The Best Songs Come From the Soul

by Quicksear

11. Inescapable

“...Octavia...?”

My head swayed slightly, hanging from my shoulders as I flicked an ear in the direction of the voice I couldn't hear.

“...Oh Celestia, why is this h-happening…”

My nose twitched under the assault of an overpowering scent of copper and oil, while my legs jerked in their bindings. A shadow passed over my head, but I didn't see it. I didn’t feel, see, smell. I could taste though. I could taste wet cotton. And I could hear. In fact, I heard to the exclusion of all else.

A single note had started. I’d been sleeping, but it had woken me, only to bury me. A single note to begin with, and then a plethora of barely distinguishable strings and other sounds weaving their way into my brain. Double bass, cello, violin, a harp distantly, and I could almost hear a trombone...yes, I could here horns of various shapes and sizes reaching to me as well. They all trickled through the air like syrup and surrounded me. I knew each and every instrument by heart, because it was all I could focus on.

Plus, I’d heard it all before.

It’s your song.

My eyes opened wide.

“O-Octy?!”

“Shut up!”

I glanced left. It was all I could do from where I was. I was surrounded by darkness, but familiarity bore me. I was in Vinyl’s old dining room. The fitting for the chandelier had been re-purposed, and now was hung with a dozen thick ropes that trailed the room, many leading to me. One wrapped around my neck and tied off at the stair railing, holding my equally bound forehooves just off the ground. I tugged once, but then my eyes fell upon the rest of the room. in front of me, flicking in agitation, was a grey tail. Not a natural grey like my own coat, but a chilling, empty grey that begged colour to return to it. Beyond it, I saw a similar mane, flanked by bone-like foggy wings the beat the air, and a raised hoof, poised to strike.

“Otcy!”

“I said shut it!” The hoof came down, and cut off that high, terrified voice. It died with a whimper. Only once it was gone did that familiar musical voice reached my mind, and I jerked forward, spitting through my gag.

The pegasus spun to face me, and I gasped back again. Her very skin seemed pulled back, leaving her snout and cheekbones standing out in prominent silver under eyes so bloodshot they glowed crimson. But all I saw was the pony on the floor, the cyan-green mane, it’s white streak marred by the slightest smattering of blood. I choked against my gag.

“You shouldn’t be awake,” Angel’s sick sing-song voice boiled against me, and I glared at her twisted smile as she walked up to me. In the darkness, hundreds of pitted scars reflected moonlight off her drained coat. She stared at me lopsidedly for a moment. Suddenly she huffed, “You aren’t supposed to be awake. Vinyl said she knew your song. Go back to sleep.”

I growled through my sodden rag. Defiant, like I’d learned to be.

Angel’s eyes hardened. “Spirited I see. We can use that.” With that she turned tail and left, heading into the hallway, past the stairs and down into the depths.

“...O-Octy…”

I turned back down to Lyra, lying on her side against the dining room table, her head propped up against the hardwood. The punch to her face had slammed her head into the table, and even in the dark I could see bruises forming around both her eyes. One vindictive punch. Anger rose in my breast.

“...Octy, w-why...where are we? Where’s Bon Bon?”

I couldn't answer her. The music around us redoubled, somehow subtly changing in tempo. This time I could hear a saxophone, and an incongruous almost jazzy jingle trying to play over the low melancholy symphony that so reduced me.

Lyra’s ears perked up, her eyes flashing, “Bonny…?”

No! I jerked back against my bonds. I heard Lyra whimpering, struggling against her own. She didn't know what I knew, but it was clear nothing good was to come of this. If Bon Bon was here…

“Then you’ll have your accompaniment.”

I stared at my bonds. The ones around my fetlocks were three twists of tough hemp, the one about my neck I could feel to be the same. My rear hooves were held off the ground by a tie under my belly, left to kick free in the air. I twisted to look behind me. I suddenly felt my balance shift; I was falling. With a nicker, I thrashed to right myself, but I failed. I heard a whirring of saw-edged teeth, and pulled back abruptly. When I stopped swinging I found myself staring straight at a tight bunch of soul drills dangling right above me, their articulated jaws aimed at my face as if they could sense my skin. I was hanging upside down now, my hooves all in the air, tangled in the ropes about my body, still off the ground.

I narrowed my eyes. Since when was there an Earth Pony ropes could bind? I pulled my rear legs up, ignoring the burn of the still-raw injury in my thigh, and kicked the ropes around my forelegs. It took a few tries, once or twice missing and hitting my own legs only, but the bruises were worth it. The edges of my hooves weakened the rope enough for me to pull them apart.

With my forelegs free, though bleeding, I snapped the gag tied bridle-fashion about my head, and then it took no more than a few snaps of my teeth to free my neck. My head hit the floor hard enough to send a burst of sparks across my eyes. They danced in time with the music.

But it was different. Overworked. The song was not pure. And I knew why. Angel was right, Vinyl knew My Song. But she wasn't playing it. I kicked my hindquarters free and wriggled back, nearer to Lyra. I looked my friend over, mortified and disgusted at what I saw. She’d been beaten. Bruises crossed her neck, her back. Her hooves were bound, and her horn clearly shellshocked, maybe overchanneled? Either way, her magic was useless. She was not gagged, but it was clear her mind was not all there. Probably a concussion, or one of these invasive Songs. Vinyl had Lyra’s too, after all.

I pulled the bindings from Lyra’s hooves and nosed her side. “Come on Lyra, please. I need you to get up. Please, dear…”

Lyra’s head lolled a bit, but she pulled her hooves under her and blinked. “Octy, who...she took Bon Bon. She took us both. I d-don’t know how...there were others Octy, so many. I tried, but I’m not a fighter. I’m j-just me…”

“And that's all you need to be, “ I whispered hurriedly, “Lyra, I know this is scary. It’s terrifying. But you need to go get help, alright? I’m going to buy you time, you just go into the street and shout as loud as you can manage. Ponies will come, and it’ll all be over.”

Lyra nodded shakily. “You’ll save Bonny?”

“With any luck,” I muttered, “I’ll save them both.”

It was dark in the house, the discordant music somehow dimming it even further. Everything looked grey. Everything except Lyra. She stood up, almost luminous green, shaking off her injuries admirably. She looked about, and I gestured towards the front door as I moved to the edge of the stairs. I peered around the railing, down the hall and into the open basement door, into the black. I waved the all-clear, and Lyra stumbled the door. Too late I heard the buzzing static, and suddenly the music stopped. I spun to face Lyra, just as she engulfed in a bang and a flash.

It was backlash from the muffle spell. How I hadn't thought of that was insane: of course Vinyl had recast it. I cringed back from a lick of heat, but it reached me as less than a warm breeze. The spell’s backlash was much more muted when broken from the inside.

“Owww…”

I looked up at Lyra, standing dazedly in the entrance hall, looking back at me curiously. “What was…”

I heard a click and a whir behind me. I saw Lyra’s eyes widen, and I looked back in time to see a grey blur burst past me like a fog, driving through the air and holding a soul-tap outwards like a spear. Angel sneered coldly as she crossed the room at blistering speed, aiming straight for Lyra. One instant, Lyra was twisting away, the next, she was staring down at herself, at the faded hoof driving the metal demon straight into her chest. And a harp joined the deathly choir.

Lyra gasped, slipping forward to her knees. A long cable traced from the basement to the device eating into her flesh, piping her essence into the dissonant song weaving itself into the air. Even as I watched, as Angel turned to face me, I saw Lyra’s coat bleaching.

I’d felt anger. I’d felt fear. I’d felt hopelessness and conviction both, but I hadn’t ever felt Hate. A driving force the likes of which no one should feel. I took a step to the right and stamped hard on the cable tethering Lyra to the building. I heard the teeth stop grinding, and the music stuttered, losing it’s lyre.

Angel saw my eyes, but I doubt they glowed as hers did. “Oh, Octavia,” she growled, “you’re going to regret that.”

I didn’t back off, of course not. I’d see my hoof down this devil’s throat before I gave up. I lowered my head and pawed the ground, saying nothing. I planned my move.

Angel moved first. Her dry, matted wings flashed to life, and she dove towards me. I leapt forward as she did. What a clash it would have made. But instead, I aimed low, hitting the ground and rolling towards Lyra, trying to blast the door open with sheer force and carry her out. Then I noticed that Angel too, hadn’t aimed to hit me. In fact, she’d hit her mark.

Angel sprung back down from the ceiling and slammed into my side, knocking my head to the floor and pinning me, arresting my movement. No matter how dwindled her limbs appeared, they were filled with months of hard-livings’ worth of sinew and muscle, all locked around my chest. I couldn’t push her away, nor free my forelegs. My rear hooves, though, found purchase against one hall.

I kicked off with a growl, spinning our locked bodies around and, with a twist, I flipped us over. Angel’s head met the floorboards with a jolt, and her hold weakened. I kicked myself free and jumped for the door. Lyra was coughing lightly, looking curiously at the drill buried, dead, in her chest. She raised a hoof to tap it, but as she did, a piercing note sliced the air. Sliced my concentration. I fell forward, clutching my head. I saw enough to know Lyra was similarly affected. Even in her state, she collapsed to her side, screaming til she was reduced to panting in pain.

And here was I, seething. I heard the song playing over it all drop to one incredibly powerful bass note, so low it shook the timbre of the building. It smothered the whistle for a moment, enough for me to gain my senses. I swung my body back, glaring murder at Angel. The pegasus was shaking her head roughly, holding a long almost flute-like instrument in one hoof. She opened her eyes and noted me hackling, and she raised the accursed whistle to her mouth again just as I charged. It met her lips as my shoulder met her ribcage at full speed. I knocked her back, tumbling, until I saw the maw opening before me. I skidded my hooves, trying to stop myself, but Angel savagely gripped me. With a grin I could almost hear, she pulled me over her own head and threw me straight down into the pitch-black basement.

The music surged. I felt the edges of the stairs dig into my back, then again as Angel landed on my chest before pulling me over her again. She slammed me down on the stairs twice, and one last time on the floor at the bottom, using my momentum to drag me along in a loop. When we finally stopped, I was dizzy, in pain, and scared. All I could see was her menacing grin an inch from my nose. “Welcome to your hell, Octavia.”

Then she turned on the lights.

A static net of bright blue raced over the ceiling and lit the chilling scene. Angel propped me in a corner beside a huge whirring, winding machine, and let me look out over the room.

Cavern-like, the dark walls of the empty cellar stretched away, but I needn’t see them. Everything was right before me, hemmed in by walls of heavy recording equipment, walls of switches and spinning plates, decks and contraptions I’d never care to name. Tapes ran across a few reels. and tall glass cylinders rose from bastions, filled with a ghostly thin luminescence that danced to the music. In the middle of it all was soft bed, its bloodsoaked sheets strewn aside as the pony there twitched, probably thrashed before the strength had left her. Her cream coat was ruined with blood, bruises and cuts. And soul-taps. Three of them, I could see: one in her belly, one burrowed into her foreleg, and another into her neck, where her faded blue-and-pink mane had been pushed aside. In the corner I could see another pony bound, unmoving, her purple coat and mane barely hiding the pain she’d suffered. Berry Punch.

My eyes, though, were drawn upwards. There, in the mass of pulsing blue and swinging cables, was Vinyl. All along her back, studded into her legs, her chest and her neck, were not drills, but...plugs? Jacks. The ones along her spine were plugged into dangling cables, and a faint whine emanated from the ceiling where they disappeared. At Vinyl’s hooves was a table, strewn with wires and scrap plates of steel. Her horn glowed a sickly grey as she moved dozens of parts into each other, rebuilding, creating while destroying from her perch in the rat's nest.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Angel purred beside me.

I punched her as hard as I could.

“Now, none of that,” She sneered, “I need you strong for Vinyl.”

I stopped trying to hit her, “Wha...What?”

“Bright as you are, you probably haven’t worked this out yet.” Angel punched me back, just hard enough to make me dizzy. My eyes traced her as she slithered toward the bed. Her mane seemed to shimmer with...pink? “You think these things are, ahem, Plug and Play? Oh no. It really takes it out of you, to make a tune. I would know.”

She swung up onto the bed, staring at the prone form of Bon Bon there. But she spoke to me. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” She spun back to me, staring, waiting.

“I can’t say I do.” I spat, trying to right my vision.

Angel cocked her head, then raised one scar-addled forehoof to her mane, holding it’s ragged edges up, almost in a ponytail. “Bright pink hair, purple streaks, olive coat? And, of course, a little more meat on these bones.”

I just stared back at her and she spun and choked a laugh. “Canterlot Orchestra Auditions for fourth seat violin, six years ago! I was going to be the only Pegasus in the all-unicorn orchestra, but then some hick Earth Pony came along and took the spot! My shining moment, my only moment, taken by a pony who just a year later, upped and chose the cello anyway!”

She spun on a hoof again, to stare at me. “Oh, I tried. I tried so hard. But, I ended up back at my family’s home in Cloudsdale, penniless, working for the weather factory just to pay bills. Sure, there was some demand for a ‘flying fiddler’, but I could do better! All I needed...was a break.”

She sat down, staring up at the doorway. “My brother gave it to me. I was actually young then, and pretty enough. Can you believe it? He showed me around the weather factory. Wonderful, boring place, that.. I got a few admirers there, though, other, equally bored ponies. They showed me some amazing things. They showed me the Development Wing.”

“Cloudsdale has always been...independent,” She continued, now eyeing Vinyl as I was, watching her work away as Bon Bon grew still, “They make all sorts of weird and wonderful thing up there. ‘Pegasus magic’, fancy technology that could do things nopony else dared try, not even your fancy unicorn friends. I found out why.”

She idly scanned the taps buried in Bon Bon’s skin, the yanked one out. Bon Bon merely shivered. Angel threw the bloodied piece at my hooves, and I scurried back. “These were originally meant to be ‘thought recorders’. When normal means failed, the builders used others to achieve their ends. My brother? He built these. It wasn’t until I tried to look at one closely, a curious filly, that either of us found out what they could really do.”

Angel wandered over to a corner and hauled out a matted saddlebag. From within she withdrew, strangely, a vinyl cover. Splashed across it was a bright and cheery olive coated, pink-maned pegasus bearing a polished violin and a cheery smile. I read the name, recognition dawning.

“Featherbright.”

“Ahah!" Angel called out. “Yes, that was it! I was called Featherbright! Happy, raggamuffin ne'er do well fiddler, a rising star!”

I stared at her, disbelieving even as I said, “Then you disappeared. One day you were charting and the next it was as if you’d never raised a bow…”

“That’s when,” She gestured at herself disgustedly, “this started happening. First my coat faded, then my mane. Then my eyes went redder by the day. In a month, I went from recording new songs, to trying desperately to get rid of them. The drills. They don’t leave though. Not even if you throw them from the tallest cloud into the darkest forest, no. They stay in your head. You can hear the music, no matter what you do, it never leaves you. And you never grow back. It just gets worse.”

Angel turned back up to Vinyl. “Nearly done, Scratch?”

No reply. Angel’s head flopped back over painfully, flashing my a upside down grin. “Vinyl’s making the cure. Once the drills take your Song, you can’t really get it back. You just hear the shadows. But Vinyl’s taken other ponies’ songs too. I tried that. My brother was a big stallion, but his soul just fizzled. Vinyl, though, she’s a genius. You know that? Not only at her turntables either. She built those things. She built all of this. And now, she’s learned to take other Songs and use them to replace what she - what WE lost. So far, “ She waved at Bon Bon, “Vinyl can delay the breakdown, the deterioration. But a few tweaks, and a soul as strong as yours? Or that other mare upstairs, even? Well, maybe then Vinyl can fix me.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “Why...why us? You came here...because of me?”

“Hah!” Angel barked cruelly, “No, you self-centred fool. Though when I heard that Vinyl Scratch had shacked up with you, I knew it wouldn't be long til she broke. A pompous fop like you to grind her down? All it took was a nudge from me before she caved like a house of cards. Much easier than the others.”

Tears wanted to come, but I let anger wash it away. My hooves found the floor. “Others?”

“Oh yes,” She swung about nonchalantly, “Dozens, maybe more. Most died. Some think I’m going to help them. The last of them were even kind enough to take care of your friends in Withervale. And then bring them here, that was sweet. They'll probably be dead in the morning, though.”

“You sick, perverted monster!” I cried and launched from the wall. I dove towards Angel, teeth gnashing. But I didn't get there. Angel sidestepped and brought up a forehoof, soul-tap poised. My momentum carried me past her as she plunged the drill deep into my hip.

I’d felt this pain before, but it was different. My inner thigh still burned with hellfire if I moved too fast, but this...It was cold. It filled me with lethargy, a creeping tiredness that overwhelmed my anger, my fear. I felt rather than heard the shift in the music, for the moment it lasted. I heard a slow, mournful violin slice through the bass-and-horn, slice through me. As I stood trembling, Angel staring at me victoriously, I dully remembered the tune, even with all its embellishments. It was My Song.

“Now go to sleep, Octavia. Relax. It’ll all be over soon.” Angel purred.

“Y-Yes...it’ll all be over soon...” I mumbled, looking into her red eyes.

Her smirk lasted only as long as it took for me to grip the cable of the drill in my flank. “It’ll all be over for YOU!!”

I lunged forward, whipping the cable up with the last of my strength, looping it about Angels scrawny neck and pulled. She hacked and fell into the floor, just as I did the same. I made sure to fall on the cable. She tried to pull back, but I refused to move. Instead I raised my head and screamed at the glaringly white pony hanging down from above, “Vinyl!”

“S-She can’t hear you," Angel snarled. With a sudden jerk, she pulled aside and twisted out of the cable, resting a hoof on my neck. “She can’t hear anything I don’t tell her! She gave me her Song, you idiot! You know what you can do with a Song? Play a pony’s soul back to them and you control them!”

“I know...” I rasped. I looked past Angel, up at the ceiling. The cables were stirring.

“And you thought, what? The sound of your lovely voice would wave her? Please, She’s dead, you fool.”

I saw a shock of blue. Not in the lights, but in a mane. It was my turn to chuckle. “I’m not the fool. You’re playing my Song to the pony who loves it most? She’s heard it before...She can hear me now...” I was fading, so tired.

“Why won’t this bitch just give up!” Angel spat at me through the tunnel my vision had become. And while she glared daggers at me, the cables along the ceiling popped loose.

The Songs ended.

I heard a hoarse nicker:

“Because which pony ever claimed to control the Great Octavia Philharmonica?”

“What? Scratch, what are-?” Thats when Angel saw it. Vinyl hung in place, her hooves and magic still holding shards of metal, her eyes blood red, her lips twisted into a crazy smile.

A sing bassline reverberated through the building.

“You promised, Angel. Deal’s off.”

Angel turned to look at me, eyes wide. It was an exquisite moment. Angel dove forward as Vinyl fell in on herself. Angel grasped the base of the drill buried in my hip and tried to pull it out, seal the hole in her control. I grabbed the device over her hooves and, against every stinging instinct, pulled down. I felt it hit bone. The teeth sawed through me, seeking to go deeper, all they needed was a push, and they snagged. Angel froze a second too long in panic, looking at the vengeful demon in white behind her. The bleached Pegasus started up, wings spread, dashing for the door above.

Then Vinyl screamed. She’d pulled every fibre of herself, of shard of metal close to her body as she doubled up, and then in a split second, she flung it all outwards in a flash of brightest blue, a circle of flying death. A thousand fragments peppered the machines about us, slicing cables, chipping discs, shattering solid metal and raining steel into the back of the Pegasus only halfway to the landing. Angel never saw it coming.

Neither did I. In the pulse Vinyl threw out, a strand of my mane fell into my eyes. It was so faded I could see through it. In the moment of fire and terror, all I could feel was a soft warmth, all I could see was Bon Bon shuffling on the bed, and a faint purple stirring across from me. And I was happy. All I wanted to do was close my eyes, cut out that horrible grinding noise going on inside me, maybe hear the soft chords of a violin.

I got neither. Instead, the mashing going on in my body stopped, cut off. I felt a real warmth slide against my side, comforting, and a voice, raw with emotions and fear, whispering.

“I’m so sorry Octy...”

And I fell into the abyss.

Author's Note:

Soo...

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[Fire-Storm]

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