, Aria,” she admitted. “I half-expected you to start throwing punches the moment you cracked an eye open.” Her approval was met with a dispassionate huff from Aria. Adagio swallowed a grunt; how could she, their leader, still be out cold long after her teammates had roused from their extended rest? “Even so,” she continued, “I would have appreciated it if you roused the two of us immediately.”     “I did,” Aria snapped, glowering. “You just kept falling back asleep.” Sonata nodded in verification as she hugged her knees tightly to her chest.     There was a long silence between the them, punctuated only by the eerie stillness of their current quarters. Adagio would have said something, but her brain was still trying to wake up. "So,” Sonata said, likely to break the awkwardness, “what do we do, now that we’re all up?”     “I say we pretend we’re still asleep,” suggested Aria. “The next time one of them gets close, we get the jump on her and book it while we have the chance.”     Adagio sighed; it was certainly an enticing idea, if one were as thick-skulled and narrow-minded as Aria. “A masterful escape plan,” she said mockingly, drawing a hair-trigger frown from the girl, “but we don't know where we are. Where are we to go if we find ourselves in, say, the dank slums of Canterlot City in just our nightwear? And let’s assume the Rainbooms are here, every single one. We can’t take them all on, and for all we know they could have done something to us to make us weak.”     Sonata nodded her head vigorously at that. “Yeah! I remember they were feeding me something funny whenever I woke up. It could, oh!” she gasped. “It could be poison!”     Aria scoffed at the idea, but Adagio did not allow herself to take the situation lightly. For all her ramblings, Sonata could be right about this. Better safe than sorry, as the old saying goes.     “What about singing?” Aria proposed. “We crank out a quick little number to get them bickering and slip out.” She eyed each of the girls’ pendants pulsing a ruddy glow against their busts, and the hint of a smirk appeared on her lips. “We could grab a quick meal as we leave, and jack their stuff too. One of them’s bound to have a car.”     A phantom pain shot through Adagio’s jaw; she recalled the “meal” she had received immediately following their defeat, one “knuckle sandwich” to be precise. That aside, Aria my dear you continue to assure me of your incompetence as a leader. “Our spell doesn’t work on them, darling,” she explained, slow and mockingly. Aria put on an irritated scowl; briefly Adagio pondered if it was directed at her, or the realization of her flawed plan. Knowing Aria, definitely the former.     “Besides,” she continued, “it wouldn’t be the wisest thing to do, to dive head-first into physical conflict after being bedridden for Gods know how long.”     Aria pouted. "Then what's your plan?"         Adagio pulled her feet in so she sat crisscross, one hand placed upon each knee. The air she breathed felt heavy in that moment, knowing her patience and nerves would rue the words about to come out of her mouth:     “The best course of action, girls, would be to buckle down for the time being, and comply with whatever the Rainbooms ask of us.”     Aria’s reaction was as predictable as the rising of the sun. “Are you kidding me?” Her mouth hung open in disbelief. “Those stupid human girls destroyed our first and only chance at finally restoring our old magic. They humiliated us in front of everyone! We’re now their prisoners, and you’re saying we should just go along with it?” She exhaled heavily out through her nose, akin to more of a bull than a teenage girl.     Adagio blinked slowly; this was par for the course with Aria, complaining and trying her damnedest to be a little rebel-genius despite never having a single strategic thought in her stupid thick skull.     But what Aria said next was something else entirely. “This is why I should be the leader,” she snarled. “You always let our enemies walk all over us, King Neptune, Starswirl, the Rainbooms, all of them. And the centuries have only made you softer, Adagio. If we followed my lead back at the school, we’d be queens of this stinking 'hole by now, and Equestria.” She straightened her back, suddenly appearing as the tallest of the three. “Maybe I should call the shots from now one, given your track record. What do you say, Sonata?”     Sonata wisely hid her face behind her knees and held her silence; she knew what was coming, as she shifted her eyes towards Adagio. The siren in question breathed in, then out. It was all she could do not to start hollering and scare the daylights out of every soul in the neighborhood. The blank look on her face betrayed not a single emotion as she leaned forward and said with frigid sweetness, “I would sooner let maggots feast upon my beautiful flesh before I even consider naming you leader of this team.”     Aria held her ground, rolling her eyes and trying to play it off with a simple hand wave. “And that lovely image was brought to you by Adagio Dazzle because...why exactly?”     The Dazzling pulled back. “‘Why’?” Adagio accepted long ago that she will never grasp the scope of Aria's ignorance, yet despite that she still could not help but be baffled. “Aria Blaze, you’re seriously asking ‘why’? Aria Blaze, always responding to everything in a violent knee-jerk reaction without ever grasping the larger picture at hand?" Behind a sullen look, the scolded siren ground her teeth together. "And even if you cleaned up your act, you’re still ill-tempered and possess too-large an assurance of intelligence you do not have.” She allowed her head to drop, to sigh aloud, before collecting herself again.     “There must have been some way that Equestrian Magic got into this world," she said in a low voice, "and word of mouth tells me that that purple Rainboom isn’t a local. There’ll be a way to get what we want, girls. There always has been. I’m not saying we have to play nice and make friends; we’ll just need to lay low and bide our time.”     “Like always?” chirped Sonata.     Adagio smirked. “Like always.” Her eyes darkened when they returned to Aria. “I will not hear another word about your ill-reasoned and childish fantasies of becoming the leader of this team. Are we clear?” The squeak of underused door hinges came from the other side of the room.     Sonata looked over her shoulder, though Aria continued to glare daggers at her leader. “Crystal.” Adagio decided to be generous and give her a month before they would find themselves having this same conversation again.     With that, she and Aria mimicked their teammate and directed their gazes towards the doorway. Sunset Shimmer of all people stood there, holding a jar of some orange goop in one hand and a metal spoon in the other. She looked like a deer in the headlights, especially with the orange dim of the hallway glowing around her. “Rarity?” she called out, never taking her eyes off the Dazzlings. “Start a coffee pot…"