"I'm afraid I have some bad news," said the stallion in the doctor's coat. "It's about your daughter's... ah... perhaps you would like to hear it in private?"

"No." Her father's voice was firm. Octavia did not immediately know where it came from. She had hidden in a refrigerator car, its sterile stainless steel walls reminding her of a doctor's office. To her great surprise, the pony in the doctor's coat had crawled out of one of the cooling vents and was pacing nervously on the ceiling. Her father, a figment of him at least, far removed from that... thing the intruder had molded, also stood on the ceiling.

"It's really not something a little girl should have to worry about-"

"It is her life, doctor. Tell us."

With a sigh, the physician hung his head. "Your daughter has a very rare disorder. It's called..."

Octavia bit her lip and flattened herself against the floor of the car. She remembered this too. That was the day she learned she was a dead mare walking. She should have been born a unicorn, she had a unicorn's blood but no horn. Instead she was a broken earth pony who could not release the magic in her veins properly. Useless.

"Very well," her father said once the doctor was finished explaining. "How much will it cost to correct her mutation?"

"Sir... we can't. It's a genetic defect, nopony-"

Her father reached out and grabbed the doctor by the collar of his coat as though he were picking up an apple. "Do you mean to tell me that there is no might in your horn, doctor, or do you simply lack the fortitude to do what must be done?" His horn glowed gently, and the doctor levitated toward the floor of the refrigerator car. "I have already paid you an exorbitant sum to find out why she has been blacking out and suffering from headaches. Now I am asking you how much more it will take to make those problems disappear."

"Sir, neither technology nor sorcery can change what's wrong with her!" The doctor pawed at his throat and the thin ring of magic that was choking him. "Maybe if we had known when she was in the womb, but she's already several years old! Her aura and magiphysical-"

Her father dropped him on the ceiling like a sack of potatoes. "Money. Is no. Object. How can you not understand that? There is no problem that cannot be resolved with the proper application of force, and I am offering you as much as you need."

The physician rubbed his neck and looked at the grey mare, seeming to see a little filly rather than the frightened cellist. "I... sir, if there was a way, I would do it. I understand your pain, you... you know I have a daughter myself!"

"Yes," her father said quietly. "A beautiful little girl, already dabbling in magic. Hearty, healthy, well-horned." He reached down, relative to his own position on the ceiling at least, and patted the doctor on the back. "You are to be commended on having such a fine young filly to call your own. I would hate for you to have to know what it feels like to be in my shoes." The Jäger smiled at him. "No father should have to beg for his daughter's life, should he?"

Absolute terror gripped the doctor's face. "Please! No... no, not her, I'm sorry!" He grabbed at the other stallion's fetlocks. "If there was any way, I would, but surely you know there are things not even magic can fix!" The doctor swallowed hard. "I will not lie to you, there is nothing I could find that would help. The defect is... is... it's woven into her. There's nothing anypony can do, why, you would have to reach into her very soul!"

Her father rubbed his chin. "There are spells capable of that, and artifacts empowered with the ability to tinker with the bonds-"

"Do you think me a fool?" the physician interrupted with a touch of anger. "I consulted all the books, spoke with several experts, and chased every lead. I would not dare to come to you with news like this if I did not know it to be true beyond a shadow of doubt. A pony's magic comes from the heart, it flows from the chalice of the soul. A unicorn focuses that power through her horn, while an earth pony regulates hers through her physical connection with the ground. Your daughter seems to be incapable of either, and so it is slowly building up and inefficiently discharging. I have researched it thoroughly, and I can find no artifact or spell able to heal her."

Her father took a few very deep breaths, and stepped away from the stallion in the doctor's coat.

"However... there may be a treatment. It would be quite orthodox, but..."

"Tell me."

The doctor stood upright and adjusted his coat. "You mentioned before that your daughter seems predisposed toward music... this may be an instinctive drive to correct her body's failing by releasing it into her playing."

Her father turned slowly and looked at him as though he had just eaten his own stethoscope.

"It's not as crazy as it sounds. Many of the greatest musicians pour their hearts and souls into their work, playing to exhaustion in some cases. I've treated one who very nearly died from dehydration. Perhaps your daughter feels driven to compensate for her deficiency by releasing the... energy through her music."

Octavia put her hooves over her ears and whimpered softly. The pain. She remembered the pain, building inside her, pulsing through her brain, just like that hum she could feel through the car floor. It was getting closer. She rolled open the door and bolted out, leaving the memory behind.

"Useless... I'm useless." The grey mare held back tears as she ran. She would never be free. There was nowhere to run, she was just delaying the inevitable. Octavia ducked under a traincar as a horrible sound of metal toppling into pavement told her where the intruder was. She hid behind a huge wheel on a rusting locomotive as the shadow of a unicorn fell across a nearby railcar, then doubled back before taking off in a different direction.

She could still feel the hum. Whoooom. Why was she fighting this? The intruder's voice echoed through the trainyard, taunting her, "you can only run for so long, my little pony!"

Octavia sighed. She was right. The sensible thing was to roll over and die. There was no point to running, and maybe that horrible hum would stop once she was dead. Even so... the thought of what that specter had done to the memories of her parents turned her stomach. In her heart was some cold fire that kept her from simply giving in and letting herself be taken. The earth pony had always been a fighter since the day she had been born. That was why she was alive to have this nightmare.

She took a few deep breaths and considered her options. No weapons, no escape route, and no way to call for aid. The grey mare ran a hoof over her neck and felt... naked. Why, she did not know. Was she supposed to be wearing a necklace or something? That only made her more worried, for though she was willing to accept that this battlefield was in her mind, she was terrified by the idea that her memories might be... damaged. Incomplete. For what was she without some recollection of the things that made her Octavia?

"Useless," she answered quietly as she snuck down a narrow corridor between two massive passenger trains. The glass mouths of their broken windows leered down at her. She had no purpose, she just kept on living and making others' lives miserable. Like some kind of four-legged-

"You little cockroach!" roared the white specter, soaring down from the heavens on wings of crackling magic. "I have you now!"

Octavia ran, her legs pumping and heart racing. She did not want to die, even though she had no reason to live. The earth pony slid through a gap between train cars and came face to face with the growling corpse of her mother. She kicked it in the forehead and ran. Frantic plans flew through her mind, from the mundane idea of checking the train cars for firearms to the mad scheme of firing up one of the engines and flooding the sky with smoke to hide herself from the intruder. Before she could try anything, she heard the groan of the traincar to her right being toppled by magic, and dove beneath the one on her left.

The cars began falling all around her like dominos, each one shaking the ground as megagrams of steel toppled into one another. She jumped atop one, then scrambled up another to gain enough elevation for a jump onto a wobbling car. Scoffing Song was using her magic to push it over, and had her eyes closed in concentration. With that cold fire still burning in her heart, Octavia sprung out into the air and kicked the intruder in her face.

The unicorn sailed back over one railcar, and smacked into another. Octavia hit the ground hard, forced herself to her hooves, and took a deep breath. If she was to die, she would not go gently. A sudden sense of déjà vu rushed through her mind at that thought, but she pushed it aside. She needed to focus. How could she turn this situation to her advantage? The answer was simple. Seize the moment.

The grey mare squirmed through a narrow gap in search of the intruder. She needed to press her advantage while the target was on the defensive. Now was the time to run to the target, not away. She had to force this monster out of her mind.

Stopping only to pick up a loose iron bar, which she held between her teeth, the mare plodded quietly toward where she had heard Scoffing Song crash into a railcar. She peeked around a tangle of rusted steel beams and saw the dent where the mare had hit, but the unicorn was nowhere to be found. Octavia swallowed hard. She felt the hum growing again, knew that it meant the intruder had to be close, and wanted to run. It was foolish to try and face her. She was just a mudpony who had to carry her weapon between her teeth! With a glance over her shoulder, the grey mare slipped into the shadow of one of the railcars and tried to get a closer look.

Scoffing Song could be hurt. Her father had shown her that. There is no problem that cannot be resolved with the proper application of force. She was controlling the situation, concealing herself until she knew more about the target, searching for a weakness. Pride. She had pricked this intruder's pride, and that was her shortcoming. Octavia kept her tongue away from the iron pole in her mouth without even thinking about it. Earth ponies learned such things quickly. Even so, the taste and smell of iron drifted through her thoughts.

A trail of blood led from the dent, under the damaged car, and out the other side. Octavia circled around rather than following it directly, and saw that the trail led between another narrow gap. The grey mare considered for a moment, then spotted a few metal rungs on the side of a nearby railcar. She climbed atop it, thinking it would be better to lose the target for a moment than be bludgeoned unawares. Staying low, she looked over the edge and saw that her fears had been well founded. The two reanimated corpses of her parents stood on each side of the gap. Octavia swallowed hard and searched the sky for the intruder, then glanced back down at her parents.

No. They are not my parents. Not anymore. She looked back up at the sky, searching for something she could exploit, but saw only a cargo crane that was too far away for her to reach. Besides, what good would a crane be against a mare who could throw trains with her magic? They are not my parents. They are targets. She forced back a tear, knowing this was the weakness her father had tried so hard to purge from her. Octavia still saw her parents in the rotting shapes below, and that held her back from acting smoothly and dispassionately. This was different than a quick kick, this was premeditated murder. She should leap down and crush both of their skulls with her pipe. That would rid her of two enemies and allow her to focus on the weakened Scoffing Song.

She slid back from the edge. Could she do it? Could she finally make her father proud? Octavia gathered her willpower and made sure she had a solid grip on the pipe. It would be... it would be a mercy, would it not? Yes, this was what she must do. Then she could regain control of her mind. How had she entered this mad world of memory, anyway? Worse... if her attention was here, what was happening in the physical world? She had to do this. Octavia stood up and stepped to the side of the train, her legs coiled and ready to drop down. She peeked over the side one last time, and wondered for an instant why the ground seemed so far away before the train flipped onto its side.

The earth pony fell face-first into the ground, with Scoffing Song's laughter taunting her all the way. She rolled upright and readied her pipe, but the two shambling monsters that had once been her parents were already on her. Octavia swung the pipe and smacked one in the chin, all restraint forgotten in the face of pure terror, but it seemed to ignore the blow even though its jaw now hung loose. A few shattered teeth oozed out, along with a trail of spittle, but the corpse-pony's grip did not loosen. She swung the pipe again, but a glow of magic ripped it out of her teeth before it could connect.

"Ah-ah, can't have you ruining this, now can we?" the specter chortled. She reached up and casually bent the iron pipe into a ball, then tossed it through the window of a nearby passenger car. "You've ruined enough already, wouldn't you say?"

Octavia tried to kick free with her hindlegs, but despite hearing the crack of bone, the two parodies of her parents did not fall. She squirmed, thinking she should know some way to get out of this, some trick of close combat, but... no, her father had never taught her too much of that. Still she struggled, for the cold fire in her heart refused to give out.

This amused The Daughter. "Why do you fight so hard? I'm only trying to make you happy. You love being put upon, ground into the dirt, ordered about, do you not? You were born to be a slave, you are only happy when somepony is making you beg for recognition. Why else would you put up with him?" The glowing unicorn pointed at what used to be the grey mare's father. "Why else would you play that old classical music? Nopony really loves that stuff, it's just expected. It's a status symbol, like a fancy dress."

She stepped closer to the grey mare, adding just the right amount of contempt to her voice. "One has to have classical music at a ritzy party, and one has to be seen going to the classical concerts. Oh, I like to listen to it now and again, something of a guilty pleasure, but it's not like it'll ever be popular like in the old days. And you'll never be a star with classical music. You'll just be a name on a flier, mixed in with the rest of the orchestra and pushed around by the managers with all the real power."

Octavia whimpered softly, then shut her eyes. Something was wrong with the words the specter was using. They seemed to slip and squirm as they entered her ears. This... this was something she knew about but... but what was it? Word, idea, concept, enemy, power, magic, unnatural, manipulation, sorcery, mind, the grey mare gasped for breath and jerked against her captors, witch! It was as though she had never heard the word before, and it seemed to have some hidden meaning she was not aware of a minute ago.

"That's why you came here, isn't it? Somepony ordered you to, and so you went running along like a good little mudpony. You came to kill me." Scoffing Song threw back her head and laughed. "Rule of heel, Octavia. You can't kill the Chosen One!"

Her laugh echoed through the trainyard, taunting the grey mare again and again. That hum was pounding in her skull, louder even than her own pulse. There was nowhere to run. She had failed, again. She would never make her father proud. Octavia looked up to the sky, and saw only a weak sun in it. Still, she whispered softly, for what harm could it do, "help."

Scoffing Song laughed again, and took another step closer. "Your masters can't hear you in here, Octavia. They'll never know what happened to you, nopony will. I serve a True Power, and I'm sure your soul will make a delicious sacrifice." The unicorn floated a few centimeters above the ground, held up by little sparks of magic. "Don't you see? I won before you ever set hoof in my enclave. I won the day you were born. I always win, even when stupid mudponies make it hard." She huffed. "Really, everypony does. I always have to work to get my way, but I always do in the end. And soon, I'll never have to work for anything else again, it'll all flow right to me, I'll just have to lie back and open wide!"

Only a meter or so separated the two mares. Scoffing Song reached out with her magic and forced Octavia's mother to turn the earth pony's head so their eyes met. "Now. Say it. Say that I won, and you lost, and you want me to order you about because it's the only way you'll ever be happy." She smiled wide, then slowly her ears began to rise as Octavia remained silent. "Say it!"

The grey mare found she could not say anything. She felt like something had given way in her mind and a roaring wave of water was flooding all her thoughts out her ears. For the longest time she thought that her genetic defect had finally won out, and her brain had literally exploded inside her skull. Part of it, at least, just enough to leave her a vegetable that could barely breathe on its own. That had always been a quiet fear of hers. Then she heard something that terrified her even more, though she could not explain why. "Fooound yooooou!"

Author's Notes:

Dun dun dun!

I'll admit it, this chapter was split out from a larger one. The other option was posting a huge slug all at once, and I didn't think it flowed as well. That other chunk also needs a bit more editing before it goes live.

I spent eight to ten hours on Bon Hadescream this past week, if I did the math right, and I'm extremely happy with the amount of work I've produced! That's why I'm able to publish this chapter tonight, and I hope to have the next chapter of Aquarium out before next Sunday (the 30th).

As always, thanks for reading!