After all the school stuff was done, Iridia and I decided to go together to play some instruments as practice for the band we'll be making. I grabbed the two guitars I had and we headed out. I don't exactly know where we should practice, but we'll figure out along the way. It would also help me clear my head and think about some other things. But mainly, band stuff, for it is indeed time to unfold the plan I have.

...

I don't really have much of a plan, do I? I mean, I know the basics, but... Ah, well, I'll figure it out along the way. Plus I have Iridia to discuss it with, which is effectively a discussion between myself and myself. Hm... Well, I hope it won't just be me talking and her nodding or the other way around, that'd just be boring.

And then I remembered a thing – Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns has rooms for music practice. Hm, they seem like a perfect place to play undisturbed, as well as discuss things. After telling Iridia about it, both of us headed straight into school yet again. Celestia really thought out her school, that's for sure. It has pretty much everything the students would need. Cafeteria with free food, playgrounds, gyms, music classes, condom shops, it's all there. Plus I've seen a few condom dispensers in the bathrooms. I mean, why not? Better to let students have some protected fun than not allow it and see pregnancies sprout. Although, condoms are only needed during the estrus season... and I think I didn't see those dispensers before this week. I can't say for sure.

In any case, CSGU is like a small town with everything. Plus we're paid stipend if we study well! Now that's motivation. Having some money to spend on ourselves is always nice. I have some bits in my savings.... well, a jar of coins under my bed. I think it's large enough to afford a few more musical instruments. Definitely enough to buy a decent guitar, but I'd rather save up more to buy something better.

Speaking of that, I should get Iridia her own instruments because, while I can share mine with her, it's not like she owns them. And she's me, so I bet she feels like these instruments were taken from her. We'll definitely remedy this situation. I feel like she's going to receive a gift from me pretty soon. Hm... should her birthday be my birthday or is it the day of the cloning? I'm not quite sure, and I don't really want to ask her about that, at least not yet. In any case, I don't need to wait for her birthday to give her something good. Maybe it'll take me a week or so to do, I just need to find the right person for the job I'm thinking of.

The school building is nearly as full as it is during studying hours. Some students are indeed still studying, for the schedule can be rather finnicky from time to time. Others, however, are engaged in some extra activities like music, art in general, and additional voluntary classes. Some students are even cleaning up the school – it's not really that much, but it still warms my heart to see people actually caring about public spaces. I never understood why a lot of people outright disliked stuff like cleaning floors and toilets. I mean, if no one did it... it'd be really shitty in all senses of the word. Personally, I enjoy a good cleaning from time to time – they make everything look nice and shiny. Sweep the cobwebs, vacuum the carpet, clean the dust... and everything suddenly looks as good as new.

That reminds me, I should clean up in the dorm. It's not really that dirty, but I swear I saw a couple spiders, and the layer of dust is surely growing in thickness, especially in the corners. Yep, that's decided – we'll clean stuff up during the weekend. Although, I'm not sure vacuums have been invented yet. I think they were, but I don't think- actually, scratch that, I can hear one further down one of the halls. Yep, so I'm going to get a vacuum and really clean the place up.

Anyway, Iridia and I proceeded to the music practice rooms. The first one we tried to enter was locked from the inside and some really muffled sounds of... brass, I think, could be heard. The next one was locked as well, featuring a lone guitar and a set of drums. Hm, they sound like beginners, so this is probably a lesson in progress. The third one was unlocked but there were some ponies inside unpacking their own instruments. Hmm, seems to be a busy day today as far as music is concerned... But the fourth room turned out to be empty. We went inside, closed and locked the door, and placed the guitars on one of the tables inside. We should buy actual cases for them so that we don't have to carry them via magic all the time.

Anyway, we placed some chairs close together and sat down, preparing our guitars. I checked the tuning, adjusted the volume knob, fiddled with distorting for a bit, making sure it didn't sound like electric fart. Iridia was pretty much mirroring my actions with the second guitar I brought. I pulled out my smartphone from a small bag I carried around my neck and placed it between us. I navigated to the folder with different beats to different tempos. Hmm...

"What should we actually practice today?" I asked Iridia, "I didn't really think of that, I just wanted to, you know... do stuff."

"Neither did I," she shook her head, "But I think I have an idea..."

Iridia took the smartphone in her grasp and browsed through the drum beats. She turned one of them on – a rather fast beat resembling stuff from Death Metal and other brutal styles of metal. Hm, I don't know why I have it here, but... I think I need to unwind, spend some energy.

So, I stopped the beat and rewinded it to the start. Iridia and I adjusted our positions on the chairs, and some sort of mental link allowed us to understand who would lead and who would set the rhythm. The latter was what I wanted to do today.

One. One, two, three, four!

I don't know what, but something clicked inside both of us. A switch was flipped, a button was pressed, call it however you want, but what happened next was akin to having an orgasm, but... at least twice as powerful.

Energy exploded inside me like a Tsar Bomb, my magic quickly picking the strings, playing a fast tremolo on low strings. A rhythm appeared, and a mind-shattering insane solo followed. Iridia and I banged our heads so much they threatened to fall off as we improvised for the next few minutes, playing as fast and as complicated as we could. Tremolo, sweep-picking, pinching harmonics, tapping, everything that we knew, we laid out in music, and it forced us to cover our ears so that we wouldn't go deaf. Without hands limiting us, we were able to get seemingly impossible sounds out of our guitars, blasting music to our hearts' content.

My red mane was covering my face, but I didn't care – I flowed with music as if it were a river. The notes penetrated my ears pleasantly, although loudly, and I was in the state of absolute bliss. With my brain almost completely turned off, I sang wordlessly. My vocals were rusty and I was unable to change the tone of my voice quite as well as I usually could, but I hit the notes where I intended and didn't miss a bit. Soon, Iridia joined me in this weird symphony from the other world as we sang and played until our throats dried and our guitars somewhat detuned from just how hard we played. I don't know how long we spent in such a fast-paced and yet slow-flowing musical trance, but when we reemerged into reality, we were sweating profusely, our manes clinging to our faces. I grinned like a complete maniac, breathing deeply, then I carefully placed the guitar nearby and turned off the beat – the phone showing that barely five minutes have passed.

"We needed that," Iridia concluded, and I could do nothing but nod. We sure did.

"Feels good to play music with someone who knows the same stuff, that's for sure," I commented, wiping the sweat from my brow, "With that out of the way... Wanna play some songs in particular?"

"Sure," she nodded, "You know... we're going to start chronologically, right? That first song is just some happy organ song inverted, so we're going to play the second, and then move to the next one."

"Sounds good to me," I shrugged and quickly navigated the phone to the beats I needed. I didn't know where to find the needed drum track when I was still a human, so I had to listen and recreate the same stuff with digital drums. Took me a few months, maybe even half a year to get every Ghost song transcribed properly for drums, although I managed to find some sheet music for a couple of the songs. In any case, at the end of the day, I had everything I needed.

"We will also need to get proper suits, you know," Iridia reminded me, "Some robes and masks. We'll probably have to make some ourselves. I think the masks of the first Ghouls were from some movie, right?"

"The one with an orgy at an expensive party?" I asked, trying to remember. Then it hit me, "Ah, right, the one Kubrick directed? Something about eyes?"

"Yeah, that one," Iridia nodded, "But I'm not sure that's the masks I like... But, you know, we should maintain the continuity somewhat."

"I love Papa Emeritus the Second. He looked fucking badass," I added, "I'm definitely going to keep that painted skull. The first one is... fine. The third? A bit too simple for my taste. And the robes... That's going to get expensive if we go for it, you know. Maybe we'd have to start with something simpler."

"Makes sense," she agreed with a nod, "We'll change the legend surrounding Ghost, but still, we'll have to maintain the looks and not change the songs at all. You know, leave all the sacrifice, orgies, and all that in. We can't just modify the songs how we see fit, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't want to lose the original intention," I nodded, "Although, I'm not sure ponies would understand everything... But eh, neither did I when I first listened. I still loved the band, so yeah, we'll just let the ponies hear whatever they want to hear. Maybe they'll come up with something interesting we can use..."

"Yeah, we're kinda crappy at writing," Iridia chuckled, "Remember that story we've written during the eigth grade? About a cyborg taking over?"

"Don't even remind me..." I let out a sigh of embarrassment. What seemed badass at the time turned out to be some pretty edgy fiction. Or, at least, poorly-written. Or both. I don't really remember much about it other than it having plenty of sword fights. Yeah, in a sci-fi world with guns and stuff. That wasn't too bad, but then I don't remember most of what I've written, and that's probably for the better.

"Anyway, Con Clavi Con Dio, let's do it," Iridia reminded me of what we should play. Alright, here's the beat, and... One. One, two, three...

The song was relatively slow and started with a guitar plus bass. I didn't have the bass guitar with me, so I had to make do with what I did have. It didn't sound quite right, but, well, we're here to practice, not play an accurate representation of the song. And finally, the first verse came – we arrived to praise Lucifer. Oh, the evil one... When I was just a teen, this was the perfect song for my rebellion against my parents. What's better than to praise someone they were so profoundly against? I didn't praise Lucifer openly, but it gave me great pleasure listening to this song, knowing well that it was going against my mother's Christian values. Ah, how this song reignites my memories... Good and bad ones.

As I played and sang the song, I remembered how I went to the church with my parents. I never really understood why I had to go – I had little understanding of what my parents even believed. The church service was just... boring. Some hard to understand Bible verses were spoken, there was some singing, and a lot of praying. It was so long ago I barely remember the details. But I think that's what set me on the path of liking what I do now and disliking a lot of things about my parents and what they believed in. And Ghost is just a perfect mocking of religion using religious stuff. Or, at least, religious in a fictional sense. I doubt anyone in Ghost actually worships Lucifer with human sacrifices. But, funny thing... Drinking the blood and eating the flesh is a Christian thing. Why not sacrifice the whole human, right?

The chorus came. I tried to translate it, but it seemed to be some mix of Italian and Latin, as far as I can remember. I think it translates roughly as "We're with our Dark God" or something along those lines. No matter how much of a mix of languages it was, it sounds pretty nice, so I won't complain.

The second verse came, the one about Lucifer coming back to Earth through the birth of Antichrist, and the Satanists did it from behind their masks. Or, at least, that's how I see what is sang. In any case, I loved it just as much as the first verse for pretty much the same reasons. Isn't Satanism as a whole about disobedience to God? As I saw it back then, it was disobedience to the faith of my parents, and although I've not yet come to proper, logically-defined atheism, the seed was already planted by these songs. I wouldn't call myself a Satanist, and I would never sacrifice anyone in the name of the Devil or anything of that sort, but... I enjoy the aethetic? Probably because it reminds me of my own rebellion, and this is the part about Satanism I can accept. I heard about different versions of Satanism, and, apparently, at least one of them was simply made to provide atheists a way to get the benefits of religion while simultaneously pissing off Christians.

Sathanas. We are one, out of three. Trinity... This line simply sounds evil in a good way. Like, in a way someone can like Emperor Palpatine or Sauron. I semi-growled that line, and it sounded just perfect.

And next came the solo, and I couldn't resist the temptation to bang my head to the beat. This time, I played the solo, so I wholly enjoyed banging my head to it. I don't know what it is about the solo, but it sounds evil, proper evil, and this is what I like. The tone of the guitar I set probably helped a lot with that, but I don't know.

Soon, the song began to fade away, and so did our guitars as we slowly turned the volume knobs until strumming the strings produced no sound. Usually, guitars don't do that, but ours had some magical stuff built in that simply silenced the strings completely. It's weird, they produced absolutely no sound as if they weren't and couldn't vibrate. I watched as the strings vibrated, their amplitude and decreasing until it all came to a stop.

"I think that went well," Iridia said, "Fingers still remember... Or, well, not fingers, but muscle memory. Or magical memory... Whatever, I'm just glad we still know what we're doing."

"Yep," I nodded, "So, wanna continue? We have plenty of time and seven songs to cover. If it goes just as well, we'll be going back home pretty soon."

"I'm not against that," Iridia turned the volume knob up again, "Next time, we should bring Moonshine. Do you think she's good enough with the keyboard?"

"Maybe not, but hey, we have time to teach her," I shrugged, "Plus I think it will be fun even if she makes mistakes. You know, you never learn if you don't make at least one mistake. Remember when we tried to play our first songs on the guitar?"

"That sounded horrible," she let out a short laugh, "Yeah, you have a point. Alright, let's continue."

And so we did, even going through the songs again after we were finished with the ninth and the last song of Opus Eponymous, the first album of Ghost. So far, they had... four albums, as far as I'm aware. Maybe more, considering that I was away from quite some time, so maybe Meliora isn't their last 'storyline' album anymore. Shame I can't buy their latest album if it's out, I'd definitely like to hear.

In any case, I'm happy to see Iridia being so energetic and lively. Maybe I'll be able to give her a good life without making her feel like she can do nothing without me. It's hard for me to understand her situation, but then it's not me who was forcebly separated from myself. For me, nothing really changed, but for her... a lot of things surely did. And now, through music, she begins to heal somewhat. I just hope I will be able to give her a life because, well... in a certain way, she's as much my child as she is a part of me. Discord created her, true, but... I don't really know what to say. I feel a strong connection, one that probably only parents can feel to their own children.

That sounded pretty cheesy, but that's how it is. I feel an invisible obligation to make sure I don't forget her and move on like nothing happened. For her, a lot happened, and it's my duty to make things right. And the least I can do is play music with her.