A Song for Orthus
Of all of the things Sweetie Belle had expected to come crashing into Carousel Boutique that afternoon, Silver Spoon wasn’t amongst them. Silver Spoon with a rumpled mane, clad in a heavy working apron, and with her customary expression of chilly disdain replaced with frantic desperation ranked even lower on the list. But there she was.
“Silver Spoon?” Sweetie Belle looked up from where she’d been steadfastly failing to tempt Opalescence to play with a length of purple yarn. “Can I he—?”
“Something of your choosing every day from Sugarcube Corner until the End-Times if you come with me right now and don’t ask questions,” Silver said breathlessly. One of her eyes twitched.
“But —” Sweetie Belle opened her mouth to do exactly what she’d been warned against, and then closed it again. Silver Spoon had the haunted, harried look of a pony who, if defied in that moment, would either have a breakdown there and then or just clamp her teeth on the tail of her target and drag them where they were needed.
Neither of these appealed. Sweetie Belle liked the integrity of her tail, and she suspected Rarity would be put out if she came back and learned that other ponies than her had been having breakdowns in the Boutique. And besides, if Silver Spoon’s icy snootiness had fallen by the wayside, things must be … well. She wouldn’t get so much from Sugarcube Corner after all if the End-Times were that close. But no matter.
“Let’s go!” she said instead, jumping up and cantering up to Silver Spoon. Delirious relief shone in Silver Spoon’s eyes for a moment before she wheeled around and, impossibly, went from standing to a gallop in under half-a-second. Sweetie strained herself to keep up as they burst out of the Boutique and into the streets of Ponyville.
“Do you need the other Crusaders?” Sweetie ventured as buildings and carts and surprised ponies blurred by them. “We could swing by, pick them up from —”
“No time!” Silver Spoon was taking their route with the attitude of a homing missile. “Diamond’s holding the fort, but I don’t think she can hold on much longer!”
Whatever maniacal energy had propelled Silver Spoon to the Boutique and back out again to the outskirts of Ponyville did seem to be flagging a bit, and her pace had somewhat slowed. As they galloped, Sweetie thought. Silver Spoon, and Diamond Tiara for that matter, they’d both turned over a new leaf, sort of. But it wasn’t as if they now made a point of seeking out the Crusaders for regular friendship hijinks or anything like that? Why come to her?
Well, why did most ponies seek out the Crusaders these days?
One question came to Sweetie’s mind then, which should hopefully clarify everything forever.
“So is this, like, a cutie mark problem I’m helping with, or …?”
“It’s a hellhound problem.”
More important questions came to Sweetie’s mind.
“What?” won the scrimmage over which got to be asked first.
“You heard!”
“I don’t think I did! Hellhound?”
“Yes!”
“What?”
“We’re here!”
More confused than when she’d started galloping, Sweetie Belle looked up, and found that they’d galloped out to the Silver residence, right on the edges of Ponyville, where the town ended and the main road to Canterlot began.
She’d never been inside. She knew vaguely that the Silvers were old-ish money, and their home fit the part. Three-storied, grey-walled, large-ish, solid-looking in a way that suggested it intended to keep on standing for centuries yet, and altogether smug in a restrained sort of way. Workshops and sheds sprouted from the sides and ran along the back, and smoke gently curled up from several chimneys she couldn’t see. There wasn’t much by way of ornamentation or decoration at the front entrance they came to. A silver plaque over the door did all the preening the house thought it needed to do.
Silver Family Metalworkers and Jewellers, it read, over the royal standard. By Appointment to Their Majesties The Princesses.
From inside, there came a chorus of cheerful, high-pitched barks, as well as what sounded like Diamond Tiara giving way to her coarser emotions. “Down, I said! Get off, you stupid — glark!”
Sweetie hesitated, but Silver Spoon seemingly had no reservations about following the sound of glarking. “Come on!” she said, opening the front door and ushering Sweetie into the hallway. The little unicorn stopped briefly to gawp. There weren’t as many dungeons and instruments of torture and yawning portals opening onto realms of pure evil as she and the other Crusaders had once speculated lay within after a particularly bad day with the pair. Instead, she was greeted by an expanse of dark, soft furnishings and carpets, sprackled amidst cream-coloured walls. Side-doors ran off hither and thither, and between them, the walls were lined with grandfather clocks, gas-lanterns, coffee-tables, portraits of bygone and sober-looking Silvers. Pride of place went to numerous examples of what must be the family’s work - cups and tiaras lined shelves, crossed blades and shields were mounted on the walls, and an orrery by one Silver who’d obviously wanted to show off. All fine work, all polished and gleaming and proudly displayed.
Silver bundled Sweetie past all these, and towards one side-door from which the barks and Diamond’s blandishments were coming. Sweetie stumbled inside, still somewhat confused, and found answers to some of her questions. And, as per form, more questions to go along with them.
She beheld a jeweller’s workshop, one side of the room taken up by a wide, low workbench laden with all the tools of the trade - pliers, hammers, fine saws, a little enchanted soldering iron, pads of steel wool, thin sheets of various metals, jars of even more various liquids, even what looked like a miniature magic-powered forge at one side. All in a foal’s size, presumably for upcoming members of the craft to cut their teeth on. Before the workbench, there was a wide and open space, well-lit and ventilated by windows on two sides.
And in that space, Diamond Tiara was grappling with a little Cerberus, amidst a whirling confetti of paper scraps.
Sweetie stared with wonder at the little Cerberus for a moment. She’d seen the Cerberus a while back, of course, before Twilight had led him back to Tartarus.
This one looked like their puppy, though ‘puppy’ didn’t seem quite the right term for a creature that had the dimensions and build of a sprightly rhinoceros. Three heads boggled delightedly at the world with six puppy-dog eyes, each the size of a hoof. Four of its six ears had contrived to flop inside-out. Its requisite four outsized paws and single tail thumped the ground and frothed the air respectively, while three tongues descended on Diamond’s mane and turned it into a mess of cowlicks.
The little Cerberus seemed to be having the time of their life, as it forced one body to act on three puppies’ worth of enthusiasm, and all manner of knocked-over tables and torn-up scraps suggested the fun they’d been having. The same couldn’t be said for Diamond, who was treating it to a large number of words neither she nor Sweetie were probably meant to know. She only stopped to glance round at Silver Spoon and Sweetie Belle. “Finally!” she exclaimed. “Get it off!”
“I … er … alright!” Sweetie Belle, though still a little behind events, wouldn’t let that impede the task that needed doing. “Here, puppy! Who’s a good … boy? Girl? Who’s a good puppy? Over here!”
“I mean sing at it!” Diamond exclaimed, while the puppy bounded in circles around her, deaf to Sweetie’s entreaties.
“Sing at it?”
“Did I stutter?”
Sweetie, to whom events were still somewhere past the horizon, hesitated and dithered. Pressure to perform got its panicky hooks in, and she tunelessly babbled out the first few lines of whatever came to mind. “I, er, with our cutie marks, we’ll rock Equestria, we use our stomachs to digestia … wait, no, that’s —”
It didn’t seem to register with the little Cerberus. Before Diamond vanished under a fresh new wave of puppy adoration, she could be heard cursing Sweetie Belle unto the umpteenth generation.
Sweetie turned to Silver Spoon and gave her a plaintive look, in dire need of answers. Silver Spoon herself was kneading her forehead with a hoof. “Why do you have a Cerberus puppy, and why do you need me to sing at them?”
“Hellhound,” said Silver Spoon in a quiet, trembly, tired voice. “She’s a hellhound. Same species as Cerberus. Her name’s Orthus. We’ve got her because she needs a set of collars, and I’ve got to design them for her. And we need you to sing at her because that’s how you calm hellhounds down, if we’re remembering right.” There was a hitch in her voice. “Please sing at her.”
This wasn’t a Silver Spoon Sweetie was used to seeing at all. Whatever tether she had, she was at the end of it, and she badly needed help. And no matter whatever chilliness there might still be between them, or whatever bad memories might be lurking, Sweetie couldn’t not help.
She turned back to the puppy, and after taking a moment to compose herself, clear her throat, and think of something a little more musical, pattered forth the first verse of ‘I Am the Very Model of a Modern Marshal-Chevalier’.
It wasn’t quite a perfect rendition, partly due to her realising partway through that she didn’t actually know all the words. But whenever a line like “Dum-dumdumdum-dum-dumdumdum-dum-dumdum-dumsomething-eer” had to cross her lips, she could keep it in tune, at least. Orthus had turned to her partway through the first line, forgetting Diamond in favour of giving Sweetie a curious look. By the end of the third, she began ambling closer to Sweetie. And when the verse was finished, she flopped to the floor before Sweetie with a heavy crash, and one of her heads stole forward to lick the unicorn’s foreleg.
Sweetie laughed and leaned to pat Orthus’ tummy. “Good girl! Did that help? Are you all calm? Yes you are!”
“Good. Hah.” Diamond rose from behind Orthus, wearing a disgruntled expression. “‘Come over to my place at three, Diamond’, I was told,” she muttered. “‘We’ve got a special commission from the palace, and Mom asked me to do the measuring and designing. It’s going to be so cool.’ Nopony mentioned the slaver everywhere. Nopony mentioned the slaver going on me, especially!”
“Well, I’m sorry, Diamond,” snapped Silver Spoon. “Nopony also mentioned you had to stick around if you didn’t want to!”
“Well, what was I meant to do, exactly? Just leave you in the lurch?”
“You could have done!”
“Well, I wouldn’t!”
Sparks flew across the room as the two seethed at each other. Sweetie drew back slightly, and Orthus whined softly from three different throats. But the moment passed, and as the air cooled, both Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon flushed and subsided with guilty expressions.
“Sorry,” they murmured, and couldn’t have done it in better chorus if they’d been Orthus. And then, “No, I’m sor—” Upon which, mutually sensing that all that could be productively said in this vein had been said, they wisely stopped.
“Mind if I use your shower?” Diamond asked. “My mane won’t look decent again otherwise, I think. I’ll come back and help you with the designs.”
“Sure,” Silver said ruefully. She trotted behind her workbench, and rummaged to retrieve a tape measure. “You know where we keep your towel?”
“Not likely to forget,” Diamond replied, trotting off. Orthus snuffled and flopped right around expectantly as she passed by, and Diamond flinched. Sweetie quickly pinned Orthus to the floor with the first few bars of ‘Whoops, I’m Being Swallowed By A Hydra’, and the hellpuppy subsided with an amiable whuffle. Diamond stopped when she passed by Sweetie Belle. “Thanks,” she said quietly and genuinely, and then she was off.
In the hush, Sweetie Belle stepped aside to make room for Silver Spoon, who stooped down to Orthus with the tape measure in her teeth. “Keep her shettled,” Silver asked. “Got t’ get her meashurementsh.”
Sweetie Belle put paid to the hush with a loudly-hummed ‘La Horseillaise’ while Silver fumbled the tape around each of the hellpuppy’s necks and noted the number each time. “So,” Sweetie ventured once Silver Spoon was done. “You didn’t get Fluttershy? I thought she calmed down Cerberus last time.”
“She lives too far away.” Silver stalked back behind her workbench and dropped the tape measure into one of its open drawers. “We thought you could get hellhounds to calm down with singing. But … ah, Diamond and I didn’t have much luck. Thought we could find you or your sister in Carousel Boutique. And, well, she’s in the Pony Tones, but you’re … well, a bit closer. Kinda glad I found you first.” Her voice dropped. “I needed something to go right.”
Sweetie trotted closer, her eyes full of concern. “What’s been happening?”
“Mostly just what you’ve seen so far. But there’s more. It’s just ...” Silver Spoon waved a forehoof in a vague way at the workbench in front of her, where some papers lay spread out. Sweetie Belle craned her head to get a look at them.
She saw designs for a little set of three pet tags. The circled set at the bottom were shaped like heraldic shields and surrounded by notes and labels set in a fussy, small script. Sweetie squinted to make out Azure/Or by one, the middle of which had been filled in with blue and trimmed with gold. Amaranth/Argent? had been jotted down by a dark red one, trimmed with silver. The last shield-shaped tag had been labelled with Purpure/Or, and coloured purple and trimmed with gold. Each shield had the same identifying information in small print at their centre.
My name is
Orthus
If found, please return to Gates of Tartarus.
If suspected Tartarian escapees seen en-route,
Kindly alert nearest authorities and Princesses.
Please do not fight Tartarian escapees.
Really, do not.
“Those look nice!” Sweetie Belle said.
“Hmm.” Silver Spoon eyed them with little enthusiasm. “I mean, I … I thought it’d be a bit more … I thought everything would just click, like that. That it’d all go perfectly.”
Sweetie waited, and Silver Spoon began to fill the silence. “I knew I wanted to do this. The family trade’s cool. The moment I knew I wanted to do it as well was when I stopped being a blank-flank … I, I mean, was when I got my cutie mark,” she amended hastily. “Played here most of the time when I was younger, just practising. And when this commission came in, to make a new collar and tags for the hellhound that’ll take over from Cerberus when Cerberus retires in a couple of centuries … Mom and I thought that’d be my perfect first piece of proper work. That I could just take measurements and design and fashion some prototypes while she was gone and while we had Orthus for the day and, and … and that it’d all go smoothly.”
Sweetie dithered for a moment, not entirely sure how to respond, and just when she’d decided to offer up something pat like ‘Well, it’s okay if not everything goes smoothly the first time’, Silver Spoon spoke again. “I didn’t think I’d end up struggling to so much as keep Orthus calm. I didn’t think Diamond would have to spend her whole afternoon helping me and getting cranky and tired. I didn’t think we’d have to get even more ponies, get you to come help me do my only job as well. I didn’t think I’d end up second-guessing my designs before I’d even started cutting the metal.” Her voice was as quiet and vulnerable as Sweetie had ever heard it. “I thought what I was meant to do was meant to go perfectly.”
Orthus had stirred repeatedly at the mention of her name, and as Sweetie used her magic to scratch her behind each ear in turn, she crooned something. It wasn’t a particular something. It didn’t have a name. She had the notion it was something Rarity crooned to herself when she was getting herself into the zone.
Did she have a zone of her own? Was she even meant to have a zone? A zone seemed like something you had when you needed to detach, sort of.
To heck with it.
“Don’t know if this’ll help you,” Sweetie ventured softly, “but … you know how we got our cutie marks recently?”
“Yeah.” Silver Spoon winced. “Look, I don’t know if I ever told you so, but I do feel kinda bad now about all the times —”
“Never mind that now. I’m saying we got our cutie marks in helping ponies with theirs. And we’ve been doing plenty of helping. And we mess up lots. Like, a lot. Imagine a lot, and then add more lots on top.”
Silver Spoon blinked. Sweetie pressed. “But a lot of the time, when we help each other out, or call on other ponies, we get there in the end somehow or anyhow. And even when we don’t, we’ve learned something we can use to help ponies in future. And I think that’s how it goes for everypony. Nopony ever starts out great or totally in tune with what they’re meant to do. We’re never perfect. But we’re always getting better and getting more comfortable with what we do. And even if you’re not sure, there’s loads of ponies around you who’ll stand by you. Diamond. Your family. Me and the Crusaders. Loads.”
Silver Spoon gave her a dubious look. “But I’ve seen the stuff we’ve made, that we display in the hall and all over the place,” she said. “That’s what I want to make. That’s what I want to live up to, that all the other Silvers made.”
Sweetie was quiet for a moment. “I bet none of those pieces were their first-ever commissions,” she said. “And I bet they had lots of help along the way.”
Now it was Silver Spoon’s turn to be quiet for a moment. “I guess,” she allowed eventually, “I guess that’s kinda true. And, well, yeah, of course the old Silvers would have had help and friends as well.”
“Exactly! Like Rarity says, no pony’s an island.”
“Great-great-great-great-grandpa Quicksilver did have a full pirate crew under him to help plunder all the raw materials he needed, that’s definitely true.”
“Well, yeah, like that.”
“And I guess he’d always have been testing and improving on the weapons and armour he built for them, on account of all the bloodthirstiness—”
“Well, not quite like that,” Sweetie Belle said quickly. “But sort of. And if you’re not sure about the tags, then I’m happy to stick around and help you out however you like. And once Diamond’s back, she will as well.”
Silver Spoon didn’t respond then, not quite yet. But when she did, she reached one foreleg around Sweetie Belle’s withers in a hug — only a brief one. And when she leaned her forehooves on her workbench, something of her old aloof poise had returned. When she turned to Sweetie Belle, that poise had been tempered with a faint smile. Not a smirk, like she was used to seeing.
“I guess if you wouldn’t mind sticking around for a bit and keeping Orthus settled, that’d help when I start doing finicky things with the shape,” Silver allowed. “I’d owe you something from Sugarcube Corner every day until the End-Times twice, even. And maybe music’ll help me get in the zone. Do you do requests?”
The unicorn grinned and straightened. “If I don’t know the lyrics, then don’t worry,” she said. “I can make all sorts of words up.”
And as Sweetie Belle helped Silver get in tune, and Silver picked up her metal-cutting saw with a rekindled look of intensity, and as an unslavered Diamond stumbled back in, Orthus slept like a log throughout.
It wasn’t how Sweetie Belle had entirely foreseen her day going. But there she was.