//------------------------------//
// Terror of the Nuckelavee 
// Story: Trixie Searches For Magic 
// by MagicS 
//------------------------------//

The mountains east of Griffonstone were a land practically unknown to the ponies of Equestria and even most griffons. After all they were just some desolate mountains. No hidden cities or long lost kingdoms existed there. Occasionally some griffons would fly through them to see what was there only to shrug and turn back when they learned just how bare it really was. And even more rarely did any ponies from Equestria travel out here over the years, most preferring to stay within their beautiful homeland. And even the more adventurous ones preferred to go exploring places with a little more pizazz than the mountains that formed the natural eastern border of the Griffon Lands.  

However appearances can be deceiving. And for the few ponies and griffons that did live in these mountains and called them home they knew they were far from alone out here. For this world of Equestria, the Crystal Empire, the Dragon Lands, and beyond, was a world full of strange and magical things. And in an out of the way place like this even weirder things tended to gather and happen. Magical beasts unknown to any archive that appeared and disappeared at will, marauders that were hiding out from any sort of authority, vagabonds and vagrants looking for who knows what, all had no problem gathering in these mountains and make life a struggle for the good and honest ones living there.

An ashen gray mountain range stretched as far as the eye could see from Griffonstone, heading east and east and east seemingly without end. What lied beyond that horizon? Even the studious Twilight Sparkle couldn’t answer that. Nothing had been written about it in Equestria and even though she was the type of pony who would leap at the opportunity to learn all she could about something new it wasn’t exactly high on her list of priorities. It wasn’t a high priority for anyone.  

The fact that it constituted the middle of nowhere for the rest of the world is what led it to be such a haven for all things odd and all things criminal. No prying Alicorn eyes here. Whatever weird phenomena happened in these mountains there was never any expedition formed by a concerned Princess to figure it out. And whatever cruelty or evil that might have been going on was similarly invisible. The ponies and griffons and who knows what else in these mountains were truly off the grid and on their own.  

For the most part they lived in a town like any you would find in Equestria or elsewhere. And lived normal lives. But there was a roughness here and always the threat of some sort of magical beast appearing and leaving chaos and destruction in its wake. It was the kind of world stuck in the past before the modern era and all the safety and prosperity it brought with it. So in some ways this small world was alike the outside one and in other ways it was so very different.  

Speaking of the threat of a magical beast, for the locals currently attempting to eke out an existence here, there was one such beast now that was proving to be the gravest of threats.

It was the middle of the day in the mountains. A single village was situated in the valley between some of them, a ravine with a rushing river behind it and hard, dry, dirt the only land. Making this place the very curse of the farmers who tried to provide food for the village. The valley was wide though and the village small, there was plenty of room at least. But now at this moment in the middle of an otherwise nice day a thick bank of unnatural fog rolled in from the west.

At the edge of the valley with the village a mere speck in the distance three ponies and one griffon huddled behind a rock. Watching as the fog came down from the mountains at the west end of the valley and slowly began to encircle them.

One pony, a dull orange earth pony with a short mane the color and consistency of straw and a Cutie Mark of a flying bird, peeked over the edge of the rock with a spyglass in his hooves. Looking through it he tried to see into the fog but it was too thick to make out anything more than blurry shapes and shadows.

“Do you see anything?” One of the other ponies, a bespectacled unicorn with a wildly frizzy white mane and tail asked, his coat a very bright blue and his Cutie Mark a pair of electrodes.  

“No, the fog is too thick.” The first pony answered.

“If my vision wasn’t shot I’d give it a look myself.” The lone griffon grumpily said. He was noticeably quite old and his feathers had begun graying. As was suggested by what he had just said his eyes looked a shade pale, the onset of vision loss.

“It doesn’t matter if we can’t see it yet. This is definitely the cause of the Nuckelavee.” The last pony, and lone mare, said. She was a white unicorn with a bright yellow and straight mane and tail with a single orange streak running through it. On her flank sat a Cutie Mark of the sun rising over the horizon and on her head she wore a small black bow.

“So what do we do then? Just wait for it to come and hope the traps are enough to deal with it?” The bespectacled unicorn asked.

“I think that’s all we can hope for.” The earth pony said, grimacing. “I don’t think we can fight this thing. That’s why I didn’t let you bring anyone else, Gizzard. We can’t let anyone else in the village get hurt by this monster.”  

Gizzard, the old griffon, bristled. “Pah! My boys could handle this monster.” He frowned. “Maybe.”

“I wouldn’t want to chance it.” The unicorn mare said, levitating the spyglass to herself and taking a turn with it. “That whole village to the south… just gone in a day.” Not seeing anything she turned to the earth pony. “All the traps are set?”

He nodded. “Yep. Made sure of it myself.”

The unicorn mare sighed. “Then it’s time for our last stand I suppose.”

There was an atmosphere of trepidation and worry in the air after her words. The silence only broken after too long a pause by the orange earth pony.

“Good luck, everyone.” He said. “Gizzard, Coil, Daylight. We can pull through this.”

“You too, Vector.” The unicorn mare, Daylight, smiled at him.

Thump

The four stiffened in terror. Nervously they all slowly peeked their heads over the top of the rock.  

Thump

There was a shadow in the fog. Still far away enough to be nothing more than a dark smudge but getting closer and closer enough that its shape was beginning to take form.  

Thump

Which each noise the shadow grew larger. Now the three ponies and one griffon had their eyes glued to the figure inside the fog. Taller than an elephant with long, stilt-like, legs and a thin frame. The outline of the shadow was like a supernaturally tall pony walking towards them… but with something else off about it. It was like there was something riding atop the pony, spindly arms hung from this figure on top, arms that extended almost to the ground itself and ended in hands with skeletal fingers.

A drop of sweat fell from Vector’s forehead to the ground.

The shadowed creature, the Nuckelavee, took another step towards them and the village behind them-

And as its hoof hit the ground a magical explosion erupted beneath it. A brilliant red blast of magic and electrical energy tore the ground asunder and blew away the fog around the creature. In an instant the shadowed Nuckelavee had been engulfed in smoke and fire while the four watchers were nearly blown backwards by the shockwave of the trap.

Getting his wits back, Vector looked at the billowing smoke and pressed his hooves together in prayer. “Please, please, please, please, let that be it.”

There was no movement that could be seen and the rest of the fog slowly started to lift.  

With the slightest amount of optimism the four waited to see if the Nuckelavee was still coming. Coil let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding in.

“Ponies… feeble ponies… and a griffon on death’s door.”

The voice cut through them all like a knife. The sound of it instilling a primal fear in all of them. It was like reliving all the nightmares they had as children at once, that cold impossible fear that only the mind of a child could produce. With one sentence this monster had returned them all to being little children afraid of the dark.

The first thing they saw emerge from the smoke was the faceless head of a pony. No eyes, no mouth, just the mocking shape of a pony. When the Nuckelavee fully emerged the four defenders had to fight to keep themselves from puking. It had no hair but flesh that was taut along the joints and limbs but loose and distended along the body, its muscles and veins visibly pulsing just beneath the surface. And that thing growing out of its back that the ponies couldn’t even describe, with the long and wicked arms that ended in clawed fingertips. An apelike “rider” connected at its torso to the pony’s back. Its broad chest and shoulders supporting a head with a whispy length of oily black hair falling down its back. Unlike the pony the second head had eyes and a mouth, but the eyes were merely glowing red pits of pure terror and its mouth an endless abyss that all the darkness in the world seemed to be gathered in.

“D-Daylight, spring the other traps.” Vector said to her as the Nuckelavee approached.

She nodded and her horn lit up with a faint blue glow and more hidden magical bombs exploded around the Nuckelavee.

They didn’t even seem to slow it down.

“Weak magic such as this… cannot harm me.” Its dark voice effortlessly carried over to them, the monster stalking its way out of the smoke at an easy pace. Not worried or hurried in the slightest.

“Argh, Coil? What about the spears?” Gizzard asked the unicorn stallion. “If magic aint doing it then maybe we need something a little more… physical.”

“They’re ready. But I think they’ll just make it mad.” Coil looked behind them where several holes had been dug in the ground and wooden stakes thick as a leg had been placed.  

“Better than nothing. Fire them.” Vector said.

Coil nodded and his horn lit up with a soft pink glow. Upon the activation of his spell a firing mechanism was triggered below the spears and they were launched into the air towards the Nuckelavee.

The fearsome monster looked up at the spears about to rain down upon it, dozens, maybe even a hundred of them, but it looked unconcerned. The Nuckelavee raised its long arms and a faint green-red shield of energy appeared around it. The spears impacted on its surface, the first few bouncing off completely but as more and more hit cracks started appearing in the shield and a few even punctured halfway through it only to get stuck. Still, despite a better showing than the magic bombs the Nuckelavee was yet unharmed by their attacks. It lowered its arms and the shield disappeared, the stuck spears falling to the ground with it.  

“This is hopeless...” Coil whined.

“No it’s not.” Daylight scowled at him. “Look, even though it didn’t get hurt it had to defend itself. Physical attacks will work against it.”

“But we can’t get close to it.” Gizzard said and then suffered a brief fit of coughing. “The... *cough… the last survivor we found said that anypony who got near it became entranced by its eyes and just… *cough… just let it...”

“So we improvise. That may have been all our spears but we have plenty of rocks here don’t we?” Daylight said and picked up a half buried rock the size of a watermelon next to her in her magic. “That thing is taking its sweet time because it thinks there’s nothing we can do. Let’s prove it wrong.”

With a grunt she lifted the heavy rock and threw it with all her might at the Nuckelavee. With a single raised arm the shield appeared again and the rock harmlessly bounced off it, but it left a large crack in its wake. And as Daylight saw, the same cracks and holes from the spears were still there in the monster’s shield.

“Look! That shield of its must take time to regenerate fully!” She pointed out to the others. “We can do this!”

Coil frowned. “Yes, all we need is a boulder the size of a carriage. Oh wait, we’re sitting behind one. Now can we lift it?”

“Okay, no, we can’t. But there are definitely more rocks you and me can throw at that thing. Maybe we can even distract it or lead it on long enough that Vector and Gizzard can go around and gather up the spears too.” Daylight reasoned.  

“Pathetic creatures… your efforts are futile… I will devour you as the rest.”

The horrifying voice shook the four of them. Daylight winced as the sound of its voice felt like someone banging a hammer around in her head.

“Well, Coil? Your choice.” She asked him.

The unicorn groaned and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “I should’ve constructed a catapult...”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty.” Vector muttered. “Not like any of us could’ve prepared for what this thing can do.”

“Forget about it, once that thing gets closer to here the two of us should do like Daylight said and run back around it.” Gizzard said. 

Coil and Daylight both lifted up large rocks like the one she had thrown earlier. With a pained heave the two threw their rocks at the approaching Nuckelavee. Again the beast nonchalantly raised its magical shield, but the cracks the rocks made when they impacted it this time were even larger. Daylight was sure that shield would fall with a few more rocks.  

Unfortunately the Nuckelavee was aware of this. While it was a monster among monsters that showed no fear and didn’t want to sully its pride by acknowledging the ponies efforts it wasn’t stupid. A low groaning wail emerged from the abyss it called a mouth.

“Pointless...”

The Nuckelavee raised its arms and the three rocks that had been thrown along with all the spears were grasped in a red aura. The weapons were lifted high into the sky, right above the heads of the ponies and griffon facing the Nuckelavee.

“Uh oh...” Vector gulped.

The monster dropped its arms like a guillotine and the weapons formerly used against it now rained down on the village’s defenders. Propelled with great force and magical energy from the Nuckelavee’s power they obliterated the boulder the ponies and Gizzard had been using for defense. A cloud of dust and debris rose up from the crater just recently formed by the attack. The Nuckelavee continued its slow gait forward, satisfied that the small creatures were no more.

But as the dust cleared the Nuckelavee noticed that that was not the case.

The four creatures were tired but unharmed. The two unicorns horns were blinking with a faint trace of magic, they must’ve used a shield at the last second to block most of his barrage. But now they were close enough where the Nuckelavee could practically reach out and touch them. His eyes shined brighter. At this distance if they made the mistake of looking into those shining red lights for too long they would be forever enthralled and doomed.  

“Worthless creatures… I devour the souls of things like you… and defy gods… give up.”

“Never!” Daylight yelled and defiantly fired the last of her magical energy at him, despite knowing it was futile.

The Nuckelavee almost lazily raised a hand to block it, no shield was needed for something like this, the magic simply fizzled out on his open palm.

“I am… the bane of magic… you will… will...” The Nuckelavee paused, a whistling sound reaching its ears.

The other four heard it too, some sort of strange whistling coming from somewhere. What was it?

The Nuckelavee finally looked up to see an object falling through the sky at incredible speed, right towards it.  

“Wha-”

The thing crashed into the ground like a meteor with enough force to shake the village still a mile away. Daylight, Coil, Vector, and Gizzard were all thrown into the air and fell back down in a big heap, groaning in pain. Slowly they picked themselves up and looked at the latest cloud of dust that had been born in this valley.

“Just what was that?” Vector wondered in slack-jawed disbelief.

"Who cares, what about the Nuckelavee?” Gizzard asked.

“I think whatever just landed here… landed on top of it.” Coil said. He was almost too shocked for words himself.  

Daylight frowned at the dust cloud, worried but curious. She took a step forward. “Well we need to investi-”

Before she could finish a series of fireworks shot out from the smoke. Exploding in a myriad rainbow of sparkling stars, flowers, towers of colorful flames, and ones that spun around and around throwing off sparks everywhere before fizzling out. The dust and smoke was blown away with but a screen of glitter from the fireworks remaining to reveal a wagon sitting comfortably on top of the destroyed ground, the Nuckelavee buried far beneath it. 

Then another blast of smoke exploded from in front of the wagon. However this was not natural, this was the cause of a smoke bomb.

As the three ponies and one griffon watched this display in stupefied amazement a voice bellowed from inside the new cloud of smoke.  

“Come one, come all, and be amazed! For the Great and Powerful Trrrrixie...” The smoke blew away to reveal a blue unicorn with a crystal white and blue mane wearing a wizard’s robe and hat standing front and center. “HAS ARRIVED!”





Shortly before…

“I’m sorry, you want me to do what?” Discord raised an eyebrow at the obnoxious blue unicorn accosting him. The two of them were standing on the outskirts of Ponyville, Discord had just gotten done having his afternoon tea with Fluttershy when who else but his favorite joke magician to annoy rolled up with her wagon.  

“Like I said.” Trixie glared up at him. “I want you to send me somewhere Twilight Sparkle has never gone. Preferably somewhere I can learn new magic.”

“Oh yes, I got that part. It’s the why that’s eluding me.” Discord picked at one of his ears, acting like he wasn’t paying attention to her since he knew it would annoy her.

“Grrr!” Trixie growled at him. “I am the greatest magician in Equestria-”

“In your head.”

“-and I need to prove it! I want to become even more powerful than I already am and learn magic that even Twilight Sparkle doesn’t know about!” Trixie exclaimed. And then much more quietly added- “And I’ve run out of ideas for my shows.”

Discord sighed, his patience already wearing thin. He did have to give any creature that could cause him to lose his patience some credit though. “Why don’t you just ask Starlight?”

“My bestie is too close to Twilight. And anything Starlight teaches me is likely something Twilight either knows or could learn herself. I want to wow them and everyone else with new magic the likes of which has never been seen in Equestria!” The showpony grinned in her almost slightly evil looking way, waving a foreleg in the air for emphasis.  

“So you came to me?” Discord yawned.

“Yes. I know you know places where crazy magic happens and I know you can send me there no problem.” She accusingly pointed her hoof at him.

“Places where “crazy magic happens” are not places a unicorn with a horribly overinflated ego should go.” Discord said.  

“Please! Trixie’s ego is not overinflated at all. It is exactly as giant as it should be.” She smirked at him.

“Right.” The draconequus rolled his eyes. “But fine. I know you well enough to know that you’ll keep bothering me about this if I don’t help. Or you’ll just end up going and doing something stupid on your own. I won’t be sending you to anywhere too crazy though, last thing I need is for you to somehow learn chaos magic. Or get eaten by an inter-dimensional monster.”  

“Trixie is grateful for your help.” She smiled as if she wasn’t paying attention to that last thing he had said. “She will surely return from this journey as the Even Greater and More Powerful Trixie!”

“So she’ll be graduating from the “Foolish and Overly Optimistic Trixie”? Good luck.” Discord mocked.

“Haha, very funny. So are you sending me now or not?” She glared at him.

“Yes, don’t worry. I said I would didn’t I.” A devilish smile appeared on his face. “Hm, but where’s the fun in just teleporting you? I have a much better idea.” He snapped his fingers and Trixie found herself transported inside her wagon.

She looked out the window at him, wondering what was up. “Discord?”

He pointed down at the bottom of the wagon.

Trixie looked down to see two large metal rockets in the shape of flying pigs protruding from the underside of her wagon. The rockets began to shake and soon ignited, a massive column of fire blasting from them and sending the wagon and Trixie hurtling far into the sky.

“DIIIIIISCOOOOOORD!”

“Arrivederci, darling! That means goodbye somewhere you don’t know!” He waved after her. As she disappeared with a twinkle he brought a paw up to his chin and started stroking his beard. “Hm, I wonder if she’s going to be alright?” He shrugged. “Eh. I’m sure it’ll be fine. And if not then Starlight can just get a new annoying best friend.  Oh! I should make a list!” He snapped his fingers and a scroll and quill appeared before him, automatically starting to write. “Let’s see… Lightning Dust… Iron Will… Prince Blueblood...”