All around her was mist.
No matter which way Aria turned, the fog was there, thick and impenetrable. She waved her hand--no? A hoof? She had to bring it close to her eyes to be sure...even then she found that her vision was a bit blurry, like the world was just a hair out of focus. Still, there was her...hoof. That had to be a good sign, right? A thin, scaled limb ending in a sharp cloven hoof. She brushed her face, feeling the ridge of her muzzle, ending in a snout. Ran her tongue over teeth that were probably sharper than was strictly necessary for her usual diet at this point. She looked down, a kind of morbid fascination taking her when she realized she couldn't kick her legs because she had no legs to kick, a scaly piscine tail in their place. This must be the 'phantom limb' phenomenon she sometimes heard about.
They'd done it, then. They'd made it through. She barked a laugh, the harshness of her voice surprising her.
Experimentally, she hummed a few scales, basic vocal warm-up exercises. Each note ground at her, somehow very rough on her ears. This wasn't being rusty at singing; they'd done scales as a matter of instinct, something they fell back on when they were thinking or concentrating. It had done wonders to help them re-learn control after the disaster of the Battle of the Bands. Music had always been a part of their lives, even during their banishment. Even as Aria listened, she could feel it in her bones more than her ears.
No...her voice really was just very hoarse. Like she was barely a step from a roar at any moment.
For some reason, this made her very sad. She'd spent so long with the voice she'd carried as a human girl. Had she forgotten the voice she carried as a proper siren? Had they always sounded so...bestial? Aggressive? The human form might've been horribly suited to water, but her voice had always been clear and beautiful (at least until they'd been defeated, but they'd practiced hard to get them back).
Aria wondered if Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle sounded different as ponies.
Ultimately it brought her back to the swirling mists. Where was she? Where were her...sisters? Sisters was the only word for them at this point in life. They'd been through so much together, even if they didn't necessarily get along. She smiled, despite herself, and shook her head to clear her thoughts. Right. Reminiscing wouldn't get her out of this place and she had people...sirens...waiting on her.
First, review the facts. She was...somewhere. In a place bound by a horribly thick fog. She was back in her siren form, and she was suspended in air, somehow or another. There was certainly no ground for her to be resting on. Aria tried swimming, but she couldn't be sure she was actually going anywhere with no points of reference, and there was no resistance when she moved her flukes. The siren might just be spinning her wheels, to borrow a human turn of phrase. She struggled to remember what had come between the screaming hellscape of the portal and the now, but she could only recall a white shape of some kind in a dim, fuzzy room. Useless knowledge, for the moment.
Second, with the facts, choose a course. Aria considered her options. She could try swimming in a direction at random, but that might be dangerous, if she was actually able to go anywhere at all. There was no telling what could waiting in the endless haze. On the other hoof, if she sat here, it seemed unlikely that her situation would change. After a brief moment of thought, an aimless and harsh tune in her mouth, she set off in...some way. Maybe she'd hit a wall, or something.
After what felt like hours, exhaustion finally got the better of the siren and she fell still, tail feeling like jelly for the constant paddling. It was like there was no gravity, she mused, but it still did nothing to dull the exertion of constant movement. She craned her head about, the featureless mist still in all directions.
Was this some sort of nightmare, she wondered? An ironic hell where she was doomed to wander alone for the rest of her days for daring to want more from life?
It was another human adage that hell was other people, and for a lot of her life, she had found herself in agreement (though it was a considerably more egalitarian phrase earlier on). In the face of the silence broken only by the sound of her breath and occasional harsh scales she habitually sang, she found herself struck by the irony that she would KILL for some kind of contact.
She found sleep tugging at her, her labors starting to tell on her body. It wasn't like she was in any danger, she reasoned. If something were to kill her in her sleep it'd be a change of pace. The morbid thought made her laugh aloud again, only for a heavy weight of tiredness to press down on her.
Aria closed her eyes. Yeah. She could just...rest. Maybe the situation would change when she woke again.
She opened her eyes to sunlight. She raised a hoof instinctively, but found to her dismay it did little to protect her from the irritation. Really, what was so great about a huge ball of--
Her eyes flew open. Sunlight. The fog had cleared! Aria jumped to her...hooves? She startled, turning in a circle as she looked over her body. This wasn't right. She reached up with a forelimb and brushed her dorsal fin, or where it had been, and found only hair...well, it'd be mane now, wouldn't it? She stared at her hoof, no longer cloven and sharp but rounded. Still very hard, though, she noted. The tactile sensations through it were...different. She breathed in, air filling lungs that were strong and healthy, not withered by months of undernourishment and lethargy. She laughed aloud, the sound like bells compared to her voice as a siren.
Once more, Aria did a round of scales, and was delighted to have the crystal clarity of her old voice answer. She laughed again, spinning in place on four hooves, until a thought struck her. She turned about, getting a look at her haunch. Sure enough, there was a cutie mark! The five-pointed star and two sweeping curves she had on all her clothes back in the human world...well, that would do well enough, she supposed. But why was she a pony, all of a sudden?
Before that, even, where was she? She cast about, taking in the mostly plain stone-and-mortar room she found herself in. A large set of windows faced her, covered in intricate metalwork. She noted sardonically that the bright material, despite being laden with sweeping curves and interesting patterns, was very sturdy. It was unlikely to break even with direct impact, and moreover, it covered enough of the glass that there was no room for a pony to get through at any point. Pretty though it was, it was barred. Across the small room was a door with a substantial lock attached.
More interesting was the trio of glassy spheres seated in the center of the chamber on a dais suspended in what she had to concede were magnificently crafted cases, each cradling their prize with brilliant golden filigree. She paced around the treasures, for surely treasures they were, and noticed with interest that one of them seemed to be cracked near the bottom. The other two were pristine...perhaps this one had been mishandled? The siren looked around once more; the security of the room made a little more sense to her now. This was a vault of some sort or another. But how had she gotten in here?
Aria didn't have time to consider as the lock behind her clicked loudly, a complex mechanism working as the door swung open. She froze in place, ears pinned to her skull, caught red-hoofed (though whether it counted since she was clearly already in the room was debatable).
Into the chamber stepped the largest pony Aria had ever seen, a magnificent alabaster mare with a long, pointed horn and wings folded at her sides. Upon her brow sat a golden diadem, and a similarly styled peytral adorned her chest. Perhaps most imposing was her mane and tail, gentle pastels of many colors flowing through them as they floated about her on an ethereal wind. A pair of violet eyes completed her visage, and before them the siren felt horribly small and weak. This had to be the leader of ponies, their Empress.
She couldn't will herself to move. Her legs had locked up, knees weak. Sweat beaded on the siren's face as the immense alicorn approached, seemingly staring a hole right through her. The Empress loomed over her...and ignored her.
Aria was dumbstruck as the ruler walked right by her and inspected her treasures. She paused when she noted the cracked sphere, her brow knitting only slightly. Just as suddenly as she had arrived, she turned and left the room at a brisk walk. The door made to close behind her...
Time seemed to freeze as a thought struck the siren; if the door locked again, there'd be no telling when it was opened again. This was a vault; it wasn't meant to be visited often. She might die in here, even putting aside that the Empress seemed to ignore her. Panic seized her, the siren awkwardly scrambling on her hooves as she bolted for the door. She had just barely slipped through, by some stroke of fortune not running into anypony only to trip on the carpet just outside, an ignominious rolling mess ending with her on her back and her head spinning.
She rose to her hooves in alarm, looking around...but the lavishly decorated hallway was deserted.
Now what?
This has to be a palace, or at least a governmental office of some kind, Aria concluded. The great lengths taken to pretty the place up were the key. The only establishments that went to such lengths for decorations were theatres, expensive hotels, and the aforementioned royal lodgings, and she could rule out the first two if only for the fact that there was a secured vault on the premises that the Empress was confident enough in to hold her treasures. It made no sense for such a thing to be anywhere else.
Moreover, the pony Empress (and for that matter, everypony else) had seemed uninterested in her. They either didn't care that she was moving about...or they couldn't perceive her, for whatever reason. The former possibility was odd, but the latter was interesting.
Aria sidled behind a column and sat down, just to be on the safe side, as she pondered. Review the facts again, she told herself. Vault, probable castle, Empress, potential invisibility. The first two could be confirmed by a quick look around, she reasoned. The third was more a statement of fact than anything, and the last...that would need testing. She leaned out from behind the pillar, awkwardly holding on with one hoof and wondering how ponies demonstrated the level of dexterity she remembered seeing in them.
The hall remained deserted...but it turned left at one end, and she was reasonably sure she heard voices that way. She scuttled down the carpet, sparing glances at the paintings and décor around her as she went. She was surprised at the paintings on the walls; many of them recounted scenes she'd never heard of before or fables she'd never read. One vase on a pedestal to her right was dimly familiar; she was reasonably sure she'd seen ones like it during her time in Canterlot so far back.
She smiled wryly as she crept along; it hadn't been that long ago, by her reckoning. They'd been torn from Equus and stranded on Earth for months...perhaps a year or more? Aria couldn't be sure; keeping accurate track of time had been a tertiary concern at best to Adagio, who was indisputably in charge of their 'operations'. Their illustrious leader (such as she was, Aria snorted) had zeroed completely in on the first task of survival and the second of finding a way back to Equus and Equestria after that, if possible.
Going from place to place, using the scant powers available to them to sow discord and reap the heated emotions therein...and each time, they barely broke even. Humanity, for all its history of violence she'd read about, had so little emotional energy to take. It was baffling.
Aria rounded the corner and found to her annoyance that an even greater hallway greeted her. On the other hoof, this one seemed to be a primary pathway, as it branched off into numerous arches and doors. She was on the right track, at least...
She paused as a pair of heavily armored sentries marched from a side hall, a certain ease in their movements that told her they weren't expecting trouble. As much as they were making a show of scanning everything around them, they were lax in their scrutiny. Aria chuckled under her breath; these were the Empress's palace guard?
Still, they were well armored and probably quite strong for carrying around all that heavy plate for any length of time. If they were to detect her, she'd have to run and she wasn't confident in her agility in this unfamiliar form.
It was now or never, she supposed.
Gingerly, she stepped out into the hall, the echo of her hooves frightfully loud as she shouted at them, “HEY, BUCKET BRIGADE!”
The sentries stopped cold; Aria's heart dropped to her stomach, so to speak. They turned about...and resumed their march back the way they'd come, giving no indication that they'd heard her or that they could see her standing before them.
The siren hesitated as they passed by her. They really couldn't see her. That was...good. Probably. She could move about freely. Still, it was troubling. How had she come to be a virtual ghost of a pony?
Aria shook her head; there was nothing for it but to go forward, after all. Perhaps Adagio and Sonata were in a similar state and she could find them and they could sort out what to do from there. She turned about and made for the nearest branching hall.
A few hours fruitless searching found her in a garden, grumbling to herself as she trudged to a halt, taking up a seat on a stone bench as she caught her breath.
Nothing. No signs of either of the other sirens; she'd even back-tracked to the vault door to be sure. Admittedly she'd spent a lot of time struggling to remember what an uncountable number of crime-solving stories and shows had taught her, but actually applying it was a lot trickier than it seemed, and even then, she wasn't totally certain what she was supposed to be looking for. She pulled a violet hair from her forelimb with her teeth, wincing at the momentary pain as she dropped the now free fuzz to the bench. It definitely existed, she mused. If the others were in a predicament like hers, they would've certainly left some kind of sign behind. A curly goldenrod strand, or a long turquoise one.
Not for the first time in her life had she lamented the relatively plain eyes sirens were born with; she could really use a magnifying glass or something.
Aria was silent for a moment as the absurdity of her last thought overcame her. She was unable to restrain a laugh as she tried to figure out what she would even DO with a magnifying glass.
“Is somepony there?”
And just like that, she froze mid chuckle, clapping her hooves over her mouth in a panicked effort to stifle her voice.
“...hm. Mysterious...”
The sound of metal on stone amplified Aria's horror; as far as she could tell none of the ponies in the palace had worn any kind of shoes. That could only mean that this was the Empress. She slipped down and under the bench as quietly as she was able. She couldn't take any chances with that pony; she was visibly too powerful for Aria to do anything about in her current state as some kind of invisible interloper. The hooves paced around the nearest hedge...
Aria was taken aback to see slender, deep blue legs atop obsidian shoes, a vision of the night sky trailing behind them. That wasn't possible. The Empress had been white with gold raiment, and a very different mane. Who was this, then? The legs came to a halt before the bench, the tall pony turning in place as though looking for something or someone. The siren held her breath and remained as still as she could as this different creature continued to cast about after her.
“...perhaps there was naught here after all.” The mare's vernacular almost made Aria giggle; she hadn't heard anyone speak like that in quite some time. Either way, the mare turned to leave, her loud hoofsteps allowing the siren to track her position until all was silent.
The siren-turned-pony crept out from beneath the bench, looking both ways and exhaling softly. She'd have to be more careful; if someone COULD hear her, then someone could catch her and then she'd never find her sisters. She could see the gentle oranges of twilight starting to form on the horizon; she would have to find a place to rest until the morning; preferably a hidden one.
It wasn't until she made to leave that a glint of light on the bench caught her eye. There, atop the seat, was an diadem made of the same dark material as the hoofshoes of her mystery royal. She startled backwards. This pony was either incredibly naive, or she'd been found out, and she wasn't taking a chance on the latter. Aria turned to run...
...Only to find that she couldn't move. A strange blue haze lifted her from her hooves and made moving her legs like trying to tread molasses. She strained from the effort, a groan of exertion leaving her mouth as she craned her head around.
There behind her stood the blue Empress, a hard expression on her face as a field of stars danced around behind her, carried in a violent ethereal wind with her wings flared.
“And what have we found...? A thief, a spy, or perhaps a foolhardy youth bent on proving her courage?” She paced closer, her eyes luminous pearls in her skull as her face shifted to a grim smile. “We'll soon find out.”
