Now with an appropriate amount of downtime and a slightly renewed vigor and willingness to help East Glade, Trixie had coordinated with Gabriel and her “students” to set up another day of magic lessons. Speckle Wood, Gold Embrace and her twin colts, had now joined with Trixie inside the mayor’s house. It was the largest building in East Glade after all and was just the right kind of place for the kind of lessons she had in mind for today. She wasn’t going to just randomly test their magical strength or anything like that, now she was going to channel a bit of Starlight.
Just like before the same peanut gallery had come to watch things. Vector was as supportive as ever but even though Daylight had warmed up to her considerably Trixie knew she still had some suspicions about her teaching ability and magical prowess. Gizzard was keeping watch as the sheriff, if he saw anything useful come out of these lessons maybe he could make a place for Speckle Wood or Gold Embrace the next time East Glade was in danger. Coil was absent though. Trixie figured that with his history there wasn’t really anything exciting for him about her teaching typical magic like this. Like Trixie herself he’d probably much prefer seeing and studying some strange, unique magic that was native to here instead.
“Since The Great and Powerful Trixie is still without any teaching materials for more battle-oriented or defensive spells she will instead be teaching you something very simple and practical today.” The magician told the other unicorns while they stood in Gabriel’s living room.
“What is it?! What is it?!”
The chorus of children rang out as the mayor’s kids rushed right up to Trixie, joined by Gold Box and Gold Fortune too. The five practically jumped up and down at her, overly excited to learn what she would be teaching.
“Calm down already!” Trixie said and used her magic to grab the three young griffons and push them back to the couch where there parents sat while Gold Embrace ran up and grabbed her kids. The mother profusely apologizing the whole way. Trixie raised a blue hoof to her mouth and coughed. “Right, as I was saying-”
She used her magic to carry a bucket that was full of a number of rocks gathered from outside in front of her. “I am going to have you practice transformation spells. Now, follow me!”
Trixie took them all over to Gabriel’s dining room table and placed the rocks on top of it (she could clean it later). The rocks themselves were no bigger than a saltshaker and just what Trixie wanted for her lesson. She grinned, this kind of thing was her specialty now and she was sure that not only could she wow the others with her transformation skills but she was also certain it was something she could teach.
“Allow me to give you a demonstration of just what it is we’ll be doing,” She said and lit up her horn. “Teacup!”
She fired her magic at the nearest rock and turned it into a particularly fancy and perfectly made pink teacup.
“Ta-da! A perfect transformation!” Trixie exclaimed.
Naturally Vector was the first to start clapping for her while her four students ran up to the table to get a better look at the teacup Trixie had created. They had never seen magic used in such a way, to change one thing into something completely different? For unicorns who had only used their magic for the simplest sort of telekinesis this was almost unreal.
“That’s awesome, is this really something we can do?” Gold Fortune… or maybe Gold Box, asked her. Whichever it was, both of the colts were looking up at her in hope and wonder.
“Of course it is with me as your teacher,” Trixie smugly responded.
As if to prove her point she looked to the next nearest rock on the table and fired another transformation spell at it, turning it into a teacup as well.
“We’ll be practicing all day to do that,” She told them.
“You sure seem fond of making teacups,” Daylight Gleam said as she walked over to the table as well, a sly smirk on her face. “One might think that that’s actually all you can turn something into. But that couldn’t be the case, right?”
Trixie coughed, a sweat threatening to break out on her face. “Of course not! Teacups are simply very practical and useful to have, these will be a thank you for the mayor and his family for letting us use his house when we’re done.”
“Right, that’s true, but I think just for demonstration’s sake you should make something different. Don’t you?” Daylight was clearly baiting her but Trixie couldn’t refuse in this situation.
She frowned and went to the next rock. “Very well! All of you now watch me again!” She hesitated slightly on what she wanted to turn it into, biting her tongue while the pink magic along her horn shimmered brightly. Finally she got it. “Alright, wine glass!”
Her sparkling pink beam of magic fired out from her horn and transformed the rock.
Into another teacup.
Silence reigned for a second as the ponies and griffons in the room first stared at the new teacup and then slowly turned their heads to Trixie as if waiting for an explanation.
Luckily for Trixie she was quick on her hooves when it came to this kind of thing. “I said wine glass but I changed the spell at the last second to show you how fast I can be with my magic. And now Gabriel has three teacups, one for each son.” She levitated the teacups over to him for him to hold onto. “Ta-da!”
Again Vector was naturally the first one to start clapping.
“Wow! I don’t know much about magic but that’s some pretty fast spell work isn’t it?” He obliviously smiled at the blue unicorn.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” She tossed her mane back as if she had made some great accomplishment.
“Sure was,” Daylight was glaring at her with a forced smile and a twitching eye.
Oh lighten up. Trixie thought as she turned away from the white unicorn to her students. Now what’s the best way to teach them how to do this? What did Starlight say about transforming things again?
Before things could continue though, Gabriel Jr. ran up to his father and grabbed one of the teacups. “The Great and Powerful Trixie made me a teacup!” he proudly showed it off to his two younger brothers.
“Hey, no fair!” Guyaven shouted at his big brother and snatched his own teacup, followed shortly by Gower. “She made teacups for all of us!”
The three young griffons started waving their teacups and shouting with each other, each one trying to prove that their teacup was the “best” despite the trio of cups being identical. The mayor just sighed and exasperatedly lied back on his couch, Trixie didn’t envy him for having to deal with three hyperactive kids all the time. Giselle did her best to calm them down but it was apparent that that ruckus would be going on in the background throughout the entire rest of the lesson.
“Miss Trixie?”
Trixie felt a tug on her robe and looked down to see Gold Box… or possibly Gold Fortune, looking up at her with wide eyes and a bright expression on his face.
“Er, yes?” She asked the colt.
“Can you make teacups for us too?” He pleaded, hooves clasped in front of him. His brother came up and did the same thing.
The blue unicorn fought to avoid rolling her eyes or sighing in annoyance. “Of course. But only after the lesson today is over.”
“I’m sorry, teacher.” Gold Embrace said with a faint blush dotting her cheeks. She put a hoof on her colt’s shoulders and pulled them away from Trixie.
“No need to apologize, Trixie is great with children,” The boastful mare said. “However we do need to continue our lesson. I’ll teach you as best I can on how to transform objects.”
Speckle Wood turned out to be the best at this sort of thing. It was a tough going though since this was a far cry from anything they were used to doing with their magic. Speckle Wood was at least able to turn some rocks into the shape of a teacup but couldn’t actually make any of them porcelain. Gold Embrace and her kids weren’t so lucky with the lesson, at best making misshapen rocks with only the suggestion of something like a handle or cup in them.
“You’re doing perfectly fine for your first time,” Trixie tried to say. “Why don’t you try with something a little simpler and just make a normal cup or bowl?”
“But we want to do what you did!” Both of the young colts said at once.
Trixie’s chest actually swelled with pride and she giggled. “Now, now, I am The Great and Powerful Trixie and I’ve been studying and practicing magic all my life. It’s flattering that you would like to be able to perform magical spells with the same potency that I can but you’re still young and new at this. Don’t let it get you down.”
The lime-green unicorn with a campfire Cutie Mark took that moment to speak up. “Uh, not that I’m not grateful that you’re teaching us this but will learning how to turn rocks into teacups really help us protect East Glade? I thought that was the whole point of this.”
Trixie rounded on Speckle Wood with a strong gaze. “Transformation spells are very useful. You can turn a weapon someone is holding into something harmless. And besides, you’re still learning how to really use your magic to its fullest potential. It’s better to start you out with something safe like this before moving on to anything… bigger.”
Speckle Wood frowned as he looked down at the floor. “I just want to be able to help. Last time they attacked us we still couldn’t do anything even after your first lesson.”
“There, there,” Gold Embrace came up to Speckle Wood and patted him on the back. “Like she said, we’re still learning. We’re not heroes like her who’ve been fighting monsters and evil for years.” She winked at her stallion friend. “Yet.”
“I guess so,” Speckle Wood sighed. He then looked up at Trixie with a more determined look on his face. “But next time Goliath or whoever comes here to start trouble I want to help!”
“Eh, don’t worry about that.” Gizzard suddenly said to Speckle Wood from the peanut gallery. “I’m always willing to have someone help out with protecting East Glade, how about after this lesson I can take you to meet my grandsons and we’ll show you what we do?”
The unicorn smiled. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
After that little conversation the lesson got back on track, for the most part. Despite Trixie not being a teacher she tried channeling Starlight and Twilight as best she could to get these unicorns more in tune with transformation. Back when Starlight was teaching her how to do this, Trixie was able to pick it up very easily. But she had far more experience with her magic and, if you asked her, was naturally far more gifted than most unicorns as well.
She thought about what Speckle Wood had said and how she had responded, the truth was she just had even less of an idea on how to teach that kind of stuff than this. Even though it would probably be immensely helpful to her in the future if she had one or two more unicorns backing her up whenever Goliath decided to come back.
Maybe it would just be better for Gizzard to teach more villagers how to fight normally. After all it’ll be years before Gold Box and Gold Fortune are able to help out anyways… Trixie mused.
Of course though if she made that suggestion to the mayor it might make it seem like she was worried and not the perfect infallible hero that East Glade thought she was. So Trixie was still somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place. Those things being her ego and common sense.
The rest of the day went by pretty well for them all though, Trixie had noted some marked improvements in her students transformation abilities. None came close to what she was able to do but it was a start. As evening rolled on by she said that was enough for now and they could find out another time that would work for them all.
“Why not just tomorrow? I’m sure none of us are going to be that busy,” Speckle Wood asked her.
Trixie chuckled and winked at him. “Actually that’s not the case. I have something special planned for tomorrow.” She looked out at all of the others filling up the room. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will be putting on a second magic show!”
That instantly got the attention of the mayor’s kids again and they came rushing up to her.
“Really?!”
“What are you going to do?!”
“Is it going to be even more amazing than last time?!”
They were joined by Gold Box and Gold Fortune too and Trixie had to do her best to fight off the wave of children before their parents came to calm them down.
“I can’t tell you anything yet, part of what makes my shows so great is my audience not knowing what I’m going to do,” Trixie told them.
“Are you sure that’s really the case? You seem the type to just make things up as you go along,” Daylight smirked at her.
Trixie got a devilish glint in her eyes and smirked right back at the other unicorn. “Funny of you to say that. Since you’re going to be the first to know just how much planning I’ve put into this show.”
Daylight’s smirk left her face and was replaced by a worried expression. “Er, why?”
“Everyone!” Trixie announced with a whirl, holding a hoof in the air in grand fashion. “Although I will not reveal the contents of my show to you just yet I shall be happy to excite you with the fact that things will be quite different this time around. Miss Daylight Gleam here will be assisting me and we will perform acts the likes of which you have never seen!”
As the others in the house cheered for the both of them and the excitement level went through the roof, Daylight Gleam glared at Trixie.
“I did not agree to that.”
“Come one, come all, once again, to the show of The Great and Powerful Trrrrixie!”
Trixie yelled out to the crowd of East Glade denizens as she finished setting up her wagon and everything for her show. They were placed in a corner of the town’s square this time and everyone had gathered to see just what Trixie would be doing in her second show. If anything the ponies and griffons were even more excited than the first time, now that they knew what kinds of things she was capable of and how she had just saved their village again for the umpteenth time.
“And introducing-” Trixie grinned. “My wonderful assistant, Daylight Gleam!”
The magician motioned to the white unicorn standing to her right in front of the curtain. Despite her looking incredibly uncomfortable and annoyed she did her best to wave back at the villagers while they cheered for her and Trixie.
“Today you shall be amazed by an all new assortment of tricks and illusions!” Trixie said to the crowd.
She wasn’t wrong. It had taken all last night for Trixie to prepare Daylight for this and the two of them had barely gotten any sleep but it paid off. Daylight’s natural talent with magic helped quite a bit too.
Just the night before Trixie had been speaking with her and learned something that would help quite a bit for her shows...
“I don’t think it’s fair that you just roped me into this willy-nilly,” Daylight said to Trixie while the two of them stood outside of Trixie’s wagon in the middle of the night, Trixie having explained to her all the stuff they would be doing at tomorrow’s show.
“There are so many things I can only do with an assistant or volunteers. Try to think about someone else for a change,” Trixie nonchalantly responded to the angry unicorn.
That of course only made her angrier.
“So-” Trixie continued, ignoring the steaming Daylight. “I know you’re pretty good with magic but is there anything special you can do?”
She wasn’t expecting much actually but she was in for a very pleasant surprise.
Daylight rolled her eyes in exasperation but she still lit her horn up… and then disappeared.
There wasn’t any poof either like she had teleported. It was like she suddenly just vanished.
Trixie’s jaw dropped in surprise. “You can turn invisible?! Why didn’t you say so sooner?”
“Because why would I?” Empty air said and then Daylight quickly appeared again with the slightest of flickers. “Besides it’s something I’ve only recently been able to do well. It’s just a stealth spell that I’ve been working on.” She pointed at her Cutie Mark. “My special talent involves light, I bend the light around me to appear invisible. I can also make a larger camouflage spell but that has some drawbacks.”
“Invisibility is a staple of Illusionism! Can you imagine how handy something like that is for magic shows?”
“No, because I had no interest in magic shows and never thought I’d be performing in one.” Daylight frowned at her.
Trixie just smiled back though. “Well congratulations, now you can put that magic to good use!”
“Good use, or your use?” She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Trixie.
“Same difference.”
So now that it was the day of the show Trixie and Daylight were going to really blow the minds of everyone in East Glade. All of her favorite tricks she would normally perform with Starlight were back on the table (not counting the Manticore Mouth Dive) and Daylight at least had the professionalism to give it her all while the show was going on. Whether that meant being sawed in half or suddenly disappearing after being shoved in a box only to reappear inside the crowd, Daylight was proving to be an adept assistant.
Trixie didn’t have enough time to coach her on how to rile up the crowds like Starlight knew how, and she didn’t think the white unicorn would be too good at that in the first place, but thankfully you didn’t really need to do that with these villagers. They were still so amazed at every little thing and with every new trick Trixie showed them it was like performing in front of children for the first time.
Helped that the children of East Glade were there to loudly applaud everything.
And Vector.
“For my next trick I shall clone Miss Daylight Gleam!” Trixie said to the crowd.
This was an idea she had gotten from her time with the Alicorn Amulet, it was a tricky thing to pull off and you needed to be sneaky with creating a mirror image of the target pony so no one would realize too soon that it wasn’t really a clone. Daylight’s own light manipulating magic would come in handy here too.
Trixie threw down a smokebomb to temporarily obscure things and once it lifted there were suddenly two Daylight’s on the stage.
“Behold!” Trixie yelled out from in-between them.
Gasps of shock and surprise came from the audience before they quickly started cheering and stamping their hooves in approval. The “two” Daylight’s smiled and waved to the audience before Trixie threw another smokebomb on the ground. And once that smoke went away there was only one Daylight Gleam again.
“Thank you, thank you,” Trixie bowed in appreciation.
After that it was more rudimentary tricks the two put on, Trixie really wished they had a Manticore but beggars can’t be choosers. All the same the crowd still loved what the two did. There weren’t any fireworks to close out the show this time, Trixie had used them all up for her “farewell” show. It was disappointing but at least she had given them all the opportunity to see what fireworks looked like at night so that was fine.
Finally they finished their last trick, sticking Daylight into a locked up chest and swapping her with someone from the audience. Senax was a good sport about it, if a bit surprised.
Much to the crowd’s displeasure Trixie announced the show was over after that. It was also saddening to her, not many places could she go where she’d always get such a positive and supportive (and ego-boosting) crowd. She did get one last little piece of enjoyment when forcing the embarrassed Daylight to take a bow with her at least. Trixie wasn’t sure what would come next in East Glade but as long as she could keep doing stuff like this it would be worth it.