The distinct rush of pegasi flight blasted through the amphitheatre. Subsonic, although only just, six Wonderbolt competitors raced toward the finish like feathery bullets, but only two had any real chance of claiming the top spot on the podium.

“Well, I am sure zis comes as a surprise to nopony who ‘asnt ‘ad zeir ‘ead stuck under a rock for the last few weeks,” Fleur announced, her magically amplified voice ringing loud and clear from the production stage, “but ‘ere we are again with a two pony showdown. Who is your money on—the veteran, or the new filly?”

The crowd roared, row after row of ponies stomping their hooves so hard, it shook the building’s foundations. Of course, it still wasn’t enough to drown out the growling inside Fleur’s head.

Veux Luc!

Due to the hustle and bustle of the crowd, the dazzling arena lighting, and Fleur’s outright refusal to blast those pesky pegasi whizzing past every six seconds or so with a thaumic radiation beam, the siren was in a bit of a foul mood.

“Risky move by Rainbow Dash,” Fleur noted, just as the prismatic pegasus squeezed between a stone pillar and a rather annoyed-looking Fleetfoot. “It is clear zis pony is keen to prove she isn’t as green as the ozzers would ‘ave you believe. Rounding the final corner now, and it looks as though it’s going to be ‘er second Derby win in two months-oh dear,” Fleur trailed off.

Pushing her luck yet again, Rainbow Dash had shot into the final bend carrying way too much speed, and had ended up smashing through the window of the Starswirl box as a result.

The crowd erupted, this time with a collective “OOOOOOOF!” as a flurry of blue feathers fluttered down from the pegasus-shaped hole in the glass.

“Well, zere you ‘ave it, mares and gentlecolts, experience wins zis round,” Fleur cried, just as Fleetfoot soared through the finish line in a flourish of barrel rolls. “Back on form for zis mare, zis is Fleetfoot’s third win of the season, Spitfire claiming a ‘ard-fought second, and Misty Fly having to settle for the final podium spot.” A flash of her horn, and the amplification enchantment lifted. “Better get somepony up zeir to check if Rainbow is still in one piece, no?” Fleur addressed to the stage manager, who looked as though he was about to faint.

Rainbow Dash, it transpired, was perfectly fine, the mare having ricocheted off of Starswirl the Bearded’s stoney head and punted Top-Hat Tootington the Third from his jewel-encrusted throne like a pseudo pony-pinball. She had an uncanny knack for emerging unscathed from situations that would probably earn any other pony a lengthy stint in hospital for weeks, this incident being merely the most recent in a string of minor catastrophes.

“I’ll have your wings for this!” screeched Top Hat, his voice breaking like a pre-pubescent colt’s might. In the span of five minutes, he’d managed to blow the whole thing out of proportion, and was now convinced that Rainbow Dash had actually been plotting to murder him all along.

“Top ‘At! Be mindful of your words!” Fleur admonished, levelling him with a look of mild exasperation. So flamboyant was his tantrum, the nurses tending to Rainbow had taken the precaution of calling her up to the box to keep the stallion in check.

Fleur had half a mind to tell them to call the guards. She had neither the time, nor patience to deal with Top Hat, especially when she could be meeting up with Luke.

Luc…

Bientôt, mon amie.

“She nearly killed me!”

“Zeir is not a mark on you—you are well aware of zis, Top ‘At. Now, I do not want anozzer peep out of you, or the staff will be forced to inform the guards of your misbe’aviours,” Fleur countered, keeping her voice calm and treating the situation as though it were nothing more exciting than a mundane business deal.

Top Hat scoffed, an ugly grimace claiming his muzzle. “Shouldn’t you be on some dinner date with that lanky alien cretin by now-EEUURRGGHH!”

Just like that, several thousand years worth of discipline training and restraint conditioning measures were thrown from the metaphorical window by… a few petty words? Fleur was so utterly surprised it had taken such a paltry amount of provocation that she simply stared at the stallion—a passenger in her own body. Top Hat lay pinned, suspended five hooves above the floor, his body pressed against the polished wood of the box wall. His fur was bathed in the deathly blue glow of the siren’s gaze, his limbs unmoving and his breath quick and shallow.

“Veux-tu mourir ce soir?” the beast hissed, a duality of vocal tones ringing through the room.

Top Hat could only stare into the dark abyss of his fate. The true blast of a siren’s gaze was, after all, unrelenting. It was only the terrified, motionless stares of the nurses and nobles alike, along with a very confused-looking Rainbow Dash that spurred Fleur back into action.

Non!

Three seconds of brute force later, and the worthless pig was spared. For now, at least. He fell to the floor with a moderate thump. He didn’t get up again.

Il est toujours en vie! Screeched the siren, clawing at Fleur’s mind like a raging tigress.

Are you trying to get us banished? We do not attack stallions—no matter how abhorrent they are! Grabby warlocks notwithstanding, Fleur was not a coltbeater.

“Forgive me, but I ‘ave someplace to be,” she announced to no one in particular, her voice uncharacteristically shaky for somepony who had just commentated on a sporting event. Without even bothering to bid any of the ponies staring at her farewell, she teleported away without a thought.

“You’re just like a big stoney kitten, aren’t you?” Luke chuckled.

Whoever had enchanted this statue was an absolute legend. Stonenambula had perhaps been more entertaining than the derby, not to mention she’d kept Prince Tryhard and his dumbass friends from throwing snide ‘monkey’ related comments at him.

Yep, it turns out that a clip around the ear from the rock-hard wing of a seven foot stone pegasus really drops the arse out from a snarky noble. Luke had laughed so hard, he’d fallen off his throne. Blueblood’s friend had probably lost what little IQ points he’d had from such a wallop, judging by the way he’d cradled his battered head in his hooves for the rest of the race.

The three of them had scarpered not long after, the two noble couples on the other side of the box eventually following suit after Rainbow Dash had tried to one up Fleetfoot and got a faceful of glass for her efforts.

Now, it was just Luke and his new best friend.

“I could just take you home. I probably would, if I had somewhere to put you.”

The thought of the statue sitting next to his beat up old couch, preening her stoney wings in the middle of his sitting room brought a smile to his face. She’d no doubt take up most of the space, but that kind of felt like a fair compromise. It would be worth it for the company alone.

“Of course, the guards might have a thing or two to say to me if I just lead you out of here, wouldn’t they?” he added, running his palm over her wing again.

Stonenambula closed her eyes, her grin almost as wide as the box window. She shifted, detaching her hooves from her plinth completely and rolling onto her back with an almighty thud that rattled a set of expensive looking china in a nearby display case. There she lay, her legs sticking up in the air like some sort of monstrously-sized house cat.

“Oh, you want to me to rub your belly, do you now?” Luke chuckled, raising his eyebrows at the extent of the enchantment. This was some OP as fuck magic. Damn.

The underside of her barrell was smoother than her wings. Luke scratched away, chuckling at the increasingly hilarious satisfied-stone-horse faces she was making.

CRACK.

A flash of pink briefly illuminated the box. Even though Luke had been expecting it this time, Fleur’s freaky teleportation skills still managed to scare the crap out of him. “I really wish you’d send a warning first, or something,” he muttered, picking himself up off the floor for the second time that evening.

The stone pegasus, clearly displeased with the lack of attention, leaned up to nudge his arm with her muzzle, nearly knocking him out of his seat again. “Woah, okay, okay,” Luke chuckled, giving her a good scratch under the chin for her efforts. “Don’t know your own strength, do you?”

“I see you ‘ave made a new friend,” Fleur observed, a forlorn look darkening her features.

Stonenambula turned at the sound of Fleur’s voice, those big yellow eyes falling on the unicorn, and her demeanour changed, quite considerably. Luke was forgotten like last night’s leftovers, and she got to her hooves, centering herself on her plinth and laying down on her barrel.

Neither of them were smiling.

Luke waited with bated breath, but neither of them said anything, either. Made sense for Somnambula, he guessed. The statue was mute. But, he’d have thought Fleur might’ve said something. Anything.

“What was she like?” he asked, after a few moments.

Fleur shifted her gaze to Luke. Her eyes, always so full of vitality, whatever colour they happened to be at the time, now appeared dim, and lifeless. “Somnambula was the best friend I ever ‘ad, but zat alone is not what was so special about ‘er,” she lamented, raising a hoof to gently brush the statue’s cheek. “Zis mare… zis remarkable pony managed to do something zat I ‘ave never witnessed in all of my years.”

“What?” Luke prompted, when Fleur paused, dropping her hoof back to the floor and simply observing the statue with sorrow in her eyes.

“She befriended a siren. My siren,” Fleur finally answered, the sapphire in her spiked collar emitting a dim glow with her softly spoken words. “It is not in the nature of a siren to make a friend. Some barely tolerate zeir ‘osts, let alone others. Most see the general population as nothing more than a source of sustenance.”

The stone statue stared, unblinking, unknowing. It was beginning to make sense to Luke why Fleur was perhaps a little unenthusiastic with her interactions. Granted, the enchantment was clever, but to her, it was probably nothing more than a pale imitation of the mare she once knew.

“Somnambula was the pony that pulled me from my darker days during the age of the pillars. I was never a true renegade, but I was per’aps ‘eading in zat direction. Even Celestia ‘ad given me multiple warnings. Singing in the streets every ozzer week? Spreading just the tiniest slivers of strife through the city for my own amusement? I ‘ad done it, and I ‘ad felt no remorse. That all changed when I met Somnambula.”

Luke kept his silence. He was all ears, perched right on the edge of his seat. Fleur probably hadn’t spoke of this for hundreds of years, to anypony. A historian would probably kill for this level of insight into the past. The fact that she trusted him enough to share it with him made his insides feel all warm and fuzzy.

“Zis mare changed me. Made me realise I was being a terrible pony… Made me realise I was giving in to the darker path that ‘ad claimed many a siren before me,” Fleur said, her sapphire glowing a little brighter. “Our race was more despised zan ever, back then. She would ‘ave been completely justified in rounding up the pillars and banishing me like Starswirl ‘ad done to Adagio, Aria and Sonata, but she saw fit to spare me.” A solitary drop accumulated in the corner of one of her pretty violet eyes. Violet eyes, Luke realised, that had a soft blue shade hiding in their depths. “Starswirl was all for getting rid of me, but Somnambula put ‘er ‘oof down,” Fleur cried, visibly shaking with… hell, Luke had no idea. Regret, perhaps?

It seemed like something much more than that. “The years zat followed our meeting were the ‘appiest of my life. I ‘ad a true friend… We ‘ad a true friend,” Fleur said, glaring at the unblinking, expressionless statue laid before her with something akin to malice. “But like everything in zis endless existence, she was taken from us, way too soon!” The blue shade in her eyes grew steadily brighter, along with the glow from her sapphire. A second later, those eyes were staring Luke down. He gulped, gripping the arm of the chair so tightly his knuckles turned white. “And you know what the worst thing about it is? We cannot even mourn ‘er because we do not truly know zat she is dead!”

Silence cut through the chamber like a blade, despite the distant sounds of the crowd dispersing from the amphitheatre. Ponies laughing, foals crying, the general babble of conversation, all of it may as well have been a million miles away as far as Luke was concerned.

“What… What do you mean?”

Fleur didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze was set upon the statue of her old friend once more, which was acting more and more like it had been completely untouched by magic. Even the yellow glow had vanished from its eyes. “At the base of Foal Mountain lies a temple. A temple that ‘as been untouched by pony ‘ooves for over a thousand years. It ‘as become a monument to the Pillars of Equestria, as it is the place where zey sacrificed themselves, Somnambula among them, in an effort to contain a considerable threat to Equestria.”

A short silence followed her words, during which Luke could only sit and stare at the statue of Somnambula with a slightly wistful expression. This pony and her friends had given their lives to save Equestria, presumably. It was acts such as this that portrayed true nobility. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he acknowledged. “What were they fighting?”

“A stallion calling ‘imself the Pony of Shadows.”

Luke frowned. “The Pony of Shadows? Isn’t that… like, a ghost story? I’m sure I heard a foal talking about it when I used to wait in line at the dole house,” he nervously pondered. The little filly’s mother had even scolded her for trying to scare her brother with an ‘old pony’s tale’, if he remembered correctly.

“‘Ee was as real as you or I, believe me. An old friend of the pillars. A unicorn, named Stygian,” she growled, the demonic undertone of the siren sending a rather unpleasant shiver rattling down Luke’s spine as the name passed her lips. “‘Ee grew jealous of the pillars, tried to steal from them. Zey turned their backs on ‘im in retaliation, and the darkness overtook ‘im, a darkness so powerful that a simple banishment was not possible. In the end, zey had to follow ‘im into the abyss, so that ‘ee would be truly contained,” she said, some of her ire escaping her. All she had left was a sorrowful gaze for the motionless statue of her long lost friend. “She never told me what she planned to do. Never told me Stygian had been lost to darkness. She knew I would ‘ave never allowed her to sacrifice ‘erself. She knew I would ‘ave tried to fight ‘im.”

Luke kept his silence. It really sounded as though Fleur just needed to vent. He was content to just listen.

“Of course, ‘er silence on the matter was just anozzer means of protecting me. I would ‘ave lost, back then. I was not strong enough,” she murmured, bowing her head. “The saddest thing is—if it ‘ad all went down today, I could ‘ave crushed ‘im in a fucking ‘eartbeat. Even as an immortal, time still makes a fool of me,” she sighed, suddenly looking more tired than Luke had ever seen her. She gave the statue one last look. “I miss ‘er so much. Zis statue… It is nothing, compared to ‘er.”

Stonenambula smiled no more. She just sat, motionless, eyes dull and grey. The stoney expression was mimicked on Fleur’s face. “Maybe we should get out of here?” Luke suggested, already getting to his feet. “You sound like you need a pick me up.”

Fleur smiled, some of the warmth usually present in her eyes returning. “Yes, I was just about to suggest the very same-”

POP.

A flash of green light snuffed out her words, a rolled up scroll bearing a seal Luke instantly recognised as the royal insignia falling from its point of origin and landing at Fleur’s hooves. The ridiculous amount of times Luke had had the very same thing happen to him when Celestia had been pestering him to go and work for her was something he wasn’t going to be forgetting for a long time.

Fleur plucked the scroll up off the floor with her magic, unravelling it and scanning the contents. Barely three seconds passed before she let out a sigh. “I ‘ave to go,” she muttered, rolling her eyes and making the scroll vanish with another spell.

“Why?”

“Because I nearly killed Top ‘At twenty minutes ago and Celestia no doubt wants to lecture me about it.”

Luke’s mouth fell open. She nearly what twenty minutes ago? “Oh, come on!”

Fleur blinked, a bemused expression on her face. “Am I missing something? Are the two of you friends now?”

“Fuck no! But you could have let me watch… or, y’know… actually killed him,” Luke snickered, picturing Top Hat’s stupid face with ‘x’s for eyes. “Come to think of it, I’d have been fine with either.”

Fleur’s smile was suddenly as wide as Stonenambula’s had been when he’d scratched her belly, and the ‘blue tint’ in her eyes became a full on pool shimmering azure, engulfing the whites of her eyes. “Don’t encourage her! She’ll be trying to kill the nobles just to impress you now!” Fleur chastised. She sounded mildly annoyed, but her face was telling a completely different story. Shit was just plain weird.

“Yeah, best not actually do that, little miss water-demon,” he quickly added, before realising that that had been the first time he’d addressed her alter-ego directly. It was odd, to say the least.

The blue glow faded from her eyes, revealing violet irises once again. “I do not know how long I will be, but I will catch up with you for zat drink if I ‘ave time, mon cher,” she said, rearing up onto her hind legs, she claimed his shoulders with her forehooves and gave him a lengthy nuzzle.

Luke took in her scent, and it almost made him ask her not to leave. His hands found her sides, the silky material of her dress warm to the touch. The sensation of her fur rubbing against his beard, the feeling of her barrel pressed to his chest… It was a little overwhelming, if he was honest.

“Au revoir, mon amour,” the demonic voice hissed, just as something hot and wet grazed his cheek. One bright pink flash and a loud CRACK later, and Luke was standing by himself.

“Did… Did she just lick me?” he muttered to the empty box.

As if she was waiting for Fleur to leave all along, Stonenambula’s eyes lit up, and she gave an affirmative nod.

The vast blanket of Luna’s cosmological artistry met Fleur’s eyes, her hooves finding purchase on the polished marble balcony of Celestia’s private tower. A late-night audience with the solar Princess in such an illustrious and personal locale to the crown would probably have the average noble drooling all over the floor, immersed in rapturous fantasy about all the bragging rights they’d have after having attended such an appointment. But as it was, Fleur was way more concerned by the fact she had just licked one of her employees.

Or rather, her siren had.

You thirsty harlot! If the board finds out about this, there’ll be hell to pay!

Mien, was all the reply she gave.

Luke is an employee! Not the last cookie in the jar you don’t want somepony to steal!

“Fleur?” Celestia prompted.

Fleur hadn’t even noticed the alicorn standing right in front of her. The golden crown, regalia and horseshoes she normally wore were absent, and there were noticeable dark patches beneath her eyes. Celestia had never been much of a night owl, something for which Fleur felt perhaps even more guilty necessitating an immediate appointment due to losing her temper.

“Sorry, mon amie. I was a little distracted.”

Celestia smiled, the warm glow of her horn summoning a bottle of wine in an instant, which she levitated over to a marble patio table. “I hear that’s been happening a lot, lately,” she commented, taking a seat at the table, where two glasses had just materialised in a fleeting flash of gold.

Subtle and smooth, as was Celestia’s style. Fleur could already feel the regret welling up in her stomach. Celestia cared deeply for the welfare of her citizens. Even assholes such as Top Hat.

“Please, sit,” Celestia offered, half filling the two glasses.

“I know why you called me ‘ere,” Fleur said, sitting on the bench on the other side of the table. “I… lost control. I do not know why,” she lied, hoping her face didn’t give her away. If she could cut this little meeting short, then it was worth a shot.

Of course, it was damn near impossible to pull the wool over this pony’s eyes. “You know exactly why,” Celestia countered, pausing to take a measured sip from her glass. “However, I can forgive your dishonesty on this occasion. I know this can’t be easy for you.”

A gust of wind swept over the balcony, shifting Fleur’s mane a bit. Celestia’s was unaffected, answering as it did to an otherworldly force. “I… I cannot seem to ‘elp myself where Luke is concerned. Top ‘at could ‘ave called me every name under the sun, even attacked me to a certain extent, but to insult Luke like he did… She… she became… uncontainable,” Fleur begrudgingly admitted. Her darker half been perilously close to flying off the handle in general as of late, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to ignore the fact that her elevated temper could be traced back to the week Luke first started working at J’adore.

“Well, of course she did. Even I wouldn’t be so foolish as to try and reason with a siren defending the honour of her consort. Be it through physical confrontation, magical intervention, or simple conversation—none are likely to work. But have you considered that Luke may be immensely more successful at calming her?

“Ee was not zere,” Fleur deadpanned, choosing to ignore the ‘C’ word.

“You have a horn, yes? Teleport to him. Hold him close. Wrap your hooves around him so tightly that she has no choice but to forget whatever silly thing she was angry about and just enjoy his presence,” Celestia suggested with a somewhat smug grin, as if such a solution was the simplest little thing.

“But what if ‘ee does not like zat?” Fleur snapped, springing to her hooves and slamming a forehoof to the table. Celestia’s inattentive condescension was quickly becoming tiresome. She may as well have been explaining the obvious to a child. “I know ‘ee could calm her down in an instant, every siren knows zat is what a consort does. But the scale of ‘er sorrow would be unprecedented if ‘ee pushed us away. Zat sorrow would quickly turn into equally devastating levels of rage. She would never ‘arm ‘im, even in zat state, but she would lay waste to everypony else zat got in ‘er way.”

The Passive and Unflinching Celestia took another carefree sip of her wine, before carefully setting the glass back down on the table. Her tongue swept the length of her lips. “I guess that’s a risk you’re just going to have to take.”

“In your city. Around your subjects?”

Celestia gave the wry, knowing smile she was famous for. “From what I’ve seen, neither of us has anything to worry about, but you’re too clouded by needless anxiety to realise.”

Fleur sat back down, huffing out a sigh. It was only then that she realised her hoof had left a small crater in the marble table. One brief flash of her horn later, and it was gone. If only all of her problems could be solved so easily. “Okay… I shall make a move on ‘im. I knew it was going to ‘appen eventually,” Fleur muttered, the words unintentionally emerging as something of an epiphany as she said them. “I… I think I am ready.”

Celestia smiled. “You can go now.”

Grabbing her untouched wine with a resolute sliver of pink aura, Fleur downed the entire glass in one go and charged her horn for a teleport. She hadn’t the foggiest idea where Luke was, but to her mild surprise, her magical ember warped around her horn, presenting her mind with a lofty view of the streets of Canterlot. It startled her so much, the spell imploded in a puff of smoke.

Had she… Had she just seen the world through Luke’s eyes?

The connection… It was already beginning to form. Never before had she been able to teleport directly to an individual without knowing their location first. Teleportation magic just didn’t work that way. For a siren and her consort, however, it was a different story.

A shiver ran along the full length of her back, even though it wasn’t particularly cold. She had found him. She hadn’t even been looking, but here he was. Her consort. She had personally known sirens who had devoted their entire lives to the search, and when they had found nopony to call their own, cast themselves willingly into the abyss, rather than suffer through the rest eternity in solitude.

It was so sad. The only way to win at this game was to not play. So Fleur had done just that, and it had worked quite well for thousands of years, or so she’d thought.

This was only the beginning. The Everlasting Enchantment had been triggered, an involuntary bit of siren magic coveted by every little filly born into the race, and revered, craved and cherished by even the highest order of elders. It was going to change Luke, in ways that he could not possibly imagine.

He wouldn’t even see it coming.

Firing up the spell once again, she teleported, her dark counterpart guiding her to where she needed to go.

This chapter breaks canon just a tiny bit, as Celestia and Luna were supposedly school fillies when the pillars went missing, which would put them at around a thousand-ish years old. In this fic, they’re way older, so yeah… I’m just gonna gloss the fuck over that. :-P

As usual, let me know if you spot any typos or editing mistakes.