"Octyyy... are you done yet?" the pale unicorn groaned. "I mean, it feels like we've been looking for years!"

Octavia sighed, and nosed through a book. They were back in the library of her mind, surrounded by shelf after shelf of her memories. A small stack of them sat on each side of her. "I know you once told me something about dragons and dragon bones, and I'm not going to pass up this chance to remember."

"Just run down there and kill 'em all before they can do anything. Bonus points if you use one of the dragon bones like a baseball bat and knock one of their heads over a balcony rail!" Vinyl sprawled atop a mess of books. Her horn glowed softly as she levitated a few stacks around herself and lazily glanced through them. The books were not filled with words, but songs. They represented the grey mare's thoughts and the architecture her mind used to store memories. Music was an inextricable part of her life, and so her memories were ordered like notes on a stave. "All this stuff is ancient. Why couldn't you at least put your memories on eight-track tapes?" Vinyl rolled over and let her tongue loll out of her mouth. "Unnnghh... Wait. You're a sniper, why don't you just find a window that overlooks wherever they're planning to do the ritual and go all Mad Gunmare II: The Clocktower Strikes Seven-oh-Six on 'em?"

"If they have any sense at all, they'll have put some kind of protective bubble up over the ritual site."

"If they had any sense at all, they wouldn't be mucking about with dragon bones." The unicorn paged through a book, then tossed it away. "Those things are usually ancient, fossils from back when the dragons actually ruled instead of slumming around between caves and taking nice long naps."

The grey mare set one songbook aside and picked up the next. A small shiver ran down her spine. She was still struggling to cope with the violation of her mind by that... that... Deep breath, Octavia. Maintain focus. That target.

"Okay, so they have a force field. Have Beakie blow the roof and fill the whole atrium of the hotel with rubble. He's gotta have some boom-boom on him somewhere. Heh." A jagged grin spread across the unicorn's face.

The grey mare shook her head and continued searching earnestly. She had to do this, she had to prove that she was worthy of the trust that the Organization had placed in her. Failure was something she could not accept.

"Yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. I mean, it's not like we really need this old place intact, right? Not if the alternative is giant monsters. If the real me was up and about, I'd just spook him into doing it." The vampire snickered, then rolled over on the mess of books again and stretched her back. "But since I'm out of commission for a lil' bit... just ask all nice like you do, and he'll get flustered like he does, and then-"

Octavia shook her head. "No, Vinyl." An explosion of that magnitude would almost certainly draw the attention of ARGUS. She pulled a leatherbound book off the shelf and paged through it. "Dragons... dragons... what did you tell me about dragons..."

"Never make a deal with one, shadowrunner." Vinyl glanced through a book with 1989 written on its cover in chromium letters, then tossed it over her head. "Oh, and if one runs for elected office, it's a sure bet that he'll get exploded if he wins. Or he'll ascend to a higher plane of existence to protect the world from horrors that seek to consume all life, but it'll still look like he got exploded. Booooom." She balanced a book on her nose. "And the baby ones are cute."

The grey mare ran a hoof along a stave, hearing the notes in her mind and feeling the memories come into focus. This mind-state that Scoffing Song had forced upon her was like a deep form of hypnosis. It opened up avenues of the mind that were normally shut, and allowed even tiny details to be recalled from the mists of memory. Finding them was the problem. Though she knew that time was short, Octavia also knew she had to seize this chance. If only Vinyl was truly here, with all that eldrich knowledge heaped like dirty dishes inside her mind...

"But, yeah. Never make a deal with a dragon, because they usually have a clause in there about eating your soul. However, if you outsmart the dragon and he somehow violates his part of the contract, you get to keep your soul and he goes scuttling away, back to wherever dragons go." Vinyl stood upright and plodded over to her friend. She was a fragment of the true Vinyl Scratch, but she retained most of her functionality. Sort of like the difference between a studio recording of a song and a live concert. The fragment liked to imagine she sounded better in the studio sometimes, but couldn't deny that the live version kicked serious tail. "The dead ones, at least. The living ones don't usually have a code or anything anymore, but the ancient ones that you can still revive are bound by all kinds of rules and usually eat souls to maintain their physical forms."

"Um-hmmm..." Octavia muttered inattentively as she continued nosing through the books. Weakness, there was some kind of weakness, I know Vinyl mentioned it to me... She almost had it, she knew she did, it was right at the edge of her mind... "Vinyl, if you could put your pride aside for a moment and help-"

"Oh, and dragons have pride like nobody's business. Greed too. Anger, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth, oh yeah. They're all nasty creatures who thought they were the best at everything, which is why they're all dead. Pride goeth before the societal implosion and subsequent ego-driven civil war fueled by misplaced confidence in individuals who promised the stars but were capable of little more than emotional manipulation." She paused for a moment and turned her head, following a red wisp that had trailed past, then looked back at the grey mare. "Slimeballs with that kind of attitude need to stick to being rock stars. Like me." Vinyl pushed her glasses up her muzzle as Octavia turned to stare at her with wide-eyed wonder. The unicorn could jump from moments of moronic sloth to insightful scholarship as quickly as the earth pony could eat a daisy. "Those still alive are either too young to know about the hedonism of their elders, or they've slept too much to remember much of anything from back then. Heh, what's funny is that when an old dragon is resurrected from its bones, it still thinks it's king of the mountain and the best at everything, but it's really only good for causing a lot of destruction until it's had time to refresh its old skills. Its body has forgotten how to do things, even though its mind remembers that the dragon had sharp skills. I can sympathize with that. I forget a lot when I conk out too." The pale mare yawned. "Wait, what was my name again?"

Octavia slammed the book in her hooves shut and smiled as the knowledge she had sought clicked solidly into place. "Vinyl Scratch... you're a genius!"

"Hey! Yeah, that's me!" She held out her arms. "Hug?"

The earth pony wrapped her front legs around her friend. "That was what I needed, thank you."

"What was the who... huh?" Vinyl stuck out her tongue and spat into a dark corner to untie the knot in it.

"I need to vanquish this dragon, and undo all the preparations that these cultists have made. I failed to kill their leader outright, and I do not think I will awaken in time to have another chance. So I must be prepared to deal with the monster they seek to summon as well."

"Go mash the monster, Octy." The vampire smirked. "Make it a graveyard smash, like we always do."

"No, Vinyl. That won't work this time. If it comes to a stand-up fight, we're finished." She swallowed hard, then said firmly, "I'm going to outsmart the monster."

"Really? Outsmart a dragon?" Vinyl raised an eyebrow. "Hrmm... well, I think if anypony can do it, you can. But hey, maybe you're just overreacting." She patted her friend's back. "I mean, what if the cultists in the elevator reach the ground floor and discover that there's a couple of black-armored Operatives there with full-auto lasrifles? Boom, problem solved."

"Real life is never that convenient, my domitor." She sighed. "The fickle wind of chance is always blowing against us, throwing our best-aimed rounds off-target."

"You're right. Besides, then Beakie would be smug as the cat that got the canary." She groaned, imagining the gryphon all puffed up with his institutional pride. "Then he'd write up a report about the value of well-trained Operatives and how they should never be underestimated, even when used in conjunction with Assets." Vinyl stuck out her tongue. She did all the heavy lifting when she was around, and everypony knew it. "And then he'd glare at me even more than he usually does while blabbering on about endangering not only the team, not only your partner, but every employee of the Bon Hadescream Corporation in this city while putting countless civilian lives at risk."

"Vinyl... what did you do back at the base? Why did everything explode? Was it really some kind of trap, or..."

"Heh, wouldn't you like to know." The vampire smiled. "And, honestly, I would too. So, go kick rump, get the real me back to normal, and we'll find out together what I meant by spider in the crate."

Author's Notes:

It's been a long wait, but Bon Hadescream is finally off hiatus! Unless, of course, you just recently found out about this story and are reading through it in a proper archive-binge. In that case, welcome!

First of all, I've pre-written all the chapters out to the end of this story arc. That was part of the reason that Bon Hadescream was delayed for so long. I wanted to give this story arc a proper conclusion, and I did not want to post chapters at random. The good news is that this means Bon Hadescream will be updating once a week until the story arc is completed!

I also reworked some of the chapter names. In particular, I prefaced all the current story arc's chapters with "Bastille". That was a French fortress, and Camille Saint-Saëns (composer of the Carnival of the Animals) was French as well. The name seemed fitting for a "fortress-hotel" controlled by cultists!

Bon Hadescream has always been dear to my heart, even though it is much less widely read than some of my smaller stories. If you have read this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I would truly love to read what you think. While I have been unable to post new content for quite some time, I have taken pains to always check up on my stories and read their comments.