Guards and Monsters

La lalala la, quite unexpectedly,
La lalala la, almost imperceptibly,
Lala la lala, sloooowly and quietly,
I’ve got you… under… my spell.
You didn’t. Even. Notice. When you fell.
You friends and family probably can’t really tell…
Now jump!

And then Bonnie kind of just stared at me for a while, her eyes narrowing, and I smiled nervously and my hoof twitched, wanting to step back out of range, but she just rolled her eyes. “Is that the new magic Twilight’s been teaching you?”

“I’ll get it sooner or later!” I said, the tension washing out of my body and leaving the same huge grin, only much less nervous. “Although she actually wanted my help coming up with a musical counterspell, since apparently she really needed one on one of her old adventures and didn’t know enough musical theory. Her band managed to wing it, but when she thinks back on it, it’s still an embarrassing failure on her part. And you know Twilight – any failure is just an opportunity to bury her nose in another book.” I paused. “Not that I’m a book.” I paused again. “Or that she buried her nose in me. She’s not really my type. She’s too…” I waved a hoof in circles.

“Crazy?” Bon Bon offered.

“No, no, I like crazy,” I said. “And I like magic, and danger, and purple! Purple is good. Maybe I should sleep with her.”

Bonnie snorted at the notion. “I really can’t imagine her sleeping with anypony.”

“Oh, right! That’s why she’s not my type.” We sort of stared at each other for a bit, and then I giggled, picturing Twilight trying to have sex. Maybe if she got laid on her back, she could glue the checklist to the ceiling…

“So how did a counterspell lead to you trying to hypnotize me?” Bon Bon asked, turning back to the dishes.

“Well, I needed to have some samples of siren magic to counter. And on the way home, I got to thinking that since my special talent is musical, I might be able to adapt them to unicorn magic. I’ll get it sooner or later!”

“Dishes,” Bon Bon said, out of nowhere. I made a curious noise, and she continued in monotone. “Dishes. Dishes. Dishesdishesdishesdishes do. The dishes. Do. The dishes. Do do do do—“

I couldn’t help but jump in, with something a little more melodic. “Dodeedo, dodeedo, do them do them do them do them –“

“NOW!” Bon Bon shrieked, in a voice like the love child of a griffon screech and Princess Luna’s Royal Canterlot Voice.

“Oh right! I said I was going to help!” I pranced across the kitchen and made the water from the faucet swirl around in midair to rinse off the dishes Bonnie was washing. “Wow, your spell worked a lot better than mine.”

===

In my dream, I was a siren. The ocean was made of music, and my voice filled it with light and motion. And harmony – my sisters swam by my side, complementing my singing by completing the chords.

A dark rumble of white noise approached, and without having to say anything, the three of us swam to the surface and let our joyous terror fill the open air. One by one, the sailors on the ship that had disturbed our play leaned farther and farther over the edge, until they fell into the water… and then we fell upon them, and while our mouths were full of pony flesh, the song continued, carried by their delightful, burbling screams.

“Charming,” came a sarcastic voice, cutting through the music and knocking me out of my reverie. Suddenly, I was a pony again, still elbow-deep in the guts of some poor sap, his organs twitching around me, the sticky warmth contrasted against the chill of the ocean.

“Um… hi. Princess,” I said, grinning nervously. “What brings you here?” I shook my foreleg until the dying sailor drifted free, the other two sirens whirling on him and digging in with claws and teeth. I swam for the surface, then floated up onto the now empty deck of the ship, since I didn’t really want to be in the water with a pair of vicious sirens.

Not while Luna was here, anyway. Maybe after she left, I’d let them eat me. I mean, no sense wasting a dream, right?

Luna was suddenly standing next to me on the deck, the moonlight shining down from behind her, leaving her in silhouette. “A few weeks ago, I received a disturbing memory orb."

I cringed back, trying to hide myself under the table, but I was hoofcuffed to the chair, the spotlight shining in my face blinding me. “It didn’t really happen! I’m innocent! I haven’t killed anypony!”

“I figured as much, seeing as the memory ended with your death.” Luna reached out and turned the spotlight so that it pointed down at the table, then tossed it back up into the sky. Her horn glowed, and she poured me a cup of tea.

I reached down with shaking hooves and gripped it, not trusting myself to do magic. The grass was soft under my flank, and the dim glow of the moonflowers that dotted the meadow mirrored the shining stars overhead. I took a sip of the tea, and let the warmth calm me.

Ew. Mint.

“So am I in trouble?” I asked, quietly.

“Not yet,” Luna replied, her voice stern. “You have yet to commit an evil act, and dreaming of such is not a crime in itself. But I worry, Miss Heartstrings.”

“Well…” my head swum as I tried to decide how to respond to that. My kneejerk reaction was to get angry, and protest that I was perfectly in control and that the very notion that I would ever let my sick little fantasies run away with me was laughable! But, you know. Even I wasn’t buying that one. “I don’t want to be banished from Equestria,” I said. “I like it here.”

Luna laughed. “That isn’t what I had in mind.”

“It might be for the best if I was, though,” I said. “If I was kept in the Everfree Forest, no one would care that I’m a monster.”

“There are other openings available, for those some would call monsters,” the princess replied. This was not exactly the reassurance I’d been fishing for. “I seek to rebuild my entourage from times of old. If you are interested in hearing more, seek me out in the waking world.”

I cringed. “That sounds like a recipe for a really horribly embarrassing scene at the castle if this is just a dream.”

“Then consider it a test,” Luna replied, taking to the air with powerful downstrokes of her gigantic feathery wings. “How much are you willing to risk, for the chance to find a place where your oddities are appreciated, and not merely tolerated by those you call friends?”

As she vanished into the moon, I considered her invitation. The price of a ticket to Canterlot Castle wouldn’t break me. The embarrassment of acting stupid in front of the Canterlot Elite… actually, that kind of sounded fun.

The quality of the darkness changed, and I realized that I was awake. More or less. I rolled over and nibbled on Bon Bon’s ear until she grunted. “Hey Bonnie… how would you like to go to Canterlot and act really silly in front of Celestia and everypony?”

“Go back to sleep, Lyra,” she grumbled.

===

“So, Bon Bon, how would you like to go to Canterlot and act really silly in front of Celestia and everypony?” I asked her again, in the morning, while I was cooking up some eggs and hay. I don’t normally cook breakfast, but that morning I just sort of had the urge, and we had the eggs, and they didn’t smell any different from normal eggs or radiate magic or anything, so I figured they were actual eating eggs that I could cook and not one of Bon Bon’s weird experiments.

Bonnie looked up from the chocolates she was painstakingly embedding with little colorful candy dots. With her hooves. I don’t know how she does that; I can’t even do it as well as she does using magic. “Explain,” she said, giving me a look. The patient look. It’s one of the safe ones.

So I did, telling her all about the dream and Luna, sort of like I just did here except that I think I went into a bit more detail on the sirens-feeding-on-sailors part until she told me to skip ahead. “So do you want to come? Being silly is always more fun with friends.”

Bon Bon sighed. “I guess I don’t have a choice. You’re going to need an adult.”

“I am an adult!” I said, poking at the eggs with a spatula to try to flip them over. Some of the hay had gotten in them and sort of seared to the frying pan, which was making it difficult. Butter! I’d forgotten the butter.

“You’re too excited about this,” she said. “No matter what sort of job Luna offers you, you’re going to say ‘yes’.”

“Well, yeah! It’s Luna! Princess Luna! And she’s doing something special just for me and an unknown number of other ponies but the point is that she actually came into my dream and gave a personal invitation. Of course I’m going to say yes!”

“Even if she wants to turn you into a statue to decorate her bedroom?”

“If that is what she wants, then I’m sure it’s not nearly as unpleasant as you’d think being a statue would be given the sort of default assumptions ponies tend to make about petrification,” I answered, considering the scenario. “For example, I might be an animated statue, like a gargoyle. Or I might get weekends off!”

“Weekends off,” Bon Bon repeated. “From being a gargoyle.”

“Eep!” It was around that point that the eggs caught fire. It’s a good thing we have running water, and I have magic, or I might have tried something silly like smothering the fire with the big bottle of oil sitting next to the stove. But we do, and I do, so I used the sink instead.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Bon Bon said, watching as I ran around putting out fires, since some of the hay hadn’t wanted to stay in the pan. “You did let Princess Twilight sacrifice you.”

“Only the once!” I protested, holding the waterlogged frying pan over the sink and trying to squeeze enough of the water out of the egg/hay mixture to salvage it. “And it was a ritual sacrifice.”

Bon Bon sounded a little confused. “Aren’t they all?”

“I hope so!” I said. “Actual pony sacrifices where the pony really dies would be kind of…” I tried to find a word other than ‘sexy’ and all I could come up was “bad. But this was different. Twilight led me into her library…”

”So what kind of ritual are you doing, Twilight? It’s not one where I actually die, is it?”

Twilight scrunched up her adorable little muzzle. “You’ll be alive at the end of it. And it shouldn’t hurt.”

She took me down to her basement, where she had an elaborate ritual circle set up on what looked like a tiny end table or something? Maybe a bar stool? With all the candles and the tiny miniature altar it was hard to tell for sure. She explained about how Celestia had a spell to keep ponies from dying from accidents, but it left a sort of temporal distortion on their aura, so she had to do a ritual to cleanse them. And I was one of them, since I’d been saved from certain death after Cadance tricked me into jumping off a cliff while I was brainwashed by the changelings.

“So to fix it, I have to kill you,” she said, with a sweet little smile, which was adorable, but it kind of ruined the effect when she shouted, “Spike! Is it ready?”

“Coming Twilight!” he called back, then trotted down the stairs holding a little pony-shaped sugar cookie, with frosting matching my mane and coat and a sketchy little icing version of my cutie mark.

Twilight snatched it out of his claws with her magic. “I declare that held in my grasp is the pony Lyra Heartstrings. Does anypony object?”

“That’s Lyra all right,” Spike said, looking it over.

“Yep! That’s me,” I said, going along with it.

“Let it be known that nopony has denied that Lyra Heartstrings now lies upon the altar,” she said, setting the cookie down amidst all the candles. “Spike, please perform the sacrifice.”

Spike looked a bit hesitant. “It’s not going to start moving and screaming, is it?”

“No, no,” Twilight said. “Lyra was here and agreed that it was her, so I don’t need to go quite that far with the similarity aspect this time.”

“Because that was really creepy,” Spike said, taking the cookie carefully in his claws.

“Just eat the sacrifice!” she snapped. But unlike certain Earth Ponies I live with, she cooled down right away. “And act like you enjoy it. You’re a vicious dragon devouring a young maiden, you should be savoring it.”

“Raar,” Spike said, floating the cookie around in the air, then leaned forwards and bit off the horn.

“Noooo, my magic!” I whimpered. “Why can’t I move my legs?”

“Because I’m going to eat them next, mua ha ha ha.” And he did. Well, one of them. Then he accidentally broke the cookie in half going for one of the back legs. “And, um, I’m tearing you in half. Guts are flying everywhere.”

I giggled a bit as he ate the tail, then gasped as he bit down on the back half of the body. “Oooh, Spike, yes! Lick my cutie mark!”

“Um…”

“Nooo, don’t stop, I want to feel your tongue on my hindquarters!”

“You can’t feel anything,” Twilight said. “Numbing spell. That’s why you’re not screaming in agony.”

“A filly can pretend, can’t she?” I asked, grinning.

Spike glowered at me, and bit off the cookie’s head.

“…and then Spike and I made out in the stairwell, while Twilight double-checked her instruments to make sure that the interference was really gone,” I finished.

Bon Bon was quiet for a few seconds. “Huh.”

“Really though, if you want to come along I’d love to have you along. I mean, I invited you and everything.” I looked down at the gray soggy mess in the pan, and took a quick sniff. Then a bite. “Huh. Still tastes good.”

“And if I say ‘no’, you’ll listen?”

“Probably not!” I said, shrugging. “But maybe you and Luna can get in a big fight and get us both kicked out of Canterlot or something?”

Bonnie snorted. “I always did want to buck an Alicorn.”

===

Because Bon Bon was there, I walked sedately through Ponyville’s streets. It was mostly psychosomatic, but I could feel her eyes on me, her disapproving glare intensifying every time my hooves threatened to leave the ground all at the same time. I’ve heard ponies say that she’s good for me, because she keeps me grounded, and there are so many meanings of the word that fit.

But it wasn’t oppressive – I wasn’t keeping outwardly calm out of fear or anything. Not even the fear of disappointing her. It was just… a pressure. A pleasant pressure holding me down, and I made my way down the street like a ferret slinking through a rabbit hole. With her by my side, nopony could tell that I was completely insane. I mean, everypony knew, because it was Ponyville and I’d managed to build up my reputation, but if you were new in town, I could have been anypony, blending into the background just like everypony else.

The door to the palace was unlocked, and Twilight Sparkle still hadn’t managed to hire any guards, so we just walked in like we belonged there, and headed to the library. It’s not nice to say, but Twilight really needs to get out more – 90% of the time she’s either in the library or in the basement laboratory. She has her throne room where she and her friends hold court, but if you actually want her help with something you should ignore her posted hours and just go bother her in her lair. If you don’t find her, you’ll at least find Spike.

That day, we at least found Spike. He was sprawled out on the couch reading comics. “Aren’t you getting a little old for those?” I asked.

“No way!” Spike said, looking up and waving to the two of us with a genuine smile. That’s one of the things I like about him – he’s always happy to see me, even if I give him a hard time with the flirting and all. “This is an adult comic.”

My ears perked up at that, and I leaned forwards to get a look. Spike closed it right away, but from the glance I got it was about what I’d expected – they’d doubled down on the cheese and put all the mares in suggestive poses.

“What do you want, Lyra?” Spike asked. He was trying to sound patient and helpful but I could see his eyes keep flicking back at the comic book.

My standard answer to this would be either ‘a long conversation about magical theory’ or ‘a back rub’, neither of which would let him get back to his comic. Fortunately for him, the answer this time was, “Do you know where Twilight is?”

“Er… she’s not really available right now,” he said. “She came down with the magic flu.”

“Oh wow. Alicorns can catch it? Do they have a cure yet?”

“I don’t think anypony’s really looking,” Spike said. “It doesn’t seem very contagious, and nopony’s gotten really sick from it…”

“Yeah, but how many ponies is Twilight going to kill after she goes insane from not being able to use magic?” I asked, cringing a bit.

Spike snorted. “I’ll make sure you’re first in line.”

I had to laugh at that. “Thanks!”

“So what did you need her for?” Spike asked.

“Luna invited me to join her entourage, but as part of the test I have to go to Canterlot and find her. I thought Twilight might know how to do that, since she’s a princess too.”

“Hmm,” Spike said. He set the comic down, and headed over to the shelves. I followed after a few second, when it was obvious he didn’t know exactly where to look.

Eventually, he found a big book with a picture of the Palace on the front, and we spread it out on the table and started looking through the maps. Bon Bon helped! A little. Mostly, she recognized the kitchens as being the kitchens and not Luna’s chambers, since nothing was labelled except for a few tourist attractions.

There were a lot of kitchens!

We narrowed it down to half a dozen likely locations. “Your best bet’s probably the Tower of the Moon,” Spike said. “It’s kind of hard to get to by hoof, but Luna can fly.”

“I’d check the old barracks first,” Bon Bon said. “Less trouble if we’re caught.”

“Can we take the book with us?” I asked, looking up at Spike.

“Why are you asking me? I’m not the librarian.” Both of us giggled at that, while Bon Bon just looked at us confused. It was kind of an in-joke – Twilight Sparkle had never actually been named the librarian of either her previous tree-brary or the current… well, I suppose it was still a library in a tree, although the tree was a fake one made out of crystal. She’d done most of the librarian’s duties willingly – I’ve never seen somepony so excited about reshelving – but she hated dealing with customers. Patrons? Visitors? I’m not actually sure what you’re supposed to call them, but at any rate she hated dealing with them, so she put a sign up on the desk she never sat behind that said the library was on the honor system.

Of course, everypony assumed she was the librarian, and nopony actually read little signs like that, so she still got asked if they could take the books with them several times a day.

I closed the book and shoved it in my saddlebag. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later, Spike! Unless Princess Luna turns me into a blind gargoyle who hunts by sense of smell or something. In which case I’ll smell you later.”

“Is she going to do that?” Spike asked, his eyes going wide.

“I don’t know! She said she was looking for monsters for her entourage. She might have just meant because I’m so fascinated with, you know.” Spike nodded. He knew. “But Bon Bon thinks she might want some scary living statues to jump out and mutilate intruders.”

“That was just an example,” Bon Bon grumbled.

Just as we were leaving, Spike called out after us, “Hey! Do you think she needs a dragon?”

“I have no idea, but you’re always welcome to come with me, Spike,” I said, lifting a forehoof off the ground as Bon Bon’s presence kept me from bouncing.

===

So we headed down to the train station. I know what you’re thinking – ‘it was the middle of the week, don’t any of you have jobs’? And the answer is… not really. I’m an itinerant musician and self-employed composer, Bonnie sells her candy on weekends, but otherwise just takes odd jobs from the civic work pool, and Spike – well, Spike really wanted to be out of the library until Twilight recovered. Magic flu wasn’t physically debilitating, but it tended to turn ponies into mopey layabouts until they got their cutie marks back.

The train wasn’t very crowded, in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. We weren’t the only ponies getting on at Ponyville, but most of the passengers were coming from Hoofington or farther west. Even with that, there were still more empty seats than not, and not nearly enough of a crowd to hide us from Diamond Tiara.

“Oh look, it’s Bon Bon and Liar Liar,” came her snarky, piercing voice, over the general hubbub of the crowd, and like an idiot I looked over at the source.

“Oh, hey there, DeeTee,” I said, smiling and waving in the most ironic way possible, which was probably indistinguishable from ordinary smiling and waving. “Where’s your slightly less annoying half?” I added, as I noticed she was sitting alone.

“Ugh,” she said, with a look of disgust. “Spoon came down with the Magic Flu, and the only pony who wanted to come with me was Pipsqueak.”

“I told you not to let him get under your tail,” Bon Bon grumbled.

“I know, I know,” she whined. “I thought he deserved a reward for helping out with the dragons, but now he thinks we’re actually an item.” She snored. “As if.”

“Sing it, sister,” Spike said, sitting down next to her as she made room. I twitched a bit as Bon Bon sat in the seat across from them. Were we really going to spend the whole train ride with her? “Some ponies just won’t take a hint, no matter how obvious you try to be.”

“I don’t really get the whole ‘hinting’ thing,” I said. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to just say what you mean? ‘I hate you, Diamond Tiara, please remove yourself from my presence and never return!’ That sort of thing.”

“Oh, I’ve tried it,” Spike said. “It doesn’t work. It just encourages them to try harder.”

“I know! It’s like they can’t imagine that anypony could actually be repulsed by their presence,” Tiara said. “They just laugh it off like you were joking.”

“I just assume that everypony hates me,” Bon Bon said. “Then I stick around out of spite.”

Reluctantly, I sat down next to Bonnie, right across from Spike. I curled my tail around my flank, and looked around at the other passengers, but none of them were doing anything interesting, so I had no choice but to pay attention to Diamond Tiara.

“I really do hate you,” I said to Diamond Tiara, after a few moment of silence. “I’m not joking.”

“No you don’t,” she said. “You’re attracted to me, but too intimidated to ask me to be your domme.”

“My what?” I blinked. I mean, yes, I knew what the word meant, and I had to admit that I did have a slight thing for pain and stuff, but the organized dominant/submissive thing never really did it for me. There were too many rules, and the outfits were really tacky. I’d let Derpy have a go at me once, and it had just been awkward all around. Also, I ended up in the hospital after she set me on fire. Never was able to figure out just what went wrong.

“And you’re worried that Bon Bon would get jealous,” she added.

“We’re just roommates,” I said, putting a hoof over Bon Bon’s shoulder. She nuzzled into my mane. “We’re not in any sort of relationship other than that.”

“Whatever,” she said, smirking. I could have sworn I saw a little fang glinting from between her lips.

What? No, we are just roommates. Bon Bon’s strictly monogamous – if she had a special somepony, she’d never cheat on them, or let them cheat on her. And what with Spike, and Derpy, and you know, Cloud Kicker’s whole set – yeah, I could never be her marefriend. But there’s no rule against roommates banging each other.

And yeah, I love her, but I love a lot of ponies. And at least one dragon. But not Diamond Tiara. Not in a thousand years.

===

Amazingly, the train ride wasn’t awful. Spike and DeeTee seemed to be able to chat with each other casually, which I blame entirely on Spike’s good nature. I spent most of the ride going over the siren songs in my head, occasionally playing a few notes softly, or humming a bit of the tune. I did make sure that Spike gave Bon Bon one of his backrubs, since for once they were both in the same place. She actually admitted she enjoyed it, which means that it must have been the best thing since cut hay. It was good to confirm that it wasn’t just me – nopony can resist the claws.

At any rate, I was able to avoid thinking about Diamond Tiara too much, and then we arrived and could finally leave her presence. Or so I thought.

“Well, have fun in Canterlot, Spike, Bon Bon, Liar,” she started.

She mispronounces my name on purpose. I don’t bother to call her on it since she’d just claim she was saying ‘Lyre’, and also I do tend to lie a lot. I’ve spent years cultivating a reputation for exaggeration and dishonesty, in fact! Just because I know she’s saying it in a mean way doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t come off as a jerk for getting on her case.

“I’d looove to spend more time with you, but I have an appointment with the Princess.” She struck a pose, raising her muzzle into the air, almost like an actual native of Canterlot. “She wants to interview me for a position in her entourage.”

My heart sunk, my coat bristled, and a cold spike shot through me. “Which princess?” I asked. Please say Celestia, please say Celestia.

“I don’t see why it matters,” she said, with a sniff. “Any princess is royalty, and being the entourage to royalty is the first step in acquiring a noble title. When I told my father I’d need a break from my internship in Barnyard Bargains, he was very encouraging, even if it wasn’t Princess Celestia.”

“Is it Princess Luna?” I asked. “Please tell me you’re not here to talk to Luna too.”

“Get your hooves off me!” she snapped, and I stepped back, not having actually realized I’d leapt at her and grabbed her. She glowered at me. “So she invited you too. I should have known.”

“Huh. I guess we’ll be travelling together a bit longer then?” Spike said. “To the palace!”

“Don’t worry,” I said, smirking at DeeTee, who followed after us with no hint of her former boastfulness. “I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful monster. Did you tell your daddy why she’d picked you?”

“Ruthlessness is nothing to be ashamed of,” she replied.

“Whatever you say!” I giggled, and may have bounced a few times as we walked down the street. Probably not, though. Bon Bon was there.