Trip the Light Fantastic

by ponichaeism

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, DJ P0N-3, Zecora, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Octavia
Length: 23778

Vinyl Scratch goes on an odyssey for the perfect song.

In the sleepy rural town of Ponyville, Vinyl Scratch is well-known for her brain-busting beats, brash attitude, and highly esoteric ideas about music. But beneath her wild facade, she's lost in her long, dark night of the soul, restlessly searching for something she thought she lost as a filly: the perfect song.

Will her odyssey take her to the song to end all songs, shining like a lantern in the darkness? Or will this tired pilgrim succumb to the shadows and lose everything important in her life?

Published 2013-04-24 22:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-04-24 22:30:01 UTC

1. INSTANT CARMOT

“Odysseus wanders as an individual, aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation [is] a temporary period, a brief journey of the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to land and race....”
-Philip K. Dick, Beyond Lies the Wub

Celestia dimmed her horn and cleared her mind of the sun-raising spell, that most ancient and powerful magic responsible for coaxing the rosy-hooved dawn over the horizon. Sunlight bloomed through the stained glass windows lining the eastern wall of the throne room. One beam in particular passed through the simulacrum of her most faithful student's defeat of Nightmare Moon. A rainbow, fashioned into the moment the darkness in her sister's soul was quelled, shone down on her. The princess took a moment to stare up at the illuminated window with the sun behind it, but her contemplation was interrupted by the grand arched doors opening. Hooves struck the marble floor and echoed in the hall. Celestia faced her sister, who entered the throne room as if summoned with a thought. Princess Luna's wings arched out as she halted and stood proud and regal.

“Sing to me, O sister,” Celestia declared, “of that illustrious musician." Playfully, she used the archaic dialect of their childhood. Her sister was still new to this world after her thousand-year absence, and had not yet mastered the intricacies of the contemporary speech.

“Unfortunately she is still lost to us, that mare of wide-ranging spirit who wanders far and wide in her own shadow.”

"Then have thou some subtle and cunning device contrived to guide her home to us?"

For a long, agonizing moment, Luna remained silent and stared at her sister with widened eyes. Then she dropped the lofty affectation and replied, "I'm working on the matter, but the pace is difficult. She is....obstinate."

"My faith in thou is as persistent as she." Faintly smiling, Celestia said, "Work thy wonders, thou thaumaturge."

The princess of the day watched her sister and fellow Deathless One close her eyes and lose herself in rapt concentration. She compared Luna to the stained glass window, mentally juxtaposing the two figures and observing how they informed each other. A whole pony, she knew, was a gestalt composite entity in a state of flux between many disparate moods and thoughts: once Luna was her darling sister; then she became the destroyer; now she was the healer. Yet she had always been Luna. All those fragments of her, those minute pieces of being, were moments in time like the droplets that create a river. In the end, everything and everypony under the sun and the moon flowed ever onward, each undergoing their own journey as they traveled in time.

Everything flows, Celestia thought with a certain resolute finality.

Luna smiled and announced, “She dreams.”

“Show me.”

Celestia closed her eyes to the material world and fully unlidded her mind's eye. She slipped into the astral plane, dominion of the mind. The higher realm dawned like a door opening slowly: first allowing a thin line of light into a darkened room, which spreads and widens until the eye of the observer sees nothing but infinite light. For a moment, the splendor overwhelmed Celestia. Then her mind's eye adjusted and she beheld the luminous astral world unfold before her; the communal well from which ponies drew their dreams and myths and imagination. But normal ponies could only sip these waters. They could not comprehend the complex streams of information streaking through the profound abyss in unfathomable rainbows of inconceivable colors. Without fully opening the mind's eye, that third eye that sees inward -- a road few ponies choose and even fewer master -- only the lesser sight of cosmic infinitude and brilliant auroral evanescence could be deciphered. That was the highest infinity they could conceive of.

“This way,” her sister said.

Luna's enlightened form streaked into the distance, leaving trails of light like shooting stars behind. With a thought, Celestia followed the princess of dreams through her domain. Her own astral body slid effortlessly past the dreaming minds, which resembled galaxies of dense, multi-layered webs. Sparks of golden light raced through the serpentine, luminescent fibers to form dazzling bursts of insight and inspiration and emotion. And as thoughts fused and feelings coalesced, the dreamers sang a beauteous micropolyphonic fugue, a dense overlap of impassioned wailing, out of which emerged a deeper melody from the harmony of the independent ariettas. The music filled the infinite realm of the singular mind that united all minds.

Luna's astral form guided Celestia towards one galaxy in particular. The sisters descended into it, immersing themselves in the bursts and flares of mental activity. Flickering visions danced and wavered, hazy and indistinct, creating mists of memory and imagination that clouded around Celestia like nebulae. The aether thickened as they approached the shining galactic core of the dreamer's sleeping consciousness. Sensations streaming through the dreamer's brain plugged themselves into Celestia's own mind, creating a world around the two observers. A warm summer's day constructed itself. The skies were crystal clear, the wind was alive with the scent of freshly-mowed grass and fragrant flowers, and birds twittered joyously in the trees. The world was in bloom, and nature reached out to embrace the little filly whose dream this was. She stood on the hilltop near them in her astral body, a little pony shining with light.

“In her dreams,” Celestia thought to her sister, so as not to disturb the dreaming mind, "her eye is open to everything around her except herself.”

“This is no dream,” Luna thought back, “but a memory that dominates her thoughts, even in the sanctuary of her dreams.”

“Is she aware of how powerful a hold it has over her?”

“On some level, yes. But she is not yet awake to herself, and does not recognize the memory's significance. To her, it is simply a reminder of what she lost. She does not realize it is also the substance she crafted her life out of. But come, watch. Her song is about to begin.”

The little pony closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the gentle caress of nature's embrace. And in the absolute stillness of the moment, like an eye opening just in time to see the rising sun clear the horizon, the filly heard the most beautiful song in the world.

“For one brief moment,” Luna explained, “her mind attuned itself to the astral plane, and her mind's eye glimpsed the infinite in all its splendor.”

Celestia felt the divine harmony of the music in the filly's head. A string of notes popped into her mind, fully-formed. The melody was simple enough, or so the filly thought, but as they built on one another they stirred the most incredible feeling in her heart, a feeling of indescribable, uplifting joy. The song reverberated through her skull while nature sang in harmony with it. The birds and the wind and sun pulsed along with the cosmic heartbeat. The song burned inside her soul like a phoenix and lent her spirit wings.

And then it started ebbing away.

Celestia's heart wrenched. “Oh, you poor little filly.”

The dreaming pony felt the divine melody slip. In a panic, she galloped home, inadvertently taking Celestia and Luna, who were anchored to the dream, with her. But Celestia felt the realization burning through the filly's thoughts: she wasn't a musician, she couldn't read musical notation, her parents didn't even have one of those tape recorders she could use to hum it and record it. There was no way to keep hold of the music. And so, as she ran over the hills, she burst into tears for the sweet melody, capable of bringing her to the most rapturous joy, as it drifted away on the summer wind. The notes were already indistinguishable. All she remembered were the absence they carved into her soul. The only thing in life she wanted was to hear that song, and she couldn't even have that. What kind of life would she lead without that song?

What sort of life, indeed, Celestia mused.

Luna thought, “Here it comes.”

Before her mind's eye, Celestia watched the summer landscape distort and dissolve around the filly's astral body, which aged fifteen years in the blink of an eye. Grimy black walls erected themselves and blocked out the hazy summer skies and bright sunlight. A dungeon wrapped itself around her and trapped her. She galloped in a frenzy, her heart pounding in her chest, trying to free herself. But the dungeon's bowels were a twisting maze, and she didn't know the way out, so she picked her path at random and ran with all her might. But she had nothing to guide her, and succeeded only in plunging deeper into the maze.

Celestia watched the pony's legs pump in vain. “She's lost, and in her panic she loses herself further.”

In a dark, brooding tone, Luna thought, “The dark night of the soul is far blacker and more disorienting than the deepest dungeon.”

“Can she find her way out on her own?”

Luna observed the dreamer, then thought, “I....” Though she couldn't read Luna's thoughts, Celestia knew what her sister meant to say clearly enough: 'I couldn't.' “I'm not sure,” Luna finally thought.

“Then will thou guide her?”

“No. She isn't ready yet, and her song is still unfinished. For a pony as lost as she, a subtler hoof is required, or else the process may be spoiled.”

Disheartened by the lost little pony's plight, Celestia thought, “Then I entrust the matter to thy capable hooves.”

The princess closed her mind's eye. Reality wrapped itself around her like a cocoon, leaving her once again folded up in the material realm. She turned back to the stained glass and wondered how she would feel if, as a filly, during the years that would create who she was, she glimpsed the infinite and then lost it. What kind of pony would she be and what sort of life would she have led if she was forever taunted and tortured with an inexpressible joy forever out of reach?

What would her song sound like?

“Nonstop wubs, all the time, everytime!” DJ-P0N3 yelled. She had a microphone right up against her mouth, the only way she could shout over the thumping ruckus of her music, which meant her voice was mighty loud when there wasn't any playing at all. A great big gleeful grin was on her face as she added, “Listen up, party ponies, 'cause DJ-P0N3 is in the hizzouse! The beats are coming like bombs, and we're gonna let 'em....” Using a bit of her unicorn magic, she let the turntable needle fall onto a record. “DROOOP! Aw, yeah! Everypony mosh!”

But Apple Bloom wasn't the only pony at the party staying far away from the sound system. Not by a long shot. Wincing fiercely, she flattened her ears to protect her hearing from the wobbling, high-pitched bass. The dubstep was loud, so loud it rattled her family's barn right down to the foundations. What a horrible racket, she thought, about to go crazy. It starts off all wailing, like it's bein' tortured. Then it goes and starts pounding so fast! Why can't the music jes make up it's mind?

She slunk over to the table against the wall. The punch bowl on the fancy quilt-patterned tablecloth jumped to the music. Spooning any punch out was a fool's errand, so Apple Bloom wasn't sure what that said about her new friend Sweetie Belle, who had the ladle handle tight between her teeth. She craned her head over the rim, trying to get some of the punch out for about the fourth time. The bass suddenly stopped, but rather than jump for joy, Apple Bloom was wary. She could tell what was coming next, because it had happened so darn much already. Suddenly, a big old bass boom like thunder shook the barn. The bowl took to wing, higher than ever. It landed wrong on its way down, tipped itself over, and upended itself on Sweetie Belle's head.

With the bowl perched behind her horn like a helmet and drops of punch running down her coat, Sweetie Belle glared at Apple Bloom, warning her not to laugh, but AB couldn't resist it and got into a giggling fit. Sweetie Belle said something as she pulled the bowl down, but the music drowned her out.

“What?!” Apple Bloom called.

As Sweetie Belle pulled the bowl off her head, she screamed, “Dubstep stinks!”

“I think she said she hates dubstep,” Scootaloo yelled, not especially helpfully.

“Thanks a bunch,” Apple Bloom said sarcastically. She rolled her eyes.

“What?!”

Apple Bloom shook her head. “Never mind!”

“What?!”

Instead of bothering to answer, she just jerked her head at the DJ table, telling her friends to follow her. The music grew a whole lot louder the closer they got to the turntable. The giant speakers were so tall and black. She remembered being taught in school about those eerie old monoliths that dotted Cornhaul, and the woodcuts of ponies in weird robes doing a kind of ritual dance in the moonlight. But she was pretty sure stones like those couldn't make barns collapse barns just by making noise.

The DJ's untamed blue mane flew everywhere. She was all busy bobbing her head to the beat with abandon. Apple Bloom didn't know how in the hay a pony could get themselves so caught up in dubstep music, since each and every one of them distorted bass thumps felt like a sledgehammer to the face.

“Excuse me!” Apple Bloom yelled.

With those tinted goggles she always wore, Apple Bloom didn't have the slightest clue if the DJ's eyes were even open. She certainly didn't pay any mind to Apple Bloom and the other two fillies, so AB had rear back and wave her forelegs over her head to get the mare's attention. That took DJ P0N-3 out of her trance, sure enough.

“Why aren't you moshing?” she yelled with a grin. “Isn't loud enough for you?”

“No, no,” Apple Bloom said quickly. “Ah jes wanted to make a request! Do ya have 'Unicorn' by the Allmare Sisters?”

“No, the Buzzcolts!” Scootaloo shouted, hopping up and down. “Play the Buzzcolts!”

“Aw, I want to hear ABBALOOSA!” Sweetie Belle pouted.

The three fillies turned on each another, hollering over the others and the pounding dubstep. “The Buzzcolts!” “Allmare Sisters!” “ABBALOOSA!”

As the music faded out and the merciless bass thankfully wobbled out of earshot, the DJ yanked a record out from under the booth and held it high. “Well, I'll tell you what I do have: some wubs! Yeah, that's right!”

The three fillies shared a look of fright, then waved their hooves wildly to let the DJ know that wasn't necessary in the slightest. The mare pursed her lips, slumped her shoulders a bit, and gave in.

“I'll check what I got,” she said, rummaging around under the table. She came back up with a record, slapped it onto the turntable, and spun it.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders cringed, drawing away slightly. Apple Bloom's stomach knotted itself in a big ball of fear at what would come blasting of the speakers, but to her relief it was nothing but 'Is Your Song Long Enough?', by Iron Ferryier. As the slow, measured power ballad played, she looked at her friend Scootaloo, then at Sweetie Belle, and as one the three fillies shrugged and decided it would do mwell enough.

“Thank you,” they called.

“No problem,” DJ-P0N3 said.

But Apple Bloom couldn't help noticing that the mare looked a bit uncomfortable. She grooved to the music again, but it seemed more like a motion mechanical, that of a mare just going through the motions with all the joy and enthusiasm of a lazy-rotating windmill, than of a pony really and truly enjoying themselves. Apple Bloom did feel a mite bad about it, but she felt worse about listening to that lurching musical mess that was dubstep, and followed her friends back to the punch table with nary another word to the DJ.

“Hey, what happened to the music?!” Rainbow Dash asked, offended.

“I wanted to listen to the Buzzcolts,” Scootaloo said, beaming up at her idol.

Rainbow Dash tousled her mane. “Heh heh, thatta filly.”

As Dash walked away, Scootaloo sighed dreamily. “Rainbow Dash thinks I have good taste!”

“She'd be the only one,” Sweetie Belle said.

Sweetie Belle chuckled when Scootaloo snarled “Hey”, but Apple Bloom still felt a touch bad about that dismayed DJ. It was weird, after all; DJs were paid to play music that partygoing ponies want to hear. But the equine heart all too often has a raging contempt for reason, and AB's guilt towards the lonely pony would not quit her. That DJ-P0N3, she....

She don't really fit in here, Apple Bloom thought, everything suddenly becoming as clear as the sun breaking through the clouds. With all that dubstep stuff she likes, she'd be much more at home in Fillydelphia or Los Pegasus.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Sweetie Belle, who skipped past her on her way to her sister, who she went and orbited in a tight circle, hopping up and down, as Rarity was deep in talking to Twilight Sparkle.

“Rarity, Rarity, Rarity, I wanted the DJ to play ABBALOOSA!”

“Is that so, Sweetie Belle?” her sister asked, putting on a mighty fine show of hiding her fluster for the interruption.

“I know they're your favorite band,” Sweetie Belle said in a sing-song voice.

Rarity blushed and her pupils shrank until they were scarcely bigger than pinpoints. They darted around to see if anypony besides Twilight had caught what the terrible secret her sister had spilled.

“Don't worry, your guilty pleasure is safe with me,” Twilight said, winking and laughing.

Rarity darted forward, sending Sweetie Belle off-balance and landing on her rump on the floor. The fashionista got in Twilight's face until their snouts were touching, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring. As she poked Twilight, she growled, “Oh, it had better be, or else I might have to let slip that a certain unicorn likes to croon 'Call Me Mane' when she thinks she's alone.”

Now it was Twilight's turn to blush and look around to see if anypony had heard. Rarity broke away and effortlessly turned on the smile again as she fluffed her curled mane. Noticing her sister on the floor for the first time, she asked, “Sweetie Belle, what are you doing down there?”

“Nothing,” her sister said, dazed.

Sweetie Belle jumped up and brushed herself off, then trotted over to rejoin Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. The three of them went to town on a plate of cupcakes, and when that wasn't filling enough they considered going to city, too. But as they chowed down, Apple Bloom found her attention drawn back to Twilight and Rarity again.

“So,” Rarity asked, “what do you think it means?”

“Hmm. Well, I have some theories about your very interesting dreams.”

“Er, I'm not quite sure interesting is how I would put it, Twilight, dear.”

Twilight's smile fell away slightly. “I find them interesting. From a purely scientific perspective, that is. Anyway, if you're dreaming about your dresses coming to life and attacking you, it could mean you're feeling overwhelmed by your work.”

“But I'm not. Truth be told, business has been rather slow lately.”

“Yet the horde of dresses implies you feel overwhelmed. Is something making you stressed?”

Just then, Apple Bloom noticed the DJ approaching to the snack table, her unattended turntable spinning in the distance. 'Is Your Song Long Enough?' was, as the title suggested, long enough indeed. For a snack break, anyway. Apple Bloom and her friends moved out of the mare's way as she and stepped up to the ice cooler full of glass bottles.

“Nothing I can think of,” Rarity said. “So why would I dream about being overwhelmed?”

“According to the book Mare and Her Symbols,” Twilight gushed, sounding like Miss Cheerilee when she got all excited about learning, “one of my absolute favorites, might I add, dreams are our unconscious mind's way of telling us what we need. Our deeper minds know what we need to do to embrace our true selves, and use symbolism to communicate that with us and help us become whole.”

The DJ paused over the cooler. Apple Bloom might've just imagined it, but it seemed like more than just indecision. The mare's head inclined towards Twilight ever so slightly, or so the filly thought. Then she magically snagged a bottle of cider from the cooler, popped the top, and swigged it down.

“Tell me,” Twilight asked, after a bout of deep thought, “when these dresses attack you, are they all different dresses? Or are they all the same dress?”

“Why....they're all the same dress, I think.”

“Is it that one you've worn the last four times you've gone to Canterlot?”

Rarity blinked in astonishment. “Yes, yes it was. I've been trying to get the Canterlot elite interested in my design, but--”

“No luck? But you keep trying anyway, am I right?”

“I like that design.”

“But they don't. And your deeper mind knows that. Yet your higher mind, the conscious part of you, keeps trying, even though it's not working. I'll bet your subconscious feels like your pride in that dress is interfering with your productivity, which is being 'overwhelmed' by that one dress.” Twilight beamed. “Your deeper mind is convinced you're stuck in a rut.”

At that exact moment, by sheer coincidence, the DJ's turntable needle skipped the record groove and started looping: '-it's destiny if-it's destiny if-it's destiny-'

“Stand back, everypony,” the DJ said, slightly more unsteady on her hooves than she had been. “DJ-P0N3 to the rescue.”

As she walked away, Apple Bloom thought about the odd coincidence. What were the chances of Twilight saying 'stuck in a rut' right just as the record went and got stuck in a rut? But nopony else had given a double take or seemed like they noticed it at all. Was it really that odd, if only she heard it? Apple Bloom wanted to ask her friends about it, but the more she chewed it over in her head and the more she convinced herself her imagination was playing tricks on her. They'd laugh at how silly she was being. But still, it was mighty odd. She had just about worked up the courage to ask them if they had noticed it when the DJ replaced the broken record with a new one. A scream urged everypony to "Get the lead out!" Then a lively, upbeat dance song filled the barn.

“Ooh, I love this song!” Sweetie Belle shouted. “Let's dance!” She galloped out onto the dance floor.

As Scootaloo started after her, she called over her shoulder, "Hurry up, Apple Bloom!"

It wasn't nothing but a coincidence, that's all, Apple Bloom thought decisively. She followed her friends out onto the straw-strewn floor and lost herself in dancing. The joyful harmony and melody refused to let her worries keep her down, and to let her keep hold of them. They all drifted away while she nimbly tripped across the floor on a light fantastic hoof. She and the other two fillies, all very new friends but already nigh-on inseparable, were so fleet of hoof they were nearly some kind of an armada, a whirlwind storming across the barn. All three surrendered themselves to the music streaming through the air and let it flow through them and move them to its irresistible beat.

But every so often, Apple Bloom's eye would wander to that lonely DJ stuck behind her turntable, looking so lost and adrift. The filly wanted to throw her a lifeline, but dancing to this amazing music was the best one she knew, and if this couldn't help her....then what could?

2. NIGREDO

“There has always been a dance element in my mysticism. [....] Music is imposing a state of consciousness by its very nature. If what this [Qabalistic] Tree of Life is is a hierarchy of different states of consciousness, would it be possible to simulate and stimulate those states of consciousness in the listener by producing the right sorts of music. Is it possible? We don’t know, but we’re working on it."
-Alan Moore

Even the fireflies in the lampposts struggled to pierce the gloomy night blanketing Vinyl Scratch. She made her weary way down the dirt road which streaked through the thatched, timber-framed houses of Ponyville. She was half-lost in the long, dark night, her only companions the cart wheels squeaking in pain at the burden of carrying her equipment home. Her legs felt the same way. They could barely keep her moving in a straight line.

Ahead, her modest house appeared from the darkness. Pale glimmers of moonlight glinted off its frame. She staggered to the door and swung a hoof at the handle, but missed it entirely. Squinting at the dull brass, she wondered why it was so hard to see anything. Then, and only then, did she realize she had walked all the way home from Sweet Apple Acres with her party goggles pulled down over her eyes. When she lifted them up, rather than being dark and blurry, the world became merely blurry. She didn't trust her vision, so she slid her hoof across the wooden door until it found the handle. She put all her weight on it. The door swung open so quick she nearly fell in and hit the floor face-first. She careened down the hall on unsteady legs, dragging her cart inside. Her forelegs hit a table against the wall, making her lose her balance and fall to the ground. As her dead weight sagged against the cart's harness, it threatened to upend and spill its contents everywhere, but luckily a gray forelimb reached out and steadied it.

“Honestly, Vinyl....” Her roommate stepped out of the doorway to the kitchen, wrapped in a bathrobe. Her jet black mane stuck up every which way.

“Stupid place for a table,” Vinyl said, unbuckling her harness. She tried to stand, but was unsuccessful.

Octavia gave her a helping hoof and dragged her off the carpet. “How much cider have you had?” she asked.

“Hey, you know how Apple family parties gets. They like to keep the songs and the cider flowing.”

“Drinking on the job?” Octavia gave an exasperated sigh. “Really, Vinyl. How unprofessional....”

Vinyl Scratch brushed her roommate away. “I got this, alright?”

“Are you quite certain?”

As Vinyl walked away, she gave Octavia a grin over her shoulder and said, “Totally.” Then she walked straight into the doorframe. Her rump landed on the carpet while her head revolved like a record.

“Totally,” said Octavia with narrow eyes, the epitome of droll.

As the world spun to face the sun again, Vinyl lay in bed and wished the sweet cider would carry her away to slumberland. But, as always, the dizzying high slipped away from her and weighed her down with the funk that always followed, and unfortunately it wasn't the kind of funk she could groove to. After a half-hour of tossing and turning, she got up. The room was empty and silent, cold and lonely. Bare white walls in the dark. She stumbled over the clothes and odds and ends left on the floor, making her way to the synthesizer in the corner. She sat down heavily on the stool and gave the keyboard a burst of magic to turn it on. The amplifier gave a warm, reassuring hiss as it came to life.

Maybe this is the night, she thought, as she had so many nights before. So many nights since that day, long ago.

She sat still for a moment, awed and feeling trepidation at the ebony and ivory spread out before her. Between those eighty-eight keys, they could conjure up any song on the face of the planet.

If she knew the right order, that is.

Still, I got a good feeling about tonight.

Her hoof hovered uncertainly over the keys. Every song depended on the first note. It was a signpost informing everything that followed. With bad directions, the whole journey was off on the wrong hoof.

Key of D, she thought suddenly, with absolute firmness.

She held her breath; would this be it? Would she summon up that sublime melody tonight?

But she was still woozy, and her hoof came on the edge of both C and D. A discordant squeal came from the speaker, making her gnash her teeth. She shook her head and hit the D key, but it was no good. After that tormented wail, her mood had been soured. She hit D again and fiddled with the octave, but her hooves refused to come up with a melody.

She fancied she could hear Octavia grinding her teeth through the walls.

Another night used up and turned to ash, she rued sourly. But she wasn't willing to write it off entirely, so she magicked the sheet music to her current professional composition over and propped the leaves up on the keyboard. She almost had enough material for another disc to spin on the dubstep scene, such as it was in the backwater berg of Ponyville. She switched the synthesizer over to the pad patch and laid into a chord progression. The shape of the song formed in her head. She mentally added the beat, the mid-range bass....

But something wasn't working. She played the chords staccato and upped the gate, but to no avail. All of it was too smooth and catchy. Her gut reaction was it wasn't working, though she couldn't put her hoof on why. Too mainstream to her ears, probably. It didn't befit dubstep. It didn't fit the future of music, which was certainly not that lame old stuff Octavia played.

She threw in a time signature change for the bass. Better, she thought as she heard the choppy, gated pad and played the bass under it; it gave the chord progression just the right choppiness to throw ponies out of their groove and shake them up, and she was all about shaking things up.

Comfortable is for wimps, she thought as she stifled a yawn, ponies who play it safe. I want to take music right to the edge....

She pushed herself for so long she couldn't remember when she fell asleep, but there came a point where the only thing Vinyl knew was the darkness. She opened her mouth wide, but before she could scream she heard a high-pitched voice cut through the oppressive silence.

“Help me!” the foal shrieked, his voice echoing to her from up the stone tunnels.

Vinyl crept forward, one hoof trailing along the rough stone wall for support. What's that little colt doing here? she asked. This is no place for a pony with as much to live for as he has.

There was a thing she could use to ward off the darkness down here in the dungeons, but no matter how hard she racked her brains she couldn't remember what it was.

“Who goes there?” growled a voice from very close in front of her.

Vinyl thought it was a mare, but she couldn't tell. In the dark, it was impossible to see even the barest glimmer of movement. Her heart started pounding as the shuffling of the guardian of the labyrinth echoed all around her, so loud she couldn't tell where it came from.

“Help!” the colt called again.

But Vinyl couldn't help him, or herself. She didn't know where the gatekeeper was; the guardian could be a foot away and Vinyl wouldn't see her. Delusions of heroism forgotten, Vinyl turned tail and obeyed the neighing voice in the back of her head commanding her to run. She flattened her ears and galloped back the way she'd come, screaming for the light. But the darkness was so thick she couldn't tell if she was moving or just running in place. She put everything she had into galloping faster and faster, but it was no use; the darkness was too thick. It tangled around her and tripped her up--

Vinyl jerked up in bed, legs tangled up in her blanket. While waiting for her beating heart to slow, she glanced at her synthesizer and noticed it had been turned off.

Octavia, she thought.

When she trudged into the kitchen, she smelled a freshly brewed pot of Griffon Gold.

“Good morning,” Octavia said stiffly. A touch sarcastically, she asked, “Did you sleep well?”

“Who needs sleep?” Vinyl scoffed as she used her horn to magic the pot of coffee into the air and pour herself a cup. “I've got wubs to wub out today.”

“Another gig?” Octavia asked. “Your eyes are bloodshot something ghastly.”

Vinyl flapped her hoof dismissively. “That's why goggles are an essential part of the club DJ style.”

Octavia said nothing, though she did raise one eyebrow in a perfectly measured arc of incredulous disapproval.

“Hey,” Vinyl said, uncomfortable and defensive, “breaking the boundaries of music is hard work. It's not the kind of thing you can just sit down and do. It demands long hours.”

Octavia averted her eyes and mumbled into her coffee cup. “Breaking the boundaries of good taste, more like.”

“At least I come up with my own music,” Vinyl snapped, “and not just play stuff by guys who've been dead for centuries.”

Octavia scoffed at that, but her cheeks flushed slightly. “How charming, you calling that noise you make 'music'.”

Vinyl could have carried on with the offensive, but didn't feel like letting this blossom into a full-blown argument, even if Octavia was mocking the musical movement she'd committed herself body and soul to. They still had to live with each other, after all. So Vinyl stared at the bright cold day outside the window and let her thoughts wander, and they attempted to piece together a long forgotten song. When Octavia left the kitchen, though, she returned to her room and took up her cello again. The scratch of the strings set Vinyl's nerves on edge, and she couldn't concentrate on music with that racket. Instead she finished off her coffee and went to get ready for that afternoon's gig.

“Vinyl, dear....”

“Yeah, Missus C?”

Cup Cake chewed her lip as she glanced at her husband, who urged her onward from a comfortable distance away. Cup Cake sucked in a breath, faced the DJ, and broached her point of contention as meekly as she could: “Carrot and I were hoping you would stay away from....wubs.” She whispered it like a dirty word. “Dew Drop is paying us quite a lot to cater for this party, and we're not sure this is the right venue for, er, 'music' like that.”

She gestured to the event room of the Dew Drop Inn, where two dozen foals were romping around. A yellow banner that said “Happy Birthday, Honey Drop!” was strung from the rafters.

I already left the smoke machine and strobe lights at home, Vinyl thought, supremely miffed. What more do they want? She relented and said, “I'll see what I got, Missus C.”

She ducked down and dug through her box of records, shuffling past her choice picks until she got to her emergency stash, for extenuating circumstances. She pulled one out and held it up, then blew the thick layer of dust off the aging sleeve, revealing a black and white photo of a smiling stallion in a bow tie with a slicked back mane. "Whinni" was scrawled across the top in a looping cursive font. Vinyl pulled out the record, dropped it on the turntable, and started to spin it. A xylophone twinkled from the speakers, followed by a stallion talk-singing along with it.

“Clap....your....hooves if you can tell me where the dragon is, dragon is, dragon is!”

The foals gurgled happily and squealed as they toddled over to sit near the speakers. Pinkie Pie hopped across the room bouncing the birthday foal on her back. She shouted “Aw, yeah!” as she dropped into the forefront of the semi-circle of foals.

“Oh, there he is, there he is, there he is!”

Vinyl leaned towards the mic and gave a half-hearted, “Whoo hoo. Get down, ponies. You're a great crowd.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie shouted, gleefully clapping along to the song.

I need a cup of cider, Vinyl thought, struggling to contain a yawn. Like, right now.

Then she heard it, buried in the mix. Her ears perked up and her adrenaline began to flow. It was only four notes long, a simple counter-melody twinkling away behind the vocals, but she was absolutely convinced it was the start of the Song. But already it slipped out of her mind and became fuzzy, indistinct. In a panic, she grabbed the record and rewound it, sending a sharp squeal through the speakers. The foals covered their ears, and some began to cry, but Vinyl paid them no mind. Her burning desire to listen to those notes and find out what they sounded like consumed her. Sweat ran down her forelimbs and made her hooves slick. She fumbled around to get a grip on the vinyl, when all of a sudden she heard a sharp crack. Staring in shock, she saw the broken pieces of the record lying on the turntable.

No no no no no! she thought. What were the notes?!

But already she wasn't sure it had been the Song. Maybe it had just been her mind playing tricks on her.

“Um, Vinyl?” asked Cup Cake. “Can we talk?”

Vinyl tore her eyes away from the shattered shards of the record, feeling ready to throw in the towel for the night.

“Are you alright?” the caterer asked.

I better get in shape, she warned herself, or I'm not going to get paid for this gig.

So what? she grumbled back. All the gold in Canterlot can't tell me how the Song goes.

No, but I could buy another copy of that album. Where did I get it? Some bargain bin. High Fillydelity in Fillydelphia, I think. Yeah, that was it.

She salvaged some shred of hope, put on a grin, and turned to Cup Cake. “Sorry, but when I get in the zone and start laying down thick beats, things tend to get out of hoof mad quick.”

“I see,” Cup Cake said, her tone making plain that she didn't.

As Vinyl looked into the wary mare's eyes, she felt the look of bravery she'd slapped on her face start to falter. She turned back to the box of records to find another disc to spin.

“I'll dial it down, though.”

Vinyl Scratch was lost, and searching for a way to remedy that. She felt along the damp, earthen wall of the catacombs, trying to see something, anything in the darkness. What was she doing here? She couldn't remember. She had to find her way up to the surface, but she was so lost in the shadows. Then she remembered there was something down here in the dungeon that could help her find her way out, if only she could locate it first.

And soon.

She heard the faint sounds of things scurrying through the darkness behind her. She told herself it was nothing. Just rats. She didn't know why that was supposed to make her feel better, but she clung to it regardless.

Then, up ahead, something pierced the darkness. If was faint and obscure, but definitely a light. She hurried towards it, but no sooner had she gone two feet than she tripped and fell to the ground. Her leg broke with a sickening crunch, and she was alone in the catacombs. She cried for help, but there was nopony coming, nopony at all....

“Vinyl!” she heard distantly. “I say, Vinyl!”

Groggily, Vinyl lifted her head off the living room couch. An empty glass cider bottle rolled away from her. She had been drinking to forget her failure to find the Whinni record at the Ponyville record store.

“Must you leave this here?” Octavia asked, her cheeks flushed.

She gestured to the cart with Vinyl's equipment, sitting in the middle of the living room. Vinyl squinted at it, because the setting sun was coming right through the window.

“No big deal,” Vinyl said, yawning. “I'll move it, don't worry.”

“Sometimes I think you forget I own half this house.”

Vinyl turned away from her roommate, then rolled her eyes and flapped her hoof to mimic Octavia talking. She glanced at the phonograph on the cabinet, where one of her records was spinning. The needle was in the end groove and revolving endlessly to no particular purpose, sending static crackles through the horn. She aimed her magic at the needle arm, but when she fired a spell off she missed and knocked over a framed photograph of her and Octavia. Octavia frowned. Vinyl got up and lifted the needle manually.

“What are you dressed up so fancy for, anyway?” Vinyl asked, nodding at Octavia's coiffed hair, earrings, and silk dress.

“You forgot,” said her roommate flatly, her voice a sharp, cold dagger. “The recital?”

I totally did, Vinyl thought. She affected a casual voice and said, “Nah, I'm just messing with you. How could I forget, when you keep playing that violin—”

“Cello.”

“....cello all the time? So when do we leave?”

“Surely you're not going to go like that?”

Vinyl shrugged. “I kinda was.”

Octavia's eyes briefly went to the empty cider bottles on the floor. “You know, you don't look all that well. Perhaps you'd better stay here and....rest. I'm sure I could muddle along without you, seeing how much you loathe my 'dead guy' music.”

Vinyl swaggered over to her roommate, draped a foreleg over her back, and pulled her close. “Are you kidding? You'll go to pieces if I'm not there, so let's rock this thing down to the ground.”

And hopefully I'll have time to slip away and check the record racks at Beats of Burden before the show starts.

“We'd best hurry then,” Octavia said. “The last train to Canterlot leaves in twenty minutes.”

“Then look out Canterlot, 'cause here we come.”

The Friendship Express jostled from side to side as it rattled along on its rails. The percussive thump of the wheels went through the carriage like shockwaves from an earthquake. To Vinyl Scratch, they sounded like the beat of war drums heralding a coming battle. The rhythm wormed its way inside her mind and goaded her to rise from her seat. It was an itch in her mind, and as the train shot into the night, she was torn on whether to confront the future as it rushed up to meet her or not. She longed for the disrupted, frustrated beats of dubstep.

Outside the window, the darkness gathered. She watched, transfixed, as inky fingers stretched out from the mountains on the flaming horizon, stole across the landscape, and brought the veil of shadow over the country fields. The rhythm of the train and rhythm of her heart were one; they made her yearn to jump out the window run across those fields, away from the night and towards the sun, never once looking back. The more the darkness took away the world, the clearer she saw her reflection in the window, until there was nothing but her face superimposed over darkness that stretched out behind her to an infinity. Deep down, she knew the dark was coming for her. She couldn't escape its pull.

“Vinyl, are you quite alright?”

The concerned voice of her roommate pulled Vinyl out of her reverie. Like waking up, she blinked heavily beneath her goggles and turned to the gray pony laying on the seat next to her; her cello case was nestled at her side. Octavia cocked her head and stared at Vinyl with equal parts curiousity and apprehension.

Vinyl smiled. “Just thinking up some sick beats for my new magnum opus.”

“I see.”

Octavia's eyes lingered on Vinyl for a few more seconds, then she busied herself with making sure her notation book of sheet music was still in order. Vinyl turned back to the window. The train had swung around to begin its ascent up the mountains towards Canterlot, and she saw the city upon the hill burning bright in the night, a shining beacon against the darkness. Was that where the coming battle she felt in her bones would take place? Would she have to stand and fight, or turn tail and run? Out of the corner of her mind's eye, she glimpsed some dark shape hanging precariously over her head, ready and waiting to snap its wire and fall. Nervously, Vinyl Scratch gulped as the train carried her upwards.

3. ALBEDO

“Self-conscious, uncertain, I'm showered with the dust
The spirit enters into me and I submit to trust”
-Peter Gabriel, The Rhythm of the Heat

"I struck the agogo, trying to fall in with the beat of the drums, and gradually I became part of the event, and, becoming part of it, I controlled it. [....] In the dancing area many aspirants to ecstasy were still moving. The German woman twitched unnaturally, waiting to be visited - in vain. Others had been taken over by Exu and were making wicked faces, sly, astute, as they moved in jerks.
-Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

As the ponies disembarked from the idling train, Octavia donned a scarf to ward off the chilly winter wind. It blew through Vinyl's coat much more ferociously with the high altitude, but she didn't mind. She craned her head back and gazed at the starry sky through the smoke spewing from the engine, wondering how long it would be before snow blanketed the land. The alabaster towers of Canterlot Castle looked like pillars holding the sky up and keeping the stars from crashing down. She knew, on a conscious level, the sky wasn't about to fall, but some deep-seated fear took hold of her and fretted about the unreality of something overhead that refused to obey gravity.

“Oh, I do hope I remembered everything,” Octavia moaned as she flipped the catches and peeked inside her cello case. “The princesses are supposed to be in attendance, and I'd hate to make an absolute fool of myself in my first solo performance.”

“Aw, you won't,” Vinyl said.

“I will, I just know it,” Octavia said in a sulk. “The recital line-up is comprised of the greatest living musicians in Equestria, and then there will be me sticking out like a sore hoof and making mince of the finest classical music.”

To cheer her up, Vinyl joked, “Hey, take it from a professional maker of musical mince: you ain't got a thing on me.”

Octavia chuckled, her spirits lifted. “Thanks, Vinyl. For coming along.”

“Moral support brigade, at your service,” Vinyl declared, giving her roommate a mock salute.

“Now, the recital doesn't start until nine, but I'm afraid I'll have business to take care of backstage until then, so I won't be able to join you.”

“It's alright, I got business in town to take care of anyway.”

Fretfully, Octavia asked, “But you'll be there, right?”

All I have to do is check Beats of Burden, she thought. It'll take a half-hour, tops.

“You can bet on it,” Vinyl said.

As they descended the station steps, a bulky pony in a cloak with a hood drawn over its head tried to brush past them, but accidentally jostled Vinyl and made her stumble on the stairs. The pony turned back to them, and Vinyl saw two piercing yellow eyes looking at her, almost through her. They gave Vinyl a chill.

A dusky voice declared, “My most sincere apology, but I'm in a hurry, you see.”

“Do I know you?” Vinyl asked.

“Perhaps by reputation or having seen me from afar, but never have our paths been crossed by the stars. But I know you, Miss DJ-P0N3, who spins her records with such glee.” The figure lowered its hood, which brushed a black-and-white striped mohawk on its way down, revealing the figure not as a pony after all, but that zebra that sometimes palled around with Twilight Sparkle and her friends.

“Zecora, right?” Vinyl asked.

The zebra nodded, graceful and elegant on her slender neck and long legs.

“And now if you will excuse me, I have a pony that I must see, for I must do some supply shopping, and they frown when I arrive past closing.”

The zebra pulled her hood up again and darted down a narrow alley between two buildings.

“What an odd pony,” Octavia said, a little snootily. “I hear she lives by herself in the middle of the Everfree Forest. Perhaps she's mad, like the gossip says.”

As Vinyl stared at the alley the zebra had disappeared down, she mumbled, “Yeah. Maybe.”

Vinyl stepped out of Beats of Burden, Canterlot's biggest record emporium, and felt like kicking something. She hadn't managed to find another copy of the record, and the colt behind the counter had given her a blank look when she'd asked. She was left her with all this pent-up frustration she had to get out of her system. However, she didn't think the city guard would look kindly on vandalism. She passed a clock, and saw it pointing at 7:57. She still had an hour to kill, and was too jumpy and restless to sit and wait for the recital to start. As she wandered through the lonely, empty streets of Canterlot, her thoughts turned to the Song that eluded her. Sometimes it seemed like a myth her mind had made up, as no song could have such power. Shaking her head, she instead worked out some epic dubstep beats and poured her frustration out by codifying it into music, even if the music only existed (for now) inside her skull.

Suddenly the shadows to her left moved. She halted in her tracks and lifted a hoof off the ground, her survival instincts screaming at her to run from danger. But it was only the cloaked shape of Zecora emerging from a side-street. Vinyl watched her start to walk away, seemingly unaware of Vinyl's presence, but something gave the zebra pause. Her hooded head whipped around until she was looking over her shoulder, and her eyes came to rest on Vinyl.

“We meet again, Miss Vinyl, on the streets of the capital.”

“Yeah, how about that,” Vinyl said warily. “What a coincidence, huh?”

The zebra smiled wryly, every bit the mystic, as she ambled over to Vinyl. “In coincidences I do not believe, but rather in the world's weave. As we travel along our lines, sometimes events produce rhymes.”

“Hey, I'm all about rhymes, but you lost me.”

“It is not a thing to be discussed lightly," the zebra said, glancing around. "Is there somewhere you must be? I do not wish to accost, but you look quite lost. If you are searching for a place to belong, then I gladly invite you along.”

Vinyl thought, A place to belong....

She couldn't say whether the zebra had meant it to sound so ominous and portentous, or if it was just a convenient rhyme, but the words struck a chord in Vinyl. She still had an hour to kill until Octavia needed her, so....

“Eh, why not?”

Zecora turned on her hooves and walked away. “Then follow close, if you please, and I'll show you where I feel at ease.”

The longer Vinyl followed her, the more the mare regressed and looped back to the train ride. A pounding rhythm penetrated her like a heartbeat. It seemed to come from under her hooves, from the very ground itself, and from the buildings ahead of her. Trepidation at what was rushing up to confront her stole over her. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead, got inside her goggles, and stung her eyes, making her blink excessively until she lifted them up and rested them over her horn. She didn't see Zecora stop until she almost ran into the zebra, who stood in front of a skinny building on a narrow street with "The Veldvet Club" emblazoned over the doorway.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“A little slice of home,” Zecora said, “for zebras who roam.” Then she pushed the door open and slipped inside, leaving it open for Vinyl Scratch to follow. As the DJ crossed the threshold into the unknown, she passed a poster proclaiming tonight's music would be performed by the house band, Umbanda on the Run.

Inside, the atmosphere was the polar opposite of the Canterlot streets: cramped and hot, with wisps of smoke tinging the air and a muted, warm red light bathing the shadowy ponies, zebras, griffons, and other denizens of Equestia sitting at little round tables. Their eyes were fixed on the well-scuffed dance floor taking up the back half of the long, narrow room. The dancers stomped and writhed with almost unconscious joy. The dancing crowd was mostly zebras, though there were a hoofful of ponies too, and a lone Cloud Goblin who seemed to have abandoned the mischiefmaking his race was known for in favor of the dance. A dais stood in the center of the dance floor, which Vinyl thought was an unusual place for a stage. On it, a dozen zebra beat out a frantic, frenzied rhythm on all different kinds of drums that boomed in different timbres. Mixed in with them were other zebras shaking gourds, ringing bells, blowing horns made from tusks, and plucking harps and bowing one-stringed cellos that looked like archery bows. They all joined together in a ferocious, bass-heavy song, ripping primal music from their battered, homemade instruments. Vinyl's heart beat in time with it, and some feral beast stirred in her chest and flexed its claws.

Zecora led her to one of the little round tables. As they sat down, Vinyl tore her eyes away from the musicians and the ecstasy on their faces to glance at a clock: forty minutes until the recital. The rhythm both fascinated and revulsed her, and her eyes were drawn back to the musicians at the center of attention. Half of her longed for the abrupt time signature changes of dubstep, while the other half was slowly ensnared by the propulsive music, drawn deeper and deeper into it until it became everything. The heartbeat of the world.

“Zebras grow up with the pounding of these drums,” Zecora said with a slight smile, “from when we are born to when our song's done. We say it's the heartbeat of the world, since the day it was first whirled. It was set to spinning, in what we call the Rhyming. For though the stars twirl round and round, they always return to where they began, we found.”

The heartbeat of the world, Vinyl thought, stunned. She'd thought the exact same thing. It was almost like Zecora had read her mind.

“The universe gave us a beat so its song would feel complete," the zebra continued. "We give thanks to it most sublime by spending our lives speaking in rhyme. It helps give the song the completion it requires, and elevates those who sing it higher.”

“That's nuts, man,” said Vinyl, her awe growing as she thought about the Song from when she was a filly. She tapped her hoof to the beat to stave off the restlessness the music instilled in her. “What was that you were laying down before? About how us meeting here was a rhyme?”

The zebra's eyes left the band and settled on Vinyl Scratch, and she still had that secret smile on her lips. “As the lines of our songs stretch out before us, written by the universe in verse and chorus, we play along to its songlines divine, and sometimes it seems two lives rhyme. A chance meeting under a falling star, or two identical thoughts divided by distances far.”

“Songlines....is that some kinda zebra word for cutie marks? Discovering our true selves and following our destiny?”

“If you wish to call them so, I will not tell you 'no'.”

Zecora's eyes went back to the musicians on the bandstand. The horn players bellowed out a sustained note, and the raging beast in Vinyl's chest roared in response. The rhythm worked its way through her defenses and threatened to take her over. She shook violently and wondered what was wrong with her, that she would lose control so completely. Her eyes went to the shadowed faces of the other patrons, to see if the music was affecting them like it was her, but they merely watched with curious detachment and soaked up the exotic flavor.

“What's happening to me?” she whispered to herself, as the beast roared inside her and tried to tear its way free.

“If you feel the rhythm call to you," Zecora said, "then what it bids you should do."

The table rattled as Vinyl shot up forcefully and stood on unsteady hooves. Sweating and panting with the rhythm and the heat, she glanced over at Zecora in a panic.

“Go,” the zebra said with a nod.

Vinyl took a step towards the dance floor, then glanced back at Zecora again.

The zebra smiled. “Just so.”

Hesitantly, Vinyl lurched towards the dance floor. The music drowned out everything but itself as she approached the throng of wild, impulsive dancers. Even though she could see the other ponies in the crowd, she half hoped the zebras would refuse her and cast her back, as if to say 'this is zebra music!' She was scared of what would happen if she surrendered to it. But the dancers parted for her, and the beast within her roared in triumph.

The dancers swayed and swung wildly, though they looked like they were flailing around. Searching for the perfect movement that would unlock everything that was supposed to follow. But none of them had managed to find it yet and were stuck in place. Corralled, even. Vinyl was no slouch when it came to dancing, but as she joined the fray she also reined her movements in, resulting in a jerky, awkward, self-conscious jumble of a dance. Her mind was telling her this was foolish as it restrained the beast in her chest.

Bridling it, she realized, then just as quick she surmised what the beast was:

A horse.

She realized she was caught between her pony brain telling her she was a fool and her inner horse bucking to break free and run wild. The zebras' song was the song forged by the wild savanna, pure and unsullied by the castles and cities ponykind had built for itself. Vinyl felt torn between those two worlds. Ponies constructed civilizations to make order of their lives, but the wild savanna she'd never known had a natural order all its own. Neither order was better, but both were necessary, she suddenly knew. And the order of the savanna was much simpler, because it only asked one little thing of her: to run. The beat the drummers played wasn't just of the heart, it was also of the hooves, because to be a pony was to gallop without end. That was something Vinyl Scratch had consciously forgotten, but nopony can truly forget that. The heart knows it, even if the mind doesn't.

Vinyl had spent so long in the city that the pull of the drum was irresistable. She was out of balance, and her heart cried out for the simplicity of the run. Her mind tried to get her to break away and leave the dance floor, but the rhythm was too strong. It gripped her, body and soul, waiting for that one final leap of faith before she surrendered herself over.

So she did.

She gave in and let the music course through her. Her inner horse ripped free of the chains that had bound it, the chains of society, and it reared back and neighed in ecstasy. Her dance became likewise feral and free, and something unconscious. She was not even dancing, but rather she'd become the embodiment of the drums themselves. Her dance was wilder than any of the other dancers. And why not? Her inner horse had been chained up for much, much longer than any of theirs, until its fury to break free had become a raging tempest. As she shouldered through the crowd and started to run, they bowed to her wild abandon and followed her.

Her herd.

She knew then why the dance floor went around the dais: so they could run free.

The Cloud Goblin leapt out of their way; he was not made for running, so he'd have to find his own way.

As Vinyl's hooves hit the floor and her knees absorbed the shock and pumped to propel her forward, scattered images flashed through her head. They were not memories, as she had never experienced anything like them in her life, but they felt real nonetheless, though she couldn't say if they were cobbled together from her imagination or stemmed from a deeper source of knowledge entirely. In the real world she was in the Veldvet Club, true enough, but at the same time, in these flashes, she ran across dusty, grassy fields under endless blue skies, her nostrils filled with the scent of nature and the dust and dirt kicked up by her hooves.

And, for that night at least, she ran free and unfettered.

Vinyl had never run as fast or as hard as she did that night, and when the drummers beat their drums into a frenzied climax, the wild horse in her kicked and whinnied in the music's thrall. Then all at once the music stopped just when it reached its fever pitch, leaving only that final sustained note echoing through the small club. Slowly Vinyl's herd drifted apart. She came back to her senses and stood in the middle of the dance floor, her aching body giving a sigh of relief. As she heaved, she felt both deeply unsettled and yet also strangely at peace. Cleansed, almost. She had needed to run wild for a long time, but she hadn't acknowledged it until now.

“Wh—what happened to the music?” she asked.

One of the zebras on the stage smiled down at her. “Though we zebras love our dance, we still respect the ordinance, which says we can only play when, the clock is between six AM and ten.”

She'd missed Octavia's recital by an hour, but with the way the dance had consumed her, that didn't surprise her. What did surprise her was that she didn't seem to care. It seemed so irrelevant now that she'd learned there was this wild animal inside her. It may have slumbered again, but she knew it was there, just waiting for a chance to leap to life again. Every time she moved her legs, she'd have to live with the knowledge there was a wild horse bucking to break free. She had such ferocious power inside her. It terrified and thrilled her at the same time.

She walked slowly back to Zecora, who gave her a look of reserved approval. Vinyl Scratch saw the zebra anew; was that why Zecora was so relaxed and confident? Because she held regular communion with the wild horse inside her? Because she didn't wait until it was all-powerful and raging to break free to come into contact with it? Because she knew every corner and every facet of herself?

“Did you find what you were seeking, Vinyl Scratch?" Zecora asked. "Or is it still too far beyond your reach to catch?”

I found something alright, but it sure ain't what I was looking for.

Wordlessly, she slipped past the zebra, who didn't look put off in the slightest. Perhaps she knew there were times when a pony just needs silence. Vinyl slunk through the door and put her hooves back on the cobbles, then paused and lingered as the crowd streamed out of the Veldvet Club around her. She was the lone rock in the river, standing still while the water flowed around her.

Why was she standing still? Why wasn't she going with the flow? What was holding her back?

Even after she started moving, those questions occupied her mind on the long walk of shame to the Royal Canterlot Concert Hall. When she rounded the corner of the big stone building, she saw Octavia sitting on the steps with her head bowed. Vinyl's legs failed her and she stood rooted to the spot, watching her friend from afar. Probably an ex-friend by now.

Vinyl Scratch put a hoof forward to face the music when all of a sudden, with sudden savageness, she thought, How can she ever know about the wild horse inside me? What right does she have to judge me for freeing it? Or for freeing myself?

Just then, Octavia picked her head up and glanced around until her eyes fell on Vinyl. A world of accusation and vengeance seemed to be behind those big purple eyes. Vinyl shuffled over to the steps, utterly conscious of Octavia's eyes on her the whole way; her hoofbeats clopped loudly against the stones in the chilly late autumn air. Ten feet away, she stopped and stared across the gulf between them before offering a mumbled apology.

“Sorry, I, uh, lost track of time.”

Octavia's eyes narrowed slightly.

“I got lost, too,” Vinyl added, which was true enough. She'd found herself, though.

“I see,” Octavia said, her voice colder than the air.

Neither spoke, leaving the wind to fill the gulf between them.

“When I walked out on that stage,” Octavia declared suddenly, “I thought to myself, 'I know I won't make a mess of things because Vinyl's here, and I'll feel dreadful if I dragged her out here just to see me make a fool of myself'. But then I looked at the audience, and lo and behold, you were nowhere to be seen.” She bitterly laughed. “It wasn't even as if I could pretend I didn't see you. The hall was small, and there weren't more than a hundred ponies on hoof.” Octavia's gaze drifted away and settled on the distance. “I froze. Completely and utterly. It took me half a minute to work up the courage to go five bars, which is when I made my first mistake. But by no means was that the last one.”

Vinyl couldn't withstand the brunt of Octavia pointedly not staring at her. She glanced up at and admired the stone facade of the concert hall, with its columns and arches.

“I made an utter embarrassment of myself,” Octavia said.

“I'm sure it wasn't that bad,” Vinyl said.

Octavia barked a sneering, condescending laugh. “You're sure, are you? Well, if you'd bothered to show up you'd know for certain, wouldn't you?”

Without waiting for an answer Octavia pushed herself up and walked away, her cello case balanced on her back. Vinyl watched her go, still troubled by how relaxed she felt about all this. Almost like it didn't matter anymore. Her experience at the Veldvet Club had left her feeling energized and purified, and she didn't want to let go of that feeling. Vinyl was tired of living a life that was only half-lived.

As the last train to Ponyville wound its way through the darkness, Vinyl slumped against the wall and rested her head on the windowpane. She stared outside, seeing without seeing, as drowsiness stole over her and the rock of the train lulled her into slumberland. With a great effort, she shrugged off sleep and raised her head. She stared down the carriage at Octavia, sitting five rows away. Octavia caught her staring and pointedly turned her head away with an inaudible harumph. Vinyl couldn't keep her own head up any longer and let it drop. It thumped against the window, but the dull pain didn't bother her much.

The Friendship Express rounded a curve and burst into the moonlight. Vinyl stared up at the craggy face of the moon and in her half-asleep stupor fancied she could see the princess of the night staring back at her.

As Vinyl yawned, she thought, I bet Princess Luna knows what I'm going through....

“Help me!” the colt cried. His strained yelp echoed through the pitch black labyrinth.

Hold on, I'm coming, Vinyl thought. She stumbled over dusty earthen stone littered with rocks. From ahead shone the faint glimmer of light. Where the colt was, there the light would be as well, she knew with absolute conviction. She had to get to the light and the colt, and couldn't let anything stop her.

“Who trespasses in my world?” growled the low voice of the labyrinth's guardian, a dark figure who blocked the light and barred her way.

Impulses surged through Vinyl's brain, and at the forefront a terrified urge to run from danger and never stop. But a new impulse was there as well, something that had slept in her for so long, something wild and feral. It was the mental image of an untamed horse, kicking and bucking as it made heroic battle against those who would do it harm. Snarling, Vinyl embraced that image and readied herself to charge and run the guardian down. Spurred on by the plaintive cries of the oppressed colt, she kicked against the ground and started galloping. When she locked horns with the guardian and threw it to the ground, however, she got a terrible shock. Faint light from deep in the catacombs fell onto its face, which she saw was her own. Terrified, she realized the guardian she was struggling against was herself, and it was leering at her. A sharp, squealing pain ripped through her head, like her mind was putting on the brakes....

Vinyl awoke with a start as the train pulled into Ponyville Station. Her head snapped every which way, caught between dream and reality, although reality was winning the tug-of-war. The dream had already started to fade, all except the terrible image of herself as her own worst enemy.

It was just a dream, Vinyl. That's all. Just a dream.

4. CITRINITAS

“[To Adorno,] only avant-garde art and music may preserve the truth by capturing the reality of human suffering.”
-Wikipedia, Frankfurt School

The synthesizer's keys were no kinder to Vinyl Scratch than Octavia. As her hooves sloppily worked the ebony and ivory, the confused jumble of sounds jagged on her ears. No doubt her roommate would have said there was no difference between the musical mess she was making and dubstep, but Vinyl dismissed the imagined slight with a snort. It took skill to craft something so artfully dissonant. But the skill had deserted her now, and every melody or rhythm she attempted to conjure seemed so off, so amateurish, so fundamentally wrong it was just as much of a slap in the face as Octavia slamming her bedroom door in Vinyl's face when she'd tried to apologize again, right after they'd got back.

Maybe I deserve this, Vinyl thought, finishing off her fifth bottle of cider. Is this my punishment?

No! I—I didn't do anything wrong. Well, I broke my promise, but what happened at the Veldvet Club, I needed that. I did. It....helped me. I think.

She fiddled around with a bassline she'd been working on and managed to keep it going for two measures before her hoof slipped. She yelled and slammed her forelegs down on the keyboard repeatedly, but the blessed relief through violence didn't come; instead, it just added to her frustration. She threw her empty cider bottle at the wall. The glass burst into pieces, but that didn't help her either. Hunched over the keyboard and breathing heavily, she thought, I'm my own worst enemy.

She shook her head. It's not my fault! It's the Song. If—if it hadn't vanished into thin air, then I could listen to it and I wouldn't be feeling like this.

Vinyl pushed herself away from the keyboard and went to her phonograph. She slipped a record onto the turntable and magicked the needle atop it. Dubstep burst out of the speaker, and Vinyl cranked the volume to the max. She didn't care about Octavia's sleep, she decided. The snooty little aristocrat could rot, for all she cared. Vinyl convinced herself it was Octavia's fault she couldn't accept a simple apology.

As the wubs shattered the silent night, Vinyl thrashed in time to the stabbing, juddering mid-range bass beat. It was such a tortured sound that it kindled a kinship with the ache in her soul. She had heard that misery loves company, so the same must be true of anger. As she tried to lose herself in the tortured soundscape, she silently willed Octavia to barge in and tell her to turn the music down. Vinyl was looking forward to sharing a few choice words with her roommate. But Octavia stayed shut up in her room. Eventually Vinyl's legs couldn't support her anymore, so she collapsed into bed and slipped away into a heavy sleep.

As the guardian of the labyrinth, still wearing Vinyl Scratch's face, lumbered out of the darkness, Vinyl herself turned tail and fled. Faint glimmers of light reflected off the stone walls, growing stronger the further she ran, but at the same time the colt's plaintive cries for help grew ever more distant. Somewhere in the maze was a weapon Vinyl could wield to fend off the guardian, if only she could find it. But she didn't have a moment's rest to search; no matter how fast she galloped down the corridors, the guardian's steady, measured pace somehow kept her right at Vinyl's tail.

Vinyl rounded a corner, only to run smack into a dead end. Her heart leapt into her throat as she twisted around and glimpsed the guardian lurching from out of the shadows towards her; the darkness seemed to follow in the guardian's wake.

“You think you can run from me?” the dark mare asked.

Vinyl Scratch looked around wildly for a way out, and her eyes chanced upon a door flush with the wall she'd missed. It was the same color as the stone and had some kind of circular emblem carved onto it. She dived for the handle and pushed it down just as the guardian reached out to grab Vinyl. Once she bursh through the door, she powered into it and slammed it shut before the guardian could dart through.

A podium stood in the center of the room, glowing against the darkness. Resting on a velvet cushion atop it were the Elements of Harmony, in the form of a single tiara with five gems and a sixth empty space over the center gem. My sword and shield, she thought, with which I fight the darkness. She couldn't quite say why those popped into her head, they seemed to fit the situation perfectly, as sure as a key fits into its matched lock. She rushed to the alighted podium, took the tiara, and placed it upon her brow just as the guardian and her darkness burst into the room. Vinyl felt courage and bravery and the sheer, indescribable power of laughter course through her.

“You wanna dance?” Vinyl asked, twirling to face her doppelganger. “Then let's go, but when I whoop ya, try not to slip on all your blood on the dance floor.”

She nimbly skirted around the guardian, getting into the fleet-hooved groove of combat like a boxer. The fantastic and otherworldly light of the Elements representing the harmony and the balance of the world was with her and in her, driving her actions with an almost unearthly and unerring power.

The scowling guardian merely revolved slowly in place as Vinyl circled her.

Grinning, Vinyl tapped into the spark of light inside her body and let the magic of the Elements and the universe itself flow through her. A rainbow of light exploded from her tiara and powered across the room. She braced herself by digging her hooves into the stone floor, which just barely stopped her from being blown backwards by the force. The rainbow consumed the guardian and the darkness both until not a single iota of the room was not of the light. It filled every corner until it was all that was, like peering through a gap in the world and into a realm wholly made of light. Then, little by little, it started to fade, not because it was exhausted, but simply because it wore on her. She couldn't keep such power streaming through her forever. Bit by bit the glow ebbed until the room became distinct again--

The guardian, completely and totally unharmed, powered forward and knocked Vinyl to the ground. Leering, she knelt down and wrapped her forelegs around Vinyl's neck. She sneered, “How could such an unbalanced little unicorn like you even think you could use the forces of balance against me? What a foal!”

Vinyl gasped for air in the dark labyrinth, but it was no use. Her knees gave out and she was sinking down, down, down....

Vinyl Scratch fell out of bed, nursing a splitting migraine. She sat on the floor as the world spun around her and the walls wobbled in and out of focus. She slitted her eyes against the sunlight pouring through the window until she made out the hands on the clock, which pointed to a quarter to nine.

Man, there's too much light, she thought. What's a mare gotta do to get the powers that be to cut back on it?

She racked and flayed her brain until it spat out under duress her itinerary for the day, though it protested loudly at the pure torture of being forced to think. She didn't have any gigs that she could remember. So, for lack of anything better to do, she sat heavily in front of her keyboard and magicked it to life. Staring at the keys, she stretched until her shoulder blades cracked while she brooded on the itching emotion brewing in her mind that she wanted to pour out into her music. She worked her hooves over the keys while singing atop the meaty chords and smooth chord progression:

“Too much light, gotta get away--”

She stopped. The sound was so mainstream it hurt, though the hangover probably had something to do with that. She stared at the keys again, her thoughts twisting and turning as they charted the course of her next musical voyage. All she could settle on was that there were rough seas ahead. After a few minutes' thought, she settled on a lurching, lumbering tempo with fits of frantic and frenzied fills. It was so hard and heavy and brutal, she couldn't help but love it--

As the fog of sleep lifted, an image from her dreams flitted into her mind, an image of her battling with herself. It was the same thing she'd dreamed on the train home. That image froze her hooves over the keys, though she couldn't say why.

What does it mean? she thought, shaking. And does it have something to do with why I lost control of myself last night? She suddenly remembered Twilight Sparkle and Rarity talking about dreams at the Apple gig a few days ago. What was that book called? Sparkle will probably have it at the Golden Oaks Library, I bet.

She turned off the keyboard, a little more frightened of it than she had been, and left her room. When she walked into the kitchen Octavia pointedly walked out, leaving her half-eaten lunch on the table. Vinyl helped herself to it while brewing some coffee, then sat at the table and stared at the wall. Her thoughts went to the Song she couldn't remember, and the morning seemed a little grayer and less vibrant. As she'd thought a million times before, she wondered why the mind that had once created it hadn't even come close to conjuring it again. Just a simple string of notes, yet they unlocked the key to filling the world with joy--

Again, that image of Vinyl fighting with herself broke into her head. Did her dreams have something to do with it?

She promised herself she would find out.

“Hi!” the smiling Twilight Sparkle said as she looked up from a scroll on the table. “Can I help you find something?”

“Naw, I'm good,” Vinyl replied, waving a hoof as she shied past her. “I wanted to check out the books on music, uh....-ology.”

“Why, certainly. Right this way.” The purple unicorn led her to a shelf and gestured with a flourish.

“Awesome. Thanks.”

Vinyl nodded to let Twilight know she was good to go, but the purple unicorn stayed put and smiled, ready to be of service. Vinyl gave a half-hearted smile in return and walked close to the shelf. Her eyes went over the spines, but she didn't pay any attention to them; all she felt was the librarian's eyes on the back of her head.

“Uh, busy day?” Vinyl asked off-hoofedly as she magically pulled a book out and pretended to look at the cover.

“Oh, I wish. It's been so slow I decided to work on some mathematics, and now I can't figure out these chords.”

Vinyl paused. “What?”

“A chord. It's a straight line that connects two points on a circle's circumference.”

“Oh. I thought you meant, like, a music chord.”

Twilight shrugged. “Music is based on math. If you know the right equations, you can make any kind of music you want.” She magicked a book, The O.J. Chorale and Other Masterpieces, from the shelf and made it hover in front of Vinyl. “Black Baytoven was deaf, yet he could still write some of the most beautiful music because he knew the math behind the notes.” She turned to the shelf and rummaged through it. “Let's see what else we've got here that might help you....”

Vinyl took the opportunity to glance at Twilight's scroll on the table, which was scrawled with complicated-looking math equations. No wonder she's so eager to help, Vinyl thought. I'd want to get away from this stuff too. She saw a diagram of interlocking circles that looked like planets, and had these 'chords' things connecting different points on the circumferences. One circle caught Vinyl's eye. Something about it seemed so familiar. It had a line going straight down the middle, and the two end points at the top and bottom were connected by three chords in a 'Z'-shape, filling the circle. She frowned, trying to remember where she'd seen the symbol before. Then her eyes fell on a battered, well-hoofed little black book lying next to the scroll. Mare and Her Symbols, by Doctor Pieasov Mind.

That's it, she thought.

She turned back to Twilight Sparkle, who was finishing up her scouring of the bookshelves. “I think that should just about do it,” the purple pony said, magically levitating a a stack of books taller than Vinyl was. “Anything else I can help you find?”

“Uh, yeah. Lately I've been feeling my beats are kinda lacking. Do you have anything I can get some mad awesome ideas from? I dunno, a book about dreams and, uh....symbolicalism? I heard....from a friend....about this trippy book called Mare and Her Symbols.”

The other unicorn's eyes flitted to the book on the table, then back to Vinyl Scratch's face. “Well, I, uh....of course.” She walked to the table, sighed wistfully, and levitated Mare and Her Symbols atop the pile. “Anything else?” she asked, struggling to hide her disappointment.

Vinyl shouldered the burden of lifting the books. Gritting her teeth with the effort, she said, “Naw, man, I'm good.”

“Right, then let me check these out and you'll be good to go.”

I hope so, Vinyl Scratch thought.

'During our evolution, our higher brain functions were built atop earlier, more primitive mental structures. These structures are the source of instinct. When we are frightened, we feel the urge to flee or, if circumstances demand it, fight. These urges happen without happening. They are hardwired into our minds and bodies, an automatic process akin to breathing. We can only attempt to hold the reins. We are riders, traveling in bodies with eons of evolution guiding them, and these gleaming cities we have constructed for ourselves are strange and alien to them.

'Yet despite that some ponies have adapted to the social alienation they represent marvelously. Canterlot high society, for one, who fancy themselves more advanced than any other form of life. As a former part of those circles myself, so did I. Yet when I traveled the most rural and remote parts of the world I most certainly did not see anypony paying to be psychoanalyzed for neuroses and petty inferiority complexes. In my naivete, I left to study the 'primitive' mind and ended up discovering only the startling lack of my own knowledge about myself.

'Before the advent of money and social structures, we equines evolved in voluntary, cooperative herds guided by a principle of mutual aid against a world in which we were prey. Our deepest unconscious instincts demand this state of free social confluence. Yet after we tamed and gentrified this world, the instincts that once generated our solidarity have gone awry. In the absence of predatory animals, some ponies misidentify their fellow equines as predators attempting to destroy their livelihood to justify their unconscious fear. These ersatz herds, such as the Canterlot elite, become isolated and insular, shutting themselves off from the richness of the pony experience even as they are convinced of their own superiority, causing a fundamental schism in both our society and ourselves.

'Civilization, it seems, is both our blessing and our curse, a testament to our technical ingenuity and a wasteland of stifling social structures. But what is to be done about this devastating modern condition? The answer is that we must recognize these unconscious impulses. Drag them into the light of our conscious observation and dissect how they guide us wrong, so that we may overcome them and safely and rationally find an outlet for them. We mustn't abolish our cities, but the mindset of our cities. In Canterlot we must recreate the world at large: a place of anarchic passion, free expression, and natural harmony.

'But what will guide us out of the wasteland? We must turn to the archetypes, the motifs and symbols that recur time and again in our fantasies and arts and dreams, even in civilizations far removed. They are the psychic counterparts of instinct. Unchanging and eternal, they speak without speaking. They unconsciously communicate with the spark of light within us and lead the way for its wholeness and integration with the herd of ponykind. They are our lodestars, our guides in our journey, and it is our shared heritage as equines from whence these primordial symbols come.

'I, in Equestria, and a zebra on the savanna may be worlds removed, yet when we independently look at a circle we both compare it to the archetype of a circle we mentally share: an umblemished, unbroken, perfect, self-complete arc. We both see a representation of wholeness. More complex kinds of archetypes reveal themselves in our life experiences, signifying mental constructs that govern how ponies interpret and order events. As we mature, experiences accrue until we realize we are on a kind of personal voyage to discover who we are, to gain not only our cutie marks but the identity they symbolize. We long for this completeness of identity. We create our own personal stories, populated by wise old men and tricksters and villains, all the while mythologizing our struggle to return to our fundamental nature, our state of natural wholeness and harmony. In their own eyes, everypony is the hero of their own myth.'

Vinyl Scratch sat up and reread that last sentence more carefully. 'Everypony is the hero of their own myth,' she thought. So what's my myth about?

She put the book down and stretched. 'An enlightening journey into the mind of the modern pony,' a book review quoted on the back cover declared, 'drawing inspiration from ancient myths, the pioneers of the Varnetian Academy, and modern scientific understanding. Doctor Mind writes with a refreshingly straightforward voice to help non-professionals understand his life's work.' It was true. She was no professional, yet she'd lain on her bed reading it for two hours straight, hoping it would trigger some magic insight about her troubling dreams. But despite what the blurb said, some of the wording was still hard to wrap her mind around. For the moment, she needed a break.

It was around noon, so she went to the front door to check the mailbox. She levitated the bundle of letters inside and spread them out on the kitchen table. While rummaging through them, to her surprise she found a letter addressed to her from Hoofbeats. Opening it up, she read:

'Dear Miss Scratch, we are writing to inform you that there has been a last minute cancellation in our annual Best Young DJ competition line-up. We're pleased to say we now have an opening. Since your application was the last one taken off the shortlist, you have been bumped up to a finalist. We're aware this is very short notice, but the slot is yours if you want it. Don't bother replying, as we won't receive your response in time. Just show up at the club and present this letter. Hope to see you there, Management.'

What the....? Vinyl turned the letter over, then checked in the envelope, looking for something that would explain. Suddenly, she thought, Octavia.

She headed down the hallway and pushed open the door to Octavia's room, where the gray mare was practicing her cello. She didn't shout, or scowl, or even deign to notice Vinyl Scratch, not until the DJ magicked the letter in front of Octavia's face and waved it around furiously.

“What's all this about?” Vinyl asked.

The cellist kept playing while she calmly but acidly said, “Oh, sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I must have lost track of time.”

Vinyl Scratch scowled as her blood pressure ratcheted up.

Condescendingly, Octavia explained, “When I last went to Manehattan, to see about getting an audition with a string quartet represented by Oceanic Musique, I saw a flyer and I signed you up. As a favor.”

“You didn't tell me anything about that.”

Octavia spat, “I didn't want you to be disappointed if you didn't make the cut. I didn't expect them to get back to you this late.”

Vinyl Scratch was torn in half: one part of her felt bad about repaying Octavia's kindness with missing her recital; the other side was pissed Octavia hadn't told her anything.

Her angry side won.

“You know what this means? The competition is tomorrow night, and I don't have anything good enough for that place. So now I have one night to come up with a worthy song!”

Octavia's cello bow scratched the strings. She parted them and asked, “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Vinyl snapped. “What's it to you?”

“Oceanic called me back for an audition. It's also tomorrow night. In Manehattan.”

'Sometimes it seems two lives rhyme,' Vinyl recalled in a moment of stunned apprehension, though she took pains to keep her face an icy mask. 'A chance meeting under a falling star, or two identical thoughts divided by distances far.'

“....are you going?” Vinyl asked finally.

“Of course I'm going,” Octavia snapped. “I haven't had a steady job in months." With a sneer, she added, "I'm just lucky they called me back before they heard about my disastrous recital." The one you ruined, her tone implied should be affixed to the end of the sentence. "Oh, they'll probably be expecting me to make an absolute mess of things the moment I walk on stage. What am I going to do? How can I ever impress them now?"

“Have you tried playing music from this century?” Vinyl sniped.

Snout raised high, Octavia ignored the jab and collected herself with a steadying breath. “And that's leaving aside the question of how to get there. I barely have enough money for train tickets. And there isn't a return train until the next day. I haven't a clue how I'm going to pay for a hotel room.”

Vinyl grumbled. She may have been angry with Octavia, but she wasn't angry enough to sabotage her roommate's chances at landing a gig. Not yet, anyway. “We could share one,” she said, injecting her voice with what she hoped was the appropriate amount of distaste. “If you want.”

Octavia kept her snout in the air. “....it would be for the best, I suppose.”

Vinyl said, “Well, as long as that's settled....”

She turned on her hoof, blew through the door, and let it swing shut behind her. As soon as she was out in the hallway, she heard the scratch of strings through the wall as Octavia took up her cello again and bowed a few notes. Then it ended as abruptly as it had started, dissolving into a frustrated gnash of strings. Vinyl Scratch, her stomach twisting, walked away.

Flaming daggers prickled Vinyl's eyes, but she leaned over the synthesizer regardless and plodded onwards. She had long ago crossed the frontier into an unknown soundscape, and struggled to find her way back without a map. Here a hill, there a vale, and everywhere the discarded fragments of sheet music she'd torn up, all for the crime of being unworthy of one of Equestria's premiere nightclubs and the home of dubstep on the east coast.

And tomorrow she had to play there. It made her want to cry.

The hours whiled away towards sunrise as the mountain of shredded sheet music grew taller. Nothing sounded right, nothing. She tried her hardest to capture the raw power of dubstep, the mash-up of slow and fast and the brutal, unstoppable mid-range beat. But no matter what she came up with, it wasn't hard enough, it wasn't dangerous enough, and it wasn't....wasn't underground enough. It was too slick and smooth and mainstream. They'd laugh her out of Hoofbeats if she tried that.

And for some reason, whenever she listened to her current composition, what came to her mind was the circular chord diagram she'd seen in Twilight Sparkle's library. She doodled it on the sheet, but no matter how hard she stared at it and ransacked her brains she couldn't remember where she'd seen it before.

A rooster took to crowing by the time she'd come up with something halfway workable and hastily scribbled the first title that came to mind and sounded halfway fitting for the song's serpentine sound. The sheet music in front of her was etched with so many corrections, alterations, and revisions it resembled a battered, age-worn treasure map, but it was a start.

She only hoped there would be some gold at the finish.

5. RUBEDO

“Well, the sun one day will leave us all behind
Unexplainable sightings in the sky
Well, I hate to be the one to ruin the night
Right before your, right before your eyes”
-AWOLNation, Kill Your Heroes

"The knights of infinity are dancers and possess elevation."
-Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

The Friendship Express running the Manehattan line rocked on its rails, tempting Vinyl Scratch away to dreamland, but the strung-out DJ was too wired from coffee and nerves to surrender to the dark and let what lay in her dreams take custody of her. Instead, she propped Mare and Her Symbols open on the train seat in front of her. She made an enormous effort to focus her itchy, unruly eyes on the little black and white signs, representing the words Equestrians communally used to convey meaning. Often she had to go back and reread when she realized she'd spaced out and hadn't comprehended great swathes of text, but she didn't care; she had plenty of time to waste and only dark, troubling thoughts to occupy her.

While absorbing the book, she had become a bit brain-blown simply trying to comprehend the basic process of translating written words into a string of sounds on a fundamental level. The book opened her eyes to that; each letter had only an arbitrary associations with the sound her vocal cords made. What tied one sound to one shape? Nothing but a collective, unconscious agreement. One thing was not like the other, yet in her mind they became the same. And language had its own basis in mathematics, just like music. A string of words were given a rigid internal logic and made to produce a particular meaning, an emotional or informational sum total in the mind of the listener or reader. And all of this was going on without a pony even realizing it, under their conscious thoughts. It was like Vinyl was stripping away the veneer covering the mundane world and seeing how it really, truly worked. It gave her a sense of comfort, even power, to possess that knowledge.

“Everypony is the hero of their own myth,” she mumbled to herself.

So what's my myth about? she thought.

I'm on a quest, she replied, as if it were common sense. To become the greatest dubstep DJ in all Equestria.

How does that make me a hero?

Well....

She couldn't think of anything. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep, but her mind was blank. She was so weary now. If anything, she felt less like a hero and more like a wanderer. A pilgrim out on the cold road, longing for the warm comforts of home. She flipped to the index and saw that, indeed, "The Seeker" was one of the character archetypes mentioned in the book.

I'm seeking fame with dubstep music, and that makes me heroic? Fine by me, but how do I reach the end of my quest?

The book, it seemed, held all the answers: 'In our fairy tales, the archetype of the dragon is omnipresent as an agent for catharsis. This beast acts as a symbolic representation of the wild, untamed unconscious mind common to all ponies. But conversely, the beast is at the same time our opposite. As our ancestors, wild horses, were quick to flee from predators, the dragon will instinctively fight to protect its treasure horde. Thus, it represents both us and not-us at the same time.'

Vinyl thought, Someone should tell that to the little dragon who's always following at Twilight Sparkle's hooves. She chuckled to herself.

'The dragon functions as a guardian of the destination or object that is the goal of the quest and offers the heroine or hero a chance to surmount the 'final test', an ultimate challenge to the skills, powers, and emotional maturity they have acquired in their journey. By winning the challenge they tame the dragon and bind it to their will, just as the fully developed pony will tame their unconscious mind and bring it into balance with their conscious self. Of course the archetypical dragon need not be an actual dragon, although that is by far the most popular, given their otherworldly nature, relative rarity, and our instinctual repulsion and aversion to its reptilian form, which can only be tempered by our rational higher thoughts.'

So before I finish my quest, I have to defeat the dragon. Great. So, what does a dragon guarding the gates of dubstep fame look like? Is it one of the other bands? The competition itself? What?

But the book just went on to say myths are made by the mythmakers, and 'their elements cannot be codified as some kind of list, from which we can pick and choose the essentials and derive some sort of universal meaning from them. The symbols we use to express ourselves as as much a part of us as they are of the world we live in.'

Vinyl sighed loudly, taking the opportunity to lift her goggles and rub her eyes.

Octavia had so far spent the entire journey sitting across from Vinyl without uttering a sound, but she finally broke and said, in a particularly snooty and condescending manner, “I never took you for such an avid reader.”

As Vinyl Scratch buried herself in the book again she replied, “Never found a book that interested me like this one.”

“Don't get so wrapped up in reading you forget to go to your little competition,” Octavia said coldly, her every word a dagger.

“I'll be sure not to,” Vinyl muttered, struggling to keep a lid on her anger.

By the time the sky grew dark, Vinyl's eyes watered so bad the words became an incoherent mess. The irresistible rock and roll of the carriage rolling on its rails cooed to her about the wonders of sleep, but Vinyl refused the call. She jumped to her legs, ignoring Octavia's stare, and wandered down the aisle. She walked along the train until she came to the very rear, threw the door open, and stepped out onto the rear balcony. The air rushing past was tainted by the salty smell of the sea, a brisk and briny scent that filled her nostrils. The wind whipped her spiky blue locks in front of her eyes and made them twist in the wind.

She stared back the way she'd come, and the path that had led her here. Everything was moving so fast now, and it frightened her, especially the way the sun was setting directly atop the place she'd come from. The gathering darkness was swarming towards it, ready to swallow it up.

The rhythm of the chugging train spoke to her, and she absently whistled a melancholy melody on top of it as her thoughts wandered to the dome of stars overhead, divided between the fire and the darkness. Suddenly, she froze. It had been the Song, she was utterly convinced. She'd whistled it without even realizing it. But no matter how hard she tried to remember the notes she'd just whistled, she found her memory lacking.

It was two seconds ago!

But it was a blur, perhaps from the long hours without sleep, or maybe....

Maybe I still remember it, deep down, she thought, her heart fluttering. Maybe something doesn't want me to remember how it goes.

That's crazy. Why wouldn't I want to? I've spent my whole life trying to remember how it goes!

As she started to panic, a dizzy spell struck her full-force, making the world gray out. As she swooned she grabbed the railing to stop from sinking to her knees. The dizziness, at least, she could be sure was from the lack of sleep.

“Vinyl,” a voice said.

“What?!” she snapped.

She wheeled around to find Octavia standing in the doorway of the carriage, stunned into silence. Then she backed away, one hoof daintily lifted off the ground. Her face hardened into a mask of supreme condescension.

The cellist said, “Well, if you're going to be so rude--”

“Well, hey, I guess what goes around comes around, eh, Octavia?"

“Why, I never--!”

“--had a record deal? With that attitude, no surprise." Although Vinyl didn't wholly understand the book yet, it gave her a sudden and beautiful insight into what was going on in her roommate's head. The DJ wielded her tongue like a sword to cut to the heart of the matter. There would be no quarter tonight, because she found she'd run out of mercy. "Though the awful music you play probably doesn't help. You wanna sit back and snipe at me, all because dubstep is the future of music, be my guest. I know what this is: you're jealous of me, so you try and bring me down to make up for how pathetic you secretly think you are. Well, keep playing your little violin, and we'll see where it gets you, huh?”

Tears brimmed in Octavia's eyes, but the sight of the prissy pony cut down to size was nectar to the DJ, even as a part of her loathed herself for reveling in her spiteful satisfaction. Before Octavia could come up with something to say, Vinyl Scratch shoved her way past the cellist. But as she blew through the door and into the rocking train car, she asked herself if she was running from Octavia, or her own self.

She couldn't come up with an answer to that.

A bleary-eyed Vinyl waited at the door of the carriage as the train rolled to a stop, the steps flush with the floor of the Manehattan platform. As the conductor threw the door open, he hollered, “End of the line!” Vinyl climbed down the steps and walked alongside the train until she came to the luggage compartment where her equipment was stashed, magicked it open, and lifted her cart out and onto the platform. She was aware of Octavia standing nearby, but did nothing to acknowledge her presence. The open gate leading to the city called out to Vinyl, whispering for her to merrily scarper off and leave Octavia behind. That would show her, she thought. But in the end, she refused to give in to the spite generated by her untamed horse instincts. She had to master her instinctual self, after all. Emotional maturity, and all that. So she secured her wagon around her middle and walked past the cellist.

“If you're coming,” she said gruffly, “come on.”

By the time they arrived at their hotel room it was six o'clock, giving Octavia plenty of time to wallow in sullen silence while Vinyl went over the battered copy of sheet music holding her hopes and dreams. Octavia got out her cello and started to play; each and every screech ratcheted Vinyl's already frazzled nerves up into the stratosphere. She tried to focus on the notation, but hers was an ache that went down into her bones. Every thrum of the cello strings twisted the knife in deeper.

“Can you stop that?!” she snapped.

“As you may recall, I am supposed to give an audition,” Octavia said stiffly.

Half from a desire to practice her music, and half from a flurry of overwhelming, uncontrollable spite, Vinyl set up her synthesizer. She cracked her neck, glared at the defiant Octavia, then hit the button that'd start the backing track she'd programmed into it. The beats came through the amp as hard and heavy as they could with the volume turned down to 2. Her stuttering, brutal gated lead quickly drowned out the cello's screeching and all that annoying old music that sounded the same to Vinyl. In response, Octavia really laid into the strings, and its sharp squeal was like a flaming poker in Vinyl's ears. Turning the volume on the amp up and up, she pounded on the keys harder.

I'll show her what real music sounds like.

They fought for dominance of the room's soundscape, creating a neverending cycle of clashing notes and migraine-inducing disharmony. But Octavia refused to back down and acknowledge Vinyl was right, so the DJ was forced to keep at it until somepony from the hotel knocked on their door and asked them to either stop playing or leave. Vinyl glared daggers at Octavia for getting her into trouble; she had no doubt Octavia thought the same, even though it was completely Octavia's fault for wanting to annoy Vinyl with all that cello screeching.

Vinyl had just finished downing her third cup of coffee from the complimentary coffee maker when she checked the clock and saw it was time to go. Magically dragging her wagon through the door behind her, she called, “When you fail, I hope you don't screw up too bad.”

Before Octavia could answer, Vinyl Scratch slammed the door. As she went down the hallway, she grinned to herself.

The irresistible pounding of some of the heaviest dubstep Vinyl had ever heard rocked the street under her hooves. A sign sticking out of the first floor of a five-story building glowed neon red, emblazoned with the words 'Hoofbeats'. Below it, a line of ponies stretched away from the unassuming brick facade of the nightclub. Their manes were as crazy as her own, and many wore wild sunglasses or goggles. Glowsticks were everywhere, and bobbed up and down in the dark like the lightcones ponies use to guide airships on the landing strip. The whole scene was like a runway, and to Vinyl's eyes it seemed like she was coming home to her people at last. She swaggered up to the husky bouncer and magically lifted her acceptance letter up where he could read it. After scowling at it for a moment, he nodded slightly and stepped aside so she could enter. Inside it was dark and hot, reminding her of the Veldvet Club. But whereas the music at the zebra joint had been a primal work of irresistable propulsion, here it gained power from its juddering defiance to offer anything so smooth and fluid an experience. It was almost frustrating in a way, and that made it all the more powerful.

She skirted the moshing crowd and approached a hanging sign with “BEST YOUNG DJ APPLICANTS” on it. Once the staff saw her letter they waved her through a door into a cream-colored waiting room crowded with other competitors. She set her equipment down and poured herself a coffee from the machine. It went down her gullet and settled in her stomach, which itched for just a little more, to settle her nerves. But she resisted; she didn't want to go overboard and reach the point where caffeine would put her to sleep.

A pony from the club with a clipboard approached her and asked for her invitation, then her name.

“DJ-P0N3,” she replied.

“Hometown?”

After briefly considering the truth, that she was from the sticks, Vinyl lied and said, “Fillydelphia.”

“You're number 23. Remember that.”

Vinyl nodded, and the pony moved off and asked the same question of a pony so young he was nearly a colt, with green hair in upright spikes and a shredded, stained white shirt. When prompted for his name, he replied with “DJ”, followed by an animal and then a very rude word. Vinyl spied a patch on his saddlebag that declared “I hate everypony!”

When she moved off, bobbing her head to the muffled dubstep, the walls closed in around her and the crowded room started to wear on her. Her hooves stumbled, and she leaned heavily on her wagon. She thought she was too wired to sleep, but nonetheless felt the dark chasm of sleep opening wide to engulf her. She pledged to stay standing to ward it off. It was only a momentary dizzy spell, she told herself. Soon it would pass, and she'd be good to go until the competition ended.

Her hooves slipped a little bit and she slid down the wall slightly, but she shook her head and regained her footing....for a little while, anyway. But the tireless hands of sleep were not stilled for long, and they made a move to snatch her again. She staggered through the throng for the coffee machine and poured another cup, but as she feared, once her tongue and throat stopped burning the coffee only made her drowsier. Trudging across the room, another pony accidentally bumped her and drove her off-balance and onto a couch. She struggled to stand up, but it was no use; the makeshift bed had it talons in her and was dragging her down.

Through the twisting and turning labyrinth, Vinyl Scratch ran. The Elements of Harmony hung uselessly on her head, jostling with every stride she took, until she tripped on a loose stone and the tiara flew off. It clattered on the ground behind her, but in her blind panic she got back up and kept running. It was useless anyway. What was the point?

“Help!” she called, but there wasn't anyone else in the maze but the colt, the one she was supposed to be rescuing. Some heroine she was.

Behind her, she heard the hooves of the other Vinyl Scratch hitting the ground. The guardian of the labyrinth was coming for her. As before, her pace was measured, yet she still somehow kept stride with Vinyl. No matter which way Vinyl ran, the darkness deepened. Of course it would; the light had been from the Elements of Harmony, and she'd lost them. Not that they'd worked, anyway. Now she would die in this shadowy maze, just another pilgrim who'd fallen by the wayside, never to reach her destination.

“Help me!” the colt's cry echoed.

When Vinyl galloped around the next corner, she realized she couldn't hear the guardian's hooves anymore. Slowing to a trot, she glanced back. She was alone. Heaving for breath, she looked around for anything useful, but all she noticed was the repeated motif of Twilight Sparkle's chord diagram carved into the damp stone walls mortared by earth; again, it looked familiar, but she hardly had time to think where she'd seen it before. The light was nearly gone now. How long would she be lost in darkness, she wondered? How much longer must her journey go on for? How much farther must she go? All she wanted was to rest, because she was so tired now. If she turned back, would she find her home? Or was her home her destination, and the wilderness behind her?

She didn't know. All she knew was that she was lost, and she needed somepony to help her find her way out.

“Hello, Vinyl.”

The DJ reared back so fast her head hit the low ceiling and rained dribs and drabs of dirt down. As she grayed out her legs buckled, and she sank to the hard stone floor. She raised her eyes as the princess of the night stepped from the shadows, carrying herself with a slow, graceful regality. Her horn glowed with an ethereal light.

“Still in the dark, I see,” Luna said.

Sprawled out on the ground, Vinyl lifted her head and then cocked it. “I never even thought....”

“To cast an illumination spell?” the princess asked, her voice overflowing with infinite wisdom and grace. “It seems obvious now, of course, but in the heat of the moment such things often have a way of escaping us. Especially in dreams, for dreams have a logic that is not of the physical world."

“Am I dreaming?”

Luna nodded. “For some time now I have heard you crying out for help in your sleep, night after night, begging to be freed from this dungeon you've built for yourself.”

“Save me,” Vinyl pleaded.

“I cannot do that. Though these motifs repeat throughout all ponykind, you are the one who has constructed this place from them. Everything contained in here is yours and yours alone. However, as an outsider I can shine a light, so to speak.”

“Shine a light on what?”

“On you. There is so much we cannot see about ourselves, as I myself once learned, to my eternal regret...." She lowered her head, her face etched with grief. "....and the regret of all Equestria, unfortunately.”

Vinyl picked herself up and dusted herself off. “What can't I see?”

Luna shook her head. “That's for you to discover. As I mentioned, I can only shine a light on it. Do you see the contradiction yet? Because that is the key.”

“The contradiction?”

“In what I've said.”

Vinyl thought for a moment, then said, “You're the princess of the night, but you shine a light.”

The princess nodded. “Very astute. In night there is light, and in sun there is shadow.” Her eyes went to the symbol on the wall. “It looks familiar, does it not?”

“I don't know where it's from, though.”

“Yes you do, you just don't see it yet. You don't want to see it.”

“Why wouldn't I want to see it?” Vinyl asked, through the princess of the night merely narrowed her eyes, and Vinyl took the hint. She asked, “Alright, so where's it from?”

Luna maneuvered so she stood in front of the wall, covering half of the diagram. “You still don't see it?”

What's she talking about? Of course I don't. Maybe it'd help if she moved--

And then it struck Vinyl Scratch. She levitated a piece of chalk into the air. Drawing on the wall, she made a loping “S”-shape that curved through the “Z” formed by the three chords, and the image was complete. The others flanking it altered themselves likewise. Then she added in the two dots, the light in the dark and the dark in the light.

“It's the symbol on the Equestrian flag,” she uttered.

“Yes. The musical chord is connected to the mathematical chord by its name. The mathematical chord is connected to the emblem by its shape. All three are symbols for the same thing, just transposed into different forms. That is the key.”

“So what does it mean?”

Luna locked her blue eyes on Vinyl. “But you already know. All you have to do is discover what you know.”

Vinyl's old schoolmarm stepped from the shadows and explained, “It stands for a unity of opposites. Whenever two opposites interact there is power in it, like the pull of the moon on the tides, or the attraction of a certain young colt you're passing notes to, Miss Scratch.” She disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“Power in opposites,” Vinyl muttered. “But what's my opposite? Is it a dragon?”

She looked to Princess Luna, but the princess just shook her head and explained, “I can only shine a light.”

Vinyl mumbled, “Light in the darkness. Light and darkness. They depend on one another?”

“Total darkness is incomprehensible without light to compare it to, just as the unity of reality is incomprehensible because we cannot compare it to anything. We can only talk of things when they are divided, yet every pony strives for wholeness and completeness.”

“The unity of reality?”

“The symbol represents the natural harmony of the universe. We're all connected to the fundamental unity where divisions break down. When we're awake everything seems to be divided, but that is an illusion, a quirk of the physical world. Occasionally, however, the deeper order manifests itself through meaningful coincidences."

"I thought you could only shine a light?" Vinyl asked sarcastically.

"You read about all this in Mare and Her Symbols,” Luna replied. "It lingers in your mind. I'm just bringing it out of your memories."

“Oh, yeah," Vinyl said, her cheeks flushed.

"All this knowledge is swirling around your subconscious, only occasionally lapping up on the shores of your consciousness. It is up to you to dive down and retrieve it."

Vinyl frowned. "All this stuff about a connection....is it true?”

“You already know it's true. You can sense that I am real, and you have no other way of explaining how another pony can be present in your mind other than an unconscious connection between ponies. Like drops of water in an ocean. Our minds are bridged, allowing each of us to construct this dream from our thoughts as they conflate and flow together.”

“So everything really is the same thing, if you go back far enough? Including us?”

Luna nodded in confirmation. “And we all strive to return to that unity. But sometimes we are waylaid, not by spooks and specters, but simply by the parts of ourselves we don't like. Our fears, in other words. What is it you fear, Vinyl? The thing that is keeping you chained?”

Vinyl started to ask what she meant, but instead decided to look inward. Dive down into the depths. And once she glimpsed what lay on the seabed of her mind, her mouth dropped open at the sheer, staggering incredulousness of it all.

I'm the dragon, she realized.

“Right you are,” said a dark voice from right behind her.

She spun to face her dragon. The guardian of the labyrinth grabbed her, throttled her, and drove her to the ground.

“Help me,” Vinyl called out, just as the colt trapped in the labyrinth yelled the same thing.

He's part of me too, she realized. Everything in here is a part of me. But what is he? My....childhood innocence or something?

Luna loomed over the guardian's shoulder, but did nothing. The almighty princess of the night was powerless against Vinyl Scratch's demons. Vinyl reached out for her, but her hoof groped at the air uselessly.

“When in doubt,” Luna said, “remember this: you are number 23.”

Despite being throttled, Vinyl blinked in confusion. “What?”

“Number 23,” Luna repeated.

Suddenly, the labyrinth started shaking. The walls crumbled. Keystones fell from the arched corridor's ceiling, followed by dirt and dust. The floor cracked underhoof. From the fissures poured in a bright, almost infinite light, and she fell down into it, entwined with her dragon.

Flapping her graceful wings to stay aloft, Princess Luna called, “You are number--!”

“--23!” the stallion trying to rouse Vinyl said. “Hey, number 23, wake up! You're on soon.”

She thrashed for something to grab hold of to stop herself falling, until she realized she wasn't. Blinking against the dingy light of the club's waiting room, she lifted her head off the couch and looked around. The haze reluctantly lifted from her mind, and all the thoughts that'd occupied it while she dreamed dissolved into nothingness.

The competition! she thought suddenly, jerking upright.

She magically dragged her wagon after her as she headed for the dance floor. The crowd was moshing to the last DJ before Vinyl, whose turgid, behemoth-ine beat was broken occasionally by a rapid flurry of stabbing notes.

This is it, she thought, her heart pounding. Sweat poured down her face, both from trepidation and the heat of hundreds of ponies dancing together. This is my place, and these are my people.

She stood near the stage, watching the mass union of the mosh. She watched her people thrash and throw themselves into the shuddering beat, relishing the abrupt time changes. They moved as one herd, and they became whole.

They're not, she suddenly thought, shocking herself.

She looked at the other ponies moshing to the broken beat. Where she expected to see the joy of unity on their flushed, sweating faces, she saw nothing but anger and fury. They reveled in the fundamental discord of the music. She did too, so she wasn't sure why this was such an eye-opening revelation now. But she'd spent so long trying to find this place and these people, and yet now that she was here....

Where was the communion? The joining into one? Everything was so broken, and nothing more than the dubstep. It pounded into her head like a jackhammer. She felt the walls closing in, herding the other moshers around her. She couldn't run free and wild. Her heart beat faster, but unlike the dubstep it didn't switch up its pace every few seconds. Dubstep wasn't complete; it defied wholeness with its every note.

But I love dubstep! It's the future of music!

The beat wasn't satisfying her anymore, though. It had always seemed like it was, but....perhaps she'd just convinced herself it was satisfying without even realizing it wasn't. She felt like she was a wild pony being herded towards a cliff, and it was all she could do to struggle against going over the edge.

Well, I'm here, she thought, and I'm about to go up on stage.

She pulled out the sheet music to refresh her memory, but she got a terrible shock. There, right next to the scribbled title, was the mathematical diagram she'd seen in Twilight Sparkle's library, doodled absently during a lull in her late night odyssey to finish the song. The symbol she now realized was on Equestria's flag. And when she had finished writing the song, what title had she unthinkingly scrawled down, simply because it fit the brutal, lumbering, serpentine oscillation of the tempo?

“I Am the Dragon”.

She approached the cliff, and everything inside her screamed out that she didn't want to see what was down below. She didn't want to go over the edge. But on another level she was back in the labyrinth of her dreams, plunging deeper into the maze to rescue the lost little colt. Her mind was in two places at once, going in opposite directions. Which way should she go? Which path should she take?

I'm the dragon of my nightmares, she thought. I'm the one keeping myself from being a hero. My unconscious is holding me back.

But why?! Why don't I want to find the Song? There has to be a reason.

And as the broken beat of the dubstep pounded into her skull, she quickly approached both the cliff and the center of the maze. Her heart wrenched in her chest. She gazed out at the moshers, the ones losing themselves to the music. Something in their unconscious minds must want them to revel in the misery the schizophrenic, brain-busting mash-up offered. And it had to be something in her mind, too. Why didn't her subconscious want her to be at peace? Why didn't it want her to be whole? Why did it compel her to remain broken?

The cliff was dangerously close now, and her wild feral pony self fought against it every step of the way; yet she was also close to the colt screaming for help, and she was determined to go the distance and rescue him.

Whenever two opposites interact, she thought, there is power in that interaction.

She glimpsed what lay beyond the cliff and saw a Thought down there, while at the same time she glimpsed the colt at the center of the maze. But in denying the Thought in the cliff, she was also denying the colt in the maze, and the conflict was tearing her mind and her heart to shreds.

No, she thought vehemently.

But that burning desire to find the lost little colt was stronger, and she headed for the edge of the cliff, no matter how hard the guardian of her subconscious pulled her reins back.

Why don't I want to find the Song?! she demanded to know.

It was do-or-die now. The stress and mental anguish caused tears to roll her down her cheeks. She trembled on her hooves, shaking her head from side to side ever so slightly to deny where she was destined to go. She could either turn away, or take the leap. And in one moment of absolute clarity, she gave in and chose to leap.

Because without this pain, how will I keep making music?

She sucked in a breath as the matter was laid bare before her. There it was. The guardian of the labyrinth was the guise, the mask, the image she assumed when she spun her discs, and it had harnessed the power of her unconscious fears to protect itself, because all her music was about her quest to find the Song and the frustration and anger that she hadn't found it. Remove that tension of opposites and what would she write music about? She would be whole, but she would have nothing to make art about. As much as she hated to admit it, her unconscious mind was addicted to the misery and the heartache. How could she take her quest away from herself and still write about it? Where would her inspiration come from?

But just as quickly she thought: Everything is connected. Everypony wants to be whole.

Inspiration surrounded her, but she'd never seen it for what it was. The loss of the Song had been the only thing she'd known, so she hadn't ever had anything to compare it to. But obsessing over that loss had only blinded her to everything else. She knew now what she had to do.

She only hoped it wasn't too late.

Magically pulling her wagon along behind her, she ran out of the club just as the Emcee called out for competitor number 23. Competitor? she thought. I don't want to be a warrior anymore. I want peace.

Bursting out onto the sidewalk, she ignored the bouncer and the crowd as she looked for a sign, any sign. That's when she glimpsed a hooded figure ambling up the sidewalk towards her. A striped foreleg reached up and pulled the hood back. Two zebra eyes seemed to transmit the mysteries of the universe through the space between them. Rather than shocking or surprising, the sight of Zecora fit that one particular moment so well it became obscenely appropriate. It ceased to be a simple moment of time and became a Moment, where everything came together in perfect clarity before Vinyl's eyes. As if she were still in a dream, she calmly walked over.

"Why are you here?" Vinyl asked.

"It was your princess of the night who told me of your plight," the shaman said. "Though I am not of ponykind, I welcome her into my mind, for it is the universe's will she carries out. A servant of the cosmos I would never doubt. We conversed warmly while I slept, and I learned many things I did not know yet. Last night, she told me that when the time comes...." She grinned. "You would need somepony to play the drums."

Everything still felt dreamlike to Vinyl, but suddenly she wondered what the difference was. After all, her senses told her dreams were absolutely real while she was in them, the same senses that told her the city around her now was real life. Could she trust her senses as well as she thought she could? Maybe not. Right then and there, it seemed to her as if that one Moment of time and space was speaking to her through its attendant signs and symbols.

Perhaps it was time she listened.

6. MAGNUM OPUS

“It is indeed a major effort--the magnum opus, in fact--to escape in time from the narrowness of [the body's] embrace and to liberate our mind to the vision of the immensity of the world, of which we form an infinitesimal part.”
-Carl G. Jung, collected in The Wisdom of Carl Jung

"Townshend finally envisaged this spiritual unity pervading reality, with the band and audience literally moving into a higher spiritual plane at the point where the Universal Chord was struck."
-John Atkins, liner notes to Who's Next

When Vinyl Scratch and Zecora strolled into the offices of Oceanic Musique, the orange-maned receptionist looked up from her desk and asked, "Can I help you?"

"Yeah," Vinyl said, using one foreleg to balance the synthesizer slung over her shoulder. "Where's the auditorium?"

"Down the hall and to the right. But there's an audition in progress...."

"That's what we're here for," Vinyl said, walking towards the hallway. The wheels of the wagon yoked around her middle creaked as she walked.

"We really must apologize, but we're late, you see," Zecora said, "and the audition requires us to be three."

As Vinyl went down the hall and entered the office, an elated feeling settled in her chest and filled her with the overwhelming confidence this was the right course. If even one pony told her to turn away, she would heed the sign and know this was not Meant To Be. But nopony stopped her. Though they looked at her curiously from their cubicles as she passed, not one pony asked her what she was doing. Perhaps they felt, as she did, that she belonged in that building at that exact Moment. She stopped in front of the swinging double doors marked 'Auditorium' and faced Zecora.

"You ready for this?" she asked.

"I am always ready, and yet also never," Zecora said. "I am a block of clay, to be sculpted however it is the universe sees fit. Do not do a thing, but allow yourself to do it."

Vinyl nodded. Absolutely without fear, she pushed the door open and swaggered into the small auditorium. Her yoked wagon trailed at her hooves. Past the eight rows of seats, Vinyl saw Octavia standing in the light of a lone spotlight, surrounded by darkness. The gray mare clutched her cello loosely, shaking so much that Vinyl half-expected her to fall to pieces.

Of the hoofful of ponies in the front row, one in a tweed jacket said, “You can begin whenever you're ready.”

Octavia swallowed heavily and nodded, but didn't raise her cello.

“Is there something wrong?” the music exec asked with a hint of snark.

As Vinyl reached the front row, she called out, “I'll say. She can't play without her backing band, can she?”

The music executives turned to look at Vinyl, as did Octavia. The gray mare gaped at her dumbly and numbly, sweat streaking down her mane and causing her hair to clump to her brow. Vinyl magically undid the yoke. Every eye in the house followed her as she climbed the steps to the stage, while levitating her cart into the air and dropping it onto the polished wooden floor with a thump.

Octavia asked, “What are you....?”

Vinyl lifted her goggles and winked. “Trust me. We got this.”

"Wh--what's she doing here?" Octavia asked, nodding at Zecora.

"Playing the drums," Vinyl replied casually.

The DJ took her synthesizer off her shoulder, shook it so the legs swung down and locked open, and dropped it on the ground. Zecora pulled her djembe drums out of the wagon and arrayed them in front of her. Vinyl magicked the amp out and made it drift over and land next to the synthesizer.

Through bared teeth, Octavia whispered, “But we don't know each other's songs! We don't have any duets practiced....”

Vinyl shrugged as she connected the cables. “Then we'll make our own kind of music. You and Zecora and me, together."

"There is music all around us, if only we play along," Zecora said, stretching her forelegs. "The whole of the world is alive with song."

"Yeah," Vinyl said. "All we have to do is listen to each other and not try to force things. Just go with whatever feels natural. Whatever feels right.”

Because it's all connected, she thought with absolute conviction. All part of the underlying order.

“Are you sure?” Octavia asked, her ears flattened against her skull. “Are you absolutely, positively sure? Because we can't stand each others' music, and--”

“Octavia, the elements of harmony don't change. It's simple math.” Vinyl turned the amp on and fiddled with the volume so it wouldn't drown out the cello and the drums, but balance them and enhance them.

"I was never good at math," Octavia said meekly.

"Anypony who's a musician is good at math, even if they don't realize it. And last I checked, we both had musical symbols on our flanks. This is our destiny.”

The synthesizer growled to life, and when Vinyl heard that sweet, reassuring sound, she knew she was ready for this. She looked at Zecora, the unsculpted clay, and the djembe drums in front of her. They came from a far-off land, and yet they were intimately familiar and could play along to the music just fine, because they were all one, if you went back far enough. Then Vinyl looked at Octavia, who still trembled. The DJ, a fount of calm, willed some of her own to cross the divide between her and her best friend, which she now realized was no divide at all. They were like a coin with two faces, divided yet connected.

“Trust me,” Vinyl said, grinning. “You can do this.”

Octavia gave a curt nod, which Vinyl took to mean her friend was ready.

Zecora, sensing the Moment had arrived, started to beat the djembes. The sound of drums popped into life, and as her hooves hit the skins they weaved a complex tapestry of rhythm that was deep and rich and smooth and propulsive. The DJ behind the synthesizer set the left half of her keyboard to a bass box and the right half to a celestial organ pad, then raised her eyes to the ceiling. She felt the world turning under her hooves, something alive and greater than she or anypony else was. That music cosmic was the same force Zecora's hooves attuned themselves to as they beat those drums. Vinyl banged her head to the beat marching through her mind and through the air. The steady drums hooked her and pulled her along for the ride; they propelled her onward as immutably as the clockwork movement of the stars in the sky. Soon her whole body joined in, and she wasn't entirely sure that when her hooves came down on the keys she was controlling them, or if something unfathomable was speaking through her. The drums, the bass, and the organ joined into a blissful synthesis that filled the auditorium.

Octavia took up her bow and cello, closed her eyes, and with a long sigh she let herself go. She started to play along. The cello's haunting notes meshed perfectly with the propulsive drums, the deep groove of the bass, and the celestial organ. And as the very different instruments complimented each other they forged a sound none of them could achieve alone. They become something more, something complete, something infinite. She and Zecora and Vinyl, as different as they seemed, became completely in tune with each other and the world as they channeled that music so much larger than they themselves were. The bittersweet melody and the propulsive heartbeat rhythm fused into one and settled in Vinyl's chest, easing her heart and relaxing the tension. As the song filled the auditorium, the world seemed so illuminated, and so light on her shoulders as it lifted her burdens. She felt like she was coming home again after a long journey. She raised her eyes to the sky, tears dripping from under her goggles and trickling down her cheeks. Even though there was a ceiling above her, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, she saw the light of the stars overhead break through the roof and surround her. The song worked in her and transformed her into something more. It burned in her and gave her spirit a phoenix's wings.

She looked at the ponies in the first row and saw unbridled awe on their faces as the unorthodox symphony filled the auditorium. Tears rolled down the cheek of the pony in the tweed jacket as he watched Octavia summon the most marvelous sounds from her cello; vibrant and mournful and uplifting and forlorn all at once. Vinyl watched in awe as the starlight shone through him and from him. He was made of it. They all were. It illuminated the music executives as it burst forth from their bodies. While Vinyl's hooves worked the keyboard of their own accord, she gazed sidelong at her best friend. The gray mare poured her soul into the song, like a magician writing a spell, which kindled her own inner light until it radiated from her. Zecora was also ablaze with the infinite light as her hooves beat the drumskins, a relaxed passion on her face.

It was then that Vinyl noticed Oceanic Musique had unannounced visitors. By the cosmic light, she saw the princesses Celestia and Luna standing in the shadows just inside the doors, unnoticed by everypony except her. Princess Celestia watched the impromptu band play with a detached, otherworldly expression, while at her side Luna looked decidedly uncomfortable and uneasy in the physical world, a far cry from the confidence she had had in Vinyl's dream. But if Vinyl could talk to her, she would have told Luna to lay down her burdens, the starlight was shining bright from within the princess of the night. It illuminated her just as brightly as it did her sister. So much about ourselves we can't see, Vinyl thought. As she and Luna met eyes, the princess's stoic stare slipped and she returned a knowing smile.

There is goodness and light in everything. The whole universe is filled with it, even the night.

The trio onstage were all part of the cosmic motion, working in concert like the day and the night to carry on the music of the universe. The light wasn't just related to harmony, Vinyl realized, it was harmony. It was the purest archetype of love, friendship, kindness, joy; all these good things stemmed from the same source, were all aspects of the same infinite light. They seemed divided, yet they were the same. Like her and Octavia and Zecora. All insignificant parts of the grand living universe, yet they all had the cosmos within them. Each held a spark of its power: the power to create, to transmute, to perfect. They just had to keep the song going in perfect harmony, and they wouldn't just be of the universe but become the universe itself. As the light shone from everywhere and revealed the inner harmony of all things, Vinyl beamed to herself. She hoped her friends could see it too, because it was the highest good she could imagine. It shone into her darkest inner depths and filled her with the light and the love of friendship. She was so enraptured by the otherworldly ecstasy she felt like dancing to the farthest reaches of the universe, with her friends Octavia and Zecora by her side. There was nothing to stop them, after all.

Because she was limitless. Everypony was.

And so Vinyl Scratch got into the groove of the music cosmic and tripped on the light fantastic, and she swore to herself she would never come down from its embrace again.

~THE END~

"In the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light—sweet, joyous. And I became transported as I gazed."
-Corpus Hermeticum

"He whose mind is thus grandly fixed [towards the Tao] emits a Heavenly light. In him who emits this Heavenly light men see the [True or Perfect] man."
-Zhuangzi, Texts of Taoism

"A true, true friend helps a friend in need, to see the light that shines from a true, true friend."
-Magical Mystery Cure