Hexonxonx

by Cyanide

Vessel

"Planning to join us at Sugarcube Corner tonight, Vinyl?"

Twilight smiled and blinked guilelessly at Vinyl Scratch, and Vinyl smiled back. The two stood in the main room of the Books and Branches Library, Vinyl Scratch's home for the past few months. Sun shone through the windows and the open door, the hateful glare dampened by Vinyl's sunglasses. The sun was good, she reminded herself. Ponies liked it.

"You know it, Twi!" she said with exactly the right amount of enthusiasm. The bright, toothy smile that graced Vinyl's face was so typical of her; it should have been, she had practiced it carefully for months.

Twilight leapt up and clapped her front hooves together and let out a small squeaking noise. That meant she was happy, just as Vinyl had wanted. "Great! Spike and I are heading out for the rest of the day, so we'll see you at the party."

"Cool," Vinyl said, pushing her mane back from her glasses with a practiced sweep of one leg. "Can't wait! I'll be downstairs workin' on some new mixes for the rest of the day."

Spike perked up, as he always did when Vinyl mentioned her music. "Can I hear it when you're done?"

"Sure thing, squirt." Vinyl reached out with a hoof and ruffled Spike's dermal plates. The little dragon pumped a fist in the air before he turned to follow Twilight out of the library.

She watched Twilight and Spike leave, letting her expression go slack. She liked the little dragon, or at least she presumed she did. He seemed like someone she'd like. Abstractly, she remembered that at one point, she did. Thinking back to those times was hazy, though. Nothing really stuck in her mind.

She turned as the door to the library closed, and he walked to the stairs down to Twilight's laboratory. The space below the library was large and filled with Twilight's research apparatus. It was so large, in fact, that Twilight had given her a space next to the stairs to set up some of her DJ equipment. Vinyl's space in the dingy cellar was well away from Twilight's array of bizarre gear, which was fine with her. She needed room to work.

Vinyl's horn glowed and a heavy canvas tarp levitated up from her equipment. She stepped over to it, discarding the tarp haphazardly in the middle of the floor..

The first week after her fall in the club had been the worst. That, at least, had stuck in Vinyl's mind, an icy splinter of terror piercing her clouded memory. Every night she had woke up screaming and slick with sweat, haunted by nightmares she couldn't remember. At first, Twilight and Spike had leapt to her side, but after a bare few nights of this they were barely disturbed in their own sleep. The lack of memory was nearly as difficult to cope with as the feeling of horror, and between the two she barely slept that week, or the night after.

The ninth night was when everything changed. Once again, Vinyl went to sleep, hoping against hope for a peaceful night, and once again she awoke in the middle of the night, the icy grip of terror crushing her heart. She didn't scream, however. She was too entranced by the memory of what she had seen: A machine. A beautiful machine, one made of disused and broken machinery, new life and new utility brought to garbage. Whatever had left her soaked with sweat and nearly blind with terror, the machine wasn't it. The machine was perfect.

Every night since, she woke up the same way. Her sleep never really improved, but eventually the horror went away, replaced by a kind of numbness. She was numb and cold to everything now, but it hardly mattered. Every night, she saw more of the machine, understood the next piece that needed to be added. She was back on her feet; she started eating again, went back to work at the club. None of it mattered, however. It was all just to keep up appearances. The perfect machine, the machine that even now stood before her, was all that mattered.

The device that confronted Vinyl had started as a mixing console. Two turntables and a raft of sliders and dials, the console had once been Vinyl's lifeblood, and, in a sense, still was. The console was partially disassembled now and surrounded by a strange collection of devices, stacked haphazardly and bound together in a tangle of mismatched wires and lewdly exposed circuitry. There were several different synthesizers, their panels partly removed, stitched together with a mishmash of different sizes and lengths of cable into a strangely organic-looking mass, as if they were overgrown with vines. A keyboard had been fixed to the front of the console, wires spewing out of it in every direction, some vanishing into other pieces of hardware, some affixed to other lengths of wire with nuts and wads of electrical tape. Small monitor speakers, liberated from their cases and lashed to the bizarre contraption with baling wire, studded various surfaces. Thick cables snaked from the indescribable mass under the stairs.

Vinyl pushed the large contraption out into the lab, exposing the rest of her machine. As strange as the console was, the other half, previously concealed under the stairs, was truly bizarre, even macabre. The center of the extension was a large glass bell jar with a presently inert Jacob's Ladder inside it, which Vinyl had built from a few pieces of salvage based on what she remembered of the Super-Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. The tube was affixed to a variety of seemingly broken pieces of hardware, more salvage turned into vital organs for Vinyl's machine. Half of a radio was affixed to a dented copper coil. An inscrutable piece of cloud factory hardware was tethered by a string and drizzled a thin stream of shimmering green into a length of pipe that vanished into the device. The body of the second half of the machine was formed of a wheelbarrow with strips of rusty metal bolted to it here and there as grounding strips for the mishmash electrical hardware it carried. Vinyl could no longer remember or recognize half of the other components, but she knew that it was right, and that her machine was ready. She had only been waiting for a chance to activate it.

Stepping back for a moment, Vinyl inspected her masterpiece. It was just as she'd seen it in her dreams, beautiful and incomprehensible. She had no idea what it did, or if it did anything. What did it matter?

Vinyl's horn glowed. There was only one component left, one she had carried with her for months.

---

Dear Twilight,

This news is alarming. If what your friend said of her experience is true, that could mean that Discord is somehow still able to affect Equestria from his prison. Though she says she beat him, and I no longer feel his influence in Ponyville, I would prefer if she would stay with you for the immediate future, so that if something does happen she'll be closer to help. I would also ask that you send me the antler you found. Please be careful with it, and don't handle it more than necessary before sending it to Canterlot.

Yours, Princess Celestia

The letter floated in front of Twilight as she read aloud and paced in the main room of the library. Vinyl lay on the floor near one of the bookshelves watching Twilight, her telekinesis pressing an ice pack to the lump on her head to keep it from growing any further. Her trials - hallucinations - earlier had seemed terrifying, hours lost in a freakish other world, but even now, a scant hour after Twilight and her friends had brought Vinyl to the library, the memories were fading as if they were a dream. Something, however, nagged at the back of her mind. She looked over at the table near the door, where the antler sat.

Don't let her take it away.

"Huh?" Vinyl said, leaning up and then wincing slightly as her head throbbed from the movement.

With a quick glance over at the white unicorn, Twilight stopped her pacing and trotted over. "Did you say something?"

"No," Vinyl said quickly. "Just wondering what the deal is. Celestia didn't say much in that letter."

Twilight shrugged a shoulder. "I don't think she knows what's going on any better than we do. I sure didn't know that Discord was going to be involved until after we found you."

She doesn't know anything. She just wants it for herself.

"What do you mean, she wants it for herself?" Vinyl asked. She pawed furtively at the hardwood floor of the library

A look of confusion crossed Twilight's face. "Who wants what?" she asked. "Vinyl, what are you talking about?"

"Can't you hear that?"

Twilight tilted her head, still wearing the look of confusion. "Hear what?"

No, she can't. Only you can.

"I..." Vinyl stammered. "It's..."

Nothing.

"Nothing," Vinyl said, her head sinking. "Sorry." She adjusted the icepack slightly, pressing it against her horn as well as the bump.

Heavy steps sounded on the wooden floor as Twilight slowly paced away from Vinyl. She watched over her shoulder, and Vinyl watched back, miserably. "I'm going to go make some willow bark tea," Twilight finally said, slowly. "For your headache. Is that okay?"

Yes.

"Yes." Vinyl said. "Um, please. Thanks."

Vinyl and Twilight watched each other for a moment more, and then Twilight turned and left the room, hooves clacking.

Take it.

Where was this voice coming from? Vinyl rubbed the side of her head painfully.

Take it.

She adjusted the ice pack and looked at the antler again. It sat there quietly, balanced on two points and the cleanly sheared base.

Take it. Hide it. She's lying. She wants it for herself.

Vinyl's horn glowed. She watched uncomprehendingly as the antler gently lifted from the table and floated toward her, closer and closer.

Hide it.

"How?"

I'll show you.

The antler dashed from the air. Vinyl was paralyzed as she watched the points fly toward her forehead and eyes.

The points of the antler drove into her, and Vinyl screamed.

---

The memory was distant and foggy. Vinyl Scratch felt a twinge of half-forgotten pain and saw images flash before her: Twilight Sparkle running back in alarm. Her staggering to her feet. Her mouth telling lies about how the antler had disappeared. More letters to and from Celestia. Royal guardponies crawling all over Ponyville. Weeks of suspicion, weeks of lies, and all the time the numbness descending over Vinyl's mind. The antler was with Vinyl the whole time, inside her, hidden in the back of her mind.

Her horn glowed and a flash of pain shot through her, real pain, not dulled by the fog that had shrouded her for months and seemed, from one second to the next, to have simply lifted. She felt as though something was forcing itself out and through her horn. A burst of sickly energy that hurt to look at forced its way from Vinyl, sparks spilling from her eyes and mouth. She felt a sticky, wet feeling around her ears.

The energy flash coalesced over Vinyl's strange contraption, gathering over the bell jar. Vinyl watched it solidify, her newly-clear head throbbing in agony. The energy ball quickly collapsed into a small, coruscating knot that twisted and turned in on itself.

With a silent flash of white light, the knot exploded, leaving behind the antler, smoothly affixed to the bell jar as if it had always been there.

Play.

"What the buck?" Vinyl asked the air, angrily. She looked about quickly, swinging her pounding head left and right. Blood spattered from her ears, leaving tiny red spots on the electronic abomination she had somehow created.

Play.

"Who's there?" Vinyl shouted.

Play. Play your song. Play.

Vinyl winced as her headache surged again. Play her song. She sat down petulantly on the cold dirt floor. She was quite certain that she had no desire to obey the voice.

Of course you do, Vinyl Scratch. You've listened to me this whole time. Now play.

"No!"

You want your freedom, don't you? You want to be rid of me, don't you?

"Who are you?" Vinyl's voice cracked and she leaned heavily on her forehooves, the ragged edges digging into the wooden floor. Her horn brushed the keyboard painfully.

Oh, come now, Vinyl, you know who I am.

Slowly, Vinyl stood and looked around at the dingy basement, at the strange equipment Twilight kept down there, at the piles of well-loved books stacked here and there. How long had she spent down here, hiding her twisted creation from Twilight? How long had she been lying to the world, pretending that everything was fine from behind a thought-dulling haze?

How long had she been in Discord's thrall?

Play, and it will all be over.

Slowly, Vinyl reached a hoof up toward the disemboweled keyboard. She wanted to ask what song, but in her heart, she knew. Memories of thundering pistons and shrieking cats, hollow mockeries of life, echoed loudly in her ears.

Though she was a DJ and not an instrumentalist, she played. The inert machine roared to life at the first keypress. The sounds came from somewhere deep inside the bizarre device, loud and dissonant, broken and artificial. Her hooves flew over the keys, pounding out a soft tattoo of their own as the device began to produce a pounding drum beat.

Her magic flared to life as she played. Knobs, dials and switches adjusted themselves. Echoes were introduced, strange reverb effects Vinyl would never have thought to add. Her eyes defocused as her hooves moved themselves. She felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as her horn flipped a switch and triggered a low, erratic bass thrum.

The gut-wrenching music shook the basement of the library. Vinyl found herself chanting in time with it, uttering strange, wordless vocalizations in a voice that wasn't hers. Sparks spat across the floor from the inexpertly-assembled knots of wires that jutted here and there from the machine, the popping sounds adding strangely to the already demented music.

Pain began to wash over Vinyl. Little pinpricks under her coat where sparks landed on her. Jabbing pains in the frogs of her forehooves where jagged chips from the formerly smooth, lacquered surface of the keys her hooves furiously hammered flew and struck painfully. The pounding in her head exacerbated by the rising cacophony. Through it all, she played.

As the music reached a sort of crescendo, Vinyl suddenly felt as though she were being ripped apart. She couldn't stop playing, and could only watch the source of her pain: Wires ripping themselves loose from the machine and burying themselves in her hide. She felt cuts all over and the sickening feeling of the wires moving under her skin. One of the long hoses coiled under the bell jar flew up and wrapped itself around her neck before the open end rammed into the base of her skull. Mercifully, after a moment of this torment she felt the pain ebb as she watched the laboratory around her fade into the distance, taking the pandemoniac din with it.

---

Vinyl hung by her neck, the wires and cables that buried themselves in her supporting her and keeping her from throttling. All around was dark. Not the darkness of night or of closed eyes, but what Vinyl imagined being blind must be like: Pure, impenetrable blackness. In the distance, she could hear horrifying echos of the music she had been playing, still roaring away, changing gradually in new and hideous variations but always recognizable.

Something clamped down on her forearm, a talon of some sort, the tip of one claw scraping across the callused chestnut on her inner leg.

"Hello, Vinyl Scratch," Discord's smooth, hateful voice said from the blackness, his hot breath on the side of her face. "Welcome back."

Comments

[Kuki-Shift]

D: So creeeepy.

[Shanicus]

O.O Guess I'm not sleeping tonight. Brilliant, but chilling.

[StatusQo]

Woah, steampunk cyborgponys

[AhopelessEndevor]

That there, That there is some freaky schit!

[The Magister]

This is your brain on Discord.

[Apocalypse Pony]

Dayum, she trippin HARD

[SteampunkBrony]

552344

[knuppo1]

you better not take 8 years for the next chapter this time dammit i cant wait that long to see what happens next

[Lordlyhour]

*low whistle* Can I have some of whatever it is you were on when you wrote this? Dis some messed up shid.
I like this story. It is well written and captures thw apirit of some of my night mares perfectly. Kudos

[Thespurgin]

Well, I now have some nice fuel for my villains. Is it wrong that I am no more than mildly disturbed by this?

[Mr. Haze]

So fucking creepy and so well written. Why the hell can't I give you two thumbs up?!

[Ice Star]

If this story is no longer updating, could you please mark it as "cancelled"?