The headline read, “Philharmonica gains surprise supporter in effort to play forbidden Symphony – the Element of Loyalty!”

Lyra had to read the article twice before really understanding what it said. There wasn’t much there, just a few lines about how she had ‘enthusiastically promised her support, saying she would stand by her friend whatever happened and, if need be, against Luna herself.’ Lyra, who of course had not made any such promise, could only stare at the article in confusion.

If this is a political move, I don’t understand it. Are they trying to scare me? She laughed at the very idea. It would take more than gossip and rumors to keep Lyra Heartstrings from backing up a friend.

Lyra got a few odd looks as she trotted over to the castle, but she made it inside without any difficulties and began the long climb to the tower. I should really talk to Octavia about moving her practice room somewhere lower down. Surely there’s an empty room around here that’s big enough. She smiled, picturing Octavia’s reaction to her suggestion. ’What, Lyra, do you think I’m weak?’ ‘No, but I think that a marathon climb to start the day is extreme, even for you, Tavi…’

She reached the tower door, unlocked it, and opened it, only for Octavia to leap in front of her. Her expression was uncharacteristically frantic. “You must leave! Now!”

“What?” asked a stunned Lyra

“Go!” Octavia was sweating; something had spooked her. Even her normally smooth, silken mane was mussed and disheveled. “You cannot stay in Canterlot even one hour longer. Leave now and take the 6:45 to Ponyville.”

“I can’t leave, we aren’t—“

“Forget about the practicing!” Octavia gestured at a newspaper that was sitting just inside the room. “Have you seen the headlines? They are tying you to me!”

“… wait. You haven’t left this room to go home or to a newspaper stand, and I really don’t think they deliver up here.” Lyra frowned. “Some other pony left that. To scare you. Probably Greengrass—“

“Who cares? I can tell it is not a fake! Lyra, you need to leave before you are tarred by being associated with this performance!”

“Octavia. I have no idea what that means. Who cares if the papers know that I’m helping you?”

Octavia grimaced and shut her eyes. Lyra frowned; Octavia only looked like that when she was struggling to control her temper. “I cannot guarantee that Luna will like my performance; and, given all the other attempts, am still convinced that the odds are far against me. You are on the record as supporting my efforts to play it, as helping me to play. Therefore, if the Princess dislikes it and orders me shunned, you too will be blacklisted as a matter of course. No venue will want to host a mare who helped put on a performance so revolting to the Princess.”

“Luna isn’t an idiot. She’s not going to fall for this.”

“What else will she do? She cannot publically support you; that would look like she is biased in favor of the Elements, and that would cause her serious political problems. And I seriously doubt she will avoid criticizing my performance for your sake. Friends of hers and heroes of Equestria have attempted this piece before, Lyra, and it has not saved them. A friend of a friend has no immunity to her scorn.”

“Okay,” said Lyra. “So now you’re playing for both of us. When have you ever cared about pressure?”

“It’s not about pressure! Lyra, when it was only my life on the line, I consented to allow you to aid me. But now that helping me will almost certainly result in your ruination I cannot allow you to continue! You have too much potential, and too much at stake, to keep going on this path!”

“That’s my call, Tavi, not yours.”

“Octavia. And it is my call. You have no official business in the castle, and I could have you barred from this tower.”

Lyra stared. “Octavia. This is insane.”

“I am trying to save you!”

“Then why won’t you let me save you?”

“Because you cannot and the risk is too great!”

“Octavia!” Lyra was now glaring at her mentor. “Look, if our positions were reversed, I know you wouldn’t care about this! You’d help me even if they threatened to throw you off Canterlot Bridge afterwards!”

“So?!”

“So – so if you’d do that for me, why the Hay won’t you let me do that for you?”

“Because you are deserving of that sort of loyalty, Lyra! Not I!”

Octavia couldn’t place Lyra’s expression – she hadn’t seen it before. It was oddly vague, like Lyra was lost in thought. Eventually, the green mare began to speak again. “Oh, I see. I’m worth… concern… and you aren’t.”

“Exactly. I have been trying to tell you that.”

“Because you screwed up.”

“Yes.”

The two mares stared at each other for a few moments, before Lyra turned her head. “Wow.”

“Lyra, we are wasting time. The paparazzi –“

“Octavia, shut up.”

Octavia blinked. “…excuse me?” Lyra had never spoken to her like that.

“I said, shut up. As in, stop talking.”

“Lyra, this is—“

Lyra trotted towards Octavia until she was directly in the cellist’s face. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“I—“

“Do you think you’re the only mare who’s ever made a mistake?” Lyra yelled. “If one bad decision means that it doesn’t matter what happens to you, what do you think that means for the rest of us?”

“I wasn’t judging you—“

“Why not?” Lyra’s face was inches from Octavia. “I’ve screwed up too, Tavi. I’ve had bad performances. I’ve flaked. Sometimes I haven’t always been there for my friends. Do you think it’d be okay if the Duke destroyed my life too?”

“No, of course not! I just said—“

“You ‘just said’ that, even though you’ve done so many amazing and incredible things, none of that matters because you screwed up one time!“ Lyra paused. “If that makes you worthless, Octavia, what does it make me? I can’t play as well as you. I haven’t mentored anypony. What have I done that you haven’t done better?”

“You are an Element—“

“And I almost screwed that up too, when I collapsed fighting monsters on the way to the old castle,” she said. “But you didn’t answer me, Octavia.”

“Answer?”

Lyra’s voice was softer, but she still sounded hurt. “If you, with all the incredible things you’ve done, are worthless, what does that make me?”

Octavia opened her mouth, then closed it, unsure of how to answer the question. “Lyra, please—“

Lyra turned. “Octavia, I need some time to think. I’ll be back later.” She hurried out.

“Wait!” Octavia couldn’t say why she wanted Lyra to stay, after having tried so hard to convince her to leave, but she suddenly felt like she desperately wanted Lyra to remain for a few more minutes. “Lyra, stop!”

The door slammed behind her.

Octavia sprang at it, but stopped herself from yanking it open. No. No, I won’t. This is what I wanted. If we fight, and she leaves afterwards, then she might not perish if I cannot master this piece. This is good, this is… She couldn’t finish the thought.

Music. She had a symphony to learn, and she wasn’t ready yet. Bury herself in music. That would help.

She hefted her cello (with, perhaps, a little more force than strictly necessary), and then began to play. Or, at least, she tried. What followed was sound, perhaps even notes, but it could not honestly be called music.

Octavia gamely struggled on, in one of the more torturous performances that the castle had known, but it was beyond her to try to pretend that she’d produced anything of value. When she’d finished the movement, she sank to the ground.

“So. That’s how you treat your friends.”

Octavia had sat in silence for upwards of half an hour. The only indication she’d had of time passing was the slow rising of the sun through the tower window, and the sounds of the city waking up. For once, though, she wished she didn’t hear them. To sleep, or failing that, to be in a numb cocoon of silence and darkness, that was what Octavia wanted.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she told the burglar. “I am not in a mood for conversation.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.” For the first time, there was no warmth in the masked mare’s voice. It echoed around the room, almost mocking. “That was depraved, Octavia. A cruelty worthy of the Court, perhaps, but beneath you.”

“I didn’t want Greengrass to hurt her. I – it grieves me, of course, to think that she hates me. But better that than her remaining here and falling victim to that monster’s schemes.”

“He doesn’t need to hurt her now. You’ve done a fine job of that on her own.”

“Her feelings, I grant,” said Octavia. “But her career, her life—“

The mare’s voice was suddenly directly in front of Octavia. “Do you honestly think Lyra would want to have a career if she had to step over the bodies of her friends to get there?! Is that the career you wanted?” The mare snorted. “Why did you betray Greengrass, again? If you care so little for your friends, if you’d rather have your concerts and applause, you could have stayed in his pocket. He rewards his allies; you know that. He’d have given you a very nice position in a famous orchestra somewhere.”

“We’ve been over this,” hissed Octavia. “Lyra was worth my sacrifice. I betrayed my closest friend.”

“And now she has too, thanks to you. Congratulations.”

“Who has she betrayed?” demanded Octavia. “Me? I ordered her to leave!”

“Yes, you did. She’ll think that now, and tomorrow, and maybe for a few more days. Probably until after you’re done with the recital and truly beyond help.” The mare’s voice was, if anything, even more pointed now. “And then she’ll start to wonder. Were you really responsible for your words? Weren’t you under more stress than any pony could bear alone? Wouldn’t a true friend, a loyal friend, have put up with one more little outburst – especially for the mare who taught her half of what she knew? Wasn’t she being petty when she walked out and left you to rot?”

Octavia said nothing. She didn’t want to think about what the mare was saying, but her thoughts were moving in that direction regardless.

“You know how you feel, now, after what you did. You know what it feels like to betray a friend for the sake of your career.” The mare began to trot to the window. “Soon, Lyra will know it too.”

“No,” said Octavia. There was a hint of a plea in her voice. “That cannot happen.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t that… just? Honest? It would be very wrong, Octavia, for her to lie to herself.”

“There would be no lie! No reasonable or rational pony would remain here in these circumstances.”

“Circumstances? Maybe other mares would consider those, but the honest ones, like you and Lyra, know better. Circumstances are never an excuse, are they? Isn’t that what you’ve been saying all these months?”

“Ordinarily, yes, but—“

“No buts.” The mare began to climb out the window. “Why should it matter that you threw her out, that you looked about ready to call the castle guards on her if she didn’t leave? It was her responsibility to make the right choice, and she didn’t. She failed a friend who needed her. Isn’t her shame just as great as yours?”

“No, of course not!” said Octavia. But she didn’t know how to argue that point. All she could do was look away and wonder why all her rationalizations, all her carefully constructed arguments, suddenly seemed so flimsy.

“Well, if nothing else, I think you taught Lyra the importance of what you call ‘honesty’. I wonder how long it will be before she too thinks she’s worthless… and before she throws away everything for some other pony that she thinks matters more.”

“NO!”

The mare glanced back. Octavia was on her hooves. The cellist shook her head. “She can’t do that. Not her. And – and she won’t. She knows her worth.”

“Her worth, by your standards?” The mare’s horn began to glow, and Octavia suddenly realized that she knew very little indeed about her mysterious ally. “How much is that?”

“She is an excellent musician, and… and…” She couldn’t seem to find it in her to continue.

“Have you really thought about how she’d measure up if you judged her like you judge yourself?” The mare approached Octavia, until they were inches apart. “Do you want to see for yourself?”

“…what?” Octavia gulped. For the first time since Corona’s return, she felt afraid. “Stay back!”

The mare sprang forwards, touching her horn against Octavia’s forehead, and then –

The sun was going down, but the cool evening breeze wasn’t refreshing. It stank with the smell of garbage that hadn’t been collected in several days. A muddy creek swirled past the old road; it was full of commercial waste, judging by the smell, and therefore heavily toxic. It was not an atmosphere conducive to… well, to any sort of happy life.

The building across from the creek was a honky-tonk saloon, one of the last of its kind. On tottering walls and with a cracking roof, Octavia could tell at a glance that this was an establishment by and for the desperate. Those who had nowhere else to go could drown their sorrows in cheap beer and with cheap, meaningless diversions – darts, or pool, or whatever trivialities they had out here.

An old stallion stumbled out of the saloon, and as the door swung shut, Octavia heard snatches of music. Despite her misgivings, she felt herself being drawn inside.

Lyra was performing.

The music wasn’t terrible; that was perhaps the worst part about it. Octavia could still hear hints of brilliance, surely unappreciated by the drunkards and delinquents half-slumped over tables, but recognizable all the same. It was still a Lyra Heartstrings composition, though buried in the cheap, schmaltzy drinking music.

Lyra was slouching over her lyre, strumming with one hoof while letting the others dangle idly. Octavia caught a glimpse of her eyes and froze. Lyra should have looked panicked, at winding up in these circumstances, or scared, or even disgusted at falling so low. But she couldn’t see any of that. Lyra looked resigned, like she had lowered her expectations to the point where her position felt acceptable.

“Lyra!” But she couldn’t be heard over some raucous moron in the back slamming his pool cue against his partner’s head.

The cellist ran forwards, shoving patrons and a waitress out of her way. “Lyra!” she repeated. She jumped onto the little stage, accidentally put a hoof through a cheap wooden board, tore it out and kept on going. “Lyra!”

Lyra looked over at her with dead eyes. “Tavi? What’re you doing here? Thought you were in Cheneigh.”

“Nevermind. We’re leaving, now. Immediately.”

Lyra’s expression was completely blank. “Why?”

“Why? Because I am not going to allow you to languish in this rat-infested den for one moment longer.”

Lyra shrugged. “Pays the bills.” She strummed again, hitting – it had to be by accident, she wasn’t paying enough attention to do it deliberately – a pretty little five-note sequence. “That’s enough.”

“Not for you! You should be the talk of Canterlot by now!” For Lyra did look a few years older. More worn, too. “Not playing gimcrack drinking tunes to patrons too immersed in their liquor to remember it tomorrow!”

“No… I couldn’t play there.” (By now, some of the bar patrons were yelling for Octavia to get off the stage). “There’s new musicians in Canterlot these days. Loyal to each other.” She smiled wistfully. “They deserve those spots. I’m fine where I am… I mean, my choices put me here. Can’t very well complain now.”

Octavia felt a tug – a unicorn, probably a bouncer, was dragging her away with magic. “Wait! Lyra!”

“We should get together some day,” said Lyra, turning back to her lyre. “We could…” She sighed. “We could talk about old times.”

“Lyra! No! Lyra!”

“… no, no, no! Lyra, please! LYRA!”

Octavia realized that she was back in the tower, and that she was in a little ball on the floor. She looked up at the mare. “What did you do?!”

The mare shrugged. “Part of my talent. Wisdom. Helps ponies see what they’ve managed to blind themselves to.” She stared at Octavia. “That’s what your standards say she deserves. She, and you.”

“Not that! Not for her, or…”

“You know it’s true, Octavia.”

Octavia shook her head. “She does not deserve that!”

“She made a mistake—“

“I don’t care! I don’t care what she did, Lyra Heartstrings deserves more than that!” yelled Octavia. She managed to get to her hooves. “Lyra Heartstrings is a brilliant musician, a loyal friend, and—“

“It’s not me you need to convince,” said the mare. “It’s not me who thinks that, if you make one mistake, it doesn’t matter what happens to you.”

And, Octavia was able to think, it was true in a sense. Lyra would be betraying her if she left now. She’d be leaving a friend in need, and that meant that she deserved—

No.

“She doesn’t deserve that,” repeated Octavia. “Any standards that say she does are wrong! All the work she’s done, all the good she’s done, matters, and cannot be obviated by… by something as trivial as being angry at a friend, once, especially with half the Court working against her! She’s brought joy to hundreds of ponies with her concerts, she works tirelessly to do justice to her music, she saved the world, and more! She deserves better than that perverse illusion!”

She paused.

Doesn’t the same apply to me? And then, a stronger thought. Aren’t all the good things I did worth something?

And she was seeing them, as if for the first time, the ponies that had smiled at her shows, the ones who had written her and told her that she’d inspired them to go into classical music, the colleagues whom she had helped reach true greatness under her training. There was even the one foal who had contacted her and said that she’d been so swept away by Octavia’s cello sonatas that, when she’d arrived home that night, she’d realized that she’d gotten her cutie mark at that concert – a record disk. She was going to be a music critic, she had said, because she loved music, and it was Octavia who had helped her to realize that.

I did a horrible thing, but I don’t deserve that saloon either. And I don’t deserve to be blacklisted now.

She had thought, for the longest time, that if she allowed fault in herself, it would not be long before she gave in to all manner of vice. Once it was allowable to, say, skip practice once, it would be easier the second time, and the third, until one was a layabout bum. But at this acknowledgement that her failure was, perhaps, forgivable, Octavia didn’t feel a sudden urge for hedonistic and libertine depravity. She felt like…

Like a weight is off of me. Maybe I can’t escape the Symphony’s curse, but at least now I know that I should try… that it’s worth trying.

“…alright,” she managed, and bowed her head. “I was wrong.”

“Don’t tell me. Find your friend,” said the mare. Her voice was no longer cruel, but it still wasn’t quite kind. “Before it’s too late. Before she decides that she’s betrayed you and is just as worthless as—“

Octavia was already running for the door.

As she went down the stairs, she sped up until she was in a full-blown gallop.

She had to find Lyra.