> Note of Silence
>  by Quicksear
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Forgotten
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“...This story has aired on three radio networks and is available for sale in all major centres, along with the last songs Vinyl Scratch ever produced, saved on the single record in the wreck of her house. If anypony, anyone spots her, please…I just want my Vinyl back.”

The same voice I hear every day, the one that reminds me of everything I’ve done, lost, and love. The voice that begs me every day to return while telling the whole world the story of why I can’t. The voice that echoes soft and tinny through the smoky air and my heart.

“Hey Cherry, could you please turn that Celestia-damned depressing radio off?! She’ll drive me to suicide!”

Cherry Cup paused in polishing a row of the old bar’s shot glasses as she replied to the bruising beer-swiller of a stallion dirtying the end of her pristine countertop. She smiled sweetly as ever as she replied, “I don’t know Cinny,  I think it’s a bittersweet story, you know? Like those old Canterlot tragedy plays.”

In the smoke-heavy air, the dull brown form of one of the bar’s stoutest regulars, whose name I’d picked up was Cinder Block, grunted dryly, “Sure, except if you haven’t read any paper or magazine in the last two months, you’d know that this actually happened. For real. The great Octavia Philharmonica pining over the radio, hoping her undoubtedly long-dead marefriend will return to her. The Gendarmerie are still looking for that blasted pony. Personally I hope they find a body.”

“Hey!” Cherry squeaked at the far larger earth pony stallion, leaning over the stained oak counter, “Watch what you say about Vinyl Scratch! She was awesome!” She stared at him with all the threatening force a tiny rose-coloured unicorn could, her lilac eyes glowing with determination.

“Emphasis on was.” The workhorse grumbled into his tankard, “You heard what she did to all those ponies. Lands sake girl, you bought this bar from Berry Punch, you saw what happened to her! I wouldn’t be surprised if that Vinyl Scratch offed herself just from the shame.” He shifted around his seat as his work-worn hooves sought a better grip on his chosen poison.

“Well I dunno...” An eavesdropping tan-coloured Pegasus interjected. He meandered up to the bar, sporting a moon-spangled quill as a cutie mark, with a swish to his tail that implied confidence, perhaps a little over-confidence. In his eyes, excitement flashed as he continued, “Have you ever listened to that whole story?”

“Just about the only thing K-Kolt plays nowadays…” Cinder Block rumbled.

“Can you blame Octavia?” the pegasus replied, “I’m Moon Skritch, a writer, a researcher. I’ve got...a personal stake in this whole situation. I understand how she feels.”

“Oh?” Cherry raised an eyebrow, “Are you...are you related to Vinyl? Or one of the mares who got...Taken?”

Moon Skritch shook his head, “No, no...look, you know this is bigger than just Ponyville, right? You heard how it all started?”

"You c’n say that again,” Cinder Block grumbled. I noticed that while Cinder Block’s rear hooves were firmly on the floorboards beneath him, Skritch’s danced lazily in the air. “Me an’ my work crew were there two months ago. We helped clear what was left of Vinyl Scratch’s house out of the street, and we moved the eight bodies dead in the back yard. You townsfolk didn’t see them, you were too busy out front. Withered and dry they were. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’d been there a week before we picked ‘em up.”

Moon Skritch nodded. “Life is not kind to the Taken.” He looked up, straight into Cherry Cup’s surprised eyes. “I’ve seen them, you know. Soul Taps. Held one myself before I came groundside. I don’t blame VInyl one bit. The magic in those things, it’s...compelling.”

“Soul Taps? That’s what they’re calling them?” Cinder Block chortled, “Way I heard it, Vinyl Scratch built those infernal machines herself. Those ‘Soul Taps’ were nothing more than gruesome music makers, microphones that listened to the true essence of a pony, sucked out their Soul to make a Song. A backfired experiment.”

Then Moon Skritch laughed. It was a bitter laugh, a hint of derision, “Music makers? I just came groundside last month. I was there during the Royal Inquiry. Those Soul Taps are so much older than just Vinyl, they date back to before the Lunar Rebellion!” 

He leaned in to Cinder Block sharply, and the much bigger pony quailed. “Those little constructions of gears and teeth were meant to be weapons. Cloudsdale had wanted to break away from Equestria back then, but to do that they needed magic. That’s what Soul Taps were meant to do: Take the latent magic of a pegasus or earth pony and harness it. In reality they just bled it all out. Speed varies between ponies, but once they are pierced by those devices, everything that makes them them will slowly fade away. The Cloudsdale Senate back then saw the damage Soul Taps could do and hid their creations away in the heart of their City’s securest locations. But you know what they say in Cloudsdale…”

“Cloud walls hold few secrets.” Cherry breathed. 

“All it took was some city filly getting loose on the Factory grounds, and the Soul Taps were loose again.”

I couldn't help but recognize this young pegasus’ flare for the dramatic. And I wasn’t the only one; the small dingy bar seemed to wait with baited breath, curious eyes blinking open in the booths and along the tables. 

Of all the curious faces looking in, Cinder Block’s was the voice that cut through the air first. “Fer Celestia's sake, haven't we ponies put up with enough already? Nightmare Moon and Discord... and that Changeling invasion! And now us normal ponies have a bunch of half-dead zombies walking around causing trouble.”

“They’re not zombies!” Skritch shouted. Every murmur in the building stopped in the wake of his outburst. The weight of the silence pushed in on me. “They’re not zombies, they’re ponies. Do you have any idea how many of them there are? Or how many of them you’ve actually met? Octavia, Lyra Heartstrings, Bon Bon, Berry Punch, Carrot Top, Noteworthy? They’re all Taken, now.”

“Yeah, and who do they have to thank for that? Vinyl Scratch.” CInder Block slammed his tankard down with finality.

In the wake of his words, I choked. 

Skritch just sat and glowered at the larger pony, silent. Cinder Block grinned his triumph. But he was not quite finished. With a twisted grin, he turned around, eyes scanning the ponies gathered in the bar, all looking back at him, til he found the only pair of eyes that couldn’t meet his own. 

Mine.

“I wanna know what Ghost thinks. So how about it, what does the Ghost think of Vinyl Scratch? Helpless innocent? Martyr? You think she’s still out there, pining after her lost life?”

I lifted my head slowly. Eyes watched me, as they used to. Only now, their eyes were not welcome. I gritted my teeth and brushed my lank grey mane aside as I said slowly, clearly, in a whisper everypony could hear:

“Vinyl Scratch was weak. She let herself and her friends – Octavia – down. She failed, and she deserved what she got.”

In the silence that followed my hoarse words, I stood up from the corner booth I’d hidden in and padded up to the bar counter. I kept my empty eyes down, head low. I hid behind my colourless mane, once so full of vivid spirit. Of course they’d never recognize me. I was small already, but under the wary gazes of the other patrons, I felt like a foal. I placed a few worn bits of the counter with a soft touch and turned for the door. Cherry Cup looked at the golden coins on her polished counter numbly. “But you never bought anything…”

They all watched me leave in the silence. When I reached the door, I took a steadying breath of the brisk night air and stood still for myself. Then, as I took the final step out of the bar, I shot back over my shoulder:

“Cinder Block is right; Vinyl Scratch is dead.”


*****


Ponyville evenings were one of the reasons I decided to move here years ago. They were so quiet and calm, I could listen; really listen to myself. I heard thoughts I never knew I’d thought before, thoughts the City had drowned out: thoughts of settling down, making a place my own, making a family. I’d thought about somepony else for the first time in my life, and I’d been happy. She’d been happy. 

Then I ruined everything; I drowned it all out with music. With Songs.

You were weak.

My eyes snapped open as I snorted. I was in an alley between two houses, I don’t know whose. Across the dirt street were three of the shabbier buildings in town. One was a dormitory of sorts, for wayponies and the like, the other was a shed filled with building materials next to the bare foundations of the house they were intended for, and the last was a bar. Cherry’s Cup, specifically. On this edge of town, nothing existed past them but fields all the way to the Whitetail Woods, and nopony cared a whit. Around me, the midnight air chilled everything to silence, leaving the world in peace.

Me though, I was arguing within the confines of my own mind.

Leave me alone, at least tonight.

You don’t deserve that and you know it.

I looked up into the few lights burning on this edge of town, so near the place I had called home and yet further than life from death itself. I could not return to what I had taken for granted, and so I was left with this; the darkness, the quiet and my memories. 

I can’t stand being alone with my thoughts. Because there in the silence and the shadows, Her voice still lives to mock me.

You can never be free from your crimes. They’ll follow you til the day you finally give up and just stop breathing.

Get out of my head, Angel. I killed you. I filled your body with metal and dropped a building on your withered corpse. You’re dead.

Need I remind you, Scratch, so are you.

It was a few hours before I saw any movement at the bar. I think it was around midnight when the door burst open and the pegasus story-teller finally stumbled his way out. I regarded him in the dark, my grey eyes tracking him as he wearily stumbled his way towards the dormitory hall. He wasn’t drunk, I could see that. He wasn’t smiling inanely or falling over himself. He just looked sad. Slightly angry. Even from across the street, I could feel a low hum in the air. Now that he was alone, I could almost hear his Song already.

It looked like I’d get to talk to him tonight after all.

He didn’t see me approaching in the dark. He’d already reached the door by the time I made my way to his side, and he never saw then. It’s difficult to notice a pony that’s missing the essence of themselves. I watched him as he raised a hoof slowly to the door before giving a dismal sigh and headbutting it instead. He lay there for a moment, as if in thought. I decided to intervene.

“You’re Taken.”

“G-gahh!” He jumped about four feet to the left, and I heard a very loud screech in the back of my mind, like a broken reed in a saxophone. I ignored it and watched Moon Skritch as he gasped for his breath. I took in as much information about him as I could. A tan coat, messy black mane, dark eyes that definitely had seen some things, but were still young and naïve. Ruffled feathers and a bitter twist to his mouth that spoke more of previous pain than mere annoyance. He was young and smart and angry, and thus I judged him. By the time my eyes finally locked with his, he had judged me too.

I don’t know what he saw, but I imagine his eyes raking the form of a small thin unicorn, seeing her bone-white coat and strengthless ashen mane, her stony eyes and sagging shoulders. He probably took me for a beggar or lost child, even though I was actually years his senior.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing sneaking up on ponies in the dark?!” he blurted. Then, he heard what I had said, “And what in Equestria are you talking about?”

I cocked my head to the side, flashing him a wan smile, “I heard you in the bar over there, heard your story. You said you had a personal stake in the situation. Something else I noticed; your left foreleg.”  

He instinctively pulled his leg back, hiding it, but I’d already seen the scar there. I said it again.

“You’re Taken, aren’t you?”

His eyes trailed over me again. I felt like squirming away, but I didn’t. His eyes lingered on my neck for a moment, and I couldn’t help but reflexively raise a hoof to cover the round puckered scar visible there. But he’d seen it, and suddenly he found the others my thin fur only barely concealed. I heard a few fast chords of a song I didn’t want to hear. 

“You definitely are,” he muttered, watching me, weighing me up. “You’re a unicorn. A unicorn in Ponyville. From what I heard, that must make you-”

He froze. His eye widened. “You must be Vin-” 

In the blink of an eye, my hoof blocked his mouth and my eyes burned into his from inches away. “No,” I whispered, “She’s dead. If you want to live, then you’ll shut up right there.”

My voice wasn’t the same. It used to carry some force behind it, but now I just sounded…tired. It was at the same time hopelessly pathetic and almost spine-chilling. He stopped trembling as I said it and stared back. Then he raised a hoof and touched it to mine. He didn’t push it away; he was inspecting it.

I pulled back, feeling sullied. 

“I’m not one of you, “He said slowly, but not unkindly, “This scar on my leg was given to me by one that is. My best friend, a guitarist from Cloudsdale. He tried to talk one of those Soul Taps into me, but I rejected it. He wouldn’t accept that. I was lucky to get away in one piece.” He turned the foreleg in question towards me, baring the old, mostly healed bite mark standing out from his fur. “I’m here to find him.”

“Why.” I said, dry, “You said it yourself, the Taken cannot be restored.”

“Can’t they?” He finally shot me a genuine, daring smile, one that nearly broke my heart. “I heard you nearly had it right yourself. I also hear they’ve finished your work for you in Canterlot. I will find him and take him there. It’s all I have left to do.”

“A cure?” 

Hope. a spark in my heart I refused to let smolder. This was a pipe dream, hopeless. I hardened my heart. 

“If it is, then Princess Luna is really good at pretense,” Skritch replied, “I can’t wait out my friend's death. I’m going to help him. I would think you have ponies you’d want to help too.” He reached forward and touched my hoof, then in a cold, almost tangible wave, I felt him. His sympathy. his Song.

I recoiled, trying to rub his presence off me, make myself free of it, but I couldn’t. He didn’t know it, but he’d let me in. I heard a cheerful melody played in a pair of guitars, an improvised tune to bring joy to the heart. He felt something for me, and I learned everything about him. I heard his Song, and so did She.

He’s got a really strong heart. He’ll make a fine Song.

“No!” I grunted and pulled my hooves into myself, forcing Her out.

He dropped down and stepped up to me, but stopped, “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you!” He thought he was the cause of my pain. If anything I was going to hurt him.

“I-I hear it…” I stuttered, eyes clenching. “Celestia help me, I hear it.”

“H-hear what?” He asked. He crouched in front of me, looking up into my face. My eyes cracked open to see him, then more when I saw the look of concern on his features. He didn’t know what to do. He knew my crimes, but he also saw a weak filly hiding in the dark, somepony who needed his help. I breathed a shaky breath and said;

“You.”

His eyes widened at that, and I knew he understood. “And…And what does it sound like?”

I looked into his eyes, and for the first time in months, I felt a modicum of comfort. I held back a tear as I whispered, “It sounds... kind.”

We were silent for a long time.

I heard singing break with light across the street. I darted my eyes to Cherry’s bar, and saw Cinder Block stumble out, roaring drunk. He was tumbling in our direction, and I heard a discordant noise in the back of my head.

I lurched back from Moon Skritch and trotted into the shadows, “I-I have to go!”

“Where to?!”

His call stopped me in my tracks. I looked back at him, not understanding. “The further away from me you are, the safer you’ll be. I won’t risk anypony.”

He stepped forward, resolute, and asked boldly, “And what about Vinyl Scratch, where is she running to? Who is she running to? She deserves your care too.”

Hadn’t he heard me earlier? “I told you. Vinyl Scratch is dead.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, “She might be, but you aren’t. Will you let what’s left waste away?”

What was left of her. What was left of me. His words echoed around in my head, a far more welcome voice in my thoughts. A cure. Hope. I needed that hope, that purpose. I felt the spark take root in my heart. I turned back to Moon Skritch, one more question on my lips.

“You spoke in the bar about how that first filly got into Cloudsdale. Do you know how Angel did it? How she got the Taps out?”

“Angel?” He asked, blank. Then he remembered, “Angel, that’s what you called the mare who Turned you, isn’t it? You think she was the first? She doesn’t even count. No, the first was some filly from Canterlot, more than a decade ago.”

Smart boy…

More than a decade…? I knew Angel had been Turned six months ago, and in that time she had rampaged from town to town, Turning over a score of ponies, who went on to either Turn others or serve her whims. If she could do that in four months, what could another do in ten years?

He was right. I spoke again, putting steel into my voice this time. “I need to go.”

He swallowed, then asked, “Where are you going?”

I felt the fortitude grow in my chest. I couldn’t stay here. For the ponies around me, I had to keep away from them, or risk letting Her hear their hearts singing. For Skritch, I had to leave before She acted on what She had heard. For myself, I had to leave just to stop from wasting away, and maybe, just maybe, stand a chance of saving what was left. I uttered a final word as I faded, a gray ghost against the darkness of the night,

“Canterlot.”
	
> What I've Done
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"When I awoke, I awoke to the soft, calmest trill of a violin, a single note I could swear came from just beyond my window. I opened my eyes and saw the beautiful sunshine through my faded mane and smiled, drawing a deep breath in peace. And the music stopped."


*****


I rested well that night.

For the first time in months, the empty pit in my stomach was filled with relief; relief of no longer existing in this limbo, this lack-of-purpose that defined me. So where I’d gone to sleep trembling in my dark corner of an abandoned basement, a thousand thoughts rushing through my head faster than I could understand them, I woke to a beautiful golden sunrise and a peaceful, voiceless silence. 

I finally knew what I had to do.

Ponyville had been Vinyl Scratch’s home, her place of safety. She had known nearly every pony across town and had been a well-loved member of society. One of the more famous denizens, she had brought quite a lot of fame to the previously small village. What with her and Octavia, and of course the Elements of Harmony, Ponyville had become a boom town in mere months, despite the disasters that kept blowing things up. Ponies like being where things are happening, so they still came. 

That’s where the side of town I lived in came from. Ponies like Cinder Block and his team of workponies were drafted in to build houses for far richer, far dumber ponies, and others like Cherry Cup followed to support them. It hadn’t taken three months for the town to double in size after the Nightmare Moon incident, and that was five years ago. 

The building under whose foundation I’d made my home was one of these new boom projects. It was also abandoned, the rich Prince who’d commissioned it having decided he’d rather not live in the same town as the seamstress who’d painted a target on his well-groomed ass. Now it was mine. Or, had been.

As I looked about the damp walls of the grotto under the floor where I lived, I knew I wouldn’t come here again. Something said last night outside the dormitory sparked a little something in my chest. Hope. Whether I denied it or not wouldn’t change the fact: I was ever a fighter, and I couldn’t just give up without letting go of everything that made me who I was. Even more than that, I told myself, if I didn’t leave town now, other ponies were in danger. Ponies like Cherry Cup and Moon Skritch, whom I’d spent time with or gotten to know; their Songs would call to me sometimes, along with the Voice in my head, prompting me to give in, attack them. That animalistic need to take from somepony else what was Taken from you. 

Yes, it was time to leave Ponyville.

I looked to my possessions. All I really had to my name was a pouch of bits, coins donated by sympathetic ponies assuming I was a beggar, a small emerald on a silver chain, a gift from a special pony long ago, and an old but well cared-for violin. 

Why the violin? I ask myself that every day. I had seconds to save a few possessions before my world and my life ended that night, and I had saved these two things.  The necklace had been within the violin case, and in the delirium that had ruled me, that instrument was the only thing I cared about. Everything else but that reminder was already lost to me. 

The violin wasn’t even mine. 

Weeks after my old home was scattered across the neighbourhood, I’d found myself in this hole, clutching the violin case like a life preserver and crying into its scuffed, felt surface. Four hours after that, I was outside a window at the clinic, bawling as I tried to play a song I no longer had.

I don’t really know why I did that. Octavia heard me, I know now, she said so in her radio recording. To know that it brought her some measure of peace was good, but I knew then that I had to abandon any hope of seeing her again. Still, when nights grew too long or the Voice too loud, I’d gone there, to her window, and tried to play. A lost chord in the dark night, haunting her.

I couldn’t abandon her. Come to think of it, that was probably the only reason I was still alive. But maybe if I could find a way to reverse the damage I’d done, maybe I could repair everything, make it like it was again. Maybe Vinyl Scratch and Octavia Philharmonica could-

No. 

I looked at the necklace, that other reminder of happier times. I know better than to wish for the impossible. Octavia blames herself, and thats the only reason she hasn’t learned to hate me. I can’t expect her forgiveness. If I can reverse what I have done, at least then I can try to forgive myself.


*****


An elderly mare opened the door. She looked down at me through rheumy eyes in surprise as she asked, “My dear, how can I help you today?”

She had that compassionate look in her eye, the same way fillies look at little birds with broken wings. I can’t say I appreciated it. Instead, I nodded curtly, raising my hoof. “I just wanted to leave something for Moon Skritch, if he’s here. If he’s still sleeping that’s okay, but-”

‘Oh my,” she started, looking at me differently now, “I never knew  that young pegasus worked with the likes of...Um, that is to say, he never arrived last night. Though now I fear he got himself drunk at that dingy bar down the street. Maybe you should check there?”

I froze, my hoof still halfway to hers, the necklace draped over it. Her eyes found it, though, and sparkled. “I’d be happy to hold onto that for him though.”

I snatched it back, glaring. I sat there on the doorstep and looked at it contemplatively. I’d meant to thank him. He’d been so kind, despite his own problems. He hadn’t said anything untrue, and had tried to help me. I’d meant to thank him…

“If you’ve no further business, dear…”

But maybe it’d be best if I just left.

The road out of Ponyville was excellently maintained, and worn smooth by many hooves rather than rutted by wagon tracks. The train line handled all heavy goods and most passengers anyway; the only ponies who used the roads were traditionalists, those walking for the fun of it or madponies (all one and the same in my opinion) and of course those who couldn't afford the train fare. That would be me. 

The sun was blinding. It was already half-way through the morning, and the high orb beat down an incessant heat through my thin coat and mane. Looking down, away, or even closing my eyes didn’t help; they were always sensitive, and even more so lately. Too much time in the sun would give me a headache, and the Voice always followed pain. Today though, today was far too important. Today I said my overdue goodbyes. 

I watched my hooves listlessly kick over the white pebbles in the dirt, not daring to look up as I walked between two huge willow trees. I hadn’t dared come here before. Two weeks ago, I had gone to the clinic in the early morning, the violin across my back, tears in my eyes, only to see the window I played beneath closed. Octavia never closed her window. I was terrified. My fears were groundless, luckily. Octavia had been deemed healthy, discharged. She had moved into a new home, out in the quieter countryside. It hadn’t taken me minutes to find out where it was.

I looked up and opened my eyes wide, burning the picture into my mind. On a small hill, surrounded by low well-tended shrubs and beside a small stream, sat a golden-thatched cottage, new built and looking fresher than a painting on the easel. I looked through the hanging boughs around me and sighed. I pulled the violin case from my back and opened it in front of me. I sat there, looking at it, thinking. I’d played songs for her outside her window at the clinic. Would she hear the song here and think of our happy memories, or be reminded only of the pain I put her through? I reached hesitantly for the worn bow, only to snatch my hoof back. This violin, it wasn’t mine. It never was. 

It was, and always will be, Octavia’s.

I closed the case and drew it back up to my shoulders. With one last glance at the quiet peaceful cottage, I turned around and walked away. I almost thought I heard a snatch of cello playing from behind me as I left.


*****


My legs weren’t as strong as they used to be. Walking was a task after only two miles, torture after ten. I was then breasting a hill twenty miles east of Ponyville. 

My progress was slow; it was afternoon , and the sun glanced off the clouds far to the north. Cloudsdale, the only city visible from pretty much everywhere in Equestria. Around me, the tall oaks and aspens of the Whitetail Woods. Beneath me, the same white pebbles that covered every inch of the road behind me.

Ahead of me, though, was my problem. A black-and-white tail  and blue wings, walking along the path. I was hoping the pegasus wouldn’t see me, but it was inevitable.

With a sigh, I lowered my head and kept on walking. Just my luck he paused where the path narrowed. He stopped when I passed him, looking up in surprise, “Oh, sorry I didn’t... Hey, you okay?”

I huffed and stepped further away from him, pushing an annoying branch out of the way with a hoof. The equally annoying pegasus gave me a curious look as I did, “Uhh, why don’t you just use magic to push that out of the way?”

“Why are you walking down here when you have wings?” I snapped back, finally getting free and moving on. He wouldn’t know, but magic, something I had relied on, perfected for my life, my job, my talent... as Skritch had said; it had slowly drained away, and now I was left with nothing. 

“Well it’s so pretty this time of year, I figured I’d enjoy the scenery.” He said, watching me amusedly, “I’ve just come groundside recently you see, visiting family. You don’t get flowers in Cloudsdale that much.”

Cloudsdale, huh?  I rolled my eyes at him, “Getting excited over a flower is something even pegasi get over in their foalhood, isn’t it?”

He shrugged and stopped smiling, walking at my pace. “Maybe. But I say find joy where you can, when you can. After everything that’s happened lately, its the best we can do to enjoy the little things.”

We were quiet for a while. His words had caught me off guard. Not many ponies I knew could be both happy and realistic, and it left me at somewhat of a loss. This colt was quite young, yet something told me he knew something of the world. That made me curious. 

“You must have an interesting outlook to see things like that. I wonder if there’s more to it.”

He gave me a sideways glance, curious himself, and snorted. For a second I thought he’d recognized the scar on my neck for what it was, but then his smile blossomed as he cantered off up the road and grabbed some poor clump of weedy flowers in his teeth. He galloped his way back and dropped the rough bouquet at my hooves and nodded at me, big blue eyes sparkling, “They aren't much, but they’re a gift. Try to enjoy them, alright? If you’re stopping at Hoofington, ask for Chasing Haze at the town clinic. I’ll see if I can help you out.”

And with that, he took off. Great wings flared, the strange pony disappeared up through the trees. Only one thought could make itself heard in the silence he left behind.

He’s crazy.

Still. I looked down at the vibrant field-flowers. I poked them experimentally with a hoof before I realized I looked every bit as silly as that pegasus had a moment before. I smiled a little at that. 

...they’re a gift…

They were some of the sweetest flowers I’d tasted in months. 

As I sat there with petals hanging out of my mouth, wondering just what was happening to me to make me so susceptible to gestures of random strangers, I remembered his words again. I looked up at the sun lowering in the sky behind me, then forward at the approaching twilight. The Hoofington Clinic, did he say?

I got up and started moving again. Maybe that Cloudsdale pegasus could help me after all.
> Runaway 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I remained still, frozen, like a rabbit under the glare of a wolf, unaware of all else but the climbing music, but then it changed. The bass leveled out, and the treble rose higher and higher. Suddenly the bass dropped, blowing away my self-control, even under the screeching accompaniment of a pack of violins.”


*****


I would like to think that Hoofington is what Ponyville was like six years ago, before the fame drew the celebrities and monsters and crowds. The peaceful town was nestled between two hills; the main road passing up between rows of terraced cottages thatched golden and washed white. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I did not belong somewhere so peaceful, or that my very presence was the reason I saw not a pony in the streets.

Ponies are, by nature, social creatures; they seek out the companionship, validation, and affection of others. Ponies can die of loneliness as easy as of starvation, so walking into what should have been a happy town like this and meeting not a soul in the streets was… wrong. Of course, I’d forgotten what had happened those months ago in this very town.

Bon Bon.

My old friend from Ponyville had been returning home after her sweetshop’s grand unveiling in Canterlot, brimming with joy and glowing with victory. She’d sent a note express to Ponyville, exclaiming that she would be back early to celebrate with her friends, and of course, especially Lyra. The mint unicorn had gone into a flat spin preparing for her marefriend’s return, planning a huge ‘welcome home’ bash. I wasn’t really aware of it at the time. I was in my basement, a Soul Tap on my table and another tearing into my body, ignoring the fact that Octavia had just left me. I don’t remember much of that time, only waking up that afternoon with a horrible sense of foreboding and major blood-loss.

I heard a buzzing noise in the air. I flicked my ears to shake it.

I tried to warn Octavia too late. Bon Bon never made it home. She’d be found by Lyra two days later in Hoofington, one of the stops between Canterlot and Ponyville, beaten and bloodied and robbed. The pair sent one letter home, and were not heard of again until it was too late. Both of them are alive, though, in Ponyville. The shock of it to this small town must have been enough to cow the ponies living here, especially when they heard what had actually happened.

I frowned. That buzzing wasn’t going away. It was getting louder, too annoying, and yet...compelling.

I tried to stay inconspicuous among the houses, but one pony walking through the dust is hard to miss. I heard windows and doors opening. Then I heard them swing quietly shut, and for once, I was happy that I was so intrinsically forgettable.

That damn buzzing noise was plain loud now. I turned this way and that, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Eventually, I found it. 

Hoofington Clinic.

It was no different to the one in Ponyville. Same muted colours, same blocky layout. I swear I could almost recognise one of the windows. What did surprise me, though, was the blue pegasus at the door, sitting patiently. Almost like he was waiting for me. 

I nodded to him, my ears swiveled low against the noise. He nodded back with a sad smile. He seemed unaffected.

“Hey, stranger. Thought you weren’t coming.”

“I’m not exactly built for long distance,” I muttered. Behind Chasing Haze, in the lobby, I could see busy nurses bustling from desk to room, pushing white carts, carrying white equipment, counting bleached-white bottles of white pills. The only variation were the drab grey curtains. 

“My sister’s inside,” Chasing said. 

I flinched at his detached, resigned tone. “Your sister’s a nurse?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he turned and pushed open the door and gestured me to follow him into the pale building. Amid the white-clad nurses and colourless furniture, I looked right at home. We walked to the end of the hall, up a flight of stairs to the second level. I shook my head violently, trying to dislodge the humming now all around me. I nearly fell down the steps then. Chasing turned and looked at me carefully.

“You alright?”

“I’m...fine. Can’t you hear that?”

He looked me over one more time, then shook his head and kept walking. Something was… off. Chasing Haze kept walking, nodding familiarly to the odd passing nurse, answering their nervous questions as they shot glances my way. It was clear from the way they treated each other that Chasing Haze had been here before, often. To see his sister. So why did he lie?

“She’s right in here.” He said softly, nosing open a featureless door. Inside was dark, heavy. The buzzing intensified. Chasing Haze watched me intently now, waiting. I swallowed. I should have just left. I should have left this strange pegasus to his vigil, but...something kept me there. The door, that darkness; the buzzing was forming something there, a timbre, a voice, plaintive, seeking, lost.

I walked in.

It was lighter inside than it seemed. The thin curtains were drawn over the little window, throwing swirling motes of lost light across the room, to fall idly by the single bedside, and the still dark form lying there.

The buzzing dissolved into the clicks of a Geiger Counter as I saw her. 

Her coat was ashen grey, stripped away in places, leaving bare, blackened skin, leathery, dry. Her wings tucked around her, featherless. Her body was pitted with angry red scars, barely healed. Her legs had not healed at all. Deep raw holes burrowed into her limbs, weeping clear liquid across her long-ruined sheets. One foreleg shifted, and I saw specks of light right through on gaping wound in her hoof. I nearly gagged. Her breathing, deathly shallow, dry, wheezing. From the corner of her mouth, something green seeped into the thin fur of her cheek. I felt ill.

I took a step closer. 

Then another. 

Then I was standing right over her thin, trembling body, moving only barely to indicate her being alive. Her wounds grinned at me, taunting me with the twisted story they told amidst the aching clicks and whispers.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? 

On her flank, I noticed she had no cutie mark. I felt like screaming. 

Chasing Haze stood next to me, looking down sadly at his sister’s body. “Her name is Paladin Haze.” He chuckled thinly, “Yeah, pretentious name, isn’t it? My father always said it suited her though. Best flier in the family. She joined the Equestrian guards’ Long Patrol right after the Canterlot invasion. Three weeks later, we found her like this, nearly dead in the woods.”

What was wrong with this colt? I could see her wounds left untended, open. She must be in so much pain...

She can’t feel a thing. Her Song is gone, just like yours will be.

The clicking blended into a squeal in my brain.

“How can you leave her like this?!” I demanded sharply, stepping back as if I’d been stung.

“What more can we do?!” His tone fell into bitterness, impotence. “Here she is, in hospital, the ONLY hospital that has cared for Taken before. We...we did the best we could for her. We don’t know when she was attacked or why those crazy zombies did it. All we can tell is that she isn’t getting better, and then yesterday...that.” He pointed to the ruined mare’s flank, bare and blank. “Now, I know she isn’t coming back.”

We aren’t zombies.

...not yet. 

I pointed at the gaping wounds along her legs, seeping fluids across the sheets, “How can you say that when…” Then I saw his expression. A little lost, one eyebrow raised, questioning. I realized too late. “You can’t see…” 

His eyes hardened. He knew. He turned and slowly walked out of the dark room, back into the glaring hallway. He left me with her, but as I now knew, he didn’t really believe she was there at all. So far as I could tell, she may not have been. 

I followed him out. The buzzing reached crescendo, calling to me, begging. But I couldn’t look anymore. 

I didn’t know where he was going, but it was the same way I was headed. Down. Out. Away. We pressed past the exit together, turned down the street together. It was then I realized he really was following me. 

“Would you mind coming with me, Miss Scratch?” he asked, toneless.

Or leading me. I sucked in a breath. My automatic reaction was to push him away, get his presence as far from me as possible. That name no longer counted. I could feel him somehow looming over me, intimidating me, even though he walked well out of reach. My horn trilled as I tried to summon force no longer there. Chasing Haze, watching me, snorted, something clarified in his mind. 

“Come on.”

I followed. 

Hoofington ended abruptly, pushed up against the border of the Whitetail woods. I absently noted we were walking towards Ponyville from the opposite side. The trees looked on apathetically as I passed, still following the black-and-white tail before me. Why, I couldn’t tell you. Something beyond my comprehension was driving my steps in the silence around me.

Then I realized. Chasing Haze was Songless. 

Eventually he slowed down. We were well amongst the trees, hidden from all sides. Chasing glanced at me askance, a thoughtful look in his eye. “You’ve finally caught on, haven’t you? You can’t Take me.”

“I wouldn’t. I couldn’t!” I stepped away from him, denying with every step. 

“Is that what you told Octavia when you led her down to her doom?”

I didn’t reply. 

“You have to understand why I’m doing this,” he continued sadly. “I know I’ve lost my sister. She was hurt beyond measure, even if she seems fine now. I have to protect others from her fate.”

“You couldn’t see her wounds…” I muttered, “So what? You gonna kill me in the woods? Eliminate the risk? I’d like to see you try.”

He stopped dead, eyes wide. “...If you could even think that of me...no, I’m here to help.”

“There is no help for us,” I growled, stepping back. “You have no idea what you’re talking about! You have never seen what the Taps can do, the feeling of their magic eating away at yours! You couldn’t even see what your own sister is going through!”

No whole pony can.  You’re broken. Broken and gifted. 

A curse is all I have, Angel, and a curse on you!

“Help you?” the pegasus sneered. “No, I mean help Equestria, by ridding it of you! You can get hidden away in whatever hole they’re hiding you, just so long as you can’t do to anypony else what your kind did to my sister! To me…”

“Oh? How you gonna stop me? Unicorn, remember?” I set my hooves foursquare. I was bluffing. I had no magic left in me, but at the very least, my horn was pretty pokey. “Back off.”

“Hah!” he laughed at my posturing. “You think I don’t know your magic’s gone? It was the first thing I noticed, you pushing that branch aside. Then the scar on your neck.” I raised my hoof instantly. “You see? It’s obvious if one knows what to look for, you’re one of the Taken. And the single most famous Taken pony in Equestria.” He stopped, levelling a look at me. “There’s a bounty on your head, you know.” 

“Octavia’s reward to anypony who…” I looked down at the dirt. I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t reason. There was no reasoning with him. He wasn’t wrong either, I realized. But he was Songless. Hopeless. He’d seen what could happen to him at any time, and had lost what he sought to protect anyway.

“You have no Song.”

He flinched back hearing my words, and in the moment of hesitation, I did the only thing I could. I turned and ran. 

The trees didn’t want me. They wanted wholesome things under their leaves. As I ran, an impulse was screaming at me to run for the Everfree. The place where the wild things lived, where being broken meant being right. My hooves beat the loam. 

Everfree!

I never even made it close. Wings beat the air behind me as I ground to a halt, but I could only see the blue eyes glaring, unblinking, from the shadows, tracking me.

Clicks and hisses filled the air and my mind. 

First came the lean jaw, curved, wicked fangs bared as the sound of loss escaped between them. Then the jagged twisted horn, warped by strange magic. The glowing eyes, the leathery, shiny skin, almost plates of chitin. Ears played back either side of a fin-like mane. Legs full of holes.

Before me stood a Changeling.

Chasing Haze met the earth behind me, wings spread to block my escape. He nodded to the Changeling before me. 

“As you asked, sir, here she is.”

I gaped. He would hunt down Taken ponies for a Changeling? A predator? No! I screamed myself hoarse, “What- How can you do this?!”

Suddenly, the hissing, clicking stopped. I vaguely heard the sound of trumpets. “Good work citizen. Princess Luna thanks your service,” the Changeling replied. I whipped back, stunned to silence. That voice was not that of the mindless monster. It was that of a Canterlot guard.

Chasing and I were looking at two different pictures. 

I was doomed. 

And then, in a split second, everything changed. Again. The air was filled with drums, my mind beaten into submission by the sheer force of will. A high, shrilling C note‏ strummed through the air, reverberating yet grating. As I buried my head in my forelegs, screaming, I saw the Changeling do the same. A shimmer coursed over it’s carapace, and Chasing Haze, unaffected til now, stared in abject horror. 

A grey blur lanced from the trees. Lights flashed, concealing the figure, and it’s speed made it untraceable. I saw the blur materialize again in front in me in the form of a slim waif of a mare, a unicorn all in grey from hooves to ears, buried horn-deep in the Changeling’s chest. 

The drums and guitars ceased. 

In the silence, I heard a thump behind me. I spun, snarling, ready to bolt, only to see Chasing Haze passed out on the leaf-litter. Through the trees I saw two more forms, the evening sun lighting the trees behind them, obscuring their figures. And a deep voice chuckled mirthlessly. 

“Looks like we’ve found another Spotter…”

The heat, the exertion, the music caught up to me, and the ground rose to meet me in a rush of darkness. 
> In Between
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“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. Then all was still.”


*****


They’ll call you out in the middle of the night…
                     Everfree, safety
Have to help, fix, heal...
                             Canterlot
       Judgement
Redemption
They don’t care, they want you dead, gone, out of their perfect little lives, they want you-
They don’t-
                             I don’t-
                        No one care’s about me. 
They want you dead

But I care about her.

“Hey now, easy does it...don’t move too fast, you could hurt yourself.”

My eyes fluttered open. Of my senses, sound returned first, a low creaking and high rustling of the forest trees, muffled movement and muted conversation. The sensation of leaves and twigs pushing into my skin came next, with a warm smell of loam, then the gentle touch of a hoof on my shoulder. 

“Are you okay, miss?”

My eyes finally focussed, and I found myself lying on my side beside a rocky overhang. Between me and a perfect view of the sky was the concerned face of a colt looking down at me. I blinked a few times. His pale eyes blinked back. Then he turned up and around, baring the side of his neck to me as he spoke. There I saw a rough scar against his warped grey coat, hiding under his unruly ash mane. 

“Tech, she’s awake.”

The conversation stopped. I heard hoofsteps coming in my direction and the colt above me stepped aside. I strained around to watch him, but I found myself staring into yet another dull slate-grey eye not a hooflength away.

“Hello there,” this other colt said soflty, “My name is Tech Beat. Are you okay? Can you stand?”

I nodded. The Earth Pony in front of me reached out a hoof to help me up. I hesitantly accepted. As he pulled me up, I noticed the welt around the inside of his upper leg, a scar. 

“Can you talk?”

“Y-yeah…” I muttered, shaking. I looked around me, trying to find out where I was. I didn’t recognize anything, only endless trees and hilly ground. We were a narrow defile that came to a head at the rockface now behind me. The first pony I had seen, a pegasus colt, had retreated to a tree on the left bank, and to the right I saw the slight unicorn mare from before, sitting still as stone over the black huddled body of her victim. I turned back quickly. 

The earth pony, Tech Beat, was watching me intently. “So...you wanna start, or should I?”

Start what? Introductions? He sat patiently, waiting, unmoving. Greeaat… I thought dully. What should I say? How do the Taken introduce themselves? I scolded myself for thinking that; they were ponies, not foreign creatures, just the same as me. But still...I had not spoken so much in the past months as I had in the last few days. I didn’t even remember when last I said my name.

“Uh...Hi.”

The Earth Pony laughed a deep dry laugh. In the wake of his chuckles he gave me a pleasant grin, saying, “Ah, I see you’re still a little disorientated: That would be my fault, so I apologize. My name is Tech Beat. My friend there is Riff Pick,” he pointed to the pegasus beside his tree, “and that magnificent lady over there,” he waved to the unicorn sitting statuesque over her changeling, “is Elderberry! Say hello Elderberry!”

Elderberry flicked an ear. 

Tech Beat grinned disarmingly, “She says hi.” 

I eyed him cautiously, then the other two. I couldn’t help but notice that despite the three’s casual appearance, they had me perfectly and inescapably trapped. Oh, and one of them just so happened to be standing over a dead body. I unconsciously curled inwards defensively, saying tersly, “I’d like a explanation of what’s going on...of what happened, and where I am, if you don’t mind.”

“Uhh, right…” Tech shuffled his hooves, “You, um, saw Elderberry take out that bug back there?”

I nodded. 

“Right,” He continued, “then you saw Berry’s Scatterlights, and heard my Quake?” 

I recalled my last memory before waking up. It was a chaotic mess, one which I couldn't quite piece back together, but I remembered overwhelming sensastions; the painful, deadening concussions that seemed to knock the wind from my lungs, the constant drilling pitch of strings, and the glimpse of Elderberry wrapped in neon light. I nodded.

“Wouldn’t have gone quite so all-out if we’d known you were there,” Tech continued apologetically, “We just meant to disrupt the Changeling, not you too.”

Disrupt? Well, they’d sure managed that. Tech Beat noticed my meaningful glance at the black shape beneath Elderberry, a shape that was undeniably more than a little dead. “Overkill, much? And what is it even doing here? Why can I even see it?”

Tech’s happy demeanour faltered, and for half a second Elderberry’s eyes flicked up to me, glaring anger. I flinched back from her as Tech said softly, “You’d probably do well not to interrupt Elderberry’s vigil.” I’d already made the resolution to stay the hell out of that unicorn’s way, so I nodded curtly before Tech continued, “As to why it’s here, I’m sure you know. Riff Pick felt a Turn happening, so we investigated. Lucky we did, too.”

“What makes you think I needed your help? I could have handled it...” I muttered, glowering. I’d never accept help from these ponies, or anypony. I could have escaped, I just got…

You were helpless and pathetic. Just roll over and give up already.

I blinked the Voice away quickly. When I looked again, Tech was watching me intently. My falter told him far more than I wanted it to. I cursed Angel yet again. Tech  spoke, “Don’t worry, there’s nothing you can have secret we haven’t already seen. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we aren’t quite whole either. But consider your…affliction, miss. Where Changelings go, Taken disappear.”

He smiled thinly at my shock.

“ Easy to feed on a pony no one remembers, after all.”


*****


I hadn’t answered Tech then. After a few more questions that I didn’t answer either, he sighed and left me be, neither of us any the wiser. But still, what he’d said rang through my head; the Changeling had been after me? It had nearly gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for the confusing fact that I had seen straight through its disguise. I was still in shock, but I was slowly discerning things about my situation. This glorified ditch we were hidden in showed signs of recent habitation; a dead cooking fire, cleared ground and a few chafe marks of trees where ropes may have been tied. It was all packed away now, in three sets of saddlebags in the centre of the clearing. Whoever these ponies were, they getting ready to leave. And I was just sitting here in their camp.

“Uh, hello again…”

I whirled around, too surprised even to growl at him. He flinched anyway. At first I thought it was Tech Beat, but on second glance, I noticed the grey wings.

“Sorry,” He smiled uncertainly, “My n-name’s Riff Pick.” He supplied. He waited a polite time, then continued, “Tech asked me to talk to you. I know how you must be feeling, so I’ll just answer any questions you have, and  hopefully learn more about you?”

I glared at him. Who did he think he was, coming up to me like a shrink? And what did he want to learn? I knew, better than I ever did before, that I had many demons. Hell, one of them wasn’t even a metaphor. No, I wasn’t going to talk to this pony, nor anypony. He saw the stubbornness in my eyes, and gave a disappointed huff. 

“I know who you are, by the way.” I spun towards him even before the last word left his mouth, anger flaring in my gut as my hoof whistled for his head. It took me a moment to realize I was roaring at thin air. 

“Or, at least who you used to be.” I spun again to see Riff Pick standing casually behind me, a sad smile on his face, “I don’t know what names you go by, now, but I do recognize that cutie mark.”

“It’s an eighth note,“ I spat, backing up, head low, “They’re pretty common, mister Quaver Ass.”

Riff looked back at his own cutie mark, A guitar pick surrounded by quavers. “Nice jab. But I also happen to know that a certain DJ was very defensive of her common cutie mark from an early age.” He chuckled at my flinch, “I read your biography. I...was somewhat of a fan, before all this.”

“I’m not that pony anymore.” I said, I was angry and confused and a little scared, and I wanted out. I shoved forward and past the pegasus. He simply stood aside and watched quietly as I trudged up the hill. Tech was sitting behind a tree there, and jumped up on seeing me, but sat back down grudgingly at Riff’s quick gesture. I tried not to think about it as I walked up to the tallest hummock and sat there heavily. I was so tired…

“Um, I know you don’t want to, but can you please talk to me? I...need to know if you’re safe. And right now I can’t tell, with how you’re acting.”

“And how is that?!” I spat, turning away. I hoped he’d leave me alone, but instead he shrugged and said plainly;

“Like a Feral.”

“Like a what?!” I shouted at him, before his words quite sank in. Suddenly I was wordless. 

“A Feral, you know, a Taken pony on the verge of Turning?” He snorted at me as I stared back blankly, “Geez, have you been living under a rock for two months?”

I thought back to my grotto under the floor of an abandoned house, but stayed silent. Riff’s eyes widened in realization, “Wait, have you ever even met another Taken before now?”

I hesitantly shook my head. 

“Oh...oh wow, I’m so sorry,” Riff whispered, looking away. “I had no idea, I thought a pony like you would have-”

“Like I said,” I interrupted, “I’m not that pony.”

Riff looked up again, then nodded, “Right. Sorry. I know...I know how much what has happened to us can change a pony. But, to catch you up; We Taken, like you, have felt Soul Taps. We’re broken, in the same way. I’ve seen what happens to a normal pony when they are Taken; they fade away, slowly or quickly, it depends, but eventually, they lose something vital, and from there it’s bad news. They get violent, confused, forgetful. Feral. Then they Turn.” He pointed at my flank, “They lose their cutie mark, and within hours, they’re gone completely.”

“Gone?” My thoughts went back to Chasing Haze’s sister, and her tragic condition.

“Vanished.” Riff clarified, “Never seen again. That, and the moment when a pony is first Taken? Those are Turning points. I’m kinda able to feel the ethereal reaction, like a rip-current in the air. Takes me straight to them. Like I’m following a Song.”

“Yeah…” I whispered, “I get that, at least.”

Riff nodded, sliding up to me. I barely noticed “That’s because, like me, You’re a Virtuoso. You feel ponies in terms of music, right? I heard Octavia’s radio show, I’ve heard what you did, said.” I nodded again, remembering the hazy nights I’d spent under the spell of the Soul Taps, hearing every Song around me, barely able to hold back from flooring the nearest pony and sucking their souls dry right there…

“You and I are Virtuosos, right? Tech Beat is a Viber; he feels everything in terms of vibrations in the ground, sometimes the air. Elderberry is Lucent; she sees everything in terms of light and glowing...you look confused?”

I was. I so very was; “You keep saying feeling ‘in terms of’, but what exactly are we ‘feeling’?”

Riff Pick opened his mouth to answer, but a different voice cut the air, high, and sharp. “Essence.”

I looked across the gulch to see Elderberry, still staring curiously at the body before her. She was speaking, “Soul? No. Magic? No. Identity, spirit, resolve, no, no, no! None of these, save that which binds them together.” She looked oddly pleased with herself. I stared back, confused.

“Forgive Berry,” Riff whispered, “She came perilously close to Turning. Drove her half mad. But she has a good heart. She’s also right. I...we think at least, what we’re feeling in other ponies that which the Taps take away from us, the thing binding magic to our souls. Break that link, and we lose, well, a lot of things. You your magic, for instance.”

What Riff was saying was making a peculiar amount of sense to me. As I thought about it, pieces slipped together in my mind, “It all comes down to magic in the end, huh?”

Riff nodded, fluffing his wings, “Yes, in a way. What you hear, or feel, or see in other ponies is a reflection of what you’re missing. It’s different for every Taken, of course.”

“You make it sound like a study subject,” I muttered, “You even have a little classification system and everything? Virtuoso? Viber? How’d you come up with this stuff?”

Riff shot me a look that spoke of pain, “There used to be many more Taken in these woods, you know. There was even talk of coming out into the public eye before the Canterlot Invasion three years ago. Of course, a lot of those Changelings ended up in these woods, and things just got worse from there...”

“Changelings…” my eyes widened. Changelings had killed them all. A secret war Equestria had never even heard happening right in it’s very heart.

“The Taken tried clearing the woods, but there seemed to be a Changeling for every Taken they lost. Of us three, only Elderberry was there at the time. Now, I think we’re the only Taken left in the whole of Whitetail.”

A part of me was screaming. This tale was huge and reeked of fiction, but somehow I knew it was true. I’d never thought, two months ago when another grey pegasus had visited me in my studio in Canterlot after a show, that the small toothed clockwork she gave me would be nothing more than a single thread of such a vast tapestry. A tapestry growing smaller by the day. 

“What did you lose?” I asked suddenly.

Riff gave me a questioning glance, to which i continued, “I lost my magic, what did you lose...besides your looks?” I added with a grin.

He smiled back, saying, “Hey, drab grey suits me just fine!” He sobered though as he added, “I can’t cloudwalk anymore.”

That jolted me. I was about to apologize for asking so roughly, but suddenly, a chill lanced under my skin. I trembled uncontrollably, just as Riff next to me flared his wings as the  terrible shock washed over him. Across from us, Elderberry howled.

Tech Beat dropped down the bank to the gully bed, and snapped up his saddlebag, “Riff? Where?”

“West,” I blinked, then said again, “West, from around Hoofington.”

“Wait, how did you-” Tech swallowed his question as Riff Pick rested a hoof on my shoulder and nodded.

“She’s right. Hoofington, north side of town.”

“That’s nearly four miles away…” Tech frowned.

Elderberry jumped down and snatched her bags from the leaf litter, “She lights the sky. She comes. Cat and Mouse.”

Elderberry leapt from the hollow like a dog off it’s leash, and Riff fluttered after, shouting, “I’ll keep her in sight!”

Tech pointed at Riff’s saddlebag as he tightened his own, “Grab that Scratch, we gotta move!”

“I stood bolt upright, the bag falling from my mouth, “Don’t call me that!” I hissed.

“Then what?” Tech growled back, “You kinda want a name to stay around.”

I was breathing hard, hooves planted. A name. I hadn’t needed a name for a very long time. I hadn’t felt worthy of my own, nor bothered to get a new one. The ponies at Cherrie’s bar had called me ‘Ghost’, but that felt off to me. I was no ghost. I needed something...more.

A name, a name for the Taken that I am.

It hit me suddenly, wrong and right and neither at the same time. A harsh reality rather than a decision. I looked Tech square in the eyes and said,

“Angel.”

As I said it, a bass rumble echoed up from beneath my hooves and throbbed outwards, numbing, strong, burning. Tech eyed me worriedly, then nodded. 

We ran through the forest, the light of the chase growing in our eyes, a small feral beast in our hearts howling after Elderberry in the distance as the beat of my hooves stopped the air dead around me. 

My name is Angel. 
> One Step Closer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The closing night brought back memories of that dream. The silence deafened me until I heard, or rather just barely felt, a light beat playing over and over again. It overlaid its own soundless rhythm, calming me. It almost made me smile before I realized that it wasn't what I’d hoped, but what I feared.”
Snkch - static
"This is a special announcement from K-Kolt Radio: we are interrupting our regular airing to keep you informed of a growing situation in the western Everfree district south of Canterlot..." 


*****


The ground shook, the trees trembled, the birds took flight, and Tech Beat stared at me, shocked to silence.

For half a second, I felt powerful. And then it was over. 

Time was so relative for that half a second that stretched on forever. No sooner had I said my new name, a power filled me, or at least the air around me, and I’d almost felt as if I had my magic back. But no sooner had I heard it, felt it, fallen into it, the sound around me ceased, and I fell to my knees, gasping.

Tech Beat watched me fall. He didn’t react at first, staring at me uncomprehendingly til the glassiness faded from his eyes. There, standing in between the thinning trees, we stared at each other, him in awe, me in confusion. 

“Well...that was something,” he breathed. 

I shook my head, backing up, “Wait, what wa-”

A scream cut the air in the distance. Tech flicked his head around, “We have to go.”

I fell in to his right as we continued charging through the trees. I felt a pit in my stomach, hollow, almost like I was sick, but different. I was distracted, though, when I felt a pulse in the ground beneath my hooves, in time with Tech’s hoofbeats. I noticed his scowl strengthen along with the Quake as we burst from the treeline and into view of the town. 

Elderberry stared up at the building before her. The tall, grey-faced building loomed near the treeline, small windows and a pair of small back doors shut against the forest. It took me a moment to realize, but I was staring at the back wall of the Hoofington Clinic.

“Berry,” hissed Tech, sliding to her side. “Where’s Riff? He was right behind you!”

“Trees,” Elderberry muttered. “Shadows and safety.”

Tech and I shared a look. Then both our gazes snapped to the building as a loud, soundless chattering filled the air. 

“Building,” Berry whispered. “Lights a traps.”

“Ugh, we don’t have time for this!” Tech struck a hoof to the ground. a shockwave rumbled off through the ground. I heard a scream on the other side of the building.

“The building’s evacuating,” I realized. “Whatever happened was big. The guard will be here in minutes.”

Tech took another half-step, raring to go, but cautious. “But...we need to go in, find this bug! We can all hear it! But we don’t know why yet!”

Where Changelings go, Taken disappear.

“There’s a Taken pony in there.” I stepped up to Tech’s side as he watched me. Looking at the featureless grey wall looming above us, I felt conviction growing in my breast. I stomped a hoof to the earth, and a terrible low bass line echoed out around me. 

“We need to go in now.”


*****


“We don’t know what we’re getting into...dammit, we need Riff for this!”

“It’s white halls and empty spaces inside. I think we’re good.”

Tech shot me a look and snorted. “I say we just wait a few more minutes. Then…”

“Looks like Elderberry disagrees with you.” I nodded at the other mare just a second before she kicked the left back door. Tech swore as she vanished within in a flash of neon light. 

Well then…

I walked up to the remaining door. The clicking from the building doubled. It wore on my mind, beating me down. For half a second, I started to turn away.

See how weak you are when it comes to a head? You’re a failure. 

I kept turning. I snarled, crouched low, and coiled my muscles. Tech was looking at me worriedly, but I grinned back at him. I felt the energy run through my limbs as the bassline rippled outwards again, silencing the Voice in my head.

How much power do you have over me now that I took your name away?

I bucked that door clean off of its hinges.

The buzzing trebled, but I didn’t let it beat me down. Instead, I spun and pushed it back with sheer force of will. I gritted my teeth and planted my hooves, focusing on nothing other than not giving in. 

You won’t beat me!

The Sound swelled around me, blocking everything else out. I drove it forward, pulling the sound into a tighter and tighter field, pushing it forward through the doorway. The sound was forceful, threatening in my ears. It was so constricted, I could see the hazy shimmer of it pulsing through the air. 

The clicking abruptly stopped.

I stood there, gasping as the energy fled down the hall, leaving me empty. In the silence, I heard Tech softly walk up beside me. 

“Well, that was really something.”

“What...did I just do?” I asked. 

“Whatever you did, it disorientates, confuses, and drains anything in your line of fire. And I’m pretty sure your trigger is Conviction.”

I pulled in a breath and stood tall. I chuckled dryly as I breathed out. Disorientates, confuses, and drains. Sounds like a normal Canterlot party. As to the ‘trigger’; he called it conviction, but I thought it much more amusing to think that I was beating down a monster with sheer stubbornness. 

“So what will you call it?” Tech asked, stepping up to the doorway. He kicked the doorstep, and a Quake trembled through the whole building. No sound was heard.

They’d all named their own Effect. Each was so different from the others that they couldn’t think of a blanket term. This Effect, this power that whole pony could hear or feel, or sense, was the remnant of what made us unique. If we chose, we could use it. Tech’s shook the world. Elderberry’s concealed her. Riff’s...Riff’s I didn’t know. But mine I knew all too well. The effect was one I’d used before, when I had the taps. I’d channeled it through the taps and controlled my friend’s minds as I hurt them. I knew what it was called.

“Warp.”

Tech nodded and his eyes hardened. “Okay then...Angel. Lets go.”

We stepped through the door into the dark service door of the hospital. 

Inside, the air was heavy, dark, even though the walls were just as white as they were in the wards above. I felt like I was walking through fog while being able to see perfectly. I felt like I was breathing water.

“Angel, you’ve been in here before, haven’t you?” Tech watched me as he whispered through the heavy air. 

“This is the reception, storage and consulting floor. The next two up are wards. The top on, I don’t know,” I answered, brushing past the true meaning of his question. “The Taken here was on the second floor in her own room, blacked out so it’ll easy to spot.”

Tech raised a brow at me but set off at a canter. I followed close on his tail. The lower passages led us up to the self-medication desk of the pharmacy. As we slipped over the counter, I took in the damage in the flickering of the broken lights. Shelves all around the central pharmacy were knocked over, pills and bottles strewn all about the floor. A torn shred of a lab coat hung off one of the canted wall units, ripped off on a nail just below a black scorch mark. 

“This place is a wreck,” I muttered, cautiously stepping across the dangerous floor. Hooves on lots of little round things tends to end badly for any pony. 

“I’m pretty sure there’s nopony on this level. They’d have heard us by now if they were hiding, and I don’t see any bodies.” Tech trailed along the edge of the room.

“Bodies?” I hissed. “It’s just one changeling! You think it would kill ponies?”

He shrugged as he jumped over a shelf. “It’s happened before.”

A rattle sounded above our heads, and we both stopped, looking up. 

“I guess we’re going up,” I muttered. I tracked the muted sound through the thick concrete above me. A light flickered to my left. My eyes barely caught the black blur that shot past in that momentary shadow.

I jumped back, turning, growling, only to lose my footing on a scattering of pills across the floor. I crashed down on a shelf.  I found it ironic that painkillers could hurt me so much. 

“Angel, what was that about?” Tech questioned, trotting up to me. He nearly slipped himself on the treacherous ground. “Oh, right…”

“Doesn’t matter!” I snarled, getting up. “Over there by the stairwell. I saw something!”

Tech’s face fell into a stony glare. I could feel the coldness radiating from him. “Good eye. Let’s go.”

“No, what about-” But he was gone. How he got to and up the stairwell that quickly was beyond me. Instead, I focused on the muted thud on the floor directly above me. There was no way that was Tech. I could feel the shudder of his Quake from where it emanated on the other side of the floor. Tech had whatever it was covered, I reasoned. I was free to investigate this second unknown. Whatever it was, I could take it. 

I made for the other stairwell on the other side of the room.

The pharmacy was just to the left of the main atrium. through the glass doors, I could see the edge of the exit, and the few remaining ponies moving there in the evening light. In a few more minutes it would be full night, then, I imagined, we would be at a disadvantage. I hurried up the stairs.

The first floor wards were in relatively good condition. The lower pharmacy had probably been the escape route for most ponies in the building and most likely suffered the worst of a stampede, whereas this level was nearly untouched. There were still a few pieces of equipment knocked over, scattered papers, and an empty bed here and there along the wall, still mussed from when their occupants had been rescued. My examination was cut short by a quiet shuffling in the first ward off the hall. 

I snapped to attention. The doorway was only a few lengths away, leading to the central open recovery ward. the soft sound ceased as I took a step forward. I heard a quiet, constant tick.

I stood against the wall, preparing to move. Above me, I heard a sudden crash. To my left, across the ward, a shout, and behind me a tap-tap sound. Under the sudden assault of noise in the silence, I built up my courage and jumped. I landed foursquare in the entrance. All the beds were empty, but the tick-ticking increased. I lowered my head as a pressure wave built behind me. I reared and slammed my hooves down, and the sonic blast careened across the room. As the haze of the wave swept through, a few loose chart sheets flew into the air, and yet not a single sound was heard. But a voice ahead of me died in mid scream. The ticking to my left chattered on. 

The bunk nearest me was overturned. I peaked around it, seeking that noise. There, huddled under a blanket. It was a small, furless, maneless body and two big blue eyes staring back at me. I snarled before I realized what I was looking at. 

A little filly, scared out of her wits, hooked up to a heart monitor that was broadcasting her terror. Her chart, lopsidedly dropped on the ground before me, read in bold letters ‘BURN RECOVERY’. Her eyes, ice blue and wide, stared up at me unseeing. My heart clenched. 

My Warp gone, the voice at the other end of the ward found it’s owner. A groan wound up from the other entrance, and a few flashes of light. 

I squinted and leaned up to look at the pony in question. “...Elderberry?”

A sudden hissing and clicking, the rattling of a last breath and the scent of petals drying in the dark surrounded me. For half a second, I knew Fear. Then it was sucked out of me. 

The world greyed as I turned, and I felt a touch on my back, then my shoulder. All I could feel was a weight over me, a lost voice shouting, screaming, begging for something. Hungry and lost and cold, then the world was purple. 

A bright neon purple that shifted quickly to red through orange, yellow, then green. The presence over me was knocked aside with a scream, and I pulled myself back together in the reprieve. As fragile as I felt, I called up my will and pushed. 

The flashing light and the hissing scream in my ears ended. 

I shook my head to rid myself of the disorientating effects of the light and looked about. Elderberry stood against the far wall beside the entrance, looking out. In the hall beyond, the twisted shadow of my assailant disappeared the way I had come. A sharp sound of a high guitar riff cut back from the opposite direction, and above us, the hard rumble of a Quake shook small pieces of the ceiling boards down. Tech. 

I turned back and huddled the filly behind her bed. I pulled the barricade aside and reached in to nuzzle her, but she flinched back with a squeak. Of course, she was blind. “Hey, it’s okay, we’re friends. Please, let us help you?”

For a second, the only sound was the tick of the heartbeat monitor. Then, softly, “O-okay…”

I bent my neck to her, trying to help the little one up, but I was hurriedly pushed aside. I was surprised to see, in my place, a stony-faced Elderberry. 

The lean unicorn lowered her head, muttering soft sweet nothings I would never credit coming from her mouth as she nudged the bare-skinned foal to her shaky legs, then lifted the youngster to her back. Shivering, the filly nestled down into Elderberry’s thin grey coat as the lithe mare turned back to me. 

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you gonna be okay carrying her?”

“The spark of the future,” she intoned. “My life for hers.”

Riiiiighty then. I looked around, trying to relocate my shocked senses. Noises were beginning to filter up from below; soft anxious voices calling and an infernal buzzing click. The changeling was still stalking us. One of many sounds ceased suddenly, and I looked over to see Elderberry casually crush the heart monitor’s display into silence. 

That wasn’t disturbing at all.

The guitar was playing again, to my left, away from the voices. I recognized the tune; an old farming song called ‘Come Hither Sweet Children’, one of those sickeningly sweet, happy songs they teach youngsters in kindergarten. It was also very clearly Riff Pick. 

That song was clearly a message. I turned left, up the hallway. 

Elderberry fell in behind me as I trotted up the hall, flanked either side by wards, now empty. Or maybe not? Either way, when the changeling was...handled, they would be safe. That meant following Riff for now. We had to protect the filly. I glanced back every now and again, not missing the way Elderberry checked even more often than I did, a strange half-smile gracing her thin lips. 

The hallway ended in another flight of stairs. A wheelchair had crashed down the flight in the evacuation, but there was no sign of the occupant other than a slight trail of blood. 

I stopped shy of the stairs. We were running up, away from the safety of the ground. We were walking into a corner. I hated corners. As I stood dithering, Elderberry brushed past me and carried the youngster up, following Riff’s chords trustingly. After a moment, I did the same. 

It was there, in the tight confines of the stairwell, that the changeling attacked again. 

In a flash, it was on me again, that awful chittering noise screaming at me. This time, I reacted faster. A wave of my Warp thrummed around me, and the changeling’s effect diminished as it slipped to the ground. I didn’t pause to look. Instead, I pushed Elderberry forward, shouting, “Move, for Celestia’s sake, MOVE!”

And move Berry did. She more...blinked. And suddenly I was facing empty air. I didn’t have time to question it as the screaming chatter rose back up behind me. I spun to face the changeling, getting my first good look at it. It looked exactly like you’d expect a changeling to look: downright creepy. Solid, listless eyes, insectile wings, leathery, chitinous skin, fangs, and a warped, crooked horn. It hissed at me. But through the anger, I still sensed a question. 

Then it leapt. 

I was able to dodge, bringing up a hoof to strike it, but it was already backing off again, snapping at me like a dog. I felt anger, and the Warp flared up around me. A pulsing bass synth roared around me, tinting the air a hazy sky-blue. It felt powerful. 
The changeling screamed, then charged horn first. 

Horns as combat weapons were not unheard of; just the other day, I’d seen Berry impale this monster’s brethren through the chest, but it was not something I was familiar with. In the rush, I reared back, uncertain. The Warp fell away, and suddenly, I was standing on my hind legs, my vulnerable underbelly exposed as the changeling charged full tilt to kill me. 

Good thing I knew how to punch. A well timed blow to the back of it’s head left it dazed with a face-full of stairs and me on it’s neck. I couldn’t hold it down though. Instead, I jumped back, up the stairs, and across to the opposite hall through a nurse’s station, the changeling hot on my tail. 

I managed to get to the other hall before the changeling could follow. We ended up in opposite halls, the nurses station and the first ward between us. I saw its black shadow follow me as I dashed along the hall, leaving the walls of the center ward between us. We were on the top floor of the hospital. The only place higher was the roof, and the only stairwell was in the other hall. I was trapped. 

Looks like you’ve run yourself into a corner, Scratch. Now you’ll die. I’ll laugh as you breathe your last breath.

I hate being trapped. I lowered my head, snarling.

You. Won’t. Win.

I felt the Warp pulling up around me, and I shaped it around my body. my thin fur rippled where a hazy blue wave of sound crossed my shoulders, arcing either side to circle me. The open entrance to the ward on my side was my only option; the changeling was mirroring my every movement in the other hall. I could hear its chitter-chatter grinding on me. I wouldn’t back away, I’d face it! 

I stepped into the entrance. The changeling mirrored my every move. We stood, facing each other across the wrecked ward, me with shimmering Warp, it with changeling fire. Both of us saw the hospital bed in the middle of the room, the blanket still gently rising and falling with steady breaths. 

I recognized the black-and-white mane, the sky-blue muzzle. His eyes were closed, blissfully unaware of his surroundings, or how much danger he was really in. Above all of this was the shock of seeing a hospitalized and drugged Chasing Haze.

What the hell is he doing here?!

I didn’t have time to dwell on it, for the changeling too saw the helpless pegasus. Slowly, a terrible, very real scream broke the ambience, a sound of pain and loss and fear that nearly broke my resolve. Then the changeling fired. 

Green changeling fire seared through the air, burning cold, clearing Chasing’s chest by inches. He didn’t feel a thing. I felt it though. It was hungry, and I was its meal. I didn’t feel like being consumed by the unholy light, though, and my Warp rushed to meet it. Anger, fear, rage, and grief powered it, and the Warp wormed through the air, a tunnel of sound that shimmered in the air with it’s own power. The Changeling fire fell into its immutable influence, and burned itself out in the soundless tone. The Warp ripped onwards, the power of it striking the changeling across its entire body, drowning out its chatter and will, forcing it to it’s knees, helpless. A rumble shot through the whole building. 

Then the roof came down. 

The whole other side of the ceiling came down on the immobilized creature, crushing it instantly as tons of concrete poured down in pony-sized chunks and dust. Moonlight bleached the air white as a grey shape dropped down onto the ruble. It turned to me, calling out, “Angel, are you okay?”

“Riff!” I cried. Relief filled me, and the last remaining tendrils of the Warp died instantly. I rushed up towards him, but stopped next to Chasing’s bed. He was still sleeping calmly, unaware of the world. Whatever drug he was on, it was really good. 

“Come on Angel, we gotta go! There’s guards everywhere! He’ll be fine, but if they spot us, they’ll clap us in irons for this!”

‘Right.” I scrambled up the fallen debris, up into the night air. I reached for the ledge of the intact roof, but it was just out of my reach. I took a deep breath and jumped for it. I caught the ledge, but slipped, falling back. A grey hoof reached down before I could, and caught me. 

Tech Beat hoisted me onto the roof with a tired smile. “Dammit Angel, never make me do that again, okay?” He pulled me into a quick hug, full of relief, “Thought we lost you already for a minute there.”

“I’m...fine. “ I muttered stiffly. Waaay too close for comfort. Tech made sure I was fine, then stepped away. I saw Elderberry standing attentively over a small bundle of blankets.

She smiled thinly and nodded to me. 

Riff Pick flew up into the night air and looked down onto the street. he didn’t need to tell us what was happening; I could hear the voices shouting in the building beneath us. Tech heard it too. 

“Guess that’s our cue to leave. Come on, we’ll make it back to the forest from here.”

“We can’t,” I muttered. “The pegasus you rescued me from is on the lower levels, still passed out. When he wakes up, he’ll tell them about the Taken hiding in the woods.”

Tech’s ears splayed back. He looked to Elderberry, who shook her head sadly, and Riff, who watched on thoughtfully. “Well...where too, then?”

“We could hide out along the borders, circle west, back towards Ponyville?” Tech suggested, “Nowhere’s safer for us than there. Weird things in the woods is kinda the norm.”

Riff shuffled a little, looking torn. He looked apologetically to Tech, then turned to me. 

“...Angel. Look , I know you probably don’t want to know, but I should tell you; I got into the hospital through one of the upper offices after you guys arrived. I found some release forms on the desk, forms for Octavia Philharmonica.”

I blinked. “...What.”

Riff walked up to me, “She was here, this evening. She left only an hour ago on the Canterlot Express.”

“H-how…Why?!” I shouted, pushing him away, “Why was she here?!”

Riff looked away.

I breathed heavily, hearing the rising calls of ponies around us. Octavia. She’d been here. She was going to Canterlot. We were stuck. I looked at the cracks running through the roof, surrounding one corner of the building. The structure was shifting. I looked up. 

“Tech, you Quake this building one more time. I have a plan.”

Tech wanted to argue, Riff looked sad, and Elderberry, unreadable as ever, tucked the blankets in firmer around the little filly. In the end, they all said nothing against me, and Tech took a few steps up to the corner. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Angel.”

I smiled thinly as the shockwave knocked the corner to the ground. Our escape and diversion all in one. I knew how we would escape, and where to.

 Everfree, safety

Have to help, fix, heal...

Canterlot

Judgement     


Redemption

> The Messenger  
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Vinyl Scratch, the infamous DJ Pon-3, had always been known for being a bit of an eccentric. For instance, she had decided to make her home in little Ponyville. Nopony really understood this, since she had been offered residences in really every major city in the land. And why she would decide to live in a small town two hours away from her radio station simply made no- 

“We have an update on the situation in Ponyville: The gendarmerie are still searching for the missing pegasus. However, with so little known about the elusive Cloudsdalian, it is unlikely any leads will turn up soon.

“However, new developments in Hoofington have arisen, leading the Guard to think that this may just be the beginning of a connected series of attacks. Another pegasus was attacked in the Whitetail Woods, and when he survived, the Hoofington Clinic where he was being treated, was attacked with great ferocity, and a filly abducted from her bed.

“We will bring you daily reports on the situation, so keep an ear on the airwaves. K-Kolt out.”


*****


Lots of ponies assumed I was born and raised in the city. To be honest, I nearly had myself believing that with how well I pulled off pretending that was true. But it wasn’t. I was in fact born and raised in a small town just the other side of Canterlot in one of those idyllic valleys the Equestrian Elite like to buy out and build huge mansions in. In time, my family home was bought, of course, and my parents moved into a scruffy basement apartment under some slightly less scruffy apartments. To begin with, I hated Canterlot. The only time I would ever go out was night, because that was the only time I felt like I wasn’t being looked down on. Canterlot was polar like that; the rich paraded around in the day, and the poor lit up the night. It was there in the darkness, surrounded by ponies I would eventually surpass, that I went to my first rave. There, surrounded by the powerful music, every pony from rich teens looking for trouble to down-and-out bums looking for an escape were all equal, because the sound controlled them all.

I guess I always wanted to emulate that. It’s such a shame I eventually did.


*****


“We should have left her.”

Elderberry snapped a growl at me, hackles rising as she protected the huddled bundle on her back. Tech stepped between us, facing me, “Look, we’ve spoken about his, we couldn’t have left her on the roof, okay? We’re just looking after her for a while.”

The bundle between Elderberry’s shoulders wriggled, and the ashen mare turned to nuzzle the burned filly within comfortingly. My heart went out to the little one, but I was thinking practically, for our safety. “We could have, Tech, there were ponies from her own home town on the floor below us! She would have been fine.”

“How far from the nest to fall,” whispered Elderberry, “when the nest burns out from beneath you?”

Tech Beat and I both looked at her askance, confused and derailed.

“She means we don’t know where this filly’s parents are, or even if we can find them,” Riff Pick offered, “And I’m a little inclined to agree.”

“Well…I’m not.” I looked at the uneven ground of the forest floor as we filed along a narrow ridge between two streambeds. “Do you honestly think she’s any safer out here in the wild…with us?”

“Safer here than on a crumbling rooftop in the aftermath of a battle,” Tech spat bitterly. “I don’t know what possessed me to make me listen to you, Angel.”

“Maybe the logical explanation; that if we’d spent any longer on that rooftop, guardsponies would have leapt at the chance to call us out on attacking the clinic,” I snarked back, but even as I spoke, I caught the curious knowing glance Riff Pick shot at Tech.

The pegasus wisely interjected, “Look, we all have good points on this one, but the fact is, the filly is with us. She needs care now; she was on a heart monitor earlier for a reason. For now, let’s just get our stuff and move on.”

Tech and Elderberry both agreed in their own way and walked down the ridge into the dried-up confluence of the two streams. I hung back, thinking, while Riff Pick remained by my side, waiting for me to speak.

I obliged him, “So…what about you, what does your…whatever-you-call-it do?”

Riff smirked at me as he explained, “My effect is the Scale. It was actually pretty common among Virtuosos way back. I can…call other Taken, or communicate my intentions at least, to whomever hears it. I’ve gotten really good at it,” He admitted, “I can even use it as a sort of echo-location, figuring out the area around me by ear alone.” He looked up at me again, the smile wavering, “Your Warp, you called it? It makes Taken ponies lose themselves in the sound, like your music used to. Yeah, I got caught in its path; pretty potent, gotta say.” Then he sighed. “Me, I always said I wanted to reach out to ponies with my music. I guess being Taken can be ironic like that.”

And I’d wanted to let ponies lose themselves. Turns out now I gave them no choice. I raised an eyebrow at him, “Huh…for a shy guy you sure do talk a lot, don’t you? Where d’you really learn all this stuff anyway?”

Riff looked a little uncomfortable for a moment. “Remember how I said Elderberry was the only one of us who’d been here during the Taken hayday? One day, before she…slipped, she sat me down, told me somepony had to remember what she’d learn before she ‘gave in to the Mind’s call’. I guess at least part of her stayed. I just don’t know how much, exactly, but being the brain is my job now, I guess.”

I looked down into the hollow where Elderberry was carefully curling up around the burnt, blind filly. I took a moment to remember that all of us, no matter what we were now, had been something more once, even the silent and haunting Elderberry. Tech stood beside her awkwardly, wanting to help, but unable to. That reminded me of another question I had;
“I thought you said these…effects we have only affected other Taken and Changelings,” I intoned. “Tech just nearly brought down an entire building just now. Wanna explain?”

“I…left a few things out,” Riff admitted. He squinted up at the moon above us. “Tech is a Viber, like I said. Vibers used to be considered very valuable assets out here, because they’re the only known Taken that can so utterly affect the world. But you have no idea how much energy Tech expended to save you.”

“Well, he coulda saved himself the effort, I had that Changeling on her knees.” I boasted.

Riff raised an eyebrow at me, “Her?”

I paused, my mouth open, trying to work out where that had come from. But it was lost to me. I huffed and forged on, “Well…it just looked skinny and all. Ei-either way, Tech didn’t have to listen to me afterwards either. I was hardly expecting him to.”

“Tech will probably listen to you more often than not,” Riff Pick said, getting up. “He used to be an audio technician, set up sound systems and concerts for famous musicians in Canterlot and beyond. He was once involved in the biggest Vinyl Scratch concert ever in the capitol.”

The breath flew from my lungs before I could shout Riff down. He noticed and smiled sadly, but continued anyway, “Ever since that concert, he had a huge crush of Vinyl Scratch. Even if you don’t claim that name anymore, he still sees her in you, whether you like it or not.”


*****


Do you hear it, Scratch? That soft melody at the winter hearth? It’s begging for you.

A dream. This was a dream, I knew, because as I stood from the ground, I brushed my shocking blue mane from my eyes, marveling at the bright glow my fur gave off, radiating starlight. I heard the eerie ageless melody, soft and ringing as it gently seconded the moon. I felt confident, strong in and of myself, ready to face the world. I was drunk with a power I no longer had, and I liked it.

You could be you again. The great Vinyl Scratch! Untouchable! Indefatigable! All you need to do is do what you want most, and even these bumpkins will follow your every beck and call.

I looked around myself in the moonlight, eyes wide with wonder. Ethereal trails of light glimmered in the air and eddied on small currents of static, reaching out like tendrils to touch the grey, drab, dead world around me. The trees, and leaves, the grass the sky...everything was dead, save for what the power I felt throbbing within me touched. 

These others are useless to you, already dead, but she, she still has true power.

A tendril before me turned an unnatural shade of green and shot forward, caressing the bundle of blankets just enough for the thin fabric to fall aside, revealing one bareskinned small hoof to the tinkling of ice-harps.

Power, Scratch, like you’ve never felt before.

The feeling in my chest, of sheer, raw energy surging through me, rose to a boil, and I felt my mind click even as the music rose and cascaded over me. It was light, flowing, enchanting, and oh so tempting. I felt like giving in, just losing myself, in it’s embrace. Then I saw those blue eyes, sightlessly staring up at me, questioning.

The rapture ended, and the anger rose in my breast.

You get out! Out of my head, and away from this child! I won’t hurt her, and I won’t let you either!

Oh, but Scratch, you so nearly did.

“H-hello?”

My eyes snapped open. The twilit morning sky bled veins of red across the sky, and I shivered in the freezing air. A thin tendril of warmth brushed my coat, and I turned towards its comfort, only for my blood to run cold once again. Two huge ice-blue eyes stared emptily back at me, the tremor in her voice all the more heart rending.

“I-is anypony else awake?”

“Y-yes.” My voice cracked as I spoke. 

The filly shuffled awkwardly with her blanket, and her eyes closed. “…You’re that pony who…who found me at the hospital, aren’t you?”

“You have a good ear for voices.” I mentioned, then winced as she opened her sightless eyes again.

Her furless ears splayed back as she huddled down even more, “Y-you don’t like me very much.” She poked a hoof out and brought it up to her own nose, as if inspecting the pink new skin that had grown there. In the early light, I could see the scarring, “You w-wanted to l-leave me behind…”

I couldn’t stand seeing her like that, nor anypony thinking like that. I could just about feel her fear. A small part of me whispered in the back of my mind that, whether I wanted to or not, I could hear it, clear as day. I pushed that thought away though, and pushed myself to my hooves. “I’m coming over there, okay?” I spoke low and calm. She nodded. I walked over to her and brushed the one side of the blanket, silently asking permission to join her. She didn’t move. I nodded to myself understandingly before lying down beside her, ordering my thoughts.

“I mean nothing against you, little one,” I whispered, “it’s just I think…I know that we aren’t the ponies to look after a filly like you.”

She didn’t move as she said, dead and flat, “I’m blind. I’m broken.”

I looked across the gulch at the slowly breathing grey forms that were Riff and Tech on the other side of our camp. I looked down at my own ashen forelegs as I answered, “No, you aren’t. You’re hurt now,  but you aren’t broken yet. You will be an amazing pony one day, I know. Better than me.”

“I’m a blind Earth Pony,” she snarled into the homespun wrapped around her, eyes sparkling with tears, “I don’t have magic to feel with, I don’t have feathers like a pegasus. I’m useless.”

“N-no,” I cut in, but couldn’t think of anything to add. I gasped like a fish as the filly turned to face away. Then, my eyes settled on Tech, “No…You are and Earth Pony; you are strong, you are resourceful, and above all else, the Earth itself can be your eyes.” I impulsively touched her exposed hoof. She flinched, but I was stronger, pushing it down and into the loamy ground, “I have…had and Earth Pony friend not too long ago. She played…well, she played everything with strings. She always said she could feel the vibrations in the strings through her hooves, through the bow, and that’s why she was able to get pitches just right. Imagine one day, when you get as good as her, just what you’ll be able to see just by standing in one place?”

She didn’t answer me, but, after a few minutes of silence, I felt the blanket shift against my side. I wriggled under it, and felt her bare skin through my coat. She was freezing as she snuggled into me, her head against my chest. Her cheeks were wet.

“Y-you’re cold.”

I flinched and pulled back self-consciously, looking at my dull grey hooves, “Well, I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do about-“

“N-no! I meant…” The filly withdrew a bit as well, but not enough to break the contact, “Th-the last thing I remember clearly…is the fire. The last thing I saw was…f-flames and…the last thing I left before the hospital was…burning. You’re…cool, not c-cold. Soothing.”

I gaped down at her. I didn’t know what to say to that, there weren’t any words after all. So I just relaxed into her; if she thought that soothing, then she could have as much as she needed. She snuggled into me a bit as we lay in silence. Silence I could handle, but it didn’t last.

“W-what are you going to do with me?”

“Take you somewhere safe.” I said simply, nuzzling the top of her head, where a little bristle foretold a full mane after a few months, “You just need to tell us where that is.”

“I don’t have a home…” She muttered, “I don’t have a family. N-not anym-more…”

She looked…resigned. Scared, lost confused, and a whole bunch of other stuff besides. I was never good with the words, or reading emotions, but I knew that look on a pony’s face; the moment when they’re teetering on the edge, about to lose all hope.

I suddenly imagined her with a faded grey coat and mane.

“Hey now,” I said, soft but strong, “You listen to me; I…I know how hard things must look right now. I really do. I lost somepony really important to me, too, along with my home, my friends…I lost what made me me. I lost my identity. But the thing is, so long as you can believe in something, there’s nothing to say you can’t get back up and do it all again. For you, all you have to do is believe that things will get better, and they really, really will. All you need is that hope.”

“Oh, yeah?” She asked bitterly, heckling against me, “Did you lose your parents? Your home? Y-your eyes? You have no idea! W-what do I have to hope for?!”

“I lost my special talent. I lost my name.”

That seemed to stun her for a moment.

“You’ve got everything to live for, if you know where to lo- where to find it.” Luckily, she seemed to not hear my slip, “You know the story of how the first snowflakes were made?”

She nodded, ever so slightly.

“One day, you’ll do something amazing. You’ll know then, that even though it was hard, life couldn’t keep you down. You’ve been through it all already; There is nothing left that can stop you, if you just keep hope.” I couldn’t believe what I was saying. In a way, it didn’t feel like me at all.

“Y-you sound just like my mother…” The filly muttered. For a second an old part of me jokingly hoped that I didn’t, but that died quickly enough. 

“I need to know where we can take you,” I prompted again, “Somewhere you will be safe. Family? Friends?”

“M-my parents...they didn’t say at the hospital but...I-I know…” The filly sniffled a little, to distraught to answer immediately. I hated having to do this to her. But really, we had to know I touched my snout to her cheek tenderly to try and comfort her, but instead she leaned up and whispered a name into my ear. The name of a village. My eyes widened in recognition..

“M-my uncle lives there…” She whispered, too quietly to hear clearly. She shufled, I shuffled, and neither said a word. She, not wanting to admit to herself that in that moment she had finally accepted that her old life was gone, and me not accepting that mine was coming back to bite me yet again. 
“How do you do it?” She  finally asked, voice laden with so much sorrow I felt the weight of the world on my own shoulders, “ What do you hope for?”

“I don’t have Hope,” I muttered, tracing the outline of the pitted scar on my neck, “I’m…Taken. We all are.”

Nothing seemed to change, not really. Her breathing still pulsed slowly beside me, the soft nightsounds slowly gave way as more and more dawn light crept into our streambed. But I felt it; a chill was riding that light in the wake of my words, and the filly didn’t answer me.

“Y-you know what that means, right?” I asked, hoping that she didn’t, that I hadn’t just gone and said that, and scared her right when I’d almost felt like I was building a normal connection with a normal pony.

I knew I’d lost her. She pulled away slightly, not even enough to have done it on purpose, but she did. “Can I… feel one of the scars?” She asked so innocently, so timidly, I couldn’t even feel shocked. I lowered my neck to her nose, and she slowly reached forward. Her breath and then her touch chilled the sensitive scar as she traced its shape as softly as a butterfly. When she pulled away, she pulled away for good, wrapping herself back up in the blanket and trembling.

“I j-just want to go home…” She sobbed.

“I’m…I’m so sorry.” I whispered helplessly. After a few more cold silent minutes, I stood and turned away. I’d leave the filly to what rest she could claim. She deserved all the escape she could get. Me though, I turned and brought my eyes up to look straight into the grey misty eyes of Elderberry.

The older mare looked at the filly, then at me, her expression stony yet stricken. She leaned forward and gave me one light touch on the forehead with her snout, saying, “One day, when she makes the next Snowflake, she will look back, and she will thank you.” Elderberry smiled and nodded, “Thank you.”

She walked past me then, curling up protectively around the filly and sitting, watching vigil, leaving me standing and watching the warm dawn. But the chill never really left my bones.

Congratulations, you scarred her worse than she already was. 

This is why I never ever wanted kids…

“Hey.”

My head snapped up and I glared at the pale eyes looking back at me. I stomped over bristled down at the huddled shape of Riff Pick. “Lemme guess, you were eavesdropping too.”

“Not like I had a choice,” Riff hissed back, standing, “That Song...Well, at least we know that filly’s stronger than we thought.”

“What song?” I asked, confused at first, but then I remembered; Riff and I were similar enough, both Virtuosos. Ponies and Songs were our curse and currency.

“You didn’t hear that?” He asked dully, looking at me askance, “I’m pretty sure that little heart-to-heart can be picked up on all major networks countrywide.” When he saw my gasp of surprise, he quickly added, “That was a joke. But seriously, how could you be so caught up in a conversation you miss that? I could just about feel the static. Elderberry was glowing.”

“I didn’t hear it,” I muttered, turning away. But I had. I’d heard it, and it had drawn me to her, no matter how I denied it. That dream was pretty hard to ignore. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Riff said in a way that meant it clearly did, “We need to move soon. Did she tell you where she would be safe? Where we can take her?”

“...Yeah,” I answered, the words coming out sour on my tongue. I turned and looked up at the barely outlined silhouette of the Great Canterlot on it’s mountainside, or more specifically a hidden valley hidden beneath it that only those who’d lived there could even find, “We need to take her to Fetlock.”

I would live to regret this.