The sirens wait for an opening that will never come. They have learned to disdain unicorn magic, but the stallion standing before them has crushed their expectations into powder. His beard sweeps around him in the magical wind that fills their late arena, and the clatter of his bells are torture to the sirens’ ears. Always keeping some of their power in reserve in case a true chance for escape presents itself, they throw themselves again and again upon his magical barriers, battering the shining bubble as it grows ever smaller around them and repeating his hated name.
Star Swirl! screams Anguish, the sirens’ leader. She is a proud thing, orange and deadly, but even her vast powers are at last defeated. No longer shall she roam the hill country of Equestria, breaking apart even the oldest friendship or closest family for her own amusement; no longer shall she have the ear of great Princess Luna, feeding her jealous words against her sister. Star Swirl, she screams, set me free! Songs I can sing to you as you have never heard, songs that will settle the very stars upon the earth for you to play among and learn from! Can you throw away this opportunity, unicorn? Can you deny the power and understanding I can still give you?
Star Swirl! shouts Rage. The purple siren is fast and strong, but no dent can she make against the bubble spell. No longer shall her reflection flicker in the crystals of the northern lands, appearing to the impoverished in their moments of uncertainty and inciting them to violence; no longer shall she step her bloody way through the court of King Sombra, eliminating his other advisors one by one to direct him to the domination she believes him capable of. Star Swirl, she shouts, set me free! You think I have strength now? I am young! One day shall I return to Equestria, and only your action now can stay my anger on that day. Will you doom your world for a temporary revenge, mortal? Hundreds will die as Clover did if you abandon not this magic!
Star Swirl! cries Suffering. The blue siren’s attacks are half-hearted, following the rest of her band in action if not conviction. No longer shall her voice be heard in the ears of the powerful, inuring them to disinterest in the lives and dreams of their lessers; no longer shall she dance among the Windigoes, telling them of the bounties to be had in the land of the hoofed. Star Swirl, she cries, set me free! What have I done to you? What in my behavior has offended you? I am a siren! Will you banish the squirrel for eating nuts or the dragon for hoarding gold? Nothing in your life has interested me, pony, not for a moment! Forget this injustice and return to help your own kind!
To this and more Star Swirl’s ears are closed. The scarf that was Clover’s last gift is wrapped tightly around his head, leaving space only for his eyes to blaze with the twin fires of magic and emotion; if words he speaks, they are lost to history. Beneath his burning glare the bubble shrinks ever smaller, pressing the sirens against first each other, then the very fabric of the universe around them. Smaller and smaller shrinks the bubble until—by force of the sirens’ remaining power—the universe gives ground first. An unearthly crack splits the sky for one horrible moment, and when the sound and darkness have faded, the sirens are gone… from Equestria.
Star Swirl, beard now hanging from his chin with the weight of age, retraces his steps to the Castle of the Two Sisters. The scarf falls forgotten from around his head as he walks. He has heard nothing of the sirens’ words: knows nothing of Anguish’s promises, nor Rage’s threats, nor Suffering’s pleading. He knows nothing of the woes that shall yet befall his country in the years to come, before the millennium-long period of reconstruction. He feels nothing but grief—and very, very old.
It is not yet dawn, and yet the museum is alive with the sound of angry voices. A thin trail of green mist, all but invisible to the naked eye, flits through the corridors and exhibits with deadly precision and leaves nothing but arguing guards in its wake. At the end of the trail is a crowded staff room—its lock but recently broken—full of blanketed artifacts and treasures of uncertain province that have not yet been presented to the public. Painfully bright lights line the ceiling and make it impossible to hide anywhere in the room. They shine on sheets and weights; on papers and sketches; and on three weary teenage girls.
“Okie,” says Sonata Dusk, “that was absolutely my last bit of magic. If any more guards show up, we’re gonna need to get back to basics!”
“Physical assault?”
Sonata blinks, a motion her eyelids are well accustomed to. “I was thinking I could try acting cute and innocent, but yeah, that works too!” Sonata Dusk is small and blue all over, save for the purples that make up almost her entire outfit. Silver clamps run down the fronts of her pink-accented boots; fuzzy purple bands stretch several inches up from her wrists; her midriff is bared in an enticing V. There are patches on her legs and clothes where she has been marked by rotten vegetables thrown by angry students, but she likes the outfit too much to change it.
Leaning against the wall, Aria Blaze glowers. She is very good at it. “Spare us. Of course, if we hadn’t lost all our magic in some hare-brained plan to take over all Canterlot High…!” She does not finish the sentence, but only makes a fist. Aria Blaze is tall, muscular, pig-tailed, and gorgeous, though she has never had use for this last fact. Following the attack with the rotten vegetables she has changed back to the scraps of her old clothes: a ragged green vest hangs around her shoulders, covering a ripped shirt that she tore off hours ago in the belief she would never need it again. Glittering purple pants hug her legs from boots to star-adorned belt, and the necklace around her neck—the same as Sonata’s—is oddly empty. “I wonder,” she says, “whose plan that was… Adagio!”
“Oh, shut up for once in your tiresome life.” Citrus-skinned Adagio Dazzle is unwilling to compromise on beauty, and she wears her favorite costume without shame. The golden belt around her waist shines no less brightly for her disgust, nor have her purple and pink clothes lost any of their luster. Only the slump of her enormous hair gives her away, that and her barren necklace and the defeat in her once-confident voice. “It could have worked if we’d just put a little more effort in with Sunset Shimmer. I think we were really onto something until Sonata went all chipper on her.”
If Aria notices the attempt to redirect her anger onto Sonata, her favored punching bag, she does not acknowledge it. “Their friendship was already failing! We could’ve taken their magic without any of that nonsense about the tournament. Instead we just gave them inspiration and a stage to upstage us! Oh yes, and now we’re powerless!”
Sonata wrings her hands miserably. “Guys, come on, we don’t gotta fight like this…”
“Could’ve, could’ve, could’ve!” Adagio spits the words, eyes flashing. “Like you’ve ever had an original idea in your life, Aria. All you can do is criticize! Well, guess what, I’m glad we lost! This way I don’t have to spend eternity ruling Equestria with you as my sidekick!”
“Not if I stole your power, you wouldn’t have!”
“Girls!” Sonata’s voice is loud enough in its entreaty to halt their arguing, at least for a moment. She looks at both of them desperately, though there is a hint of something in her eyes that neither of the other girls recognize. “So we lost. Oh wells! Shouldn’t we be figuring out something to do next?”
Adagio smiles thinly and snatches the sheet off one of the stashed exhibits. Underneath are three glistening white shells, each as tall as one of the girls and made of some sort of thin but improbably strong material, yet each nonetheless broken from the inside. “There,” she says. “Star Swirl sent us to this world in these stupid pods. Well, I’m going home again, siren powers or no siren powers!”
“Home’s another world, Adagio. You can’t make that thing go without any magic!”
“Besides,” says Sonata, “that’s not even how our cocoons work!”
Slowly the other girls turn to face her. Again there is something in her words and face that they don’t recognize… not intelligence, but a knowledge of something they know far less about. Sonata gulps as she realizes what she has said, but it is too late to keep Aria Blaze from striding up and pulling her forwards by the front of her ridged shirt.
“It sounds like somebody has something to share with the rest of the class.”
In times gone by, the Palace of Song was one of the great landmarks of the entire continent. Musicians and songwriters came from all over the earth to meet in the Palace and learn from one another and to collaborate on new pieces that would shape the face of music for centuries to come. But that harmony is no more. Now songwriters bicker openly in the courtyards and on the ramparts; priceless instruments are smashed in the dead of night by bitter rivals; and musicians leave the Palace to return to their homelands full of songs of discord, bringing anger and misery to all who stop to hear their tunes. How did this happen? they ask.
With so many new faces arriving at the Palace almost every day, no one at first took much notice of Armonioso Wildfire, the tall purple harpist from the North Country. Armonioso found a home among the less-talented at the Palace, insisting that they were every bit as skillful as their more famous counterparts and teaching a new style of music that set instrument against instrument in wild cacophonies that still seemed to evoke a certain cathartic pleasure from its listeners.
The more famous musicians were worried by this development, but would have done nothing had it not been for Acceso Deius, the first among them to step forth and denounce the lesser-skilled players as ignorant fools. She and her skilled friends joined to beat the cacophonists at their own game, composing and playing tunes even more starkly discordant than those that had come before, though only Acceso—and Armonioso—seemed to enjoy the results.
Still the Palace maintained its reputation for collaboration and beauty, and the musicians might still have been swayed by this and returned to their old ways. Then among them came Segue Onyx, the little blue flutist with the odd accent and the cold hands. What did they have to be ashamed of? Segue asked them. Music was always a competition, right? Wasn’t winning more important than just working together?
Now the Palace is a Palace in more than name, and together Armonioso and Acceso and Segue sit in the throne room, sipping chilled cider and laughing. Their elaborate dresses have been partly undone to reveal identical necklaces about their necks, each sporting a single red gem bathed in the sparkling glow of magic, and they are irrepressible. They speak of power coursing through their bodies. They speak of the anger and distrust spreading across the world from their stone walls and how delicious it feels to them. They even speak of returning home, though Acceso has unshared reservations about this prospect.
And then the doors to their throne room are forced open and men rush in, men who have been guests at the Palace and some of the best in the world, perhaps giving up their futures for this attack. They carry swords instead of lutes, and the three women draw themselves up regally and sing a powerful song that has no effect at all. Blood runs from the men’s ears as they close in, marking where they have made themselves deaf in preparations to take the Palace back. They see the women turn in fear to their glowing necklaces, and they ready their blades.
Aria Blaze is first to break the silence after Sonata is done explaining, a mark of her impetuity. “Ten years?” she asks, repeating two of Sonata’s words.
“Roughly, yep. We climb back in our cocoons, we grow our gems back, and in ten years or so we come out with new bodies and new names and try all over again. And we lose, like every time!”
When Adagio speaks, her face an expressionless mask bathed in shadow, her companions cannot tell if she is speaking to them or to herself but listen anyway. “We’ve been here in this city for… a few months, I guess. We were banished about a thousand years ago. How many times have we done this?”
But Aria has lost interest in numbers. Though she gave up her hold on Sonata’s shirt only a few lines into her explanation of their shared history, it is always difficult to shake her attention from Sonata and her various perversities. For centuries, she is now learning, Adagio has stood to the side while Aria and Sonata have tussled with each other for one reason or another, though not under those particular names. “I don’t remember any of this,” she says. “What gives, Sonata? Do you live, like, a thousand years remembering every detail and never telling us until it’s too late?”
“No! It’s not always me who does the remembering, like sometimes it’s you or Adagio. I think it’s totes random, but I’m not a numberist or whatever.”
“Mathematician,” says Adagio without any cruelty.
“Right, them.”
A thousand years are passing through Adagio Dazzle, even though she knows next to none of their details. A thousand years of new starts that never seem to last. A thousand years of failure are finally enough to shake her easy, even automatic pride. “And we’re always villains?” she asks. “And it never ends up working out?”
“Oh, no!” Now Sonata is all smiles. “I mean, we think we’re better than everybody else, right? So sometimes we decide to be heroes instead! Especially you, Adagio…”
The warehouse stands squarely in the bad part of town, an easy excuse by the town’s police to stay well clear of it and whatever may happen between its four walls. In recent months it has been home to more illegal activities than any one of its transient inhabitants could ever have been aware of; now it is dark and silent, with only two brilliant points of white light illuminating the leftover gunsmoke as it rises to the ceiling and escapes through the boarded windows.
Not destined to escape so easily are the scores of men and women who lie dead on the concrete, each other’s victims, still dressed in the distinctive blues and purples of their respective gangs. It is not really their fault. They came together in the hopes of brokering a truce between the two parties; of taking their gun scopes and focusing them on the police and the moneybags of the town, rather than on each other. But their leaders could not be brought to accept each other, and as one they began to sing, their hands going to the strange jewels they had always worn around their throats. And as they sang, all thoughts of truce were forgotten, until now at last they are the only two left living in all the building and only their jewels shine where all other lights have been broken.
The woman known as Silencer is the color of polished sapphire, yet her shine is overpowered by the light of her gem and the smell of spilt blood that follows her everywhere. Black and indigo fabrics are wrapped around her at odd angles, a reminder she is too powerful to bother with more practical clothes, and for the first time she can remember she is surprised. You’re magic too! she tells the other leader. You’re a siren like me! You just have to sing, and people fight for you!
The woman called Artillery growls an assent. Her lavender trench coat hangs from her like a shield, decorated only by the light green spiral patterns that run down her arms like a magic spell. If Silencer intends for their newfound similarity to lead the way to truce or even friendship, she wants none of it. You killed my men, she says. All of them. I’ll have to start anew, maybe even in another city. But I’m taking you down first.
As the gang leaders ready their weapons—Silencer’s small and precise, Artillery’s huge and overpowered—the warehouse door bursts open and lets in a piercing shaft of moonlight. In its glow stands Officer Angel, rising star of the local police unit and most determined crimebuster north of the river Hippos. If she is surprised by the corpses littering the floor before her, no trace of that surprise is visible in her scarlet eyes set below hard lemonade eyelids. Silencer, she says evenly. Artillery. A pleasure.
The pleasure is less than mutual, and once more they begin to sing with gems pulsing like miniature suns. Green mist leaks from the floor and walls and even the bodies of the murdered, building around Angel in an anachronic cocoon, but it has no effect. Angel squints into the gems’ light and fires two quick shots from her pistol; the women’s gems shatter to pieces against their skin. As the magic and light fades around them, Angel undoes the top button of her uniform to reveal she wears a dull red gem of her own.
How? Silencer asks.
Sirens, answers Angel. All of us. I can’t kill you, but you’re too dangerous to leave around. I’m putting you back in your cocoons, and I’m coming with you, to keep you in line in the next world too.
Adagio Dazzle sits in a folding office chair, feet resting on the frame of a priceless painting from half a century ago. “Did I?” she asks.
Sonata shakes her head glumly. “Nope. The next time I was the one who remembered everything, not you, and we got all villainy again. Then eventually a mob took our gems and chained us up and threw us in the ocean, and it took like forever to get back to the surface. Sometimes being immortal really really sucks.”
But Aria doesn’t care about immortality, or at least not about its downsides. There is a hopeful gleam in her violet eyes. “They stole our gems? That means they’re still out there! We can get them back and still rule this stupid world!”
Sonata giggles. “Yeah, um, about that…”
God-Empress Armada, royal-purple-skinned ruler of all the scattered islands of Insulmultis, lounges on her throne with the ease of one who shall never be defeated. The throne is solid gold and bedecked with rubies and amethysts on every available surface, and diamond spikes rise up from its head in every direction, but even that pales against the extravagance of her robes of state. She wears a deep lavender made from the skins of a creature so rare that Armada had the last of its kind slaughtered after harvesting enough material for her robes, with jangly golden bands surrounding her arms every few inches and golden spheres hanging from her hems on strings of woven amethyst. An elaborate pattern is embroidered into the base of her robes in a color that changes from every angle it is viewed, and she wears a necklace of long golden chain with five perfect red gemstones clustered at its base. The gems are identical to one another, and each glows an angry white even when no external light is shining on them.
Under Armada’s rule the Insulmultis culture has been set back a hundred years or more, but she does not care. It took her only one gem to conquer the islands’ old queen and turn her followers to slaves or to examples for any else who might hold designs on the throne. One gem, and her sirenic voice and the magic that fills the air when she sings and incites blood brothers to spill one another’s blood. Now she has five, and the sixth is scheduled to arrive this very afternoon. As a result Armada is in a particularly good mood and so two slaves lie burning to death in the huge braziers beside her throne, each long past screaming.
This is the last gem, isn’t it? Armada’s concubine Serpentina is stretched across the carpet before Armada’s feet, supple and blue-skinned, her small size matched by the coverage of her clothing. Brown leather straps, bound in front by a single golden ring, are all that she is allowed to conceal her lovely breasts, and her purple skirt has many layers but is not what one might call opaque. Only her long blue hair is granted the gift of decency, weighted down with dozens of golden clips and brooches, each one a mark of Armada’s favor.
Armada greets the question with a smile and a nod. On days such as this when she anticipates the delivery of some new treasure, Serpentina looks especially beautiful to her, and today is no exception. Yes, she says after a moment, the sixth and last. Soon I’ll be unstoppable, my lovely. My magic will be unparalleled and unbeatable, and the whole world will be mine, not just these pathetic islands.
Aww. But I like it here!
Do you? Armada’s smile is almost considerate. Perhaps when I rule the world, Serpentina, I will grant these islands to you for your own personal dominion. How would you like that?
But Armada will never know the answer, for at that moment her ruby-braided double doors open to reveal two of her guards, carrying spears and heavy bronze armor, and between them stands the hooded messenger from the Monastic Order of Botflyism, in whose ancient vaults the sixth gem was discovered. But Armada offered to pay them handsomely for the gift, and offered military aid against their neighbors besides, and eventually the monks agreed.
Draw forward, says Armada, and the messenger does, the two guards still watching her closely as she moves. The messenger opens the wooden box she carries, and there in its humble hand-carved insides sits the final gem, already shining faintly in anticipation of being reunited with its sisters. Armada’s whole face comes alive. Give it here!
The messenger shakes her head, and her hood falls away to reveal beautiful Allomentia, bearer of the second gem before Armada stole it from her years ago. She sings three cursed syllables, smiling cruelly, and the guards behind her fall on one another and exit the room still fighting. Armada draws herself up to her full royal height and stares. You have the siren magic, she shouts. Serpentina, defend me!
But Serpentina slides in with one of her many golden brooches and slices Armada’s necklace in two, and before Armada can react, she throws the five gems to Allomentia, who catches them easily.
Traitor! Ungrateful harlot! Unfaithful strumpet! Armada’s power is gone, but this does not diminish her rage or the hatred she now feels for Serpentina, who creeps fearfully backwards before her queen’s angry oncoming stride. I gave you everything! And you let yourself be seduced by—in league with hated Allomentia?
Serpentina responds shakily. No, she says, Allomentia was in league with me. She sings but a single word, but that one word is enough to cause every one of the six gems in Allomentia’s hands to explode into dust. You’re too dangerous, she says as both her former allies turn on her. I couldn’t trust either of you with all that power! We’re supposed to work together! But Armada, this doesn’t have to be the end… I lo—
Sonata Dusk stops mid-word and looks mournfully back over the span of centuries. “Well,” she says in a subdued voice, “um, that bit’s not important. The argument didn’t work out. Aria didn’t think she could keep being God-Empress without any magic, and Adagio was pissed off, and in the end we all went and found our cocoons and went to sleep. Again.”
The three sirens are silent for a time, each one alone in her thoughts. Aria takes a certain pride in being evil in every one of Sonata’s stories. Sonata is disheartened by her endless memories of strife and failure. And Adagio…
Adagio stands stiffly and glares at them both, her words like knives against their ears. “Unbelievable!” she says. “I thought Star Swirl punished us by banishing us from Equestria. I was wrong. He punished us by banishing us all at once! All these years we’ve stayed together, fought each other, betrayed each other, found each other in remote corners of the world! I’m never going to be free of you morons! Never!”
“I’m not a moron!” shouts Aria, unwilling to expend any effort in defending Sonata. “And from what I hear, half the time we can’t even trust you not to be on the humans’ side. Some siren you are, Adagio, or should I call you Angel now?”
“At least I was a success and only gave up voluntarily!” Adagio sniffs. “Forget this. I’m going back to sleep. Maybe when I wake up I’ll remember all this, and I’ll find a way to get rid of you two before you can mess up any more of my plans.”
Before Aria can argue any further, Adagio has thrown herself into her cocoon, and within seconds its indestructible walls close back around her for the next ten years. The remaining two sirens stare after her, and then at each other. They have spent the last several months trading insults at every opportunity, but they have never felt so close together in this lifetime, nor somehow so alone.
Sonata gulps. “What are you gonna do?”
“What can I do? I’m going after her. Maybe I’ll remember everything instead, and I’ll make us all work together and no more betrayals.”
“We tried that in the Palace of Song.” Sonata shifts uneasily in her chair, patting at her dark purple skirt. “And this time too! And dozens of other times, obvs.”
Aria is stopped only for a moment by this. “Then we lost because you were too stupid. This time it’ll be just me and Adagio, and we’ll really rule the world for once and for all. We’ll throw you off a cliff or something, and—”
“You’ve tried that!” Sonata’s voice is nearing desperation as she runs over to Aria, clutching at the back of her vest before she can climb into her cocoon. “We’ve tried all your ideas, Aria, yours and Adagio’s! Over and over! They never work out!”
Aria whirls around in fury. “So what? What’s your big idea, Sonata? How do you want to change history, huh? Sonata Dusk the idiot, going to solve all the sirens’ problems forever?!”
“We don’t have to rule the world!” Sonata is crying, although it is not in response to Aria’s familiar anger. “We’re just humans now, without our gems! Can’t we just—for once—try that out instead? We could be like Sunset Shimmer and make real friends and have slumber parties and—”
“Is this about Taco Tuesday?”
“Yeah! And fruit punch and milkshakes, and liking other people’s songs and playing video games, and growing up and going to college, and, and… friends?”
Aria’s thoughts will never be known. Perhaps she has the faintest hint of recollection of ruling Insulmultis, and of the love for a consort whose betrayal cut her more deeply than she would ever admit. Perhaps she is thinking of her old enemy Silencer and wondering what has happened to her in the intervening centuries to bring her so low. Perhaps she is merely cursing Star Swirl the Bearded. In the end, though, she simply frowns. “We’re better than the humans,” she says, and climbs into her cocoon.
Sonata is left alone in the staff room of the museum, surrounded by unknown artifacts that may be even older than her. She wipes away her tears even though there is no one left to see them. Adagio isn’t wrong, she reflects. She doesn’t know if it’s Star Swirl’s fault, or if it’s just their own personalities, but they do all seem to be drawn to each other. If she enters her cocoon, whether she comes out a hero or a villain, she feels sure she’ll see Aria and Adagio again. And just thinking statistically, they probably won’t like her very much.
But she’s used to them. Very used to them after a thousand years, even if she only remembers that detail about a third of the time. Can’t a punishment be a blessing too? After all, like she told Star Swirl a long long time ago, she is a siren. Aria and Adagio are her life. This is what she does. Can it really be so wrong?
So as the door of her cocoon grows back over her, she whispers a goodbye to the friends she could have made at Canterlot High, but she also whispers a hello to the sirens she knows she’ll meet again after she sleeps ten years. “I’ll see you soon, Adagio. You too, Aria.
“I love you.”
