Chapter 2: Abacus Cinch’s Dazzling Sirens
Chapter 2: Abacus Cinch’s Dazzling Sirens
Days passed. Or at least they did according to her calculations. However, the sun never rose, and the moon never set. It seemed that the whole world was trapped in a never-ending night. If this kept up, the land would begin to suffer. The sun brought life and warmth. To be denied it for too long would start to have negative affects on everything.
According to legend, Celestia and Luna had been around since the beginning of life, raising the sun every morning, and then switching it out for the moon at the end of each day. Then one day, a powerful unicorn known as Cadance, specializing in love magic, earned her wings and became the third alicorn, and she used her power to spread love across the land.
Finally, there had been Twilight. Starting out as Celestia’s prize student with a great affinity for magic, especially friendship magic, she too had earned the right to become an alicorn, thus becoming the Princess of Friendship. And now, here she was, the last to become an alicorn, and now the last of the alicorns.
She hadn’t exactly known what she would be looking for or where when she left Equestria, but she had hoped to find something. However, it seemed that the land beyond Equestria had changed significantly from the maps of them she had memorized from her studies over the years. She was all but flying around blindly, looking for something, anything, that might provide her with answers.
She had run into a few creatures during her travels, but none had been able to offer her any help. The humans were even less helpful. One of them, a senile old man, had even tried to capture her, thinking she was nothing more than a mere horse. And so, feeling quite insulted, Twilight made a point to try and avoid any further humans unless they looked like they might actually be able to help her. She did find a few Equestrian ponies as well, but none who were able to tell her anything useful.
However, while being an alicorn came with tremendous magical power, it did not come with unlimited stamina. And with it being nighttime indefinitely, Twilight simply slept whenever she got tired. So, once again, she settled down for another restless sleep. The small patch of grass was a very poor substitute for a bed, but she made do with what she had. Soon enough, she was asleep, oblivious to the world around her.
It was during this particular sleep, however, that a traveling caravan heading down the road Twilight was sleeping beside came to a stop. The words Abacus Cinch’s Dazzling Sirens was painted on the side of the largest cart, and its rider climbed down. A woman with light grayish blue skin and a noticeable mole on her chin beside her mouth that seemed to be drawn into a permanent frown carefully made her way over to the sleeping alicorn, looking down at Twilight with interest.
“Well, well,” the woman muttered as she studied Twilight. “What do we have here? Can it really be?”
Behind her glasses, her eyes ran over the alicorn’s body, taking special notice of the wings and horn Twilight had. Her lips curved into an arrogant smirk as she realized that Twilight was indeed what she thought she was.
“So it’s true, there was a fourth. I had thought they were just rumors. Oh, when he finds out, he will be very delighted.” Turning back to the caravan, she waved over more of its occupants. “You three, come here now. And bring the magic nerd.”
Crossing her arms, she waited impatiently and was soon joined by four others. Three were girls of the same age, and another was a bespectacled boy with a rather nerdish look about him.
Of the three girls, the yellow skinned one in the middle with the large mass of curly orange hair placed her hands on her hips as she looked at the woman impatiently. “What is it, Miss Cinch? Let me guess, you want us to waste our magic on something trivial.”
Next to her, the periwinkle blue-skinned girl with her cerulean hair tied in a ponytail nudged her. “Adagio, she’s our boss, we’re supposed to listen to her.”
Looking irritated, Adagio turned to her. “Can it, Sonata.”
On her other side, the lavender skinned girl with her purple hair tied into two ponytails rolled her eyes in boredom. “Uch, must you two always do this? What do you want, Miss Cinch?”
Ignoring the tension between the girls, Cinch gestured towards Twilight. “Tell me, what do you see lying there?” she asked, keeping her voice at a whisper.
Sonata cocked her head to the side as she looked down at the alicorn and said simply, “A dead horse.”
The lavender-skinned girl rolled her eyes again. “No, it’s an Equestrian pony. A pegasus from the looks of it.”
Adagio nudged her. “Open your eyes, Aria. It has a horn. That thing is an alicorn. And it’s sleeping, not dead. Idiots.”
Cinch’s smirk became more arrogant. “Indeed. And you, Micro Chips, do you agree with them? Come now, you study magic, you should know.”
The boy, Micro Chips, adjusted his glasses as he looked down at Twilight. Truth be told, he had been unable to tear his eyes away from her as soon as they fell upon the alicorn. “Yes, there’s no mistaking it. That’s definitely an alicorn. But what is she doing here?”
“Who cares?” Aria grumbled. “Did you call us out here just to show it to us? Thanks, I guess, but I’m really not interested.”
Cinch’s scowl returned. “I want her captured. I have a particular buyer in mind who will pay a very nice price for her.”
“Ok!” Sonata exclaimed in a bubbly tone. “I’ll go get some rope.”
The urge to groan at the girl’s idiocy was great, but Cinch managed to resist. “The rope that could hold that creature hasn’t been woven. You’ll need to use your magic to trap her.”
A groan escaped Adagio. “I knew you wanted us to use our magic. Fine, lets just get this over with.”
Reaching up, she and the other two girls touched the red crystal pendants around their necks. They began to sing a pleasing melody that caused the pendants to start glowing. Wisps of magic flowed out of them and over Twilight.
Micro Chips watched with a disapproving frown on his face, yet he did nothing to stop them. He deduced that the girls must have been using a sleep spell as well, for the alicorn did not wake, not even as she rose into the air and was hovered over to one of the carts meant to cage a wild animal. The alicorn was placed inside, and numerous spells and enchantments were placed on the wagon to make sure that she would not be able to break out, not with force or with magic.
A dark cackle escaped Cinch at her prize, and she rubbed her hands together gleefully. “I never would have thought we would find such a rare treasure. This alicorn is going to make us very rich. The poor thing is going to have quite the surprise when she wakes.”
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Surprised was quite the understatement for what Twilight felt when she awoke. She was not in the bed of grass she had fallen asleep in, but was trapped in a wagon in a cage. At first she had thought she was still dreaming, but quickly realized the truth; she had been captured.
Immediately, she had attempted to break out. But much to her bewilderment, she found that her magic would not work on the bars. She couldn’t break out either, as the bars seemed to have a type of magical barrier around them that prevented her from even touching them. Not even her teleportation spell worked.
How this was possible, she didn’t have a clue. From the looks of it, her captors were humans, and humans did not possess magic. So how could they trap her in a magical cage? Was the cage already enchanted before they got it? That was the only explanation she could come up with.
She tried talking to the humans, but it seemed that they had been ordered by their boss not to interact with her, and so all her questions fell on deaf ears. Twilight’s frustration began to grow at her predicament, and her inability to get out of it. And so she spent her time trying to come up with a way to get herself out.
Eventually, the caravan came to a stop, and the people began to set things up. Twilight watched with mild interest as they seemed to be preparing a stage. Were they performers of some kind?
She got her answer later when the crowds began to gather. The three girls she had seen working on setting things up had gotten on the stage they had prepared and began to sing to the audience. Their boss, a woman whom she heard referred to as Miss Cinch, watch with an unpleasant smirk on her face as the girls sang before walking off.
Twilight’s attention, however, was soon diverted from the singing girls, who, she admitted, were actually quite good at singing, to the boy she had seen helping to set things up for the show. He had light violet skin and dark grayish blue hair. Unlike the others, there was a kindness about him as he crept over to Twilight’s cage, glancing over his shoulder at the singing girls cautiously.
“I don’t have much time,” he said to her in a low voice. “I wanted to speak to you earlier, but didn’t get a chance. My name is Micro Chips. Are you truly an alicorn princess? You’re not just an illusion or some creature in disguise?”
Twilight studied him for a few moments, not sure if she could trust him; he was a member of the party that captured her after all. But seeing as her options were limited, she decided to take a chance. “I am. I am Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship. Tell me, how am I being confined to this cage? It seems to be magic, but how is that possible.”
Micro Chips sighed. “You can thank the Dazzlings for that.” He nodded at the singing girls. “Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk. They’re the ones that trapped you in there at Miss Cinch’s request.”
Twilight looked back at the girls. “But how? Humans do not possess magic. Do they have magical artifacts?”
“Of sorts,” Micro Chips replied. “Take a look at the pendants around their necks. Do you see them?”
Twilight strained her eyes, spotting the red gems they wore. “Yes, but I can’t make anything out from here.”
“Those are where they get their magic from. They got them off the corpses of sirens, and they use the magic in them to enchant their voices in order to draw in an audience so they can sell tickets to people to see them perform.”
Twilight frowned. She knew what sirens were. They were beautiful but wicked creatures that used their enchanted voices to put others under enslavement spells. They would then command those they enslaved to fight with one another in order to stir up negative emotions for them to feed of off, absorbing the negative energy into the gems embedded into their flesh to convert it into magic in order to make themselves more powerful. But she had never heard of humans using them before.
“It’s part of Miss Cinch’s scheme,” Micro Chips explained. “She’s running a scam of sorts. The Dazzlings are doing it for the publicity, but Cinch is just in it for the money. She’s a very vain and greedy woman.” He looked back at her. “That’s why she caught you. She’s planning to sell you off and make a bunch of money off you.”
Looking away from the Dazzlings, Twilight gave Micro Chips a suspicious look. “And what exactly are you doing with them?”
A prideful smile spread across Micro Chips’ face. “Me? Why, I’m a scholar of magic. It’s my sworn duty to learn all there is to know about magic. I’m studying how the Dazzlings are using siren magic. I’ve learned quite a bit about magic over the years. In fact, look at this.”
He removed something from around his neck, revealing that he had been hiding it inside his shirt. At first Twilight thought it was a pendant of some kind, but upon closer inspection, she saw that it was a device of some sort. She realized it as some type of invention known as technology that was apparently beginning to appear amongst human society, but technology wasn’t something that was really present in Equestria. And while she did have some interest in this technology stuff, she had never seen anything like the device Micro Chips was holding, and didn’t have a clue as to what it was.
“I invented this to detect magic so I could find and study it,” he told her, looking quite pleased with himself. “Seems it does more than simply detect magic though, it can also absorb magic and store it inside it. I’ve actually accumulated quite a lot of magic over time, and it’s all stored up in here.”
Twilight frowned in worry. “That’s very risky. It can be quite dangerous for non-magic creatures to meddle with magic. It could have very disastrous results.”
Much to her surprise, Micro Chips nodded in agreement. “Oh, trust me, princess, I know that good and well. I’m very careful with this. I don’t do anything with the magic in here unless I know exactly what I’m doing. Unlike Miss Cinch and the Dazzlings.”
He suddenly gasped and moved to the other side of Twilight’s wagon. She saw why a moment later as Cinch returned. But, much to her surprise, she saw that the woman wasn’t alone. She was pushing another wagon similar to her own. Another creature was inside it, but it was not another alicorn, though it did slightly resemble one.
The creature was hideous to look at. It was dark gray in color, almost black, with a long mane of dark cerulean. Insect wings of the same color grew from its back, and from its head was a long crooked horn. Legs full of holes clopped on the floor of the creature’s cage in aggravation as green within green eyes full of hate shifted to Twilight.
An unpleasant shiver ran up Twilight’s spine as she recognized the creature for what it was. “I know that creature. That’s a changeling queen. Why is it here?”
Micro Chips nodded in agreement, looking just as uncomfortable with the changeling as Twilight felt. “Yes, that’s Queen Chrysalis. Miss Cinch caught her by chance, the same way she did you. There’s a spell on the cage so she can’t transform, and her magic doesn’t work on it either. Apparently, her hive turned on her after embracing love, which metamorphosed them into purified changelings. She refused to change with them, and so was abandoned.”
Twilight had actually heard of this phenomenon. Changelings were creatures that relied on love for nourishment. Typically, they would use their ability to transform to take on the forms of others loved ones. They would then feed off that person’s love, leaving them feeling bitter and resentful. However, there were instances were changelings learned to share love rather than take it, allowing them to go through metamorphosis that turned them into peaceful creatures that no longer had to take love in order to survive.
Apparently, this Chrysalis had not gone along with the rest of her hive. It was sad, but no one could force a changeling to go through the change. Twilight was still surprised that Cinch had been able to capture one though, and a queen at that. But then again, she had captured her.
“Why would she want a changeling?” Twilight asked. “Does she plan to sell her as well?”
Micro Chips shook his head. “No, it’s part of her scam. The Dazzlings use the magic from their pendants to enchant the audience, and make everycreature love and adore them. Miss Cinch then has Chrysalis feed off the audiences’ love for the Dazzlings, leaving them angry and bitter. She does this to stir up negative emotions that the Dazzlings then absorb in order to power their pendants so they can spread their spell to draw in even more of an audience and gain even more fans to buy tickets, and then it starts all over again. It’s a vicious cycle of sorts, and all to fill Miss Cinch’s pockets. Look, it’s happening now.”
Twilight looked on as she saw that Chrysalis was indeed feeding off the love of the audience, sucking it up and consuming it. It flowed to her in numerous streams, and the changeling swallowed it up. She could see the audience becoming agitated, and the Dazzlings were absorbing that negative energy. It drifted towards them in the form of a green mist, flowing into their pendants, empowering them further while leaving the audience drained.
Twilight had to admit, it was a brilliant, though cruel, system that Cinch had, but it was also very dangerous. Changelings, the ones that hadn’t metamorphosed, were quite ruthless and unforgiving. If Chrysalis ever got out, she wouldn’t show Cinch any mercy.
Almost as if she sensed the alicorn’s thought about her, Cinch glanced at Twilight’s cage and spotted Micro Chips. Glaring at the boy, she turned to him and waved her hand. “You, boy, get away from that cage! I told you to keep away from her!”
Micro Chips heeded her, moving away from Twilight, but not before whispering to her, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”
Twilight watched him go, feeling some semblance of hope. She wasn’t so sure about relying on a powerless human to get her out of here, but seeing as her options were limited, she didn’t have much of a choice.
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11210824
Oh, cool, thanks for this.
11210824
Sweet thx!
I wonder who she's working for? 🤔
I feel ya adagio, I feel ya. A little bit though.
Welp, she's screwed!😰
And she'd eventually get her punishment in the mlp fim season 9 finale.
https://m.She'd be in some serious hot water if chrysalis did get free. 🙄
He has a name cinch!