Bright bounced forward at the tired fiddler. "Hey, so... When do you get a break?"

"A break?" Lemon paused just long enough to curl a hoof to her chin and abort the motion, resuming her song. "When the song's over! When the dance is over." She huffed as if that was very obvious. "Until then, no breaks. They didn't hire me to sleep on the job."

Luna smiled thinly. "Familiar, I like the route you have found. Lemon Lime, I received word from the mayor."

Lemon blinked at that. "What, really? What'd she say?! Is she liking the music?" She curled backwards, playing her instrument in the strange angle fiercely. "I hope she does!"

Rarity tittered gently. "Of course, dear. She's been nothing but compliments about it."

Sweetie stepped in, joining the cause. "But! She wants a ten minute break. Something about some law? I didn't catch the specifics."

Lemon's fiddling intensified as she shook her head in confusion. "A law requiring breaks? Never heard of such a thing..." Her eyes narrowed, staring past the gathering to someone unseen. She nodded firmly as if listening.

"Really? Well the mayor makes the rules right?" Lemon sighed then flashed a strained smile. "Very well folks! Let me just wrap up this last repetitive verse and I can pause things briefly!"

The eerie second fiddle strains seemed to waver as Lemon prepared to cease playing at last. But just as the notes trailed off, a shudder passed through Lemon and the bow jerked back to the strings for another repetition of the endless refrain.

"I'm sorry - I tried! But I can't stop, something just won't let me rest!" Lemon cried desperately. Around her the unwilling dancers echoed her visible pain at the ongoing compulsion against their will or strength.

Rarity trotted quickly to Lemon's side, attempting to steady the shaking earth pony as her hooves threatened to give way. "This dreadful curse cares not for laws or lives my dear." With a glowing horn, she cast her senses elsehwere. "There is magic at work, but you knew that. She isn't the center."

Sweetie met Luna's gaze grimly. Both turned as once to Bright. Sweetie spoke up first, "You had a good idea. Got another hiding in there? What did you see?"

Bright nodded along with the tune of the song. "What? Oh. Well, she said she could stop anytime, but like any addict, she found out she was wrong." Bright shimmied with a thump of his thick tail. "It's not a bad song, really..."

Rarity shoved against Bright. "Darling, focus. This is certainly not the time to be dancing, all things considered."

"Yeah, right." Bright shook himself awake, resisting the urge to join the dance for the moment. "So something is controlling her." He waved at Lemon Lime. "So we have to find that if we want to stop this."

Luna looked to Rarity. "Did you detect anything?"

Rarity shook her head, grimacing in vexation. “Regrettably not at present, Princess. All signs indicate no direct hex or binding forcing our violinist virtuoso’s endless performance."

She waved a frustrated hoof at the nearby throng of ponies locked eternally mid-step or rhythmic prance. "Yet clearly some diabolical influence holds all these unfortunate souls entranced!" Her eyes narrowed, fangs briefly flashing with anger before she reined back her simmering vampiric temper.

Rarity's horn glowed as she concentrated, expanding her empathic senses to their metaphysical limits in hopes of discerning the source of such relentless turmoil and denied rest.

There! Like the faintest twisting shadow out of sync with those swaying like zombies below, a web of strange and foreboding energy seemed to leech life and choice from the gathered crowd towards some central anchor beyond immediate view.

Rarity hastened back down to the group, stumbling slightly with fatigue as the extensive sensor sweep drained precious reserves. She urgently waved a hoof back along the main village thoroughfare winding towards central square.

"The curse originates just ahead where residue darkens most intensely!" Rarity cried. "Something or someone is channeling the stolen vitality to feed vile magics - we must stop this puppeteer of wayward wills swiftly lest bodies break before their minds!"

She slumped against Bright. "Let them handle that... I am drained, and you are the cure for that, dear."

"I am?" But the smoldering look she was giving him seemed clear enough. "Oh. Um, not here though?"

"No, not here." She coiled about him, tossing him up onto her back for transport. "Be back in a jiff. Good luck!"

Luna shook her head at the departing two. "Well, that leaves us then. Come, Sweetie Drops. We can take care of this ourselves, hm?"

"At your command." Sweetie started ahead, weaving through the thronging crowd of forced dancing ponies. "At least we have a direction."

"At least that." Luna floated one pony up, still dancing, and set them off her path to march past them. "I can only hope we find what we seek."

They advanced past the lights and songs of the town, starting out into the dim light of the countryside where only the moon above cast dim light over the scene. Luna sighed as she stepped over a large rock. "The moon is normallly so comforting... But I wouldn't mind mine sister's sun right now, considering we wish to see clearly."

Sweetie grimaced slightly as they ventured beyond Trottingham's village borders, the comforting torch-lit lanes giving way to darker rural wilderness. Her eyes strained against the umbral landscape as ominous rustling echoed from the brush.

"I suppose your lunar domain offers ideal cover for deceitful miscreants to scheme unseen..." she remarked, peering warily about for signs of trouble. "Though even my training cannot see through pure darkness, and this is pretty close."

Sweetie winced as she stumbled over a half-buried root, just distinguishable as a deeper twist of gloom. She glanced over at Luna trotting gracefully ahead like dark waters parting before her. "Mind if I follow you? Your night vision should let me avoid making more of a mess for myself."

Trailing in the Princess's footsteps, Sweetie strained her senses seeking tell-tale threads of the curse residue Rarity had detected amidst this abyssal expanse. She itched to light her torch but dared not draw dangerous attention until Luna permitted.

The night seemed to press oppressively from all sides, no trace of wholesome nocturnal sounds beyond the orchestrated mania fading behind them. "No owl's hoot nor cricket chirps to reflect peaceful slumber enveloping nature's children in your domain..." Sweetie noted uneasily. "Just this unnerving silence..."

Only Luna's comforting solidity beside her kept Sweetie's imagination from spiraling towards half-remembered fears once dwelling in external darkened spaces - now given fresh substance in alien sounds restrained just beyond sight's reach.

Luna suddenly clicked her tongue against her teeth. "I have it."

"You do?" Sweetie moved up to Luna's side. "What?"

"The answer." She pointed up at her moon and casually shoved it to the left, then the right. "It's hiding... There." She released the moon back to its normal path and started in a new direction with a triumphant smile.

Sweetie followed behing, blinking with amazement. "Can you tell me what you just did? Besides scaring a lot of ponies, moving the moon like that..."

"They will recover." Luna shook her head as she hopped over an almost crumbled fence. "The moon's light was avoiding something. Moving it let me get a peek. What we seek is this way, I'm certain of it."

"Ah, clever!" Sweetie smiled with fresh admiration at Luna’s ingenious ploy, using Selene’s radiance itself to expose unnatural avoidance. She trotted briskly in the wake of Night’s sovereign mistress.

“Exploiting hostile hubris, believing darkness impenetrable to their eyes alone...” Sweetie mused aloud. “Very clever. It's nice to have you along, ma'am.” Her own confidence swelled, striding with mythic titans she had only ever read about. This must be how Rainbow Dash felt in the company of daring heroes!

Sweetie nearly crashed headlong into Luna’s abruptly halted rump. Rubbing her sore nose, she followed the Princess’s fixed gaze towards an eerie yet unremarkable meadow yawning ahead through a gash in forest trees - silent and still as held breath.

Suddenly, a red-eyed raven screamed forth from the void, a tattered shroud clinging to its ragged form. The wraith-like carrion bird circled the meadow thrice widdershins, stark wings occluding the moon’s stolen radiance. Sweetie shuddered as each rotation drew more frantic fiddling strains echoing spectral from the darkness beyond.

Luna held out a staying hoof as Sweetie reflexively reached for a weapon, attention rapt upon the meadow where cloth and raven alike dissolved as sinking mist. From what seemed to be a misty unmarked grave, blood-drenched roses sprouted in lurid time-lapse, thorns glinting with stolen life not their own. The flowers’ crimson contours betrayed a tell-tale pony silhouette reclining at the epicenter...one whose hoof now rasped a ghostly bow across phantom strings.

“By my fallen feathers...” Luna whispered, pupils contracting. “Dire legends walk this eve! Ready thyself, brave companion! Our quarry at last reveals its thorn-strewn face...”

Sweetie took a strong step forward. "Not the first supernatural jerk I've faced. Identify yourself. This is your first and last chance."

"Rude." The pony raised a goblet of wine, balancing against their hoof as if stuck there somehow. "I've gone through all this effort to hold a party, and you come promising violence?"

Luna waved Sweetie back. "We do no such thing. Forgive her. She is tense. I would ask your name, if thou would provide it?"

The figure chuckled darkly, like the calls of the still circling corvid. "I am the drunken dancer. I am the endless reveler. Come, mistress of the night." He sloshed the goblet towards her. "I rather enjoyed that little trick. We are kindred spirits, most powerful when the sun is away. Come! We shall dance and forget the worries of the day."

Intrigued yet troubled by this provocative new player's cryptic insinuations, Luna replies carefully...

"Kindred thou namest us, yet mine heart recoils sensing the anguish woven through thy endless revels..." She gestures back towards the village where the unrelenting music echoes. "What righteous cause empowers thee to twist free will unto breaking?"

The shadowy roan pony swirls his blood-hued wine, grinning with too many teeth. "A fine question from she who wore vengeance as a crown, o Ruler Reborn."

He leans forward conspiratorially though none draw near his briar-bound domain. "I too merely teach the fleeting folly of frivolous festivity without end. Soon even the thrill palls...as you yourself discovered."

The specter's smile widens as he offers his thorn-lined goblet in mocking toast. "To sacred wisdom learned through the suffering of fools who fancy themselves our betters." He swallows the contents in one harsh gulp.

"Now...let us dance!" The violin strains intensify cacophonously. Thorns erupt violently outward, seeking to entangle the interlopers and draw them into the swirling garden gone mad. The pony's hollow laughter rings out, goading them to embrace the cursed melody...

Luna recoiled from one thorny vine just to find another coming from the other side. The two were soon performing a dance of their own, desperately trying to avoid the ensnaring vines that came from all sides with deadly gleaming thorns glistening in the above moon's light.

The figure howled with delight, drinking deep from his goblet, despite its thorns. "Yes! Now, we can feel it. The pain, the rapture... Dance," he bade them, moving himself in a more melancholy motion. No thorns troubled him, but he seemed to harbor pain all on his own. "When joy is denied us, to dance with a forced smile is all we have left. It is all we will ever have left, dear night goddess."

Sweetie drived forward, sliding on her knees under grasping tendrils. She bounded to her hooves before the figure. "Enough! You are under arrest! Anything you say can and will be used against you, repeatedly, if I have any say in it."

Author's Note

Hey, look, our spooky star. What do you make of them?

Join the special community of folks who like my stories, get updates early, and/or get your own here at atreon!

Don't want to do an ongoing thing? You could

Join my discord to chat!