Tavern Tactics

Chapters

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven

Part One

The stallions had gone on ahead, despite Stygian’s “ums” and “ahs”. Like Meadowbrook said, put a stallion in a one-pony town and he would soon gravitate towards the nearest tavern.

This one creaked. It looked like it had been erected overnight using woodrot and any sawdust that hadn’t collapsed yet.

Hardly anyone remained in town anyway – the stallions had seen maybe four or five ponies milling about – and the tavern only had half a dozen patrons despite this being happy hour. Not that this ever stopped Rockhoof’s singing. Rockhoof could sing for a whole troop of ponies. Any tavern with him in it automatically seemed crowded.

Now the four stallions linked forelimbs and swayed, spilling their drinks with the logistical effort involved.

“Oooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh –” began Flash Magnus, leading them into another song.

“I’ll march o’er hills, I’ll fly o’er vale,
I’ll sing through wind, and grind through gale,
I’ll wear my bones, my armour torn,
I’ll weather cries of hate and scorn;
Old Tartarus I’ll face for you,
My second soul, my love so true!
My second soul, my love…”

“SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” boomed Rockhoof.

“Truuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeee,” howled Star Swirl.

Even through the collapse of laughs and hearty backslaps, they noticed suspicious eyes watching them from the bar. The rest of the tavern held their silence, their drinks undrunk.

Stygian was the first to recover. This wasn’t his first time drinking with the “lads”, but he still insisted on a thimble full of orange squash. He’d mostly joined in to blend in; last time he’d tried cider, it had hurt his throat.

“A sterling countertenor, sir!” he said, to keep up their spirits. Alone of the group, he couldn’t hold his smile any better than he could hold his drink.

“Thank you, Stygian.” Star Swirl harrumphed, his signal that pleasantries were well and truly over. “As it happens, I used to be in the all-stallions choir of the old Canterlot University, what. In those days, you learned your C-sharps from your D-flats quick as a whip! The Old Master Dire Tonic wasn’t shy about correcting an errant tongue, oh dear me no…”

Stygian sighed, but very quietly. The bearded sorcerer was gearing up for another “Back in my day…” speech. If Stygian heard any more, his memoirs would be full of nothing but “Back in my day…” speeches.

“Yes, sir,” he began, speaking quickly, “and while we seem to have a brief respite, sir, I’ve assessed our current situation and taken the liberty of considering several new battle strategies –”

“Ouah, have yerself a pint, Stygie.” Rockhoof shoved one of his many tankards over the table. “It’ll put hairs on yer chest –”

“More hairs than usual,” added Flash cheerfully.

“Aye. Drink enough, and yer might e’en grow a chest to put them on too.”

Both he and Flash elbowed each other and threw back a quaff of cider. Some of it splashed on the floor.

Stygian smiled for their sakes, but deep down his memory added the joke to a list.

He glanced at the bar. Sitting on stools, the other patrons nursed their drinks and glared over at the party, like misers expecting thieves. Even the bar-stallion had a hoof under the counter, and while Stygian hadn’t been in many taverns in his life – his tutors had largely discouraged frivolous pursuits of any kind, up to and including smiles – he kept his ears open, and one of the things he’d learned was that a bar-stallion with a grim view of his clientele was most likely a friend of some useful club kept handily within reach. Preferably a big, no-nonsense club. With a nail in it.

There was no doubt the sirens had been through here. In a town this small, the bitter hatreds of a few dozen ponies would have made for slim pickings, but in any case, he’d learned that some towns didn’t need much excuse to start a tavern brawl. Sometimes, merely existing was enough to offend them.

It wasn’t as if his friends blended in. Star Swirl’s bells jangled on his robes whenever he moved, and he had a certain way of sitting that suggested anyone nearby was automatically a servant. Flash Magnus’ armour clanked and groaned under the rust. And Rockhoof didn’t need any fancy clothing to stand out. He projected a sort of “anti-blending-in” field with his sheer presence, and a large stallion who didn’t wash the “good, honest earth” off his coat soon had another sheer presence of his own anyway.

“Um, sirs?” Stygian began, trying not to breathe too deeply.

“Tell me, Captain Magnus,” said Star Swirl, “whence did you come upon that delightful little ditty?”

“Sang it on the campaigns to the Griffon Kingdoms, sah!” Flash Magnus ripped off a salute, half-mocking, half-earnest. “Commander Ironhead disapproved, sah, so we sang it at every chance we got, just for him.”

When he winked, Flash Magnus could make even Rockhoof blush.

“But after the first few raids, we stopped singing it out of respect, sah.”

“Why’s that?” said Star Swirl. “Sounds rather uplifting, I think.”

“Yes, sah, but it’s one thing to sing it just to rile up a stuffy old commander. It’s another to sing it when he knows his friends won’t be singing it anymore.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

Stygian wished he wasn’t sitting right next to Star Swirl. He was living proof that embarrassment was contagious.

Sometimes, the sorcerer could be so dense. Give him the fabric of space and time to mess about in, he’d run ring universes around you, but hint as to anything involving other ponies and he always, despite his best efforts and understanding, found a way to soil it.

Yet Flash Magnus’ brief frown vanished as quickly as it came. He’d gotten used to the sorcerer’s density.

“On account of all the war and so on, sah,” he said. “Not everyone gets out alive, sah.”

“Oh, I see. Yes,” said Star Swirl hurriedly. “Pardon me.”

And that was another problem with Star Swirl. In his own mind, he was never really wrong. Just mildly not-quite-correct, and then the mistake hadn’t happened and they all were supposed to move on. Stygian wondered how the bearded stallion’s tutors had treated him to get him like this. Or even if it had been the other way around.

Fortunately, Flash Magnus raised his tankard to show good spirits. “It’s a good song amongst friends, sah, but you have to pick your company with care, if you see what I mean. I’ve known it to break a stallion at many a tavern.”

“That poor stallion,” said Rockhoof.

“No, I meant –”

“Aye, I ken well what yer meant. The Mighty Helm’s seen many a good soul fall to arrow and blade, and worse things besides. Yer learn fast to get yer good cheer where yer can.”

Flash Magnus raised his tankard higher, more emphatically. “Qui dixit mihi verum, et dixit mihi doloris et mortis.”

A master of languages, Stygian raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“That’s rather grim, what,” said Star Swirl, also a master of languages but less prone to keeping his mouth shut.

The tankard hit the table. “Life in the army, sah.”

Beside him, Rockhoof looked down at a forest of tombs, the tankards being resting places of now-departed spirits. And ciders, ales, bitters, mead, and whatever else had taken his fancy.

“Time for another drink.” The stool groaned under his rising bulk.

“You’ve already had eight!” said Flash, goggling.

“Aye. Well, I had to kick off with summat, didn’t I?”

“You’re paying this time,” said Star Swirl at once.

“Ouah, you tight old scunner!”

“The rest of us would like a little insurance if things don’t go well in the next town, Rockhoof.”

“Away wi’ yer, yer old bag o’ bones! This fight’s as good as fought.”

“That,” said Star Swirl, tapping the table meaningfully, “is what you said last time.”

“And I’ll be right yet. I was just one town early sayin’ it.”

“And two towns,” Flash Magnus muttered. “And three towns, and four towns, and –”

Rockhoof rounded on him, and several hundred pounds of looming earth stallion does not round quickly. Stygian practically heard the floorboards grind under his boulder hooves.

“There a point you wanna make, Flash? Then make it, face-to-face.”

“I’m just being realistic,” said Flash Magnus, who to Stygian’s amazement looked up without so much as a flicker of a flinch. “If the sirens were that easy to defeat, we wouldn’t be here now talking about them.”

“When I get my shovel o’er their ugly fish heads –”

“Yes, Rockhoof. Only we have yet to reach that point. They know our strengths. They know how to duck and dodge our tricks. They have tactical advantages enough to kick our haunches up the river and back, as my old sergeant used to say.”

Stygian, who had some idea of how pegasi usually spoke, wondered which particular quoted words Flash Magnus was censoring here.

Calmly, Flash Magnus stood up and downed his pint before turning to Rockhoof’s cold glare. “So we can’t say this fight’s as good as fought. Otherwise we’ll end up arguing all over again at the next tavern, too.”

The trouble was that Rockhoof didn’t back down. He didn’t have the mental headspace for backing down. Backing down was somepony else’s problem.

Stygian held his breath. Surely, though, even a soldier like Flash wasn’t going to pick a fight with someone who carved valleys with his bare hooves, solely so the bards could sing about it and spread his name.

Luckily, Flash Magnus did have the mental headspace for backing down. He called it “tactical retreat”.

He sat down. “You’re right about one thing: there’s still hope left.”

“That’s what I thought,” rumbled Rockhoof, and dust rained down from the rafters. “This is only a game to me. I could knock those scunner sirens senseless all on my tod, with my legs hogtied and my eyes blindfolded. I’d knock them so far yonder, they’d become three new stars in the sky.”

“Fine, fine. I believe you. Go get your pick-me-up.”

“Well, I chust wanted it said.” Storm clouds moving away, Rockhoof tramped up to the bar. When he made his order, he was curt and sullen.

Not for the first time, Stygian wished the girls would show up. Flash Magnus was all right, but Star Swirl’s aura of burning, corona-like power made him, Stygian, feel like a foal at the grown-ups’ table. Whereas Rockhoof had a way of looming and booming that worried his sensibilities. He’d spent too much time indoors to feel really comfortable with stallions who could snap him like a twig.

Star Swirl glanced at his drink morosely. “I suppose it is time we reconsidered our approach. One moment –”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the mares to join us?” said Flash.

Ignoring him, Star Swirl lit up his horn. Thinking fast, Stygian grabbed his own thimble and yanked it off the table a second before the air popped, the world in front of him sizzled, and a gigantic map landed. Drinks rattled and rolled across the floor.

Stygian backed off a little. The map projected well beyond the table, its sides almost razor-edged.

Hums and muzzle-rubbing soon followed. Star Swirl examined the map as though reading a fascinating old tome.

“Hey!” snapped a voice from the bar.

Stygian’s heart sank at the sight of the bar-stallion. The stallion’s leg ducked under the counter, and Stygian shrank back at the thought of a solid block of wood hurtling towards him.

“What d’you think your doin’?” said the bar-stallion.

If only Star Swirl had looked mildly apologetic, or even rattled off a curt “apologies” to placate him. But Star Swirl barely treated his friends with much courtesy. A fat old nobody had no chance.

“Good sir,” he said, clipping the air with his irritation. “This concerns the fate of Equestria and all of its subjects. Kindly do not interrupt me while I’m working.”

Then he switched off the mild inconvenience and had eyes only for the map.

Stygian wondered how quickly he could bolt for the door. Part of him felt no shame in leaving his friends behind. After all, fighting was their department. But part of him kept him glued to his chair, and unfortunately it was an ancient, animal part of him that was too scared to dare move an inch, for fear of becoming a target separated from his herd.

A few of the patrons scraped stools back. Fights might be popular in these parts, especially after a siren attack.

It was Rockhoof who responded first. “Any stallion lays a hoof on him, that stallion is a dead stallion.”

One of the nearest patrons looked him up and down, or at least up and further up. “That so? And who the hay do you think you are?”

“Oh no,” murmured Stygian, the words making a dash for freedom.

Somehow, Rockhoof found enough inner matter to swell further. Spikes of rage broke out all around his body. He darkened and reddened as much as old iron.

“I am the Strength of the Mighty Helm!” he said. He didn’t bellow. He didn’t need to. Bellowing would have been a whisper next to such deep confidence. “I have cut through the rock of ages with nothing but my trusty shovel! I am Skullgrinder of Earth, Scourge of the Griffons, Slayer of Dragons. My shovel is Swordbeater! With it, I have carved valleys and raised mountains with my passing! I am Defier of Fate, Bringer of Tides, and feared from the highest heavens to the deepest seas!”

Stygian almost clapped, but that would have drawn unwanted attention to himself. The other patrons stared. Then the nearest one drew himself up, scowling harder.

Then Stygian noticed the hammer tied to the stallion’s belt. Good grief, he thought. Another warrior!

“Blethers!” said the patron, his hammer shaking. “You tell Ironsmith you can shape rock and kill dragons? You wee girl’s blouse! I am the King of Iron! I eat diamonds for breakfast, lunch, and supper. I found the titans who made the world and ground them into dust and ate their ashes and swallowed their might! I’ve seen worlds that’d make this one a speck of dust and I’ve beaten the fear of Equestria and her champion right into their bones! I am Ironsmith, Forger of Worlds, Creator of Destiny! I defy the Defier of Fate and make him eat his shovel!”

It was some of the finest nonsense Stygian had ever heard. He could tell that, despite the swelling anger and bursting pride, Rockhoof was ever so slightly impressed.

Around them, the patrons watched with an air of mild confusion, tinged with manly respect. Of course, earth stallions took a bout of boasting very seriously in some parts, overruling even a full battle and definitely overruling a mere tavern punch-up. Perhaps an understanding could be found, warrior-to-warrior?

“Is that all, ya mudlin?” Rockhoof took a deep breath, and the pressure in the room dropped so fast that Stygian’s ears hurt. “A pansy conjurer like me mate Beardy could poke his head in a dozen worlds afore you woke up to this one. But I’d conquer ’em afore you put your pink pompom slippers on!”

“Oh aye, ya gob-smiter?”

“Aye! Name your greatest feats, and no blethers, ya son of a milkmaid.”

“Ladies first, ya gardenin’ geldin’.”

“How many volcanoes you fought and won with that tinkerer’s tool you call a hammer, ya wee pictsie pony?”

“How many dragons you dug wee pretty flowers for with that ploughshare, ya daft hen?”

Stygian lay back while the insults flew. At least Rockhoof had made a good distraction. Flash Magnus ducked down to pick up his spilled drink while Star Swirl muttered and examined the map. Neither of them seemed tense anymore, not now the fight had, as it were, been put in two mouths and left to get on with it. Even the other patrons lost interest.

Hope fluttered inside Stygian’s chest. Perhaps the sirens’ effects were wearing off already. That meant they hadn’t lingered long. And that meant they might be running scared. At last, they could press home their advantage!

But as he watched Star Swirl mutter to himself, he wondered if there was still some slight, slim chance that they might miss this golden opportunity to not get their haunches kicked up the river and back…

Part Two

The door whined as it opened. Even the hinges had rusted here, in this cursed town.

Three mares stepped in.

At once, most of the company straightened up, except for Rockhoof and his current disputant. Not that pretty mares were rare in backwater places like this one, but usually they were built along solid, child-bearing, sheep-carrying, barrel-shouldering lines.

Whereas the first to enter was Somnambula. Probably none of the ponies here knew what “exotic” was, or how to spell it, but Somnambula’s rich eyelashes, Somnambula’s pristine headdress, Somnambula’s very see-through clothing, all spoke of “exotic” right down to the bone. She even walked with the kind of sinuous stride that made ponies – who’d lived slap-bang in the middle of wet fields all their lives – dream of palm trees, and white sandy beaches, and the sweet flesh of coconuts.

Someone actually wolf-whistled as she passed.

Ever the traditionalist, Flash Magnus removed his helmet and stood up as she approached. “Nil desperandum, Somnambula. The room brightens with your approach already.”

“Enough of that, you old soldier,” she said, and the slinking way she spoke suddenly made Stygian regret years spent cooped up in his private library. “Although if you’re paying, I’ll have a Honeyed Snakebite on the rocks.”

“I’m afraid your tastes exceed this establishment, Somnambula. But I’m sure I could slake your thirst with a humble mead?”

Star Swirl waved them both off like gnats. “Silence, please! I am concentrating!”

In the end, Somnambula nodded, and took Flash Magnus’ seat while he flapped over to the bar with a fresh surge of haste.

Meanwhile, Stygian watched the second mare swagger in. Mage Meadowbrook noticed him, beamed, and waved so hard she almost stumbled.

At the bar, Rockhoof and the other warrior – Ironsmith, was it? – had abandoned words and were now trying to flex their muscles. Shirts threatened to rip. Those patrons who could tear their eyes away from Somnambula cheered the two combatants indiscriminately.

Seeing this, Meadowbrook barked a laugh and hurried over. “Don’t stretch too far, Rocky! Y’all recollect how long it took me to sew up the last one, you hear?”

All stallions began smoothing down their manes and grinning at her approach. Meadowbrook swept into every room as though a belle at a ball. Besides, she had a way of beaming at ponies that made even scar-battled thugs turn into complete gentlecolts.

“Oh, Meadowbrook,” mumbled Rockhoof, and it astonished Stygian how someone who looked like the world’s hardiest battering ram could sound so sheepish. “Don’t go into that now.”

“Uh, I bet you does the best stitchin’, ma’am,” rumbled Ironsmith, nudging his colleagues. “I ken my wife can’t patch a hole worth a drake’s bottom.”

“Ain’t you sweet? I’m more into the stitchin’ wounds business, darlin’.” Meadowbrook rapped the bar for attention. “But when you’re travellin’ with the big boys, you learn fast someone’s gotta do the laundry-work, un-glamorous as it may be. And as for the smell… Sanitation clearly needs to be in this season. Am I right on the money, or what?”

“Really don’t go into that now.” Rockhoof squirmed. It sounded like a rhinoceros struggling against a leather harness.

Around him, the other stallions’ comments outvoted him. “Aye, cleanliness is next to princessy-ness.”

“’Tis a fine thing to have the laundry under an expert’s hooves.”

“No joke.”

“Aye.”

“A fine thing, a verra fine thing.”

“Mares these days just ain’t a patch on the old ways.”

“Well!” Meadowbrook smiled, a mother among children. “There ain’t no mistakin’ you darlin’s for anything but true gentlecolts! Shame we have to meet under such dark clouds. I’ve been tending to blood and guts all day, and let me tell you: healin’ ain’t a dainty li’l job. I could rightly enjoy a dram of brandy.”

“And how the hay are you gonna pay for –?” Rockhoof began.

At once, the cry rang out. “I’ll pay yer round, lass!”

“Give o’er! I saw her first!”

“One dram o’ brandy comin’ up!”

“I’ll make it two drams and the finest oatmeal money can buy!”

“Crivens, I’ll make it three drams and a hot meal and a slap-up breakfast to die for come sunrise!”

Amid the shouts and brief, sudden, but gentlemanly scuffles – a lady was present, after all – the third of the mares finally made her way over to their table.

At once, Stygian stood up. “My lady –”

“My little scholar,” groaned the elderly tones through the wrinkled smile, “I wouldn’t take your seat from you.”

“I’ve been saving it for you, my lady! Thought you might like to sit next to Star Swirl, my lady!”

This wasn’t just gallantry on Stygian’s part. Not that he’d ever say a word against the great Star Swirl the Bearded, sorcerer among sorcerers, master of the subtle arts. But it would be nice to have a negotiator between him and the old rambler, and few ponies were more open to negotiation than Mistmane.

The other advantage, of course, was that Mistmane knew magic too. She’d trained at one of the harshest schools of magic in eastern Equestria. Even Star Swirl watched her cautiously, and rarely talked over her.

Stygian was an observer, though, and he couldn’t help noticing the way Mistmane looked at the other two mares, one accepting her mead and deep in conversation with a flustered Flash Magnus, the other happily surrounded by fighting stallions and more brandy glasses than could fit in a chicken coop. No one had looked twice at the old biddy bringing up the rear.

It didn’t matter that Mistmane was, in fact, younger than the other two. She had more wrinkles and bone deformations than a wise old elephant left too long in the sun. Stygian wondered, not for the first time, if the young sorcerer secretly regretted her rash if noble sacrifice: beauty spent, once done, never rescinded.

Star Swirl cleared the irritation out of his throat. “Now that all of us are here, we can finally concentrate on a matter of genuine import.”

“We found a place to rest for the night, Star Swirl,” said Mistmane.

“Balderdash. We’re staying at the tavern.”

“Pardon my frankness, but we’ve seen what the sirens have done here. I don’t think it would be wise to stay here for long. Some of the citizens are starved and crazed, the poor things.”

Stygian pulled up two more stools, one for Somnambula who gave him a dignified nod and sat down at last, one intended for Meadowbrook once she could get out of the eager-to-please scrum. He himself had no problem standing. Scholars didn’t mind minor discomforts, and he had to confess he didn’t feel quite on par with the rest of the company. Not yet.

“Meaning what, Mistmane?” said Star Swirl, but warily; Stygian heard the old sorcerer weighing up his chances against the eastern unicorn, whose mane flowed and flexed against an ethereal wind, even indoors.

“There might be some desperate souls willing to rob us in the night.”

“So? A simple forcefield spell will solve that problem. We have nothing to fear.”

“We have nothing to fear. They do. Star Swirl, they’re angry and desperate and confused. Some of them fled when we approached, and Meadowbrook offered them food!”

“All the more reason,” said Star Swirl relentlessly, “to develop our battle strategy tonight.”

Mistmane’s sigh was a dewdrop of sadness, small, fragile, and yet reflecting so much of the world around it that Stygian wondered if he was blessed to have heard it or cursed never to forget what truths it had revealed.

He decided to take a step forwards. “What she means, sir, if I may be so bold, is that we should move for the sake of the inhabitants. The siren attack must have come as a shock to a town as small and isolated as this one, sir. If we waltz in and erect barriers, we might be treated as another enemy from outside.”

“Young colt, I still don’t see –”

“We’re a complication in the current chaos, sir,” added Stygian, who wished Star Swirl didn’t say “young colt” like they were at school. “And these ponies don’t understand the wider context, sir. If we move on quickly, the inhabitants might recover enough to focus on calming down and rebuilding their homes. If we stay, or worse, fight them, we’d only stress them all the more.”

Despite his adult pride, Stygian took Mistmane’s small smile warmly, as though accepting a golden star from a teacher. Mistmane even resembled one of his old tutors from when he was knee-high and full of beans, eyes shining as they saw the future…

“Very well,” snapped Star Swirl. “What do you propose?”

Somnambula fended off Flash Magnus’ sweet nothings long enough to say, “I found an old temple some way into the dark woods. Flash and I could travel as the crow flies, as they say in the country, but the land has hills, and the forests are muddy and difficult to walk.”

“Sounds like swamp country,” said Flash Magnus. “Meadowbrook was born in a swamp, and old Rockhoof could walk through a glacier. You unicorns might have a tough time, I suppose, sah, but if us two carried –”

“The very idea!” Star Swirl’s hat jangled as he turned his snout up at the suggestion. “A sorcerer can find his own way without anything as undignified as an airdrop!”

“Or her way,” said Mistmane.

“Or her way, yes,” added Star Swirl carelessly.

Stygian held his breath. One of them was going to mention him, any second now, without his prompting, any second now…

Flash Magnus hovered over the map. In the distance, Meadowbrook laughed her high girly laugh and said, “Now a shindig I’d sample any day! Perhaps one of you fine stallions could show a girl how to cut the rug around these parts. Any takers?”

Or no one would mention him.

In case it helped, Stygian coughed loudly. Only Mistmane looked up. The other three still stared at the map.

“Those sirens are trying to mislead us,” said Somnambula, rubbing her chin.

“I doubt it,” murmured Star Swirl, his hoof tracing a spiral over the map. “See, they’re working their way to the heart of Equestria. Simple spiralling tactic. It means they first eat up the negative energy from the outlying regions, where there are no major cities and the defences are much weaker. Then they build up their strength for the larger settlements nearer the middle. Canterlot and Everfree will be the endgame, you mark my words.”

“So what do you propose?”

“Simple. Instead of following in their wake, we anticipate them. Lay a trap for them… Let’s see…” Star Swirl’s hoof swirled over the map as though stirring a large coffee. Then he slammed it down. “There!”

Stygian squinted. Oh well, if he didn’t put his best hoof forwards…

“Rambling Rock Ridge, sir?” he said. “There’s no settlement there.”

“No!” Star Swirl’s eye twinkled, a sign of genius at work, or so Stygian charitably assumed. “However, it lies on a direct path between Canterlot and Everfree. The sirens need to finish this. They’ve had the element of surprise so far, but word spreads. Forces are rallying. The army’s being called back to defend the cities, which means more military might is concentrating on the centre.” Star Swirl glanced up. “Isn’t that right, Captain Magnus?”

Flash Magnus nodded. “Standard siege preparations, sah. So far, the army’s treated these as minor skirmishes, the idiots. I told them sirens don’t go down easy –”

“Yes, yes, that’ll do,” said Star Swirl, and for once Stygian felt pity for him.

The early days of the siren war had gone badly. When they’d emerged from the Southern Luna Sea and the towns there had degenerated into in-fighting, the high command had gotten cause-and-effect backwards. Ponies fought each other, and that caused the sirens to invade and eat up all the negative energy being born. They hadn’t realized that sirens caused ponies to fight.

So they’d gotten it back to front. They’d sent small squadrons to force peace on the ponies, which just meant the ponies had a new target on which to take out their anger. And once the soldiers had decided the ponies were more dangerous than the sirens, they’d finally heard new voices urging them on. They’d listened to the siren song…

Flash Magnus breathed deeply. Stygian had recruited him first, which only meant Flash had seen far more fights than he’d wanted to.

“Once the sirens target a larger settlement,” said Flash, “the army won’t take any chances with a small task force. They’ll go big.” He muttered, “About time.”

“Exactly,” said Star Swirl. “And the fewer settlements are left, the more desperate they’ll become. That means do or die.”

“But why in between, sir?” said Stygian.

“Because, young colt, if we choose only one of the cities and wait there, the sirens will simply attack the other. Without us defending it, that city will fall. Once the sirens have a city full of hatred fuelling them, on top of countless settlements’ worth of the stuff, even we will be powerless to stop them mopping up the rest.”

“With all due respect, sir,” said Stygian, “if we’re in between, how can we guarantee we’ll reach the attacked city in time anyway?”

“They’re only a few hours apart. Even Rockhoof could clear that distance at a gallop, and with two pegasi scouting for us, it’ll be easier still. Whereas if we pick Canterlot and the sirens go for Everfree instead, they’ll have enough time to eat up considerable power before we realized our mistake.”

Somnambula tapped the map. “Except the sirens will not do that.”

“Of course they will!” Using his hoof, Star Swirl traced the spiral. “Look at the course they’re charting!”

“Yes, Star Swirl. I see it. But we see what the sirens want us to see.”

“Poppycock. You make them sound too intelligent.”

Somnambula leaned back. Although her eyelashes flapped like butterflies under the blinking, when she finally settled into a frown, the dark wings became knives of shadow. The eyeliner – at least, Stygian assumed it was eyeliner, having never seen how or even whether the mare used cosmetics at all – gave her a glower that cut further than her face, carving up the air through sheer fury.

“My tribe tells many legends of the sirens,” she said, low and menacing as a crouched panther. “Beyond the Desert of Nap, along the coast, the monsters are said to seize unwary travellers. Beware, beware, my little mare, for siren song is beyond compare. My mother taught me how they reach into your mind, looking for any scrap of anger, any morsel of fear, any flicker of resentment.”

Around the table, silence held its counsel. Only the sounds of someone torturing a fiddle broke through, yet it seemed far away.

“Creatures like that know ponies,” Somnambula continued. “They know how we feel, how we think. They have to. They are ugly beasts no one would trust, so they sneak around us. They listen to our complaints and grievances. They avoid the soldiers where they can. If they know they are being followed, they fly away and hide, or lure them into traps. On the seas or on the sands, there are monsters all around us.”

“Somnambula,” whispered Mistmane gently, “you don’t have to…”

“We know how to deal with ordinary monsters, but those three sirens are getting smarter and smarter. How?”

“I know! I am familiar with the three in question,” said Star Swirl. “It must be their leader. She is something else. She’s different. She’s smarter, and stronger, and she’s far more ambitious than any creature I’ve ever encountered.”

“Somnambula does have a point, sah,” said Flash Magnus. “If they were ordinary monsters, they couldn’t possibly have gotten this far.”

“Mm, perhaps?”

“No perhaps about it, sah. Remember Snake Island, sah?”

For once, Star Swirl shuddered. “I remember Snake Island very well, thank you!”

“Exactly. A whole island full of pegasus warriors, sah, all seasoned veterans. Fortified garrison, warned ahead of time. Unicorn shield spells, earth ponies monitoring the caves going in and out of the camp, and regular checks on anyone trying to get in. All kept hush-hush and hidden ready for ambush.”

“I said I remember very well.”

Stygian didn’t. He’d been south at the time, looking for Somnambula. But he’d remembered Flash coming back, armour dented, out of breath and flying as though he wanted to drop out of the sky.

The sirens knew magic. Magic they shouldn’t have known, if they were just ordinary monsters.

The sirens hadn’t bothered with a direct attack. They’d cursed one ordinary earth mare and sent her to slip through the defences as a refugee. Then, like a virus, the curse had spread. Once it reached the soldiers, who were jumpy and itching for a fight in any case, the unicorns barely had a chance. The shield went down, and immediately, the sirens had leaped in.

Like they’d been waiting for it, Flash had said.

Star Swirl ran a hoof over his face. He’d been part of the shield squad at the time, under royal orders. As far as he was concerned, it had been his shield. Now he looked very old indeed, or very ill.

“It is entirely possible,” said Flash Magnus carefully, going over a script in his head, “that the… that the earth mare that time just happened to have been infected with the curse. She was a refugee, after all.”

“I do not think so, Captain Magnus.” Somnambula pointed at another part of the map, closer to the Frozen North where Equestria howled under blizzards. “They knew we knew their trick by then. They completely missed the ambush at Sasquatchewan.”

“Proof that the earth mare infectee was a fluke!”

“No. They knew we had learned that trick by then. I believe – I know they had learned to work around any ambushes by that point. They only targeted small villages for the following three weeks.”

Flash Magnus nodded. “All right. Say they were trying to be careful. Building up strength. But that way, they wouldn’t need tactics like cursing one refugee. They could just force their way in.”

“Yes, but even so –” began Mistmane.

“They learn,” insisted Somnambula. “That must be why we always lose. We underestimate their cunning.”

Star Swirl snorted. “Yes. The rest of us are aware of that, thank you, Somnambula.”

Oh boy, weren’t they just. Stygian had first seen their magical battles up close round about the time Mage Meadowbrook came out of her swamp to join them. Stygian himself managed to trap one of the sirens with a bubble spell. Nothing a stubborn enemy couldn’t break eventually, but enough to hold her in place for a comrade to aim a blow. Somnambula and Flash Magnus had prepared to strike…

Only to be tackled by the other two. Who had sent the startled pegasi flying, right into Stygian.

He hadn’t remembered much except the sickening crack. If it hadn’t been for Mage Meadowbrook, he dreaded to think what his back would have looked like, how much worse it could’ve felt, whether he might even have lived to see it again in a mirror.

But then she’d slung him onto her shoulders in a lift that was all about business and not at all about preserving his dignity, and while he’d been carried off to recover, he swore the same siren he’d trapped had glowed about her chest. The bubble spell collapsed around it.

Of course, he thought. Sirens have magical gemstones embedded in their chests. He remembered now, from one of his old bestiaries.

That was when the siren had conjured her own bubble, holding Rockhoof at bay long enough for the sirens to escape.

Those gemstones didn’t just absorb negative energy. They absorbed magic. The sirens learned spells by consuming them. And how many times had Star Swirl hurled his best at them, only to have it hurled back? It was like fighting yourself.

“My point is,” said Somnambula, thumping the map for emphasis, “if the sirens want us to think they are spiralling into the centre of Equestria, then they want us to waste time in the cities.”

“And I repeat: those are prime feeding grounds.” Star Swirl’s horn flashed. Magical lines encircled the two cities right in the middle of the map. “Where else are they going to go?”

“It’s a puzzle, sir,” said Stygian, trying to sound as loyal as his reedy voice allowed.

Hoofsteps thumped towards them.

“Is this a private party,” growled Rockhoof, “or can anypony join?”

Part Three

“I’m joinin’ either way,” growled Rockhoof when no one answered him.

The others stared past him. Both pegasi stifled giggles behind their hooves. Even Star Swirl went red under his beard and long locks of mane.

“Where’s Meadowbrook?” said Mistmane.

Rockhoof nodded over to the bar, where the fiddler finally found a tune. Clapping and heavy steps broke out.

“Making a spectacle o’ herself,” he muttered.

“What a fine dancer she is,” was all Star Swirl could say with a straight face.

Stygian watched the hem of that dress flounce, and goodness did it flounce. He thought he’d seen the limit of what a dress could do at a hoedown in the Hayseed Swamp shacks, but Meadowbrook danced as though every limb had its own beat and all of them were trying to outdo the others. Her beehive bobbed so much some of the stallions unwise enough to join her were coming away with hooves covering their noses.

Ever aware, Stygian glanced at Mistmane. The mare’s lips were thin and tight.

“So,” said Flash, overflowing with nonchalance. “I suppose your friend and you settled your differences, Rocky.”

“None can say I begrudge a young lass her right to enjoy herself,” said Rockhoof coldly.

“Indeed. And the right to enjoy several other stallions, by the look of it.”

“I woulda beaten that iron blowhard in another minute. She’s got no right, breaking up a perfectly healthy mudslinging.”

Flash Magnus placed his helmet on his seat, eyes wide and cheeks cracking. “Yes, shameful. I don’t suppose that fiddler takes requests.”

“Away with yer, then! If you must make fools of us.”

“Sah, yes, sah!” Grinning, Flash threw off a salute and flung himself into the flouncing fray. Soon, laughter from him and her shook the floorboards again.

For a while, the others simply looked up or craned on their stools to watch the flail of limbs. When it came to dancing, Flash was every inch the rival of someone like Meadowbrook.

“Don’t be so dour, Rockhoof.” Mistmane reached across and patted him on the forelimb kindly. “I think it’s splendid to see ponies live in the moment. There’s a beautiful dignity in young joy.”

“We’re warring, Mistmane! Our friends all over need us to be strong.”

“They’d also want us to be happy, and to enjoy our time while we can. Where will they be tomorrow? Who knows? But today, we thrive in the here and now.”

“Anyway,” said Somnambula calmly, “we have seen you in the mead halls.”

“That’s different,” Rockhoof said, but his voice had lost the argument.

Somnambula giggled. “Singing loudly, dancing and drinking, playing bad music, enjoying nights in between days of fighting, and yet you say they are totally different. What a riddle you tell, indeed!”

“I said that’s different.”

Stygian rustled the edge of the map, the better to indicate that anything not involving the map could wait. “I think it would be best to exercise caution, yes. Meadowbrook’s running low on healing herbs. Unless this town has an apothecary…?”

Sadly, Mistmane shook her head.

“Then we can’t afford any more injuries,” he finished.

“All right,” said Star Swirl witheringly, and opposite him, Somnambula’s eyes flashed a warning, “then tell us, my dear, what you would have us do next, since the cities are supposed to be a feint.”

The others watched as the pegasus folded up her forelimbs and glanced up, down, this way, that way, almost any way but at the narrowed eyes of Star Swirl. This was her brain on full power. They knew better than to interrupt its keen workings.

Stygian felt something nudge his elbow. When he checked, a saddlebag that hadn’t been there before now floated between him and Mistmane. Suspicion prodded him into glancing from it to her horn; both glowed brightly. Only a trained unicorn could see the magic, but Star Swirl was too busy withering Somnambula to notice.

She cut out both glows. Puzzled, Stygian rummaged around inside the saddlebag. He tried not to make too much rustling. Quite apart from interrupting Somnambula’s thought process, he didn’t want to interrupt their current lack of interest in him either. Perhaps he could surprise them with his insights…

“Sirens,” Somnambula murmured. “We know their power comes from other ponies, but it starts with their song.”

“Does it?” trilled Star Swirl. “An inspired observation! Do go on!”

Mistmane shot him a warning look. Suddenly, his withering look itself withered.

“Songs, songs, songs,” murmured Somnambula under her breath.

“’Tis another kind of enchantment,” said Rockhoof. He nodded sagely. “Earth ponies ken about the power of song. Legends tell of Orange Nature, whose beautiful voice could summon the birdies and the beasties to do her bidding. She helped fend off the Crystal Pony Army just by calling the bears to tear them apart and the crows to go for their eyes.”

“Sounds familiar?” Mistmane’s brow creased. “Ah yes. That does sound familiar. My parents told stories about a singing pony like that too.”

“Hm?” said Somnambula.

“Ghostsong the Sensitive.”

“The ancient songwriter?” said Stygian. He’d read a few of Mistmane’s scrolls on their travels.

From master to student, she granted him a nod. “Ghostsong wrote many of the world’s most beautiful poems. They said she could do more. She could sing so beautifully that anyone who heard her would fall to their knees crying, because she showed them that life was as precious and fragile as the petals of the cherry blossom. Emperors and warlords surrendered if they knew she was coming. She was a great force for peace in the ancient world.”

“All right,” sighed Star Swirl in his best “I’m putting up with this” voice, “supposing this is true. What do these legends have to do with the sirens?”

Over at the bar, Meadowbrook and Flash Magnus tackled between them a river dance that definitely had some raging rapids in it. The other patrons clapped along heartily. Laughter made several shameless bids for freedom.

Stygian took the opportunity to stop rummaging. He’d found what he’d wanted.

“And then there are these, sir,” he said. Even addressing the group, he kept talking as though Star Swirl were alone. “The clues we found along the way.”

“The clues?” repeated Star Swirl. “Oh. Well, young colt?”

Stygian laid them down carefully on the table. All heads not currently engaged in river-dancing came closer; Rockhoof’s stool creaked under the shifting weight.

“Pieces from the Harp of Crux Matterhorn,” said Stygian. The gilded chunks of cedarwood rattled on the table.

“Skin from the Drum of Warmonger.” He briefly held up the tatters.

“And –” he began.

“Snapped-off reeds from the Bagpipes of Sleeping Hill the Giant.” Rockhoof’s jaw tightened. “Defiled.”

On his behalf, Mistmane’s eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “It wasn’t your fault, Rockhoof. None of us knew. You did everything you could, even when all the ponies were fighting around you…”

The others waited for him to grind his teeth. That had been a bad day. The sirens had attacked another town, but this time the seven heroes had ambushed them.

Ah! Those sirens! They’d been too quick. The party had split up. Rockhoof and Meadowbrook chased one siren. Flash Magnus and Somnambula chased another.

If only Stygian had seen the ploy for what it was. But he hadn’t, and the sirens had led the group on a three-way chase all over the town, and had given them the slip. Stygian himself had chased after the leader, along with Star Swirl and Mistmane. The three unicorns had reached the bridge and had galloped right into the rising ambush of sea serpents.

How sirens had recruited sea serpents, no one had figured out. What kind of bargain, after all, could make several hundred feet of scaly rage swim upstream, right into fresh water, and patiently wait for three unicorns to cross a bridge at the precise moment those unicorns couldn’t afford a vicious distraction?

Mistmane thought it might have been coincidence; the poor serpents must have strayed from home and gotten scared and panicky. Star Swirl insisted they’d been cursed slaves, but Stygian doubted it. After the Snake Island fiasco, Star Swirl had taught him the tricks. So by then Stygian could tell whether or not someone was cursed by looking for a tiny green light deep in their eyes.

For an eye bigger than his head, such a glow would have been obvious, though it hadn’t made his nightmares thereafter any nicer.

Only when the sirens had escaped and the seven heroes had regrouped did they find the castle archives ransacked. Rockhoof fled to the vaults, and they’d followed, and found…

Here and now, Stygian stared at the broken reeds. Priceless heirlooms, reduced to pieces.

A hoof tapped the pieces one by one. Somnambula withdrew it.

“Why?” she asked.

“Not this again,” growled Rockhoof. “We ken why they done it! Those vandals will ruin whate’er they cannae control! Music, free and wild as the north wind!”

“We’re sure they’re not weak to music?” said Stygian.

“I’m afraid we’ve tried that already,” said Mistmane. “At Clarinet Cove. If they were weak before then, they weren’t thereafter. Their magic simply overpowers the sound.”

“They fear it, though,” murmured Somnambula. “That clarinet music frightened them.”

“Yes. Once, during hoedown season. After that, I’m afraid it was useless.”

“We should have kept up the barrage! It would have broken through!”

“Tell that to the ponies at the hoedown. They had enough problems, rebuilding their poor homes…”

Stygian wondered when the other attempts had happened. Possibly whilst he was seeking Rockhoof off the northeast coast of Equestria. Goodness, he lost track so easily; how long had the war been going on now? A few years, at least. So many battles blurred in his memory.

“Then perhaps those instruments were part of a broader legend?” said Somnambula, still looking for a chink in the armour.

Groaning, Mistmane shook her head. “None that I’m aware of, and I’ve studied magical artefacts intensively.”

“As have I,” said Star Swirl. “I tell you: These are not targets!” He nodded to the ruined pieces between them. “They’re merely acts of destruction. Perhaps the sirens feared rival music, long ago when they were young, but no longer. Certainly not now, never when faced with it.”

“Except for –” Somnambula began.

“A fluke. Such a tactic has never really availed us in this war, however we tried it. Not even your Sacred Silent Cobra Charmer had any effect on them.”

Gaze unflappable, Somnambula calmly replied, “That is not true. I am sure it would have worked.”

Star Swirl harrumphed.

Nervously, Stygian glanced across at Somnambula. The Cobra Charmer had been used once, the only time he’d ever seen music deployed against the sirens, simply because it was a magical item.

Alas, he remembered it well! Somnambula had been on fire that day – he shuddered at the mere memory of the charm spell, and the way she’d swayed and played it, and how… elegant she’d suddenly looked, as though, just for a moment, she’d become a sinuous goddess… and of all the stallions in all the world, he swore she’d whispered into his lowly ear, “Yes… yes… yes…”

…well, um, it had, it had definitely… worked on him, all right. He’d needed an hour in a cold bath afterwards.

Rockhoof and Star Swirl had been unexpectedly red in the face too; Flash Magnus alone had received enough military training to resist the charm. A warrior pegasus learned magic resistance early on in his career, else he wouldn’t enjoy a long one.

The sirens? For a while, the charm had slowed them down. It stopped them dead.

Meadowbrook had packed the parasitic pollen, ready to weaken the sirens. Mistmane had prepared to cast the grains, boosted by her own Anti-Magic Mist-Maker. Once drained by both pollen and mist, the sirens would’ve been finally helpless.

If it hadn’t been for the ponies…

But the ponies of the Smokey Mountains barely liked each other, even before the sirens invaded. Both sides threw pumpkins and catapulted stones at one another. Sirens and heroes in the middle of the valley? Those were minor distractions.

The first pumpkin had smashed over Meadowbrook’s pollen bag, the second over her head; the hail of stones forced Mistmane to break off and erect a barrier. Worse, when the ponies came down from their two mountains and stampeded into each other, Somnambula’s Cobra Charmer was knocked away during the riot and stamped into shards.

After that, the sirens – no longer stunned – fed well. Then they fled to the next site.

Later, the heroes had still tried two more attempts at musical magic. By then, the sirens glowed with power. They’d easily resisted both attempts. They’d easily overpowered the music, using their own siren songs.

Another tactic, foiled.

At the time, Stygian had expected keen disappointment to burst out of Somnambula like harsh whirlwinds of sand: some cursing of the skies, some drooping of her ears, perhaps, or at least a flutter of her eyelashes as she blinked the tears away.

It never happened. If anything, every night since, she’d planned more and frowned harder and thought longer and glanced around all the more, searching for clues in her own head.

Here and now, Stygian watched her frowning concentration, himself entranced. How had she not sighed like Mistmane, nor slumped like Meadowbrook? Even the other stallions had yelled their rage and drowned their sorrow at the time. But not she. No setback ever knocked Somnambula down.

Beside him, Mistmane idly examined one of the snapped-off reeds. Star Swirl swept the rest aside to search the map for landmarks. Rockhoof stood and waited for the next thought to turn up. No one was getting anywhere.

Well, now seemed a decent enough time. Stygian’s dry throat cried out.

“Excuse me.” He scraped his chair back. “I’m buying another orange squash. I won’t be long.”

No one noticed.

A flash of anger was cut off deep in Stygian’s head. “I don’t suppose I could acquire beverages for anyone else? Sirs? My ladies?”

Only Mistmane looked at him, and she hummed with pity. “Oh, I doubt they have saké here. Could you bring me a fine whisky, please?”

“Right you are, my lady!” On a meagre spit of happiness, Stygian saluted and hurried off, away from the table. At least Mistmane giggled behind a hoof; he’d long since learned she liked being doted upon by “polite young gentlecolts”.

Still no one else had looked up. What exactly would he have to do to get their attention!? Copy Meadowbrook?

Part Four

Stygian approached the bar. As he did so, he noticed the fiddler had stopped; Flash Magnus held a bugle he’d taken from only-goodness-knew-where and trumpeted with gusto. Surrounded by a circle of laughing admirers, Meadowbrook was not so much cutting a rug as cheerfully savaging it. Those kicks… no wonder she was so popular among the stallions.

The bar-stallion himself watched her from his post. Once or twice, he clapped and hollered something.

After what felt like long enough, Stygian cleared his throat. No response from the bar-stallion.

He said, “Excuse me? Sorry, sir, I wondered if I could…?”

Bugle bursts battered and boxed his ears. All the stallions laughed at something that made Meadowbrook’s dress shoot up suddenly.

Stygian rapped the bar. “I’d like to buy two drinks, please,” he said over the racket.

Still no response.

He seized his anger and hit the bar hard. “Excuse me! I want a drink!”

The bar-stallion shot him a look that made Stygian’s anger run and duck for cover. Nearby, two of the stallions stopped laughing.

Hoping like Tartarus he could remove the lump in his throat, Stygian coughed into a hoof. “Sorry, sir,” he said, trying not to squeak. “I only meant –”

Without looking away, the bar-stallion slowly and deliberately reached under the counter. Not that Stygian was a stranger to beatings – some of the old masters weren’t shy about discipline via planks and canes – but a club designed to fell ponies like Rockhoof or Ironsmith had not hitherto featured much in his life. He cringed ready for the first blow, hoping to whoever was watching that he’d have a little mercy –

“Stygie, sweetheart!” cooed Meadowbrook, sashaying close. “You lookin’ for the hair o’ the dog that bit you? You only gotta ask.”

And just like that, the slow and deliberate hoof ducked out of sight before the bar-stallion threw on a hasty grin.

“Beg your pardon, ma’am,” he rumbled. “Din’t know ’e was wit’ you.”

Coast cleared, Stygian let out a breath. For once, he thanked Meadowbrook’s timing. What a lifesaver…

“Darlin’, now,” she said to the bar-stallion, “be gentle with the poor dear. He’s the nice, quiet sort, no trouble at all, you hear? Poor thing, you got him shakin’ like an aspen leaf in fall.”

Stygian cursed and steadied himself. “Mage Meadowbrook, I can assure you I wasn’t shaking.”

Then he considered how this would fare, in the face of a mare who checked pony bodies often enough to tell a quiver from a quake, and definitely a shiver from a shake.

“I am somewhat cold, however,” he added defensively.

Mage Meadowbrook cast another patient’s-examination look all over him. It wasn’t whether or not she’d spot the lie; it was whether or not she’d let it lie.

To his relief, her face broke into a beaming smile. “My my, sugarcube, then I reckon you need heating up. The roads and the years haven’t been kind on you.”

“Just two drinks for me, please,” he said in a rush. “One orange squash and one…” He turned to the suddenly alert bar-stallion. “I don’t suppose you have any whisky, um, sir?”

“What’s whisky?” said the bar-stallion.

“Ah, didn’t think so –”

“Ooh!” cooed Meadowbrook, and she really did coo; her soothing voice made turtledoves sound hawkish. “I didn’t think you were ready for the strong stuff yet, Stygie.”

“Oh no, it’s not for me, you understand, it’s for Lady Mistmane.”

Meadowbrook gave him… Was it a pitying look? An indulgent one? Perhaps with overtones of patronising? It was a look he strangely wanted and hated all at once. Instead, she turned it to the bar-stallion.

“That’ll be one juice bit and one hot firewater, thankin’ y’all kindly,” she translated.

He actually saluted. “Right you are, ma’am!”

“And while he’s busy as a bumblebee,” Meadowbrook continued, sneaking her forelimb around Stygian’s own, “how about I give you some dancin’ lessons to put a honeyed smile on your handsome face? You poor thing, you look like a smile’d do you a world of good.”

Whatever was on Stygian’s face, it wasn’t honey. Sizzling oil, perhaps. Firewater, even. Extra hot.

As gently as he could, he tugged his forelimb. No hope now. Meadowbrook had a grip that cooked all resistance, and not just because she could give Rockhoof a run for his money when it came to dragging heavy things. Earth mares packed a lot of power, especially ones used to carrying sick bodies around by the cartload in times of plague.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” he said, twisting up around his own modesty. “I don’t dance.”

“Never had lessons back home?”

“Well… one or two ballroom classes, but that was just to socialize.” Not that it stuck, he thought darkly.

“Ice-breakin’ was more what I had in mind, sugarcube. We might even break a few glasses tonight.”

She winked at him. It wasn’t an exotic wink, the sort that Somnambula used if she wanted someone to melt, bubble, and ooze their way to a collapse. It was a motherly wink, the sort that told him he was OK, nothing bad would happen, mother hen would watch over her little chick.

Beyond her, the other stallions cheered him on. Stygian hesitated. He wasn’t used to big stallions cheering him on. And he had spent a lot of time cooped up in libraries or tagging along behind the others, so why wasn’t he owed a bit of fun?

“Just a short swing, honey?” she cooed again.

Stygian let a weak grin carry on up to his face. “Ma’am, I fear you have the advantage of me.”

“Suh-weet! Let’s cut a rug, Hayseed Swamp Style!”

As he was dragged to what passed for a “dancefloor”, Stygian heard the cheers rise up and saw Flash Magnus pass his helmet on to Ironsmith, who nodded and took out his hammer. A bugler, a drummer, and a fiddler… well, none of that made any conventional music, but he’d given up on using the word “conventional” anywhere near Meadowbrook, unless it came chaperoned with the words “hardly ever”. Hayseed Swamp was an odd place indeed…

“Ever done the Jitterbug?” she whispered.

Stygian remembered: the ponies of the swamp took a lot of inspiration from its native fauna, for instance, even from dancing insect life.

“No, never.” But a scholar like him always learned by observation. “I believe I’ve seen you perform it before.”

“Then swing, copycat! Swing! Lookee here, and don’t you worry. Follow my lead, got it?” Another motherly wink.

Follow her lead? Stygian wondered if he could kick that high without rupturing a tendon.

Then, Flash Magnus and his band found a tune, and a one, and a two, and a one, two, three…

Credit where it was due, Stygian picked things up fast. Although it didn’t hurt that the laughter broke out at his first two attempts. Back at school, he’d learned a colt could make friends if he was funny enough.

Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! The stallions stamped in rhythm to encourage him. He needed all the encouragement he could get.

His spins left him stumbling dizzily before he jumped back into the fray. Where Meadowbrook threw in a bit of flourish to each sidestep and swinging march, Stygian kept firm and stiff as a puppet, determined to get the gist if not the jive of what her body was saying. The first time she offered a hoof for him to grip, he stuck his out for several blank moments before the laughter and her eye signals set him straight. Thank goodness she never tried any of the really advanced moves: a simple partner spiral, a simple circling back-and-forth, as though they were trying to stamp brackets around each other, was all she’d venture before they broke off and locked gazes.

Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! He swore it had gotten louder, and the circle around them had more colours and ponies in it. Despite Meadowbrook’s shaking head, he glanced to see… oh no…

“Focus on me, Stygie,” Meadowbrook whispered urgently. “’S just you and me now, OK?”

He swallowed. “I’ll try.”

But he heard Rockhoof’s booming laughs and, strangely, Mistmane’s more silent titters. He couldn’t resist glancing again to see her ladyship’s twinkling eyes, or Somnambula’s knowing, enigmatic smile.

“Sugar! Watch your feet, now!”

“Sorry, Miss Meadowbrook!” But his tangled legs got a few more laughs. Dark thoughts crossed his mind: Were they laughing with him, or at him?

Either way, he didn’t dare stop. Nearby, Flash Magnus blew harder and the dance suddenly moved faster and the circle outside became a blur. Ah, now for a tricky bit… it looked like the legs just swung under them, but his muscles tightened fighting for precise control. Whew, he thought, was this harder than it looked!

“You’re doin’ fine!” whispered Meadowbrook. “Rear up, sugar!”

“Oh, er…”

“Don’t worry. I’ll go gentle.”

He’d seen what moves needed them to be upright. Stygian saw no way out except to keep going forward, yet fear braced him every step of the way.

She reared; he reared. They gripped hooves. His legs dreaded the next moment, and then there came the crosswise kicks –

Mercy be, but he did not tear a ligament. If anything, he kicked again and felt… limber. Flowing freely. His legs kicked and he twirled and she gripped his forelimbs again and he suddenly felt like someone who had not spent half their lives cooped up indoors. Good grief, and all on his own he was doing things with his shoulders that did not get him laughed at. The music ran through him, and then it did what he wanted it to.

Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! Bellowing cheer from Rockhoof, heard clearly over the din.

“Don’t forget to smile!” cried out Meadowbrook amid the stamping. “Can’t Jitterbug without no smile!”

He forced one. Smiling was improper, it couldn’t be allowed.

No one laughed. He let a safer smile warm his cheeks. The heat from his kicking, swinging, sidestepping, toe-tapping legs rose up, through his chest, and up into his face.

“Now that’s a smile!” said Meadowbrook.

He felt oddly proud about that and smiled all the more. It came to him. He barely even noticed the sweat and clingy feel around his coat.

They met hooves, half-passed each other, and gave one final kick.

“Strike a pose,” she whispered. “Now.”

He held it, wobbling a bit. The stamping stopped. So did the helmet-drumming, the fiddling, and – when Flash Magnus caught on – the bugling.

Stygian didn’t even care he was gasping. The half-dozen strange stallions, Flash Magnus, Rockhoof, Somnambula, and Mistmane all broke into smiling applause. Flash even whistled. For once, Stygian felt taller than an ivory tower and twice as bright.

Meadowbrook gave his forelimb a tap so he knew to stop posing. Following her lead, Stygian took a bow, one for each of the four directions north, east, south, and west, and the circle around them made generally good-natured noises like “Wahey!” and “Oo! Oo! Oo!” and “Nice one!”

Flash Magnus yelled, “Collige virgo rosas!” And Stygian gave a weak titter in reply.

“Not half-bad, for someone born outside Hayseed Swamp,” Meadowbrook said. “How d’you feel now?”

A lifetime of good manners and scholarly reserve seeped back into Stygian’s mind. Whatever wild bronco ride he’d gotten onto had been broken in. Yes, very good, his mind said, an amusing diversion.

“It was…” he began. Great? Fantastic? Amazing? “Unusual,” he settled for, and hated himself for his lameness.

This didn’t seem to faze Meadowbrook at all. Her hoof nuzzled his cheek, the equine equivalent of pinching it like an auntie.

“Oh, ain’t you such a sweet gentlecolt,” she said.

“You should put that in your healing journal,” he said, hoping to earn some brownie points properly. “Jitterbug may very well be a cure for something.”

“Makes you feel good, don’t it?”

“Most definitely.”

One by one, the ponies around them recognized the show was over. At least when the half-dozen local stallions returned to their stools, they talked amongst themselves like lads on a proper bar crawl and not, for instance, like veterans trying to drink the world away. Watching them, Stygian wondered if Meadowbrook knew about the healing power of dance and music already, and had simply indulged him just now.

“’Ere’s your drinks, sir and ma’am!” The bar-stallion produced one glass and one thimble.

“Oh, right,” said Stygian, who’d clean forgotten. “And that’ll be, uh…?”

“On the ’ouse.”

Whilst Stygian levitated the two drinks and tried not to spill a drop, Meadowbrook passed a smile to the bar-stallion that cast shadows of jealousy in Stygian’s own heart. Just not for long. The Jitterbug had weakened its venom.

Only Star Swirl had remained in his seat, watching the returning party under a cloud of stormy disapproval.

“You ponies do realize,” he said curtly, “that Equestria is at war?”

“All the more reason to keep up morale, sah,” said Flash Magnus. The others sat down around the table, but he hovered first until Somnambula, Mistmane, and Meadowbrook had taken their seats.

Next to Stygian, Mistmane sipped her firewater and whispered a polite, “Thank you.” He nodded graciously.

Star Swirl gestured to the map, full of crossed-out towns and sites. “Now, if we can proceed –”

“Bonny work, Stygie!” said Rockhoof, reaching across and slapping Stygian’s back so hard he almost headbutted the table. “Dinnae think a pencil-pusher like you’d have it in yer.”

“Yes, you were a delight to see,” said Somnambula.

“Oh, well,” said Stygian, resisting all efforts to squirm again. “I really should be thanking Meadowbr–”

A thunderclap made all parties seize their ears, yelling. Stygian winced and groaned under his own, which were two points of agony. Dust settled from the overhead rafters.

Only Mistmane looked unfazed, and she glared across at Star Swirl, who shut off his spell at once.

“Now that I’ve got your attention,” Star Swirl snapped, “perhaps we can turn our minds to the fate of the entire nation! Something that does not involve any of these darn Litterbugs!”

Part Five

The others relaxed. Stygian still nursed his own ears; the echoes of the thunderclap rang over and over in his poor abused cranium.

“Really, Star Swirl,” said Mistmane, her voice boiling, “there was no call for that.”

Spluttering like a maniac with serious rabies, Star Swirl shook his head in disbelief. “No call for – No call for that!? Look at you all, shindigging the night away like a bunch of giggly schoolfillies. Do you realize how many ponies’ lives are on the line if we fail? A little song and dance will not be an adequate excuse come the end of the world!”

Ah… now Stygian knew why he hated Star Swirl so much. The air of quiet resentment among the other ponies, the way the sorcerer spoke as though he alone knew the answers to the questions, the silence he created around himself just so he could fill it: Star Swirl was from the same class of unicorn that Stygian’s tutors had graduated from. And of all the things that class had learned, what they’d failed to learn most of all was that a pony could not study for every waking hour.

He’d seen it in the group around him, after every town lost to the sirens. Meadowbrook, Mistmane, Somnambula, Flash Magnus, Rockhoof: they kept their spirits up, they joked around, they had drinks with each other and laughed over them, because of this stupid war. They unwound. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be ponies. They’d be just a bunch of killing machines, and it’d be worse because they would be killing machines that kept failing to kill the enemy.

But he said nothing. One thing Stygian had learned was that answering back made you a target. Unlike the others, he had no weapon to throw, not even strong words. So he said nothing.

Star Swirl adjusted his hat, jangling those stupid bells of his. Why did he even wear the things? So everyone knew when he was around?

“We ken well what we’re up against,” mumbled Rockhoof.

“You know me.” Meadowbrook shrugged. “I like to get to know a place before I settle in. And raisin’ spirits is all part of the healin’, Mister Swirl.”

“Songs and dances,” said Star Swirl, “are not going to save Equestria. Now, if we’ve gotten it out of our system, it’s time to discuss the matter of how we intend to dispatch the siren threat –”

Oh come on, thought Stygian in the safety of his own head. Songs and dances are powerful enough in the right hooves. The sirens themselves prove it! Listen to their siren songs, watch the way they move, feel their music creeping up on you, and tell me songs and dances are just… silly… little…

Wait…

That was it, wasn’t it? Songs and dances in Equestria were special. Hadn’t he learned that, years ago? Songs and dances weren’t just funny things ponies did for giggles. They were important. They were alive. They appeared like spirits at just the right time and place, they possessed hosts in the right frame of mind… That was how the siren song worked. The sirens exploited living songs and their power.

While the others talked – or Star Swirl talked and the others occasionally butted in – Stygian ferreted through the saddlebag beside him and pulled out quill and paper. After a distracted rush of writing, he sheepishly pulled out the inkwell too. It’d help.

Now… songs were living things. Sirens used them to manipulate ponies into getting angry… Sirens ate the anger, and other kinds of negative energy… so what did the songs get out of it? If they were living things, then what would they need?

Star Swirl droned on and on. Something about remaining outposts.

Meanwhile, Stygian’s thoughts rushed to him. Ponies like Meadowbrook presumably controlled songs too, calling them forth when needed. Yes, good, and how did they do that? Ponies… Ponies had to set the stage, and the songs would come and roost. But the sirens forced the songs, made them take over the stage, changed them… It was like a bird, then, taking over another bird’s nest by fighting for it?

Rockhoof rumbled a protest, only for Flash Magnus to throw his in too, punctuated by “sah” here and there.

Sirens force the songs to roost, songs create negative energy, energy eaten by sirens… What if they shared it? A kind of payment for the songs to cooperate? That was how many living things cooperated in nature, like the fungi and the little plants in lichens… Hadn’t he studied such habits as part of his Natural Philosophy scholarship…?

Where did the energy go?

Quill shaking, he jotted down one word: “Gemstone.”

Every siren had one in its chest. Was that where the songs lived too, eating their share of energy and then readying themselves for the next victim? Gemstones traditionally held all sorts of magical things; some scholars believed gems, crystals, and so on were, in fact, the ultimate source of all magic, even quite small gemstones would provide it…

So that meant they were a weakness. Gemstones were targets.

He hesitated.

Supposing a song wasn’t powerful enough, though? Not on its own. Songs had been known to take over whole towns, but the effects wouldn’t last long. They couldn’t. Songs needed the right moment, the right emotion, and emotions changed on a dime. Certainly not long enough for even three sirens to control pony minds, much less control them with such perfection that they threatened Equestria.

Something else had to be involved. Something that brought ponies like him alive when he danced.

Opposite him, Flash Magnus stopped while Somnambula made an insistent speech.

They’d need help. Reinforcements, perhaps. He picked up the saddlebag again whilst Star Swirl launched into a lecture. After all, the songs and magic hid inside the gemstones, so what did you use to break them open, to let the songs and magic escape?

Music?

Hence broken pieces of instrument.

He looked inside the saddlebag once more.

In fairness, the sirens probably just didn’t want competition from powerful enough musicians. Musicians tamed songs and dances as well as music.

The Clarinet Cove stunt proved those sirens had some weakness to music, right up until they had become immune. Yet despite apparently being immune, they’d still gone after legendary instruments: the Harp of Crux Matterhorn, the Drum of Warmonger, the Bagpipes of Sleeping Hill the Giant. So they had progressed up the ladder? From weaker instruments to stronger ones?

If you played the bagpipes, a giant would be your friend. If you played anything the right way, a miracle would happen. It had happened in this bar with nothing but a bugle and a helmet! And a bad fiddler. Yet that had to be magic. Maybe not one he understood, but magic nonetheless. Meadowbrook made it feel like magic.

Magic based on music, music based on emotions. What power could be there? Could they use it?

Next to him, Mistmane sipped her firewater, easily heard even over Meadowbrook’s complaints and Star Swirl’s retorts.

Songs roosted in ponies because they were the ones who sang. Where did music live? In instruments?

Songs were spirits. Music could be, too. So, if sirens could force the spirits of songs to work for them…

“That’s where they’re getting their power from,” he muttered aloud.

“I’m sorry?” said Mistmane, lowering her drink.

Cursing himself, but unable to refuse, Stygian said, “The sirens, my lady. That’s why they attack musical instruments. They’re not just destroying our best weapons. They’re… They’re eating the music inside them.”

Well now, said out loud, that didn’t sound dumb at all. He groaned and hit himself.

“As a source of power?” said Mistmane.

Stygian gaped at her. Not a note of condescension or doubt in that voice.

“Yes!” he said, so loud with relief that the others stopped to look at him. “As a source of power! Exactly! The sirens can’t keep relying on the same songs over and over, not to control a town or even a city. They need… allies. Songs get stronger in the presence of music, and… and, um…”

The other stares wore him down to doubtfulness. He stopped talking.

Star Swirl raised an eyebrow at him. “Is there something the matter, Stygian?”

Stygian lowered his gaze to the map. Partly, this was because it was better than being the centre of attention, but partly it was because the spiral that Star Swirl had drawn also drew his eye to the two cities, right in the middle.

There would be a ton of musical instruments in Canterlot or Everfree, no doubt about it. They’d be heavily guarded, though. Spells stronger than any he’d encountered elsewhere. The sirens would have to be good to break through. Were they good enough yet?

But then why had they targeted this tiny village? It was a little way out of the centre. The army had yet to arrive in full numbers, so why not grab the cities now before the defence tightened? Star Swirl might have thought it was an anomaly, but what if it wasn’t? What if Somnambula was right? And she usually was when it came to trickery and cunning.

“Um,” he said, totally lost.

“If you break a musical instrument,” said Mistmane, and she levitated the broken reeds and the drum skin for all to see, “where does the music go?”

“Go? Go? It doesn’t go anywhere,” said Flash Magnus, puzzled. “Music’s something you make. It’s not like it flaps through the air looking for –”

To Stygian’s amazement, Star Swirl held up a hoof at this. “Actually, there might be a point here, Captain Magnus.”

“Sah?”

“Songs, as you say, ‘flap through the air’. That’s a well-known theory in magical circles. Oh true, some ponies make better hosts than others, but the songs are their… well, you know your muses of old?”

Flash Magnus chuckled, but nervously, as no one else joined in. “Yes, sah, but those are old mare’s tales. No one really believes in muses.”

“I fail to see why that is a problem,” said Star Swirl with irritating reasonableness. “It’s plausible, I suppose, that music operates in the same way. It exists, as it were, in potentia.”

“Never heard o’ the place,” said Meadowbrook.

“He means,” said Flash Magnus, now resorting to a puzzled grin, “that it exists somewhere just because it can exist. It just doesn’t exist here yet.”

“Oh. This ain’t that ‘Other Worlds’ talk again, is it?” she said suspiciously.

Mistmane finally cut in with a determined glare. “The siren songs are getting stronger,” she said before Flash Magnus opened his mouth. “And they attacked legendary musical instruments, whilst at the same time becoming immune to musical attacks. Shouldn’t we at least take this seriously?”

“Take what seriously?” said Somnambula.

“That the sirens aren’t just controlling songs. They’re learning how to control music too. Powerful music.”

“How powerful?”

“Powerful as the Harp of Crux Matterhorn. Powerful as the Drum of Warmonger. Powerful as the Bagpipes of –”

“All right, all right,” muttered Rockhoof, “don’t remind me.”

“But so what?” said Flash Magnus. “Even if the sirens are… What? Eating the music out of Rockhoof’s Bagpipes, or something… What’s the point? They’re dining like kings on negative energy.”

“Power limits,” said Star Swirl at once. “Of course! One siren controlling a repertoire of songs can do some damage, but we’d have easily contained it by now. Three sirens, difficult but manageable. Now imagine hundreds of sirens.”

Flash Magnus rubbed his forehead under the sweaty stress of thinking. “But we’re not fighting –”

“Not literally! If what Mistmane says is true, and the music is joining the ranks too, then we might as well be. Each siren adds to her repertoire. That’s why they progress from villages to towns to cities. They progress from a few songs to hundreds of songs and grow stronger as they do so. And therefore three sirens can bring Equestria to its knees as easily as an army of hundreds.”

If what Mistmane says is true!? Stygian reeled from the words. But he had the notes right here! He raised a hoof to object.

“Um…” was as far as he got. “There is good news, sir…”

“Let’s pretend that’s true,” said Flash Magnus, giving Mistmane an apologetic look. “So what? It doesn’t help us predict where they’ll strike next. We’re right back at square one.”

“Not quite,” said Star Swirl. “Think, Captain Magnus. The sirens are progressing. What they’ll want next is the most magical musical instrument possible. Something that would give them the necessary boost to attack a city, what?”

“True, sir, only it isn’t going to be in any one city, in that case,” said Stygian, wishing like heck he could make up his mind whether to complain or go along with it. “The army will still be expecting them. And maybe it’s too much of a gamble for the sirens, picking fifty-fifty and then finding we’re waiting for them at the one they pick.”

“I still do not trust this map.” Somnambula pointed at the spiral. “This little town around us is outside the spiral. They must be heading for another destination.”

“Before attacking the capital cities?” said Flash Magnus, rubbing his chin. “Yes, I suppose if I was an army going to invade those, I’d want as many reinforcements as I could find. Only where would I go to find it?”

“Anywhere here?” Rockhoof ran a giant hoof over the middle of the map, sweeping a broad area surrounding the cities.

“Perhaps,” said Mistmane, nodding to Somnambula. “Perhaps it is a feint. Our current position is…” She levitated Stygian’s inkwell and placed it firmly on the spot. “…here.”

“Southwest,” muttered Star Swirl. “That’s towards Ghastly Caverns. Nothing there but empty wilderness. Then desert beyond that. Not a major settlement in sight.”

Rockhoof leaned over the map, accidentally squeezing Somnambula against the table until she thumped him and he backed off sheepishly. “Sorry. Hm, it looks bad for the magic music theory, Beardy.”

But Stygian glared at the map. Perhaps it was a feint indeed. Just not the one they were thinking of…

He hurried over to the bar-stallion. “Excuse me, sir, but could you tell me which way the sirens were last seen?”

The bar-stallion gave him an odd look. “Sirens?”

“Sort of flying fish ponies. Three of them. They sing beautifully.”

“Them three you got already ain’t good enough?” said Ironsmith nearby. This was greeted with mild chuckles from the other patrons, but then this did pass for traditional tavern humour.

Patiently, Stygian waited until one of them gave him a straight answer. Then he heard hoofsteps come up behind him, and saw the other stallions straighten up. He didn’t even need to turn to see the sweeping skirt and know it was Meadowbrook.

“I don’t suppose y’all recollect whether you did cast your eye on any critters of that neck of the woods?” she said.

Further along the bar, one stallion raised a hoof sheepishly. “I recollect something of that ilk, ma’am. Heading northwest, ma’am.”

Stygian seethed where he stood. Why did Meadowbrook act like he needed a minder? If these fools had just answered him instead of making stupid jokes…

Over his head, Meadowbrook said, “You got any more of that there brandy, sugarcube?”

They both sat back down without a word, Meadowbrook’s brandy sloshing in her tankard. An argument broke out. Unusually, Star Swirl wasn’t involved.

“I told you, there’s nothing there!” insisted Flash Magnus, almost standing up he was so upright with indignation. “Look, the sirens are strong, I will accept that, upon my honour as a warrior. But they are not tactical geniuses.”

“And Somnambula just told you, young stallion,” said Mistmane coolly, “that we’ve underestimated them before and suffered for it. I believe she is right to be suspicious. This time, we need to think before we charge into battle.”

“Are you suggesting this ‘young stallion’ can’t think?”

“I’m suggesting you don’t think enough! We’re not after settlements. We’re after famous, legendary, or powerful musical instruments. We’ve swept that territory already. If there were anything of note in the southwest of Equestria, then we’ve already passed it.”

“And there isn’t,” chipped in Star Swirl before Flash Magnus had drawn breath. “Which means the sirens want to confuse us.”

“Huh,” muttered Flash Magnus. “They’re doing a bang-up job then, sah.”

Stygian glared at the map. He had to admit Star Swirl had a point. If veering off their spiral course was meant to be a feint, it was a pathetically obvious one. Anyone could see that. The sirens had been thorough down there. The southwest certainly had no musical marvels.

So the feint was itself a feint? And if you needed to keep your enemies away, then you drew them as far away from your real target as possible.

Meadowbrook stopped gulping her drink. “One o’ the nice gentlecolts said those sirens were headed northwest.”

Yes, thought Stygian, and that didn’t make sense either. The only major settlements up there were the ones in the Smokey Mountains, and the ponies there sure weren’t musical marvels.

A feint of a feint of a feint, then?

His gaze fell over the map. If the sirens headed south, and then turned and went north, that was only to get halfway to their real target, but they wouldn’t go straight to said real target. Not if they knew they were being followed. And they were on a time limit. Stygian and his… friends, he supposed… were getting closer every time.

So… the sirens went south… tried to fool us into thinking they went north… so either east or west? But there was nothing to the west. As he checked the east side of the map, his eye spotted a gap.

Yes, the spiral wasn’t perfect. Mountains, lakes, inconvenient garrisons: the sirens sometimes had to work round them all. Stygian knew his maps, though. He checked multiple gaps, just to make sure. Now that one was a mountain… that one was where the Frozen North forced the sirens back… and that one was empty desert…

Inevitably, his eyes fell upon the gap he’d known and dreaded would be there.

“Hollow Shades,” he murmured.

Part Six

“Hollow Shades,” Stygian repeated.

No one noticed that time either, not even Mistmane. Grunting, he moved right up to the edge of the table and stretched a hoof over to the spot.

“Hollow Shades,” he said again, louder.

“Oh! Your hometown?” said Somnambula, and Stygian for once thanked someone for fretting on his behalf. His hometown. Yes. He hadn’t said it. Someone else had.

Mouth too tight to talk, he nodded, slowed by the weight of realization.

“What makes you so sure?” said Star Swirl.

“There’s a famous musical instrument there, sir!” Stygian blurted out. “One of the most famous of all! Goes back for thousands of years, sir!”

“Needs a tune-up, then,” rumbled Rockhoof. Flash Magnus joined in when he guffawed.

“No, sir,” insisted Stygian in his tired voice. “If it’s magical you want, then magical you’ll get.”

Mistmane summoned the inkstand and other writing tools to drop them into the saddlebag, which flashed out of existence. “What do you mean, Stygian?”

“The Organ of Light,” he said.

He ignored the new wave of guffaws from the two stallions. The Organ of Light was above such pettiness.

That story! Stygian had learned this one early, locked away in his tower with tutors. Occasionally, he’d left the tower long enough to blink out the sunlight, and then one day his evening walk had taken him a little way out of town, to an old well, and down the hidden tunnel – only the most esteemed unicorns were allowed inside – to see the Well of Shadows.

Closing his eyes, he saw the endless rows of columns, the cavernous space where darkness itself pooled and flooded. The Equestrians had found it as a ruin, left over by whoever had lived in Hollow Shades long ago.

No one ever had a good dream near the Well, though, so the town had been built some way away from it, leaving it as an eye in the middle of a circle of cottages. Even being there, Stygian had quailed at the carvings on the wall, and heard whispers trying to reach him from thousands of years ago.

Everyone in Hollow Shades believed it was built to keep darkness contained. Not destroy it: darkness couldn’t be destroyed. But it could be safely put away where it would do no harm. And nopony was dumb enough to mess with it. Nopony could go in, unless they were trusted.

What frightened Stygian most, however, was the gigantic organ kept inside.

At first, it made no sense. The Well of Shadows was a cistern, meant for darkness to seep in and pool. Why would an organ be kept inside one?

After many studies, though, and after examining its glowing pipes and its aural radiance and the mysterious carvings on the wall, Stygian went back to his tower and wrote a long treatise on the nature of darkness and light.

The Organ of Light guarded the place. Darkness and shadows: they sent nightmares up to the surface. They’d send much worse misery, he concluded, if it wasn’t for the organ. Whether it was played or not, its sacred music overpowered the shadows, kept hearts glad, reminded ponies of good dreams and happy memories and art and love and the majesty of this world. It should never be removed, or destroyed, or drained of its power. To do so would be to unleash chaos.

“If the sirens broke the Organ of Light…” he breathed, and his imagination smashed the rest over his head, and he fell silent.

Star Swirl nodded, pulling his own beard as though to rip it off slowly and painfully. “The Organ of Light is one of a kind. I heard the citizens of Everfree built a replica for their own castle, but it didn’t work. Who knows what kind of power it contains?”

After gulping her brandy, Meadowbrook hummed, worry creasing along her face. “What kinda power does it pack?”

“Enough to control shadows and darkness,” quavered Mistmane. “Some say the Organ of Light holds back all the powers of Tartarus itself!”

“Yes,” said Star Swirl, letting his beard go. “Canterlot and Everfree would stand no chance…”

In the silence, the light outside dimmed. Stools shuffled back and the door squeaked and slammed. When Stygian checked, the bar was empty save for Ironsmith, who noticed him staring and slipped out. The bar-stallion got out and turned chairs upside-down, the clear but unspoken request for certain ponies to start making their way home, if they had any.

He shuddered.

“We’re sure?” said Flash Magnus. “I don’t want to go to this Hollow Shades place and find no one there.”

“Where else can they go, Captain Magnus?” said Star Swirl. “They might be strong, but the sirens still need to stop and feed as they travel. So long as we eat on the hoof, we might be able to beat them in time. In addition, they remain vulnerable to magical attacks. It’s merely… luck, and speed, and second-guessing that’s kept us from taking them down. Now that the army’s converging on the capital cities… No, it makes sense now. The siren leader, she’s an adaptable one… She’s always had a fascination with music…”

“Sir?” said Stygian. The sorcerer had a faraway look, and he himself knew that it could see for centuries.

At least he’s listening to my ideas now, thought Stygian. However long it took to get the old windbag there. Now for the coup de grace.

“But there is good news, sir…” he said again, having waited so long already. “I believe the sirens are not the only ones who can use the Organ of Light. We could harness its power too. If we stick together and use their own magic against them, and if we stand strong and united as one force, just like we did for the Jitterbug, sir, I believe we could feel its power. We could overpower the sirens long enough to smash their gemstones and destroy their… power… source…”

No one was listening. They were all staring at the sorcerer.

Stygian was too shocked to move. This was supposed to be his moment! He’d done what Somnambula would have done and thought things through! He’d used his learning like Mistmane, and planned tactics like Flash, and valued their strength like Rockhoof! He’d even been inspired by Meadowbrook! It was the perfect moment! He knew it was!

The moment died. As did his outrage. As did his courage.

A flash later, the map vanished from the table.

Star Swirl rose from his chair like a rocket.

“I say we go to the Well of Shadows!” he boomed. “At daybreak! Perhaps the sirens will attack the cities, but it’s possible we could double back and join the army soon enough to turn the tide. It would be risky, I will not lie, but an army is something that’ll slow down the sirens, especially now the regiments have learned their tricks.”

Stygian watched as his perfect moment got commandeered by someone else. He didn’t even feel angry. Anger was too small for this.

“But…?” prompted Mistmane gently.

Star Swirl rolled his eyes as though an idiot had heckled him. “But, if they’re heading for this Organ of Light, then that changes things. They’d be free to suck dry one of the most powerful artefacts imaginable. After that, no force in Equestria could oppose them.”

“It’s still a gamble, sah,” said Flash Magnus, who exchanged a worried glance with Somnambula.

“And even if we did go there,” she added, “what would we do? Magical attacks have only achieved so much.”

Star Swirl glared at the table; Stygian saw the struggle behind that glare, breaking through the surface as the muscles twitched and winced. Desperation worried that mouth, and anger fought its way through the eyes, and cold steel cut all expression out.

The cold steel won. “It’s time,” Star Swirl said, and there was no feeling in his voice, no trace of the pony, and every trace of the sorcerer. “Nothing in this world can outmatch them. So why keep them here?”

Mistmane rose off her stool so fast it clattered and hit Stygian in the hocks.

“No,” she snapped.

This time, Star Swirl did not back down. “Why not? The spell would rid Equestria of these monsters forever. They’d be locked away in the cursed place where no one would suffer on their account ever again.”

“That spell has never been tried.”

“The theory – my theory, Mistmane – is sound.”

“It would tear through nature’s borders like a sword through flesh! Think of the damage it would do, to open up a wound like that!”

“What damage!?” spat Star Swirl. “The damage that sends ponies mad with fear and hatred, the damage that flattens towns with rioting? That damage?”

Meadowbrook shuddered. “Mistmane’s barkin’ up the right tree, Star Swirl. It’s unnatural.”

Even Stygian leaned back to avoid the blade of that glare. Star Swirl rounded on Meadowbrook as though he’d drawn a sword on her.

“Everything we do is unnatural!” he roared. “Look around you! If it wasn’t for Stygian, would a motley circus like you five have had anything to do with each other?”

“All right, all right, but all the same…” Meadowbrook waved a hoof to calm him down.

“Magic-crafters have always tampered with nature, simply to learn more natural philosophy. A national emergency surpasses that motive in terms of urgency. How many ponies have you saved with knowledge that was once condemned as ‘unnatural’?”

Somnambula stood up to match him, as did Flash Magnus. “We know,” she said, “how dangerous it is to tamper with otherworldly affairs! Every one of us has heard stories about those heroes or villains who cross over to other worlds so foolishly. It could upset the balance of our own world, bringing chaos in its wake.”

“I think we should use a tried and tested method, sah,” agreed Flash Magnus. “As my old sergeant used to say, better the kick you know than the cannon you don’t.”

Stygian kept his mouth shut. When Star Swirl glared at him for support, he looked down at his hooves. Stygian didn’t trust himself not to glare back. They were breaking apart. All of them needed him to keep them together. They would have lost this war without him already. If only they’d shown the spirit he felt when he’d danced just then, the love and camaraderie and joy of their stamping and smiling.

Why!? He knew he was right! If only they had listened to him!

“Rockhoof?” snapped Star Swirl. “What say you to this?”

Nearby, the bar-stallion thumped more stools down on tables. How could he ignore such an obvious argument breaking out in his own tavern? Despite his own inner rage, Stygian almost admired the pony his perseverance.

A rumble announced that Rockhoof had caught a decision in his patient head. “I doubt it’s a good first move, Beardy, but I nae back away from a fight neither. We face chaos whatever we do. So if it comes to that, I say do it. Only if.”

Still not satisfied, Star Swirl grunted and his bells jangled. “Captain Magnus, tried and tested methods have failed us so far. Do you not talk of the Whale Threshold in the pegasus army?”

Stygian heard the armour clank and guessed the soldier had saluted.

“Yes, sah! Old rule on the books, sah! Any threat serious enough to put the realm in the cra– in the toilet, sah – pardon my Minotaurean, sah – is beyond normal M.O. and anything used against it is justified, sah!”

“And now, Captain Magnus?”

The pause wobbled. Then he said: “Sah! I’d say the realm is well and truly in the… toilet, sah!”

“Hm. As for you, Somnambula, wouldn’t you seize any chance, however slim, of winning this war? I recall you weren’t so reticent in the teeth of that sphinx, what.”

Her voice was a sickle. “I trust there is a better way, Star Swirl the Bearded.”

“Indeed. And Meadowbrook, ponies are dying.”

Stygian held his breath. Regardless of the dusk light – itself dying outside the window – the room darkened far faster than it should’ve. Was that old sorcerer bullying a consensus out of them? What gave him the right to act like a king among subjects? Who does he think he is, bullying my team?

Yet slowly, hesitantly, the other ponies shuffled their hooves where they sat or stood. Beside him, Stygian heard the bar-stallion quietly remove the stool Mistmane had knocked over. Stygian watched them out of the corner of his eye.

It was Mistmane who stepped forwards. “I cannot condone this course of action, Star Swirl.”

“You want to see them stopped,” said Star Swirl. “I can stop them permanently.”

“The limbo relocator spell is still experimental! Supposing you simply sent those monsters to another part of Equestria? They would return, and we would be lulled into a false sense of security.”

Another thunderclap smacked Stygian around the head. He threw it back and gripped his ears tightly between his hooves, gritting his teeth against the pain hitting him over and over. Through eyes narrowed and hot, he saw the others groan and clutch their heads. Even Mistmane flinched.

By the time the echoes stopped stinging, Star Swirl thumped the table.

“This is no longer just another war!” he bellowed, spittle flying. “Do or die!”

“Star Swirl!” Mistmane reared up. “This is getting out of hand.”

“Exactly! The sirens are tearing our beloved country into pieces, and you want to show them mercy? You want me to stand back and let them? Because that’s all we will accomplish if we do not aim higher than they do. Much higher.”

“But limbo! Star Swirl! I’m surprised at you. The place has too many terrible stories. Ponies who meddle in the affairs of other worlds all meet grisly fates –”

“Open your eyes, Mistmane! We are in a terrible story right now! We face a grisly fate even as we speak! But as soon as we send those brutes to limbo, the last seven years of our lives will all become a shadow of a nightmare. All our fighting will have been worthwhile.”

Meadowbrook opened her mouth to speak.

“No, Meadowbrook! Think!” Star Swirl pointed at each of them, leg stiff as a cane. “Think, everyone! Think of the lives we’d save, if we sent those monsters to the depths of limbo for all eternity, where they could no longer hurt our fellow ponies. No, I have decided. This is too grave a situation for us to be timid any longer.”

The silence fell like an axe. Flash Magnus was the first to cough.

“Steady on, sah,” he said, half-chuckling. “We’re all on the same side here. Aut simul stabunt aut simul cadent.”

Rumbling, Rockhoof cast a sidelong glance at the long beard. “You wanna sleep on it, Beardy? Could be worth dreein’ over a wee slumber.”

Just as Somnambula opened her mouth too, Meadowbrook raised her hoof to bar her.

The healer’s face fixed on Star Swirl, giving him none of the warmth that had seeped through before now. Her other forelimb picked up the tankard, which sloshed a little. All ears listened as she gulped the last of the brandy down. Then the tankard hit the table.

Meadowbrook belched. It was a heck of a belch. Stygian felt it through his legs. The rafters groaned and one of them slid out of place.

“Let’s sleep on it, everypony,” said Meadowbrook. “Tomorrow’s gonna be the mama and papa of battles, either way. I sure hope you’re right, Star Swirl.” But she glanced at Stygian when she spoke next. “For your sake, sweetheart, I honestly wish you are right as rain.”

Was there concern in those parting words? Stygian might have imagined it. In any case, she didn’t stick around after that, but simply bustled towards the exit. Rockhoof shrugged and bent his head low to follow her out. Flash Magnus shrugged and flew out after them.

And that left four.

Somnambula nodded to each of them in turn, her mask of concern cutting through the dark outlines of her eyes. She flew out too, just not with the same vim and vigour Flash Magnus had. Then again, he hadn’t looked so confident either.

Behind the bar, the bar-stallion watched the three remaining unicorns warily. Whatever goodwill he’d had obviously hadn’t lasted, not now Meadowbrook was out the door.

A gentle hoof met Stygian’s shoulder; Mistmane patted him, not unkindly, but definitely stiffer than usual. At least her wrinkled smile shone through, like a shine on an apple, before she looked back at Star Swirl.

Stygian didn’t see her expression, fortunately or unfortunately. There was no clue from Star Swirl, either. His face remained inscrutable.

The door creaked shut, leaving just the two unicorns. Oh, and…

“Last orders, gents?” said the bar-stallion.

“Leave us, bartender,” was Star Swirl’s dismissive reply.

“Only I’m closing up the tavern now.”

Too late, Stygian closed his eyes. The flare forced him to blink out the afterimages. He’d almost leapt in panic.

Bang!

Stygian looked at the bar.

The back of the tavern smoked heavily. Broken glass tinkled. Nervous eyes peered over the counter. The bar-stallion had ducked.

“I said leave us,” said Star Swirl. “I am asking politely.“

“He really is, sir,” said Stygian to the nervous eyes.

They darted off quick. Hoofsteps hurried out the back. Whimpering. Stygian had never heard a big stallion whimper. It was quite an education.

And then there were two.

Part Seven

Just the two of them now. Stygian watched the sorcerer to see where this was going. Behind him, the bar gently tinkled as it cooled down. Star Swirl clearly still “got it”.

Star Swirl didn’t speak right away. Instead, the room darkened around him. Stygian lit his own horn: a simple enough spell, and one he’d learned early on in his studies. His classmates used it to sneak out at night. He used it to study for as long as he could stay awake.

The last few minutes burned in his memory. How had he contributed so much, and yet still felt like a fool at a meeting of monarchs? How could they keep him on the side, like a servant no one needed to notice? It was his plan. His ideas. His thinking. That had brought them together. So why was he always on the margins?

Mad cheeriness seized his throat. “Not going to sleep yet, sir?”

Star Swirl grunted. “I see you have the same idea as me, though I suppose you have more reason.”

“Sir?”

“I wouldn’t ask you to fight tomorrow, Stygian. All due respect, but fighting is not your special talent.”

It’s not Meadowbrook’s either, thought Stygian. She’s only a healer. And I’ve never seen Somnambula land a kick. She uses her brain to win instead. So why single me out, you old hack?

Strangely, the thoughts didn’t worry him. They were his thoughts, after all. He agreed with them. But in his head, the thoughts seethed and bubbled and boiled, cooking all goodwill out of the words and leaving his stomach full of spitting fire.

To his astonishment, he watched Star Swirl slump on the seat.

“Sir?” he said, summoning as much concern as he had left.

“They’re losing hope,” groaned Star Swirl, wearing his years not like a master but like a shabby mule. “Somnambula herself doubts me now. I can see it in her eyes.”

“I’m sure they understand you, sir,” said Stygian, far more happily than he felt. He’d seen Star Swirl like this before. “Seven years weighs heavy on a pony’s heart, sir.”

“Hearts.” A mirthless chuckle died alone. Whatever Star Swirl stared at, it was probably a lifetime away.

Stygian cleared his throat. He really did keep this group together. It didn’t matter if no one else pointed this out, or if he screamed about it in the privacy of his own head every other day. Duty compelled him to step in, over and over.

“Everyone’s desperate, sir. Why, it wouldn’t surprise me if they secretly agreed with your plan, sir. They just don’t want to admit things are as bad as all that.”

Old age sighed with Star Swirl, his constant companion. “Neither do I, to be frank. There, we reach unanimous agreement.” Another chuckle died in his beard. “Now that’s a rarity.”

And Stygian could read the old sorcerer like an open book. “Still think of her, sir?”

“Hm? Oh, her. Yes.” Star Swirl shifted on his seat; under Stygian’s beam, his face sank under the weight of long hairs and too many wrinkles, even worse than Mistmane’s.

Suddenly, Star Swirl sat up straight. “Stygian.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You see further and hear more than these old eyes and ears of mine. What do the others think of me?”

Stygian immediately thought: Lie! Lie through your teeth. It’s so much easier than making him angry, he who can transform ponies into pots as easily as ponies change horseshoes.

“Well, sir…” he began.

“Heroes are always tricky, you see,” said Star Swirl, and Stygian thanked his lucky stars because the old sorcerer was in that kind of rambling mood. “They aim high. They think they know best. They interfere all the time.”

“Sir?” said Stygian, who wisely refrained from commenting about Star Swirl relative to those complaints.

“Put more than one of them in the same room, and there’s always something lacking. No checks, no balances, just lots of egos fighting for space. Ambition gets bigger, and that means everyone else’s ambitions get bigger too. That’s how you get monsters.”

“Oh, sir!” said Stygian, honesty taking full control. “I’m sure the others are very kind and brave and humble ponies. Captain Magnus just wants to get the job done; he is a career soldier, sir. And Meadowbrook wants to heal the world, sir. She’s the kindest soul it’s ever been my pleasure to meet.”

“Yes, yes, Stygian, you say that now. But now you’ve brought them together. They face each other more often than they face their enemies. That’s why friends are more dangerous.”

Stygian’s heart sank. He’d trodden down this road so many times. He’d always drowned under the secret guilt. Yet Star Swirl’s voice grabbed his mind and frogmarched it down a familiar path, at the end of which lay shadows. Shadows that could hide anything.

“I don’t agree, sir,” said Stygian. Change the script! If only he could change the script.

Yet again, Star Swirl ignored him. “I had a friend once. Promising young student. Very interested in transformation spells, I remember.” He frowned for a moment. “Also, fish.”

“Sir, you don’t have to say it. I know.”

“One of the best and the brightest. She thirsted for knowledge, always pestered me, always asked me about this and that. Ambitious, oh yes. She worshipped the ground I walked upon, and the air I breathed, and frankly anything I ate or drank. Always copying my every move. Hoped greatness would rub off on her, I suppose.”

When he blew out, tufts of beard flew up for a moment. Stygian couldn’t resist anymore. He just hoped the shadows didn’t reach out and grab him –

“The others aren’t like that, sir,” he said without hope. “I know they aren’t. They wouldn’t betray anyone.”

“How can you be sure?” Star Swirl’s whisper didn’t have much hope left either.

Around them, the smell of old beer fouled up the breaths they took. So dark was the tavern that Star Swirl lit up his own horn, and red rage caught on his face, the face of a demon.

“And once she had all she wanted from me, she was out the door in a trice!” Fighting against the age and weakness, Star Swirl growled. “She was my friend, Stygian. Gave me gifts, answered every question I had, fetched my ointment whenever one of my spells backfired. She told such jokes, she did, that even Meadowbrook would cringe to hear them. And she was out that door, as soon as we were done. Gone.”

Stygian shivered. Without other ponies around, the warmth of the place seeped away. Darkness intensified around their two lights.

He rubbed his mouth, which wanted another drink. “Adagio was a long time ago, sir.”

“Adagio is right now, Stygian! Flying around out there, bringing Somnambula’s wretched siren legends to life. She liked the idea. She made it a reality. With my own magic! Now she flies around hunting lesser ponies. Not an ounce of unicorn left in her. And she found two more fools to join her desecration of everything I loved. That was all my friendship meant to her! My magic, my country, my… my…”

Star Swirl’s face woke up, as though realizing the memory had been severed. Nothing beyond that word came to him.

The demon returned to him. Glaring, he muttered, “The others will go the same way, if you’re not careful.”

“Lady Mistmane and the others? But after all the things they’ve done, sir, surely we could give them the benefit of the doubt?”

“You’re young and simple, Stygian. You spent too much time locked away from the world. That gullible idealism will get you killed if you’re not careful. Nearly killed me.”

“Adagio was different, sir. Not everyone is like that. Clover was never like that.” The other apprentice. Oh yes. Stygian had never met her. But he liked the sound of her, and anything that stuck it to this fool was fine by him.

Star Swirl bared his teeth. “Nonsense. Clover abandoned me long ago.”

“Did she, sir? I heard she travelled to help other ponies, sir. See, some ponies have their own special destiny.” Like making real friends, Stygian thought.

“Are you contradicting me, young colt?”

In the silence, the demonic face of Star Swirl shifted. His hat shielded his eyes, but Stygian knew from experience the old stallion had narrowed them.

Was he standing up to Star Swirl? What kind of question was that? A moment ago, Stygian hadn’t even thought along those lines. He’d just imagined, say, Rockhoof’s face if the stallion caught them talking like this. Rockhoof might look like an overgrown mutton-head, but he knew denial when he heard it.

Even if Rockhoof had possessed rocks for brains, though, he didn’t need them with Somnambula around. He’d pulled Stygian out of so many fires, snapped him out of so many trances… How could it be wrong to stand up for a hero like him, however much the big loudmouth made stories up about his exploits? With his shovel? And what about the others? Stygian quailed and stayed quiet, but he couldn’t let Star Swirl talk about them as though they were the enemy.

As though wanting to smile among friends showed lack of moral fibre. Hypocrite! Star Swirl hadn’t been so humourless during that stupid song earlier!

But here and now, he was standing up to Star Swirl, a little scholar like him. So he kept his mouth shut, and shook his head, and something deep inside raged against his ribcage, tore at his throat, burned and writhed in the agony of not being let free to right all the wrongs thrown back at his face.

“No, sir,” he whispered. “I apologize, sir. It wasn’t my place to question your wisdom.”

He hated those words. Only, what else could he say? Star Swirl backed off, and that was that. Job done. A lie could help keep this band of heroes from tearing itself apart. And it started with the sorcerer.

Besides, where else was Stygian going to go? Back in his tower, Stygian had barely believed ponies like that were real. Rockhoof alone sounded like he’d stepped out of the sea of mythology. Until Stygian had first seen the mountain of buck up close, it was impossible to believe an earth pony could throw boulders over a volcano, or dig a valley out in one night.

Plus, who else held the key to great power? Clover had disappeared off somewhere and no one else could even come close to Star Swirl. Perhaps he, Stygian, could learn more from the old sorcerer. Find out how he became so strong.

A thought struck him. “You trust me, don’t you, sir?” said Stygian.

“Of course. You’re only a keen scholar, young colt. What harm could you be, after all?”

Stygian froze.

The worst part was that Star Swirl smiled like a grandfather, as though he’d just said something grand.

Stygian dreamed of murder.

For now, he faked a look of gratitude, head slightly bowed.

Then he watched Star Swirl’s horn light up. Of course. The stallion knew magic. Why leave through the door like a common pony? A small bang rattled the planks.

And then there was one.

Stygian jutted his jaw at the empty spot. What harm could he be? Well now. One day, he’d find out. Sirens would not leave him defenceless on the side lines, oh no. Not if he found a way.

Fear choked him. He forced a hoof into his face until all dreams of murder and smug smiles fell back into his heart. Safely contain it. That was the key. Never let the dream take over. Believe there was an end to all this. And that it would be a good one.

He took a deep breath to help steady himself.

Then he headed for the door, hoofsteps pattering on the floorboards. Fear reached up and put his light out. He didn’t want to show up in the darkness. Besides, at night he felt… calmer, somehow. More real. As if the day was full of dreams and myths and stories all clamouring for attention around him, crushing him and suffocating him. Whereas the night? At night, he was his own stallion.

No, he would not join the others tonight.

Maybe he would scout ahead, go to Hollow Shades, make himself useful. He could lead the others there, if he left signs along the route. Marks on the trunks, perhaps, or a few stones piled up in a certain way. He’d read guides on outdoor survival, after all, and journals left by explorers. He knew he could do it. He only needed a chance.

He pushed the door open. He had to. Sooner or later, he had to prove he was one of them. Worthiness had to be earned honourably. For now, he’d play the helpful sidekick, but one day, he’d play the hero.

So Stygian smiled at his own quiet dreams, at cheers never heard and slaps on the back that for once felt earned and hearty. Lights in dark places. Lights in dark times. He could be one of those lights.

Modestly, he laughed under his breath, and then bravery gave him strength and he stepped out into darkness.