A series of letters sent to Beauty Brass of Canterlot
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Ponyville, October 3rd
Dear BB,
Yes! I need something. I am wracked with guilt, I know full well I only write to you when I have a request, but it seems it is a bad habit I cannot put down. My deepest apologies! You are, as always, free to demand just compensation. I heard a new show opened up in Trottingham the other month, and word on the vine is very promising. We could visit some time before the Summer Sun Millennial if you like. This is only my own humble suggestion; I am of course open to anything you suggest. Within reason.
But perhaps I should have started with the most urgent: I am in no terrible danger or other pressing circumstance. Vinyl Scratch, that darling fool, likely is. So I would beg the imposition to watch our house, maybe once or twice these coming weeks, while I sally forth to rescue our wayward prodigal colleague.
You are of course perfectly within your rights to know what Vinyl is up to; as you may be aware, she has taken a sabbatical year to recharge her muse. I have a stack of postcards from her, all ready to be entered into a clipbook at some point. She has sent at least one from every community she has visited, and there are scores of them! The latest ones have been in the far north; she’s been enchanted by the fantastic vistas of the Crystal Mountain foothills and the many small villages there.
And now she says she’s staying.
Vinyl Scratch. Terror of the Canterlot Academy. Queen of the Party Scene. Staying at some village with barely three dozen inhabitants, whose main export seems to be wild snowstorms. Now, please prepare yourself. Make sure you are sitting down. Maybe make a pot of tea.
The reason she wishes to settle down in this village?
Vinyl Scratch wants to join a village choir. Permanently.
I swear upon my cello I am not making this up.
How was the tea? I hope you did not laugh yourself into hiccups. I could wax oh so poetic about Vinyl’s voice and its (lack of) melodious qualities, but you know all of that as well as I. However: once I stopped laughing, I became baffled. Worried, even. This is a good bit more eccentric than Vinyl’s usual antics, would you not say?
Which is why I have decided to visit Vinyl in person and make sure she is in good health and of sound mind. My ticket is for the evening train in a couple hours, leaving me with barely enough time to pack, put the house in order and write this letter (which I am doing first, of course). I will feel silly dropping it off at the post office on the way to the station, as they will promptly determine it should be delivered to you in Canterlot, and send it to the train station - my ticket is for the evening mail train. This also means that tomorrow, when you open and read this letter, my train will already be passing Trottingham.
Why the rush, you ask? In all honesty, I am uncertain. Yet there is this feeling, BB. Thinking of Vinyl Scratch - I am overcome with these jitters, as if my mind is refusing to continue on this path of thought. Look at that; even writing this makes me shake. My apologies for the horrid lettering. Call me hysterical - I do so! But I have to follow my emotions. I cannot ignore them.
The village is called Windy Valley, and I will write to you again as soon as I disembark the train. The track of course does not run all the way to the village - nowhere close, in fact - so I will be forced to trek the rest of the way. Until then, my apologies for loading you down with all of this; I hope it will not monopolise too much of your free time. Say hello to Maestro and the others from me, please! And try not to worry; I will be fine. As will Vinyl, once I have given her an earful.
Thank you and apologies in advance,
Octavia
Rainbow Falls, October 5th
Hello again BB,
As I am unsure of your schedule yet wish to keep you up to date, I am sending two copies of this letter; one to your apartment in Canterlot and one to our Ponyville house. I would ask you to put the Ponyville letter on my desk; the fancy to write down my experience into something more structured has struck me. Something tells me this will be a journey worth remembering.
You will be relieved to know that Her Majesty’s Rail Service has safely and timely delivered my person to the ever-charming Rainbow Falls. My only complaint might be the creaking of the sleeper cabins. I slept restlessly. I remember dreaming - of Vinyl, of course. She was looking at me, smiling a sad little smile. Then she opened her mouth, closed her eyes and drew a deep breath— and I woke up just before she’d start singing. Only a dream I hear you say, but I was intensely frustrated at waking before I could hear her voice in song. Dream logic, right? We’ve been with her to enough bars so we know her favourite drinking songs, and how she crows them, but in that dream I was sure I was going to experience something sublime.
Enough nonsense! Have you visited here? I can recommend it. The potential to turn a corner between stalls and stumble upon inspiration (and an inevitably expensive trade) is overwhelming. The tourist brochures are factual, but they absolutely fail to convey the atmosphere. This is a place of seekers and of mysteries, and of stories both developing and ancient retold. I can certainly see why Vinyl would’ve come here; it is a logical place to find something you haven’t seen or experienced before.
She was here about a month ago. There are some postcards from the closest villages after that, ending with Windy Valley. I have brought the latest ones with me, in the hope of finding some hitherto unseen logic in them. No such luck; the only new revelation is a hint at just how isolated Windy Valley is: it took the postcard nearly ten days to reach me. Don’t they have any pegasi at all? Regular trade? I must confess there is in me a budding fascination with the place. It might be my nerves - in all likelihood it mostly is - but the air of mystery surrounding the place increases as I draw near.
But it is only mostly my nerves. I asked around; you’d think that in a place with so many seasoned travelling merchants I would be able to glean at least the basics about this village, which is not too remote from here. But either my luck is abysmal or the village is severely isolated. The most informed ponies admitted to knowing the general location of the village - and that was all.
Mysterious village is still in my future; for now I am resting in one of the inns of Rainbow Falls. I have bought a map of the local mountains, and Windy Valley is marked. I expect the journey to take me most of tomorrow. There is a faint tracery of what I hope is a path leading there, but it is hard to make out. I nevertheless base my estimate on the answers I received from more experienced local mountaineers I shared an informative supper with here in the inn. I was introduced to them after asking around, and they were friendly enough once I explained my reason to impose. They also cautioned me to start immediately at sun’s rising and do all in my power to avoid remaining exposed on the mountainside at sundown; this far into autumn, freak snow storms often spring from nowhere; it takes heavy equipment to secure a tent well enough so it will not simply blow away. As I am no camper, it is not something I ever wish to test.
Writing about this has given me awfully jangling nerves; I had better cease before I lose my gumption altogether. Wouldn’t that be tragicomic? To come all this way, only to be scared away by the final leg of my journey, task unfinished? I can imagine you rolling your eyes right now. Get a grip indeed, Octavia Melody!
Good night, BB!
Rainbow Falls, October 7th
BB,
I have been stymied.
It is difficult for me to carry myself with proper dignity with all these negative emotions storming within me. Hopefully writing will help. I will try to convey through this text exactly what happened, but in all honesty I am still flabbergasted, confused, frustrated. Scared. I am scared, BB.
I set out yesterday morning, right as the moon set and the sun rose, armed with a good quartet of galoshes for the slush, travel rations in a sensible saddle and bag combination and the map in my jaws. The main valley in which Rainbow Falls resides runs east to west, so Sun was with me from the start, warming my back as I set out towards the closest northern mountain slope. According to the map, I needed to circle it eastwards, climbing all the while until I’d reach the point where the mountain joins another, forming the valley from which Windy Valley probably gets its name.
Rainbow Falls is already high - the train station is about one thousand eight hundred metres above sea level - but Windy Valley is five hundred metres higher still. As the pegasus flies, the distance is trivial - a mere four kilometres or so - and I of course asked around; there is no pegasus carriage service here. Conditions in the mountains are too harsh for any but the most experienced of pegasi, and those generally get jobs with better security and higher pay. This left me with no option but my own four hooves as mode of transportation.
Thus I walked, choosing what seemed a path formed by pony hooves heading in the right direction. A musician is no slouch if they know what is good for them, so negotiating the steep and uneven terrain gave me but a healthy warmth to combat the biting wind. The path rose and dipped but on average kept climbing ever higher, and it was by my judgement an hour later that I paused on a ledge some hundreds of metres above the marketplace and admired the vista. The wind, though cold, had a pleasantly melodious susurrus to it and I even caught myself trying to hum along. The ledge seemed a somewhat well-frequented place by the locals; I spotted several samples of declarations of eternal love between couples, crudely etched into flat surfaces of rock in the cliff face. It was with good spirits, buoyed by echoes of young love, that I continued onwards and upwards. The path was definitely getting fainter, but I still felt good about my direction.
Can you imagine my confusion when, about an hour later, I arrived at an identical ledge?
At first I tried to rationalise it away as simply a higher point on the switchback path. That theory was proven laughable by the lovers’ etchings on the rock face. I had been here an hour earlier and amused myself reading these letters in stone. Now, all I felt was horror and shame. How could I have been so turned around?
I am a novice when it comes to mountaineering, of course. I am not so prideful as to deny the possibility that I simply got turned around. It was a possibility I immediately decided to eliminate going forward. I carefully studied the valley, picking out likely high-visibility landmarks. Determined, but feeling a bit impatient, I set out again. Someone else might have chosen another path for their second try (and I should’ve wondered then and there about the little detail that in hindsight stands out so clearly: I had not returned to the ledge by that path) but I would not immediately discard it due to a potential mistake of my own making.
And so I hurried onward slowly. Walking briskly a stretch of path before checking my surroundings to ward against getting turned around.
Dear Beauty Brass. Dear Celestia. It did not work.
I was out of breath, I was sweating, and there in front of me - impossibly, inexplicably, yet undeniably, the path down to that thrice-cursed ledge stretched in front of me. Landmarks that I had checked less than a minute ago were suddenly displaced almost opposite to where they were supposed to be. I had not turned around. I swear this, upon Celestia’s crown and upon her throne, yet there I was heading back the way I came.
I sat down and, I am ashamed to admit, my frustrated scream echoed off the mountains. Can you imagine it, BB? I am not some, to entertain the more negative stereotypes, some spaced-out unicorn that doesn’t know where her hooves rest. Yes: Someone like Vinyl, seemingly adrift, never anchored. But no; I am of the Earth, same as you, BB. I am not sure how connected you are to our heritage, but I have a quite solid feel of the land, thanks to my relatives in the countryside. I know where my hooves stand. And yet here on this mountain I had now lost the path not once, but TWICE. THIS IS N
I am sorry. I lost my temper. It is a cup of tea later as I resume. One of Horseshoepin’s piano concertos is playing on a record I borrowed from the kindly pony at the check-in. I may have forgotten to mention up to now that I am safe and sound, back in the Rainbow Falls inn.
Am I rambling? I feel you need to know all of it, and also in part I write my thoughts down as they are fresh so I can compile them later, with the benefit of perspective. Because right now they don’t seem to make all that much sense.
I am not sure how long I raged at the mountain. Perhaps it took offence, indicated by the snowstorm that approached as I became aware also of the valley below me getting increasingly swallowed by shadow; the sun was low on the horizon. You know I have my pride, BB, so you can maybe understand how it tore at me to beat a hasty retreat down to the safety of Rainbow Falls, but while I am without doubt prideful I am by no means a fool.
Well, not a great fool at least.
The crowd at the inn was mostly unchanged from last evening, and they were understandably alarmed by my unexpected reappearance, good ponies as they are. I am afraid I was not in the best of moods, but they forgave me my hurried and very abridged retelling of my frustrations, expressing much sympathy. The innkeeper was very generous and offered me the same room at a lower rate as a “return customer”. So that is where I am right now, putting these words onto this paper. I do believe that I am the talk of the inn this evening; I can hear the murmurs of the crowd from here as they no doubt speculate upon what I encountered.
I wish I could join them, but I am exhausted. Sleep will no doubt claim me quickly tonight. I shall write more to you tomorrow, I think. So for now:
Good night, BB.
Octavia
Rainbow Falls, October 8th
Hello again BB,
I am writing this on the eve of a very eventful day. It turns out that as the rumour of my adventures yesterday spread, I attracted ponies willing to help! Already as I dragged myself down to breakfast I was met with words of support by the other residents and some natives of Rainbow Falls. This only grew as the day progressed; the dining room of the inn turned into something of a meeting hall as a constant stream of ponies sought me out. It feels like I have been introduced to, and had introduced to me, at least one third of the permanent inhabitants of Rainbow Falls, including the deputy mayor: one Sudden Breeze. Charming stallion, though not an appreciator of classical music. What he also didn’t appreciate was the news that there is some kind of magic in the mountains, turning ponies away from their paths. Pegasus as he is he was quick to spring into action, summoning a team of other pegasi to locate and, if possible, neutralise the odd magic.
Meanwhile, the physician of this community insisted on performing a full medical examination, despite my protests. I eventually caved and let her perform what tests she could in the inn, during a pause between visitors. I am in perfect health, naturally.
Today is for resting, but I am already determined to try again tomorrow. My various guests and visitors tried to dissuade me out of concern for my safety, but this strange setback only makes me more determined that I must reach Vinyl.
Come to think: How did Vinyl pass that magic? Is there some unicorn trick to it? Or was it not there when she passed through?
There is one visitor who did not try to persuade me to give up. In fact, he insists on joining me. His name is Berry Oats, and he says he is a composer and musician. I have no reason to doubt him based on our extended conversations this evening; he is a delightful debater of any musical topic, though his critique of contemporaries is a bit sharp at times. He claims he has heard me play and lauded my technique, but then waxed sorrowful over the ‘dreary and conventional repertoire’ at the concert hall. Needless to say, he strikes me as a stallion somewhat at odds with the world and himself. When I expressed surprise at meeting another musician at such a location, he grew serious.
“I think I was called, perhaps much like your friend ms. Scratch. You were up there; you heard the song these mountains sing, yes?”
Utter balderdash; though the winds do howl peculiarly, it is no siren song - if anything, that mountain tries to repel me! - but which creative personality does not cultivate eccentricities, I ask you? He did have one good point that I cannot refute, though I dismissed it as hypothetical at the time: Where one pony gets turned around, perhaps two ponies cooperating manage to pass. I reminded him of the deputy mayor, but he simply smiled and shook his head. “Pegasi might claim some dominion over the weather, but these mountain storms are not your average Cloudsdale Drizzle Four.”
Sadly, Berry Oats has been proven right; Sudden Breeze and his assistants returned a short moment ago, exhausted, having battled the still-raging snowstorm all day. Though they did finally claim victory over it, they had no time left over for investigating the barrier that I encountered. I have therefore decided to accept Oats’ offer of company for the attempt tomorrow.
And on the topic of tomorrow, I should finish this letter and go to bed. I want all my strength at my disposal for this second attempt!
Until next time!
Octavia
Rainbow Falls, October 21st
In reply to your letter,
We have been unable to determine the whereabouts of your friends, Octavia Melody and Vinyl Scratch, as of writing this letter, and I wished to give you a situation report.
Our efforts to locate your friends are hampered due to the wild snowstorm that blankets all of the mountainside of the northern slopes of the Rainbow Falls valley, and possibly beyond. We are awaiting additional assistance from Cloudsdale, as our own weather management team has proven insufficient to disperse the unregulated weather.
We do know Octavia set out in the company of Berry Oats, early in the morning of November 9th, their goal being the Windy Valley village. Accounting for the expected time of the journey, as well as that the storm did not start properly until well after sundown, there is every reason to believe they managed to reach their destination in good time.
For now, I would advise you to be patient and expect to hear back from your friends just as soon as this storm is dealt with; they are most likely eager to contact you. I have talked to our post office, and any letter from them will get the express treatment at no extra charge.
Respectfully,
Sudden Breeze,
Deputy Mayor of Rainbow Falls
A collection of notes, compiled into a manuscript
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Series of notes retrieved from the guest cottage in Windy Village
Octy,
If you’re reading this note then I’ve had to step outside for a while. Just lie back and relax. You’ve been through Tartarus and took a bad hit to the head, and the doctor says you likely have memory loss. You sleep a lot, and that’s apparently normal. The brief moments you’ve been awake, you haven’t been particularly aware yet, but here’s hoping! Just take it easy; she says you’ll recover as long as you get some rest. There’s fresh water in the lidded mug with the funny straw. If you’re hungry, have the granola bar that is next to the glass. At least, there should be one there, and if there isn’t then you can find more in the drawer. Just throw the wrappers on the floor. I will pick them up.
You are in the guest cottage of Windy Village. Don’t worry about costs or anything; the villagers and I have an agreement and you’re our guest.
You shouldn (Editor’s note: There was more written, but the words have been heavily crossed out and rendered illegible.)
I really (E: This sentence was left unfinished.)
Just lie back and take it easy, okay?
VS
October 16th,
Vinyl claims that is the date and though I dearly wish she were wrong, I have no reason to doubt her. She is not always here when I am awake so I have not asked much.
This note will be brief as I am weary and my body not only aches, but is sluggish to respond. V tells me I was grievously injured about a week ago, and my state is evidence enough to support that, but I have not discovered any wound, nor bandages of any kind. I suppose it could be on the back of my head, beneath my mane, where reaching it would be difficult. The incessant ringing tone I hear does indicate some form of concussion at the very least. When I next am lucid, I should ask for a mirror. And maybe to crack open a window; the air in here is stifling.
October 18th,
Octy,
You sure know how to scare a pony. When I came to see you, the bed was empty and you were nowhere to be found. The villagers were kind enough to help me look, even in the snowstorm - I’ve mentioned the snowstorm, right? And you were soon found, collapsed in a snowdrift. I got nothing coherent out of you, and it wasn’t as important as getting you back to bed, but I am curious to know why you’d go do something so stu (AN: several lines have been blotted out.)
Sorry. I’m just really worried for you. Please; just rest, okay? You can crack open a window if you need more air, though make sure the fire in the stove doesn’t go out.
Whatever you do, don’t go outside. It’s dangerous. The tone you hear is most likely just the song of the mountains here; they tend to produce whistling sounds when the wind is right.
Vinyl
October (the number 19 has been struck through) 20th
I don’t remember going out. I must’ve been delirious, from what you wrote. Maybe I was trying to escape the heat? It really is stifling, especially under the blanket. My head hurts, and my body is still so clumsy and slow to obey. There is also this incessant ringing sound. Vinyl, it frightens me to think I might have damaged my hearing. I am a star cellist. If I develop tinnitus my career is ending. I hope it’s just the wind, as you say. I really do. But what wind can produce a tone this clear and steady? At times, I think I hear additional notes in beautiful harmony. Please, you’ve mentioned a doctor. Can you beg her to examine me again, or at least relay my worries?
I am sorry for rambling, Vinyl, but I am afraid and confused. This heat is making me drowsy. I sleep in fits. At least, time seems to have shifted whenever I close my eyes. I look around for you, but you are here so seldom. What is it you do, Vinyl?
Octavia
October 21st
Octavia,
You are sleeping as I write this. I didn’t want to wake you. Sorry about that, but you need your rest.
You went outside again. You were stumbling away from the village when we found you. I believe you, when you say that you don’t remember going out the first time, and I would bet you won’t remember this time either. I believe it wasn’t really you that fought us as we tried to turn you around and bring you back inside.
I didn’t want to distress you with what had happened to you until you yourself remembered, but it seems like I have no choice; you have to understand just how DANGEROUS going outside is. There’s more than just a snowstorm out there, Octy. We think the storm’s made by an entity. It’s some kind of ice spirit. Maybe a windigo, like in the hearths’ warming tales, but those are supposed to be ghost-like, I think. This one is huge, furry, smelly and terrifying. And I’m so sorry, but it attacked you and your fellow traveler, just on the outskirts of the village. You were so wounded I was afraid you wouldn’t make it. He didn’t.
He was the third pony the entity has killed. We don’t know what foul, forbidden magic it knows, but we learned to cremate the dead after the first victim, laid out in the village chapel - a small open structure so cold that frost had formed on the fur - shambled to its hooves and attacked the mourners.
I’m so sorry for getting you into this, Octy. I really am. But we need to make sure you aren't tainted by some kind of black magic.
If that sound becomes too distracting, let me know immediately.
Please, rest.
V
Celestia preserve us, Vinyl.
I believe you. I wish I could scoff at your words and claim you were playing a prank in bad taste, or even that you are insane and delusional, but I write this with all haste for I greatly fear it is my own mind which is cracking. Or worse.
It must have torn at your heart to even consider, but I am deeply touched you’d care enough to try to shackle me to the bed. But as I watch blooms of frost grow on the dark iron links, and as I listen to the metal grow brittle and crack from the cold, I fear it will not matter.
Vinyl, I am burning up. I feel as if I am in the middle of a furnace. And yet the storm is blowing through the open window, depositing snow onto my limbs and barrel. It does not melt. The fire in the iron stove you so carefully fed with wood went out not long after you left. I suspect the air in here is too cold to maintain the fire.
It is almost peaceful, were I not burning up inside. The tone is ever so much stronger and clearer now. It is almost beautiful. I think I can hear words? You wrote to let you know, but I suspect you already do. You hear it too, don’t you?
I think I will seek out the source of this sound. What claim I still have to rationality rebels against the very idea, so I will resist the allure of the song and stay here for as long as possible. And yet I know with an immovable certainty that if I remain here for too long I will either lose my mind or perish. Whichever comes first.
Were you here, Vinyl, by my side, what would you have me do? Should I stay here and wait for you, and hope that you hold the keys to my salvation? Or, and I feel increasingly like this is the true path, will I find you at the source of this infernal tone that resonates through me? I wish you were here, so I could ask.
But you are almost constantly away when I am lucid. Doing valiant battle against the entity I suspect.
This bottle of ink is about to freeze over despite my best efforts, so these are my last words to you: Thank you, Vinyl, for trying. I forgive you for everything. And I am, in turn, so sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.
Octavia
Author’s note: These preceding letters and notes are in mostly unaltered state, save for some notes by me, added for clarity. They should provide sufficient context to this following attempt at reconstructing the final moments of Octavia Melody.
Windy Village in the summertime is a charming collection of about twenty houses set upon the north-eastern slope of Windy Valley, in a rough cluster. The uneven slope sports hardy grasses, mountain flowers and jagged boulders in various phases of being covered by lichen and moss. Wintertime, the village hibernates under a thick blanket of snow.
On the morning Octavia left the guest cabin in full use of the dregs of her sanity, almost none of this was visible. Snow and hail raged, and had long since buried all but the chimneys of the single-story houses, leaving only the windows and roofs of three two-story houses potentially visible, yet the windows were dark and visibility was non-existent.
A pony not protected against the elements, ideally with both clothing and enchantment, would last only minutes in the violent conditions, yet the only thing bothering Octavia was the wind, threatening to push her off her hooves. She found, in fact, that she was gaining strength as she left the cabin behind. Her staggering steps gained stability and her breathing evened out.
Octavia did not pause to wonder at her seemingly improving condition; her attention was fixed on the distant tone. That it had a direction was obvious to her, as was the irresistible attraction it held. She moved almost in a straight line, away from the village and further up the valley.
Progress in the thick blanket of snow on the floor of the valley was laborious and time-consuming. Visibility was slightly improved, though, which allowed Octavia to notice the row of shapes ahead of her before she literally stumbled into them. A row of ponies stood evenly spaced in a line in front of her, with Vinyl Scratch the closest.
Vinyl was clad only in a light green parka and her ever-present glasses and she nodded in greeting to Octavia. They tried to exchange words, but the storm immediately swallowed whatever sounds passed their lips. Vinyl eventually shrugged, gave a lopsided smile and gestured further up the valley, to where it ended at the foot of a steep cliff face. That was, Octavia realised, the exact direction from where the song seemed to emerge.
Passing the line of villagers with but a nod to Vinyl, Octavia let her plodding hooves carry her through the snow. She had not walked for more than a minute when a tremendous shock jolted the snow and rock beneath her hooves, staggering her. In confusion, she looked around and back. The sight she saw there made her keenly aware that, though her grip on sanity was already tenuous at best, mortal terror still had its claws hooked into her flesh.
The blizzard seemed to have let up, momentarily, for Octavia could see all the way to the row of villagers behind her, seemingly not having moved. Beyond them, Octavia beheld the entity, as it had set down in the valley. It would have been invisible in the darkness, a mere giant suggestion of a shape, were it not for the arcane flames that flickered with a putrid blueness around, and inside, its form.
At first glance it appeared to be a gargantuan pony skeleton, missing its back half. The stump of its spine rested on the valley floor, but it held itself aloft with two huge front hooves. Its grinning skull, with an orb of hateful blue shining in each eye socket, towered easily at least fifteen metres tall. But this general impression belied a much more terrible detail; this entity’s skull, bones and hooves were made of countless smaller shapes, all equine but twisted and mangled. Hundreds of pony corpses in various stages of dissolution together built this monstrous whole.
As Octavia stared, numb with terror, the great entity opened its giant maw, but the sound it produced still emanated from the multitude of smaller throats that made up its body; a dirge that promised death and violence, that served as counterpoint to the song Octavia was drawn to.
And yet, despite the enormity of danger ahead of them, the line of villagers did not break and run. Instead, they raised makeshift weapons that Octavia had previously failed to notice, in direct challenge to the entity in front of them. At the same time, Octavia became aware of a change in the melody in her head; a clear note that finally spoke words she could comprehend:
Come. Hurry.
Thus encouraged, the fear of the monster relented enough for Octavia to gather her remaining wits, turn around and make what haste she could over the thick and treacherous snow. Behind her, she heard the clear sounds of deadly spells being loosed, but she ran on without again glancing behind her.
She could not say how long she ran; likely not too long, as the valley was small and she had started past its midpoint, but fear made her lose track of time until she spied a warm light ahead of her.
At the end of the valley, beneath an almost vertical cliff face, there was a small cave opening. A small stream of water flowed out from it even now, but by Octavia’s reasoning the entire mouth of the cave should have been buried beneath the snow long before now. But in the light issuing from it Octavia could also see shovels and spades. Clearly a great effort had been made to keep this cave open. Thus encouraged, she ran towards the entrance, towards light and song and harmony, when from behind came a second great keening of the beast - this time much closer.
Hurry!
She scrambled over the loose stones and shallow snow at the mouth of the cave. The tunnel, she could see, was lit by lanterns hanging from pitons driven into the rock of the ceiling. The floor of the cavern was almost level, except for a slight dip where the stream rushed in the middle. There were small naturally formed alcoves interspersed along the side of the tunnel, and Octavia glanced inside them as she ran by and saw that these were filled with small kegs. Kegs trailing copper wire further into the cave.
Following the wires, she ran on, until a second massive crash behind her sent a tremor through the rock that nearly threw her off her hooves. Now she looked back, and saw the head and forelegs of the entity try to push itself into the cave, while its eyes stared at her. It was too big to enter, and for a moment she let herself feel relief.
Then the entity disintegrated into its component corpses, lit by the same baleful blue flame as they rose to their hooves and shambled towards Octavia, hissing, snarling or shouting their hate ahead of them.
Octavia turned and ran once more, until a hurried change in the music bade her stop. She had pulled alongside the end of the copper wires, where they all gathered together into two bunches, each tied to a metal stud on top of a wooden box that stood about as tall as Octavia’s knees. Beside the two metal studs placed near two adjacent corners, the top of the box had an obvious trigger handle. The oncoming shambling dead almost overpowered the song in Octavia’s ears, but enough of it still filtered through to translate into urgent, desperate pleading. So Octavia Melody reared up, placed her forehooves on the handle, and pushed down with all her might.
There was a tremendously violent confusion of fire, noise and motion.
Octavia became aware of standing at the same time she registered the absence of any sound. After so long with the song echoing in her ears, its absence almost ached. The entity was directly in front of her. It gazed down at her, its jaw almost close enough to touch. There was a feeling of dark amusement, as if the beast wanted to tell Octavia that, in spite of her impressive efforts, she was merely delaying the inevitable; Octavia had lost long before now. She looked down at her hooves, and saw them burning with a sickly, blue flame, completely without sound.
The return to consciousness was heralded by the return of the Song. Octavia opened her eyes and saw she was lying on a cavern floor, looking up at something she at first failed to comprehend. She appeared to be inside a colossal geode chamber, filled with crystals thicker than a pony stood tall. In the middle of the chamber stood a truly enormous multicoloured crystal that resembled a rainbow tree, and Octavia had been flung almost to its roots. Stunned, Octavia peered at the multitudes of ever-finer branching crystals that emerged from its trunk, and she eventually realised the branches were moving.
With a sound like the greatest string orchestra combined with the greatest choir in the universe, playing the richest, most complex harmonic, the crystal tree-like entity gently picked up Octavia with its branches.
Some of the finest crystals prodded her right shoulder, whereupon she became aware that both her right legs were missing - ripped off at the shoulder and hip by the blast she had triggered. But there was no blood. No grisly mess of flesh and bone. Nor was there even any pain, or any feeling at all. There was only a stump of jagged crystal that, as Octavia watched, was prodded into growth and renewal by the finest, needle-thin branchings of crystal from the tree-thing. In what seemed like no time at all, to Octavia’s thoroughly shocked senses, she was whole again. Or, at least, this crystal mimicry of her body was whole.
As if the crystal tree heard her thoughts, which it likely could, it lifted her higher, close to the large crystals emerging from the wall of the chamber. There, completely embedded in the closest crystal, she saw Vinyl Scratch.
Vinyl Scratch was singing. Her voice, usually so unruly and gravelly, aided and amplified by the crystal, rose to join the Song surrounding Octavia. It sung,
We are Harmony.
Embraced by the Song, Octavia was moved to other crystals, as if to introduce her to the ponies encased within. Some, she recognised as villagers she’d met. Others she did not recall seeing before. There were about forty ponies overall, young and old, male and female, earth pony, pegasus and unicorn alike. And then the next crystal held what was left of Berry Oats. The crystal was silent, no doubt because Oats was unmistakably dead, missing half his skull and the lower part of his torso.
We will salvage what we can, now that the emergency is over.
And then Octavia was faced with her own crystal, already occupied. There was no doubt it was a flesh and blood pony she saw in front of her, an earth pony mare with grey coat and raven hair, sporting a pink bow tie around her neck. There was also a very nasty wound travelling from the forehead to the top of the head.
We express sorrow that your own shell is unsalvageable. It has been tainted by Chaos.
As Octavia looked at her own body in front of her, she became aware that she - it - was not singing, but growling.
Once a shell is planted with a windigo seed, nothing will prevent the hatching of a new thrall.
The form in the crystal seemed to snarl. Spidery traces of frost formed on the crystal’s surface.
As a compromise, we have transcribed all your essence that it had yet to touch into this shell we spun for you, and extrapolated the rest.
The Song rose into a crescendo - and the crystal in front of Octavia, holding her own body, burst into actinic fire. And as Octavia screamed, in witness of her own passing, the Song picked up her grief and loss, and wove her into itself.
Windy Valley, November 2nd
Hello again BB,
All is well! I have spoken to Vinyl Scratch and we are planning our return voyage to Ponyville.
My sincere apologies for failing to write. Deepest shame gripped me when I heard of your increasingly panicked inquiries as to my health and whereabouts. I can only hope you forgive me due to the circumstances; the snowstorm grounded all pegasi in Windy Valley, and it also triggered an avalanche on the mountain paths, cutting off the land routes. We had to wait for the storm to clear to send this message.
On the clearing of the snowstorm, let me briefly mention what a thrill it was to see the Wonderbolts themselves clear the skies and confirm our well-being! There is a thousand times more to tell, but it will keep until we can sit down together.
I cannot say exactly when we will be back, as it depends on digging out the path down to Rainbow Falls from underneath the snow deposited by the avalanche, but the locals estimate a week, two at most, before the path is traversable again.
Hopefully we will meet again soon, and thank you once again,
Octavia.
Ponyville, December 3rd
Dear diary,
We have everything finally moved and properly installed in Ponyville, so Vinyl and I can breathe easier now. Well, if we needed to breathe anymore.
We plan on a small trip to Canterlot to celebrate. Nothing too wild, merely meeting our friends and relaxing, as we are unsure what differences these crystalline bodies of ours have to the usual flesh-and-blood ones.
Harmony is still perturbed, or perhaps irritated would be the better word, about the passing of Octavia Melody, but the cavern in the Everfree we found yesterday seemed to perk it up a bit. A good, hidden base of operations close to the predicted epicentre of events. It wasted no time laying down roots, figuratively and literally.
It still left us with the “choir”, without explanation nor apology. I hope the magicks of concealment and obscurity Harmony laid upon our new sub-basement are as good as Vinyl says; they need to pass extraordinary scrutiny in the near future. We also need to drip-feed Ponyville’s new inhabitants to Pinkie Pie so as not to arouse her suspicions. Even Harmony fears that mare’s abilities.
In addition to Pinkie, Harmony has cautioned that one Twilight Sparkle, protegé of Princess Celestia herself, is expected to visit and, with a high likelihood, settle down. It is coy on the details, though, only saying Twilight is expected sometime before the next Summer Sun Celebration. I can sense that Harmony is very excited about this pony for some reason.
Being Harmony’s minion has its perks. I like to go down to the new sub-basement to sit a while, and listen to the choir. Sometimes I add my voice, though not as often or as completely as Vinyl. She’s quickly developing a reputation around Ponyville for being mute. Which is a pity; she really has a beautiful voice, now that it is properly utilised.
Taking up the mantle of Octavia Melody’s life has been smooth so far. It seems most of her memories were transcribed flawlessly. Still, I have taken great advantage of her habits of archiving her correspondence and diary-keeping. Impersonating someone is easy when they give you an instruction manual.
Vinyl still argues that I am the same Octavia. We’ll just have to agree to disagree; she didn’t watch Melody be cremated. She was busy eliminating the stragglers of that windigo-like entity, so she has a good enough excuse, but I wish she’d accept my point of view.
Octavia Melody is dead.
May I honour her memory.
Octavia Philharmonica