When Adagio Dazzle regained consciousness she was on the floor of a stolen car, still wearing her fruit-stained performance dress, and in a good deal of pain. A quick inspection suggested she wasn’t actually bleeding anywhere, but her whole body ached nonetheless. Blunt impacts, then. Very carefully, wincing at every new movement, Adagio managed to pull herself back up to the rear seats of the car, where she could begin to take her bearings.
She was alone in the car; the driverside front door hung loosely open, letting in the chilly night air. Her situation was already dubious, to put it generously, but that struck her as an especially bad sign. She didn’t remember being alone. She and the other Dazzlings had fled the Battle of the Bands together, hadn’t they? It had been Aria’s idea to steal a car to get away, and Aria who’d done the actual work of smashing the window to get inside. Adagio glanced over to the open front door again, and was deeply relieved to see the window still smashed. So her memory hadn’t failed her so far.
Even then they’d managed to find something to argue about. Adagio had said that she should drive, as their leader, and Aria had spat on the ground and said her leadership had just gotten them in a whole bunch of trouble, so maybe it was time Adagio got off her high horse and let someone else take charge for a change. And Adagio… hadn’t had a good answer to that. They had just lost, after all. Lost the Battle of the Bands, lost their attempts to conquer the world, lost even their precious red gemstones. So she’d silently crawled into the back of the car, since Sonata had quickly claimed shotgun, and zoom off they’d gone, no particular direction except anywhere that was far away from Canterlot High.
Except eventually Aria and Sonata had started arguing, or maybe ‘resumed’ would be a better word. Adagio groaned and rubbed her aching head. So repetitive, all “you’re the worst” this and “no you’re the worst” that until Adagio had wanted to bash both their heads in, but… she shivered. No, she hadn’t gotten the chance, had she? Aria had said… something that really set Sonata off, and Sonata had lunged at her, and they’d both toppled out the driverside door…
Adagio climbed out of the car on the opposite side and took a look around. She appeared to be on a dark and deserted mountain road, if the rocks and species of the surrounding trees were anything to go by. Maybe nobody else had even driven by since the incident, or maybe everybody had seen the wreckage and simply driven by. Adagio wouldn’t have blamed them. Once driverless, the car had apparently crashed into an enormous tree where the road curved and the car had not, which explained why she’d been lying unconscious and sore at the base of her seats. Maybe, Adagio thought, those cloying seatbelt advertisements were onto something. She was probably lucky to still be alive.
Alive. The word brought a sudden chill to Adagio’s body that had nothing to do with the night air. If this was a mountain road, and the rocks seemed to be ascending on her side of the car, then what about the other side? She walked to the back of the car and felt sick. The road extended for only a few inches past the side of the car before the surface of the mountain dropped away to a dark forest landscape far below. Nausea overcame her and she turned around just in time to be sick all over the back of the car. Well, it was already all smashed up in front, a little vomit wouldn’t hurt it any.
But… Aria? Sonata? Adagio shook her head, not sure how she should feel—or even whether she felt anything at all. That was shock, she supposed. She’d spent the last what, several hundred years at least with those girls, ever since they’d all been banished from Equestria together. Their… loss would definitely have an effect on her. That it hadn’t quite hit yet just meant she had a little time to make herself useful… somehow.
“Okay,” she said to herself, “you’re not dead. You’re still Adagio Dazzle. You’re young-looking and beautiful and talented and you can find a way out of this mess. And you don’t even know if they’re dead.” She got back in the remains of the car and searched it for useful objects, talking to herself all the way and pretending to believe the things she was saying. “It’s just a cliff, that’s all. Hundreds of stupid years in this stupid human world, they’re not going to be done in by falling off some little cliff! No one’s dead until you see their horribly mangled bodies, Adagio, that’s just common sense… aha!”
Triumphantly Adagio held aloft the flashlight she’d just discovered. It was pink with little black hearts all over it, and clashed horribly with her outfit, but it worked and that was what mattered. The purse was otherwise mostly empty, but she did find a rather lethal-looking knife, and blinked at it in surprise. Huh. Who’d have thought someone at little old Canterlot High was bringing something like that to school, or at least to its parking lot? Well, it couldn’t hurt to bring it along too. There could be anyone—or anything—hanging around in the dead of night, and without her siren powers to defend her, a knife suddenly felt very much worth having.
The chill night air hit her again as she left the car, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it. The cold wasn’t going to go away, and thinking about it would only make it worse. She aimed the flashlight at the ground and walked back down the road in the opposite direction they’d been driving, retracing the car’s path. What had Aria and Sonata even been arguing about? Had it been anything at all, or just general frustration from their failure at the school? She couldn’t remember. But Sonata, little comparatively harmless Sonata Dusk, had thrown herself at Aria—but of course she hadn’t known the door wouldn’t be locked, stupid Aria, she couldn’t have taken half a second while getting into the car to save her own life—not that any of them had bothered with seatbelts, Adagio included…
It hadn’t always been like this. Equestria had been a better place for all of them; the energy from arguing ponies had been so much more potent than the energy from arguing humans, and with that extra power, they’d all but ruled the world around them. They’d been happy, caring for each other, helping each other against threats from the more uppity ponies. And when they’d been banished and utterly failed to replicate that same success in the new world, reduced to loitering around beat-up diners and back alleys scrounging off the dregs of the earth, that had been hard. And since the only real constants in their lives were each other, and all they saw from the real humans was argument and hatred, it had been so, so easy for the three of them to start arguing with each other, argue and maybe even to hate. Not that Adagio had been blameless; if anything it was more her fault than the others, since she was the leader and she should have found ways for them to stay friendly, but they could be so stupid sometimes, both of them. And then she’d given up for just a couple minutes and left Aria Blaze in charge, however de facto the details, and all but immediately Aria and Sonata had both gone hurtling off a cliff. Maybe. Probably.
“We belong together, you insufferable idiots,” Adagio growled, and kicked a pebble off the mountain. A couple seconds later she heard the clink of its landing, and froze. Surely the dark forest she’d seen hadn’t been close enough for the pebble to hit rock so soon? Adagio aimed the flashlight over the edge, and her eyes widened at the sight of a rocky platform not so very far below. The surface looked jagged and generally unpleasant, but—Adagio’s breath quickened for a moment—was that a familiar shade of blue sitting there?
“Sonata?” she shouted.
“Adagio!” The voice was distinctly Sonata’s, and a tension in Adagio’s limbs she hadn’t noticed was there faded away. She couldn’t read the emotions in Sonata’s voice, not that Adagio could blame her for that, and anyway she’d only shouted back a few syllables. But she didn’t sound weak, so she probably wasn’t actively dying, so that was good.
“Sonata! Stay there, okay? I’m going to try to find a way down.”
To this Adagio heard no response, and she shivered again, but she had seen Sonata’s body and heard her voice and she wasn’t going to stop now. She crouched down and leaned over the edge of the road, sweeping the beam of her flashlight over the vertical drop of rocks between her and the jagged platform below. Yes! The side of the mountain was not smooth but rather mottled by a long series of tiny crevices and hanging vines which could be used for descent by a skilled rock-climber or simply a very determined and agile-bodied girl. And Adagio was nothing if not determined. She swept the flashlight around once more to make sure she wasn’t immediately above Sonata and then dropped her knife over the edge to give herself a free hand.
The first half dozen tentative steps were no trouble. Some of her foot- and hand-holds were almost invisible, especially with the added difficulty of using a flashlight while trying to climb down the side of a mountain, but she found them in the end. What undid her was the remaining soreness of her body from the impact of the car crashing into the tall tree. She reached for a vine, yelped as a previously-unnoticed injury in her opposite shoulder screamed at her, lost her grip, and fell the remainder of the way down.
“Adagio!” So Sonata was indeed still there and alive. Good. Adagio lay among the rocks, cursing fluently, her back on fire, but somehow she felt all better—if only for a moment—when Sonata’s worried head entered her vision, illuminated by the flashlight Adagio still clutched desperately in her left hand. “Adagio, are you okay?”
“I’m… not great. Ow! Second hard impact of the night, damn it. How are you?”
“Um, I’m not much hurt. Do you think you can move? Is it safe to lift your body?”
Adagio shifted herself experimentally. It hurt, but not blindingly so. “Dunno. Help me find out.”
Sonata was hardly an expert in treating injured people carefully, and Adagio cried out several times, but they did manage to get her into a sitting position. She was surprised to discover she was hugging Sonata, and more surprised to discover she was crying—not just from the pain—but they spent the next couple minutes pressed silently together and trying to expel all the tension of the evening through any means but actual words.
Finally Adagio shifted and growled away from the pain the movement cost her. “Where’s Aria?”
Sonata’s answer was flat and monosyllabic. “Dead.”
“What?! Are you sure?!”
“I landed on her.” Sonata pointed into the darkness, and Adagio shone the flashlight in that direction and was nearly sick again. Aria Blaze lay on the rocks maybe a dozen feet away from them, bleeding from various points where the jagged rocks had obviously slashed her when she landed, and looking decidedly motionless. How many hundreds of years…?
“But how do you know?” Yes, Aria did look awfully unambiguously dead, but she couldn’t forget that Sonata was something of a fool. “Did you check for a pulse, give her mouth to mouth—“ It was strange talking about Aria, a siren, in such human terms, after they’d been alive for so long without so much as aging let alone dying, but they’d never had serious physical injuries like this to test their boundaries before.
Sonata was shaking her head. “Nah. That guy told me.”
“What guy?”
“Sitting over there. Mr. Death.”
Adagio swiveled the flashlight again but there was nothing to be seen. The world suddenly felt extremely cold. She was bruised and possibly bleeding, alone in the dead of night with a girl who had just killed her best friend and had apparently gone mad in the process. She had no more siren powers—not that they’d even work on Sonata—and she wasn’t holding her knife anymore, and even if she could figure out where it’d landed, Sonata was in less pain and therefore far more mobile than she was. If Sonata’s new madness extended to wanting to kill her too, Adagio didn’t think she’d be able to do much about it.
But she’d read once that the mad responded well if you treated their illusions as reality, maybe even showed an interest in what they were raving about. “Death’s sitting over there? Death, like the real thing Death?”
“Yep! Well, he says he is, and he’s got the skull face and stuff that all the humans like to draw him with. He’s waving at you!” Adagio weakly waved in the direction Sonata seemed to be looking. “He says he’s been looking forward to meeting you for a long time.”
Adagio’s heart sank. “He has?”
“Um… he says yes, because we’re immortal and all that. He doesn’t get to talk with immortals much. But Aria dying gave him an excuse!”
“Well, I can’t see or hear him, so he’s out of—“ Adagio stopped. She knew she might be attributing too much logic to the ravings of a madwoman, but Sonata wasn’t acting mad. She barely even seemed upset. “You’re a lot better off than me right now,” she said, carefully. “So how come you can see him, but…”
“That’s because I killed Aria. Sort of. I guess.”
“Sort of?”
“Ugh, I don’t know, it’s complicated! Mr. Death, can’t you just tell her… right, right, I forgot. Okay.” She stopped and appeared to be listening to someone or something that Adagio couldn’t hear, and Adagio didn’t quite dare interrupt her. “Okay, he says that I had the intention of attacking her in the car, and the effect of landing on top of her, and combined that counts as me killing her even though I wasn’t actually trying to.”
Adagio’s head hurt more than it had before. “And that’s why you can see Death.”
“Right. Because Aria’s supposed to be immortal, like us, and if you kill an immortal you get a… what was it called again?” Another pause while she listened. “Right, a death debt! Apparently I’m owed Aria’s death debt now? Look, Mr. Death, isn’t there any way you can just talk to Adagio yourself? I’m cold and tired and repeating everything you say just gets boring.”
A gust of not air swept through Adagio for a moment, and then before her horrified eyes, Aria Blaze’s body began to stir. It moved in ways that no human or siren ever moved, jerking from side to side and stopping with limbs directed at odd angles, but ultimately ended up on its feet, staring down at the two girls with lifeless white eyes. Blood still seeped from its various gashes and scars, but it paid them no heed.
Hello, it said, in a voice that was not Aria’s and not human at all. It was sharp like the clang of a shovel digging a grave that hits something that was not supposed to be in the ground already, and cold like an icicle passing through your heart, and completely and unshakably cruel. Just one word and Adagio knew that Sonata was not mad after all; she was speaking with a being, or at least an idea, that was utterly and perhaps violently opposed to all life on any world and yet, most terribly of all, was intelligent.
Beside her Sonata had also gone pale, and Adagio wondered what other, less unnerving voice Death had used in its private conversations with her and why it had changed. She took Sonata’s hand reassuringly and almost cried out from the force with which Sonata instantly returned her grip. All of a sudden being a mere immortal didn’t seem like such a big advantage, but she was the sirens’ leader, and even pained and barely able to move, she could still be strong. She tried to scowl. “I can’t say it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
What a pity.
“Tell me more about this ‘death debt’ that you say Sonata has.”
Ah, yes. Aria’s body had gone motionless as Death spoke through her, which was somehow even more horrible than her earlier unnatural movements. Only her split jaw moved as Death talked. There is no such thing as true immortality, you understand. Only conditional immortality. You and your ilk will not die of natural means, but a sentient being such as Sonata there can act to kill an immortal.
“I got that much from context, thank you.”
My apologies; I forgot I was speaking with the clever siren. There was no hint of remorse in its words, only amusement, as though Adagio was playing a game with Death that it had already set up and played through and won, with their actual conversation only a necessary formality. Immortals are often beautiful, are they not? Many who kill them feel regret thereafter, and they have a three hour window in which to change their mind. Every living sentient being has one—and only one—chance to abandon a death debt and revive their victim. I am here to offer Sonata hers.
“Sonata could bring Aria back to life?!”
With but a word, and I would follow her command. Even this body would be restored from its recent injuries.
Adagio gripped Sonata’s hand too tightly in her emotion as she rounded on the other girl. “Well, go on, Sonata! Bring her back before her warranty expires or whatever!”
Sonata frowned at her. “I don’t wanna.”
Her flashlight’s beam got no weaker, but the dark crept in closer around Adagio and their tiny tableau nonetheless. The sight of Sonata lunging at Aria from the passenger’s seat, of Aria screaming in sudden terror, of them both toppling out the unlocked door and the rush as the driverless car drove on, hitting a tree before Adagio could reach the wheel… it all passed before Adagio’s eyes in a moment as she stared at the blue girl sitting before her, whose hand she was inexplicably holding. She dropped it and glared. “Why the hell not?!”
“Because she hated me!” Sonata leapt to her feet as if Adagio’s hand had been some grotesque anchor holding her down, and she pointed at Aria’s motionless body in a disdainful rage. “She said this was all my fault! I sang just as well as you two in all our songs, and I did my part in getting that stupid magician girl to help us, and I even made fruit punch for the whole school! But Aria wouldn’t shut up about how stupid she thinks I am and how I’m supposed to be the worst siren, and I just snapped and attacked her, and you know what?!” She flung her fists into the air and screamed at the world. “Aria Blaze is the worst and I’m glad she’s dead!”
Flashes of bright red filled Adagio’s streaming eyes as she struggled to her feet. She leaned against the mountain side for support and held her flashlight weakly, still shining its light on both Sonata and on Aria’s body, making them seem almost to glow against the black night behind them. “Sonata, come on, you don’t mean that…”
“I do, I do, I do, I do, I do!” At any other time Adagio would have laughed at her tantrum, but Aria’s life was on the line, and laughing at Sonata maybe wasn’t such a good idea anyway. “She hated me so much, all the time, whatever I did!”
“No, Sonata, she’s just an angry person, that’s all.” Adagio used the present tense violently, trying to force Aria into life through words alone, while trying not to look at her actual body. But she couldn’t help noticing those empty white eyes watching her as she spoke. “It’s not like I don’t call you names sometimes too…”
“Yeah, but when you do that it’s because I’ve really earned it.” The beams of the flashlight illuminated shining patches on Sonata’s cheeks, where she too appeared to be crying, though in her case probably not from physical pain. “Like yeah, it was pretty dumb of me to tell Sunset Shimmer about our singing powers, wasn’t it? But Aria, it was just like nothing I could ever do was good enough, even when I wasn’t doing anything.”
“But we’re the sirens! We’ve practically always been together.” Adagio tried to reach forwards, ended up banging her shoulder against a rock, and shuddered. “Remember Equestria, Sonata?”
Sonata nodded. “Yeah. But that was such a long time ago. We haven’t really been friends like that in forever.”
“We could still try! Damn it, I know I’ve screwed things up. We all have. But if you just give Aria another chance, we can start again, like the old days. When we were actual friends.”
“As if.” Sonata tossed back her hair, which was the more impressive for how much of it she had. “Come on, Adagio, do you think Aria would even think about bringing me back if things were the other way around?”
Actually, she might.
Sonata jumped. Adagio could not afford the movement, but still stared at Death, which was rearranging Aria’s body into a pose of supplication, her palms spread upwards. “What do you want now?”
I am merely providing useful information. And sounding awfully smug in the process, thought Adagio. Not that she didn’t have plenty of experience doing the same. Aria Blaze’s ghost is here with us, you understand. I have not yet taken her with me, which is why you still have a chance to save her.
This, at last, seemed to unnerve Sonata. She twisted her hands together in front of her chest and looked more familiarly submissive, less the raging blue monster Adagio had been talking to a moment ago. “Aria’s… here?”
Yes.
“But… she’s lying, right? I mean, of course she’d say she’d bring be back to life, because I won’t bring her back unless I stop thinking she hates me, so she…”
She saved your life.
“What?”
When you attacked her in the car and fell off the road. She twisted in the air so that she would be below you and you would land on her instead of the sharp rocks.
“…she’s lying.”
Aria does not tell you this. I do. And I cannot lie.
“…Aria?” Sonata moved toward Aria’s body, grabbed her hand, and then quickly dropped it, having apparently remembered she was inhabited only by Death and its horrible voice. “Aria, are you here? Do you really not hate me? Mr. Death, what is she saying?!”
Death was briefly silent before responding, grotesquely cupping one of Aria’s ears in an impression of listening closely. She says she’s sorry. She didn’t know she was hurting you that much. She wants another chance.
Sonata sniffled and shook her head. “But I don’t… I don’t know if I can trust her…”
“I don’t know if we can trust you,” said Adagio. She shone the flashlight directly at Death’s blank eyes, but this had no visible effect. “You’re telling us you can’t lie, but I don’t see why we should take your word for that. And for someone who doesn’t get to see many immortals, you’re acting an awful lot like you’re trying to not take Aria with you.”
Touché. Aria’s bloody mouth leered at her. You are right that my true hope is to take as many of your three souls with me as I can. But I cannot lie.
“Prove it.”
I cannot. But consider, Adagio, how many years before this I have not appeared to you. The death debt is very real, and I am bound to its rules. If I could lie, there have been a thousand better chances I could have seized on to take your lives, but I cannot lie. It turned Aria to face Sonata, who cringed away from her. Tell me, Sonata Dusk, would you like to talk to Aria yourself?
“Yes! Yes, I would! Can you put her back in her body for a bit?!”
No. The icy voice sounded even smugger than before, and Adagio’s skin crawled beneath its bruises. Ghosts may not speak with the living. But if you were a ghost too, then you could ask her anything you wish to evaluate her trustworthiness.
“But how would I…?”
Your friend Adagio could kill you with the knife she has not mentioned to you. She would carry your death debt, and could revive you after a period of time agreed on in advance.
Sonata turned to face her, hands still pressed tightly together, and Adagio sighed. “Yeah, okay, I do have a knife somewhere. Look, Sonata, this is a terrible idea.”
“Why?! You want everyone alive, so you’ll definitely bring me back, and I can figure out whether Aria really wants to be my friend or if she’s just faking it!”
“But it’s exactly what that thing wants us to do! Didn’t you hear it say it wants us all dead? And we still have no proof this death debt stuff is for real!”
“But like he said, if he could lie or appear whenever he wanted we’d probably all have gotten killed ages and ages ago, right?”
“…” Adagio gritted her teeth. “I guess. I’m not sure. Damn it, Sonata, can’t you just bring Aria back and then figure out whether you like her or not?”
“No!” Sonata swept a hand around them, pointing at every aspect of their surroundings in the space of a second. “Like, no way! Have you seen this place? If Aria isn’t all nicey nicey, she could push me off these cliffs for killing her and then she definitely wouldn’t bring me back.”
Adagio struggled to find an objection and came up alarmingly short. She was sure Aria wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t sure if she believed Death was incapable of lying, and thus whether what it reported Aria’s saying was true, but she didn’t believe Aria would willfully kill Sonata. Their old friendship had become strained and hurtful, yes, but it wasn’t that bad. But she couldn’t convince Sonata of that—Sonata only wanted to hear it from Aria herself.
But Death’s suggestion required more than just Sonata’s approval, it required Adagio’s direct intentional action. “I’m not going to kill you,” she said. “So that’s not an option. If you want to talk to Aria, you’ll have to do it blind.”
Sonata crossed her arms. “If you don’t kill me, I’ll just throw myself off that cliff.”
“What?!”
“I will! And then you won’t have any death debt and you won’t be able to bring me back. So you gotta kill me.”
Adagio stared at her wordlessly, thought it over, then shut her eyes. “Damn the both of you. Sonata, get me my knife, okay? I’m in no shape to look for it.”
It’s three feet to your left, said Death, all too helpfully. No, a little to the right. Yes, right there. See the glint? Good.
Adagio looked at the knife in her hand once Sonata had given it to her and wondered if she should just stab herself and get it over with. She couldn’t shake the feeling that was how they would all end up one way or another anyway, with Death calling all the shots. But then she’d be in no position to help anyone, and even if she stabbed Sonata there’d still be one player left on the sirens’ team. She looked back at Death. “You’re leaving something out. Does Sonata still have the death debt if she dies and comes back to life before the window is closed?”
Yes. Death debts expire only from time, not from expiration. If you tell me to revive her any time in the next seventy-two minutes, she will be able to revive Aria the same way.
Adagio sighed. “Sonata, if this doesn’t work somehow, I want you to know I’m really sorry. You’ve got twenty minutes.” She was weak, but against her hopes she was strong enough to drive the knife deep into her friend’s heart and pull it out in a tiny fountain of blood. Sonata looked surprised for a moment, then sunk to the rocky ground, her face almost unchanged but in some small indefinable way not alive. Adagio didn’t know which body was worse to look at, Sonata’s or Aria’s, and so stared at a nondescript stone instead.
“So,” she said after a few minutes, “what haven’t you told me? We both know you’re hiding some cards. Are they just dead for good now?”
Oh, no. The death debts are very real. And now that we are alone, you must admit I have no possible incentive to lie about that.
“Yes, of course. So now the two of us just wait here for twenty minutes, then I tell you to bring Sonata back and you have no choice but to obey.”
That is correct. I will have no choice.
“Awesome.”
But you do.
“Seriously?” Adagio looked back up, if only because there was no point in glaring at a stone. “That’s your big twist? I could choose not to bring my friend back to life?”
Oh, Adagio, your lack of trust wounds me so. Before Adagio’s eyes Aria’s body collapsed lifelessly to the ground and left a skeletal figure standing in its place. It did not wear the traditional black robes, but perhaps it had once upon a time; now only fragments of black fabric hung from its body at odd points, born by a wind that Adagio could not feel. Nothing seemed to hold the bones together, but still it stood, seven feet tall and as ominous as ever. Everything I have told you about death debts is true, but I have not told you everything about death debts.
“Damn it.” Adagio had a terrible feeling she was about to make a fatally bad decision, even without the faintest hint of what it might be. “Keep talking, skullface.”
Insults will get you nowhere. You see, Adagio, the death debt is a transitive creation. For those rare cases in which an immortal’s assassin is themselves assassinated, there is a proviso that the holder of a death debt has equal access to all their victim’s debts. Meaning that you could bring back Sonata… or you could bring back Aria.
Yes, there it was, just like she’d expected: new information which didn’t contradict anything she had previously known and yet somehow made her question her previous decisions. She was quickly coming to hate Death. “But only one of them, right? That was basically the very first thing you mentioned, I only get one shot at this.”
Correct.
“Okay, great. But I still don’t see what you’re going for here. Sonata can bring back Aria too.”
But she may not. That lies on her and Aria to work out among themselves, remember.
“But you said that Aria feels sorry for how she’s been acting lately, and Sonata was excited by that. She wants to forgive Aria. We were—are—friends!”
Yes. Unless I lied about Aria, of course.
Adagio went limp. The knife dropped noisily to the rocks under her feet, and she only barely caught the flashlight in time, though Death’s face of bones was just as unperturbed as before when she got the light to shine on it again. “You… but you said…”
I said many things. I also said that I could not prove that I never lie. And I cannot lie. Unless I am lying about that.
“And the death debts?”
Still real. I have nothing to gain from deceiving you about those, as we have established. Moreover, either I am telling the truth that you could choose either Aria or Sonata to revive, or else you do yourself no harm in trying. Death pretended to brush some invisible insect off its boney arm. I cannot lie, but you may feel free not to believe that.
Adagio tasted blood and belatedly realized she was biting her lip. Still, whatever Death’s other qualities, it was proving extraordinarily willing to answer questions and generally talk a lot. She couldn’t ignore the possibility that Death might yet say something that she could find useful. “I think I’ll believe you,” she said after a few more moments of thought. “If I work within your system, I may find a move to beat you. If I question that there’s any system at all, I’m powerless.”
A fair conclusion. May I resume my gambit of the transitive debts?
“Yeah, go for it.”
Thank you. If you choose to revive Sonata, her subsequent revival of Aria is an uncertainty, even if you rightly believe that I cannot lie. And I will not tell you anything she does or says in the time she is a ghost.
“Of course—no, wait!” Adagio pointed her free hand triumphantly at Death, then winced at the pain. Right, there was no room for theatrics at this point. “The only things I want to hear about Sonata is that she’s listening to Aria and trusting her. If you’re not telling me anything, that means you don’t want me to hear that.”
Not at all. I made my decision not to tell you about her in advance, in order that I could not be swayed by the actual outcomes of their conversation. In fact, I chose not even to listen to anything they say to each other. Nothing I tell you will be determined by their present tempers.
Damn. Yes, okay, that was right. She couldn’t get anything out of not being told something. Death seemed to stand an inch or so taller, and she glared at him, at least her eye muscles being completely free from injury. “Even so, this is just math, isn’t it?”
Is it?
“Obviously. Or statistics or something. I choose Aria, that’s two of us left alive. I choose Sonata, that’s two or maybe three. That’s better.”
I think you have overgeneralized your role in the game from mine. My objective is for as few as possible of you to remain alive, yes, but yours is not for as few as possible of you to die.
“It’s not?”
Not at all. Or can you seriously tell me, Adagio, that if only one of your companions lived with you—Aria or Sonata—you would find either possible permutation equally acceptable?
“I…”
Aria Blaze, who tried to save Sonata’s life after being attacked by her? Or Sonata Dusk, who was so set against saving Aria’s life that she threatened to kill herself if you didn’t do everything she wanted?
“Yes, but…”
Perhaps picking Sonata gives you the indefinite chance of saving both your comrades. But if only one lives, surely it is Aria who more deserves a chance at life?
Overcome by some frigid cocktail of fear and misery and hatred, Adagio sunk to the ground, wincing at every step. She wasn’t dying, was she? Death had said that she couldn’t die unless someone deliberately killed her—or at least did some actions that could be sort of defended as killing her, as in Sonata’s case. So she guessed she was safe, but everything still hurt so much and it wasn’t helping her thinking at all. “You’re asking me to pick which one of them I like more and only save her.”
If you wish.
“Well, what else could you possibly expect me to do?!”
Consider the feelings of someone other than yourself for a change, Adagio. For all you know Aria and Sonata are perfectly happy and the best of friends again by now. Would you split them apart, telling your chosen friend that your desire to see her again overruled her newly rebuilt friendship, and not only that, the last thing the other girl will know before going to her eternal rest is that she wasn’t good enough for you?
“Only if I picked Aria…”
Perhaps.
Adagio clutched her flashlight like the last rock of sanity in a storm of evil and doubt. “I hate these choices. And you.”
Do you? How fortunate there is a third choice.
“What?”
Save neither. Let the window of time expire for both. Do not burden either one with the knowledge that her life was bought at the other’s expense, and the feeling that they must continue to be your truest friend forever and ever in order to be worthy of the favor you granted them. In their deaths, they believed in you and in each other—why not let them stay that way?
“You are a horrible, horrible, creature.”
And yet the offer intrigues you.
“Yes, damn you.”
Then my gambit is complete. I will now take any remaining questions you may have.
Adagio buried her face in her knees and did her best to think about the game, only the game, not the bruises or the scrapes or the night or the dead bodies of her friends lying just a few feet away from her. Death’s gambit was indeed complete; she’d been given an emotional reason to choose the very same option that Death itself most wanted her to choose, for her to remain the only siren living. “I don’t have to take that side,” she said, knowing she sounded desperate. “I could pick Sonata and do it solely for the numbers. Vocally, in case they can hear me right now.”
You could make such a claim. Would they believe you? Would you?
Adagio only scowled. Even without the detail that she’d told Sonata she would, she knew picking Sonata was the more sensible option. If Sonata then didn’t bring Aria back too, that would mean that Aria hadn’t been as good as Adagio had thought her to be, so she’d have made the right decision after all. And yet…
And yet she liked Aria better. There, she’d thought it. And because of that fact, she couldn’t convince herself that there wasn’t a possibility that ghost Aria could genuinely pledge her friendship and Sonata wouldn’t trust her, but for reasons internal to Sonata. Maybe it would be better to have both Aria and Sonata alive again, but for that to happen, she’d need to trust both of them, while if she picked Aria there’d be no such contingencies to worry about at all…
And yet if she picked Aria she would have Sonata’s blood on her hands, no joke intended. She knew that Aria wasn’t the nicest person—not even the nicest siren—but how would Aria feel about Adagio Dazzle the murderer? Aria, whose last living action had been to save Sonata’s life, only for Adagio to undo that? Aria, at least, had given the impression that she wanted all three of them to live, however low a bar that might have been under other circumstances. So if she picked Sonata she would have to trust both of them to work things out somehow, which she didn’t, and if she picked Aria then nobody would be happy, but that wasn’t an argument for picking neither of them, was it…?
Wait. Too many feelings. When she and Death had been playing the game for numbers alone, before Death had sprung the additional trap of the debts’ transitivity, then she’d felt properly confident. And maybe that was just a sign of how little she’d known, but maybe, just maybe, there was something there that she could work with. Death had broken her three options into a turbulent froth of messy possibilities and half guesses, but if she could just simplify the whole game somehow, find a pattern? Yes. Yes, there was a hope there, she could feel it, she just needed to ask one more question.
“You said I can revive Aria because I can revive someone who can revive her.”
Yes. A second chance, if you will.
“What are the restrictions on that? For example, if I killed an immortal, but that immortal had already put in place plans to kill a second immortal, and those plans worked after the one I killed’s death… would I be able to revive the second immortal?”
I suppose so. It is a very flexible system. Within the respective three hour windows, your choices of whom to resurrect are always the full set of your victims, plus the full set of your victims’ choices. You could carry one such a chain of murders quite indefinitely, so long as you saved the end of the chain within three hours of their original death.
“The timing doesn’t matter at all.”
Not in the slightest.
“I see.” Adagio swallowed, desperately afraid now that she had nothing to trust in but her own wits, addled as they no doubt were by the pain that filled her body.
“I choose Aria.”
As you wish.
Adagio felt, rather than saw, Aria Blaze’s spirit swirl out of nonexistence and settle within her body. Shimmering purple light settled over her, erasing her wounds in a matter of moments, and when it faded away Aria’s eyes blinked open sleepily. This apparent weakness lasted for no more than a second, however, before Aria was standing over Adagio and screaming at her. “You idiot! What are you thinking? Why did you—“
Adagio smiled wearily at her. “Oh, shut up Aria. Take that knife and kill me before Death gets a chance to tell you not to.”
The three sirens sat back to back on a small rocky outcropping on the side of a mountain, holding hands in a circle, taking strength from each other’s presence. Sonata had commented quizzically that she didn’t think she’d ever felt quite so alive before, and Adagio couldn’t argue with her. Every one of her injuries from the night had been erased completely, and there was a curious and unfamiliar sort of vitality coursing through her. Even Aria just smiled shyly and said that was a clever way of putting it.
A few feet away, Death hung suspended over the great drop to the forest below. The skeletal body had faded away, leaving only the motionless skull as it studied Adagio with blank white eyes. Well done, it said at last. Aria inherited your death debt of Sonata, and Sonata inherited Aria’s of you. A very neat triangle.
“Thank you,” said Adagio, stiffly.
You realize that it won’t work again.
“Yeah, you made that point pretty clear. Once per sentient being, yada yada yada. My plan was just never to see you again.”
Death’s skull smiled. What a pity. I was so looking forward to our next match.
“Rot in hell.”
Perhaps I will yet see you there.
Death disappeared with an air of welcome finality, and the sirens sat in quiet contemplation for a while. Then Aria spoke. “So I figure eventually the cops will hear about the crashed car and they’ll get us back up to the road, right?”
“Probably.”
“Okay, and then what?”
“Well…” Adagio looked out ahead of her, where the flashlight now shone on nothing besides the much-bloodied knife. “If you girls didn’t notice, I’d kind of like it if we were actual friends again.”
Aria squeezed her hand. “But still evil, right?”
“Naturally.” Although the sheer animal cruelty of Death still gnawed at her, that and the suspicion she'd been much the same herself from time to time.
“Then I’m in. But I guess I’ve got a bunch of lousy apologies to make.”
“Me too,” said Sonata quietly. “Especially for tonight, but you know, lots of other stuff too. Like that one time in 1936 when—“
Adagio cut her off. “We don’t need to get quite that detailed,” she said. “What if for a start we all just admitted that we’ve been treating each other pretty awfully, and… we’re going to get better. Because sirens should stick together.”
“To the end,” said Aria.
“And back again,” said Sonata.
To the east, the sun rose.
Author's Note
Adagio returns in Dazzling and the Deaths.
