“...and while I’m on the subject of foodstuffs, something must be done about these substandard apples.”
Applejack looked like she was ready to buck Trixie right in the throat, and indeed, if her friends hadn’t been present to hold her back, she would have been sorely tempted to do so. “Substandard? What the hay do you mean ‘substandard?!’ These are the best apples in Equestria!”
“But they aren’t standardized. Each apple has a slightly different size, shape, color, taste, and texture. I therefore decree that henceforth all apples shall be a uniform shade of alizarin crimson, that their taste shall be sweet with a slight hint of tartness, that their flesh shall be firm enough so as to require precisely six chews before swallowing, and that they shall each weigh 5.43 ounces. Oh, and they should be shaped like dodecahedrons, too.”
The apple farmer stared with her mouth hanging open at the autocrat pacing around the town hall. When Penumbra had returned to Ponyville to relay Twilight’s plans to her friends, she’d mentioned something about the Alicorn Amulet having odd effects on the user’s mind, but this was just plum loco! The grumpy pegasus had also said that Twilight was due to arrive any minute now, using her magic to carve out a tunnel underneath the barrier, but Applejack’s patience was starting to wear a little thin. Then again, that might have just been pre-performance jitters; after all, she had an important role to play in the upcoming plan, and from the looks of things, it would be far more important than playing Smart Cookie in a Hearth’s Warming Eve pageant.
It wasn’t until Trixie’s interest shifted to a trio of local florists that Applejack cracked a smile; she had just caught a glimpse of Twilight sneaking into the building. As her friend slunk to an appropriate spot behind the showmare, the earth pony found herself wishing that she had access to a recliner and a tub of popcorn.
“Daisies shall have an odd number of petals. In this way, none of the Great and Powerful Trixie’s subjects shall be found to ‘love her not’ whenever she desires to check.”
This, presumably, was a suitably dramatic point to make an appearance, so Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, raising her voice as she proclaimed, “Trixie, if somepony actually needs flower petals to tell them if somepony loves them, chances are they don’t.”
The Great and Powerful Trixie turned and stared in utter shock at the unicorn who she’d forcibly evicted from Ponyville three days earlier. “You! What are you....? When....? How did you get back in here?!” she eventually demanded in a voice that was cracking from the surprise and anger.
Apparently, Twilight had expected a question like this, and she’d already decided that giving a direct answer would not be the wisest course of action. “How I got back in isn’t nearly as important as why I did,” the librarian replied defiantly. “I know about the Alicorn Amulet, Trixie, and standard rules of conduct for magic duels forbid the use of magic-enhancing artifacts. You cheated.”
“Hmph. Trixie never said she was abiding by any particular set of rules.”
“I figured as much. That’s why I got an amulet of my own,” Twilight said with a smirk. She raised her head higher, drawing attention to a necklace that featured a green crystal almost as gaudy as the ruby on Trixie’s amulet. “It was a gift from Zecora,” the purple unicorn continued, “originating from her native land of Zebrabwe.”
“Please,” Trixie replied as she rolled her eyes, “do you really expect the Great and Powerful Trixie to be impressed with some tchotchke simply because it’s foreign?”
“No, I expect you to be impressed because I was able to get past your magical barrier without you noticing.”
The showmare opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. If the confused wrinkle in her eyebrows was any indication, her certainty that nothing could be more powerful than the Alicorn Amulet was colliding with the patently obvious fact that her rival had somehow managed to penetrate the magical barrier it had helped erect. “Let me see that!” she finally blurted out.
“Now, Trixie,” Twilight said with a devious smile as she shook her forehoof reproachfully, “you don’t really expect me to give up my amulet so easily, do you?”
“Fine!” the blue unicorn shouted. “I’ll put my amulet up against yours. Same terms as before: loser leaves Ponyville forever. And this time, I really mean forever.”
“Agreed,” Twilight Sparkle said. Applejack smiled. As near as she could tell, the plan was working flawlessly.
——————————
Thunder rumbled in the sky above Ponyville as the two duelists stared each other down in the open area in front of the town hall. A chill breeze sent several scraps of paper flitting across the space between them. The temperature, however, was not the sole reason that the Mayor was shivering in the birdcage where Trixie had placed her as punishment for having the audacity to suggest holding a round table meeting to discuss whether octagons were trustworthy enough to serve as wheels. A small group of onlookers gathered, including most of Twilight Sparkle’s friends and other well-wishers. Trixie, on the other hoof, only had the company of Snips and Snails, whom she’d press-ganged into service as her minions.
“Why don’t we start where we last left off?” Trixie asked with a smirk. “Snicker! Snack!”
The two colts behind her looked confused. “I thought you changed our names to Snaps and Snuff,” the portlier of the two said.
“Doesn’t matter; it’s Snicker and Snack now,” Trixie said curtly as her eyes glowed red for a split-second. “Now shut up and stand in front of me!” Having been duly browbeaten into place, the two colts stood quivering in front of the azure unicorn. One puff of red smoke later, and two infant foals were wailing loudly where they’d been standing. “Your move,” Trixie added with a triumphant smirk.
“Alright,” Twilight said confidently. “Applejack? Rarity? Would you mind assisting me?” The two mares stood in front of a particularly ostentatious statue of The Great and Powerful Trixie admiring another statue of The Great and Powerful Trixie and waited with nervous looks on their faces as Twilight’s horn began to shine with her pink aura. She sent a beam of light hurtling towards them, and when the pink smoked cleared away, two fillies stood in the same spots.
Trixie seemed taken aback by this at first, but she was soon squinting skeptically at the pair. “Do that again,” she said.
“Gladly,” Twilight said with a smile. She hit her two friends with several more beams, making them fillies, adults, and even elderly in rapid succession.
“That can’t be right...” Trixie said in a low voice.
The purple unicorn chuckled. “I’m just getting started. Watch this!” She turned her horn towards Rainbow Dash and fired off another beam of light. Seconds later, there were two multicolored pegasi flying in the air. “Duplication spell,” Twilight explained proudly. “What do you say to that?”
“A duplication spell? Really?” Trixie’s tone was not one of shock and disbelief, but of exasperation. The Alicorn Amulet glowed as her red aura surrounded the statue and dragged it several feet to the side, revealing two fillies, an elderly mare, and a stallion, all in Rarity and Applejack’s color schemes. “Why, it seems that the Great and Powerful Trixie has mastered a duplication spell as well!” she proclaimed mockingly. “And what’s more, it appears that Trixie was able to combine it with an age spell, as well as a gender-changing spell that you were presumably planning on saving for your big finale!”
Twilight Sparkle looked stunned. “But... how did you figure that out?”
The azure unicorn sneered at her opponent. “Oh, please. Trixie’s a professional showmare. She was an expert at the art of making one’s magic look more impressive than it actually is before she got this amulet. Word of advice: You never repeat a trick, because each time you do, you increase the likelihood of somepony in the audience noticing its secret.
“I’m guessing that you somehow worked all of this out with your friends and their families beforehoof and had them use wigs and body paint to set up your charade. By the same token, I’d say that the second Rainbow Dash is just that craven animal lover in disguise—she seems quite adept at hiding behind other ponies.” Trixie paused to laugh at her quip as Rainbow Dash (the real one, presumably) glared murderously at her.
“And as for your alleged amulet,” she continued, using her magic to rip the necklace off of her rival, “Trixie wouldn’t be surprised if it was nothing more than a doorknob that you just polished up and set into some spare jewelry the zebra had lying around.” She examined the green bauble closely for a few seconds before easily crushing it into a fine powder with her magic.
“Actually, it was a doorstop,” Twilight mumbled to nopony in particular as she watched the remains of her phony artifact blow away.
“Does this mean you’ll be giving up again?” Trixie asked with a gleeful smirk.
For a few seconds, Twilight Sparkle considered conceding once again, but a glance over at Penumbra’s stern glare erased that notion completely. “No, Trixie.” It just means that I can’t be certain that you won’t get hurt. “I’m not going to be going anywhere this time.”
“Talk is cheap, Sparkle.”
“Well, it’s your turn, so why don’t you stop talking and start showing us what that amulet can really do?”
“Ha! Watch this,” Trixie said. The ruby in the Alicorn Amulet glowed briefly before a bright white flash obscured the unicorn from view. When the light finally dimmed, she was nowhere to be seen.
After half a minute passed without anything happening, the remaining duelist and the audience were starting to get restless. “Mmm... mmm mmm mmm mmmm mmmmm mmmm mmmmmmmm?” Pinkie Pie asked rhetorically.
Twilight Sparkle had just decided to use her magic to give Pinkie her muzzle back, when another bright flash appeared. When this light diminished, Trixie was standing in exactly the same spot with a triumphant grin on her face. “The Great and Powerful Trixie has shattered the fetters of the fourth dimension and returned unscathed!”
This was met with a round of confused silence from the crowd. Trixie rolled her eyes. “I traveled through time, you half-wits.”
A murmur of understanding ensued, punctuated by a stallion in the back exclaiming, “Great Scott!”
Of course, Twilight had suspected that this was what had happened; after all, she had personal experience using that very spell. More importantly, however, she’d spent a good deal of Trixie’s absence formulating her response: “Prove it.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you’re a better showmare than me, how do I know that you didn’t just create a flash of light and teleport away for a few seconds?”
“Well,” Trixie said slyly, “when Trixie went back in time, she found one of your little checklists and erased the most important item.”
“How would you know which item was most important?” Twilight asked skeptically.
“Well, the fact that it said ‘Send friendship report to Celestia—Very important; do not forget under any circumstances!’ was a pretty good clue.”
Twilight immediately realized that Trixie had indeed done precisely what she said she’d done, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “Oh, please,” she said, rolling her eyes, “everypony in town knows about that incident. You could have easily picked that up by eavesdropping on a conversation about embarrassing things I’ve done in the past. I say we stick to the here and now.”
The librarian didn’t wait for her opponent to respond; instead, she pulled a dozen banners emblazoned with Trixie’s silhouette from buildings in the area and quickly set them ablaze. She then compressed the flames into two perfect spheres, which then began to move in a wide circle around Trixie, subdividing into four, eight, sixteen, and finally thirty-two spheres, each rotating around a partner like a double star as they revolved around the increasingly agitated showmare.
Almost immediately, Trixie’s left eye began twitching violently while a huge snarl exposed her grinding teeth. It only took five more seconds of circles traveling in circles within circles until her hyperventilating had frothed the saliva in her mouth to the point where it could almost be seen leaking out of the corners of her lips. “What is this supposed to be?”
Twilight couldn’t resist the opportunity to egg Trixie on a bit: “Oh, this is just a metaphorical representation of the traditional Zebrabwean philosophy of existence: Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel—”
“Enough!” Trixie shouted, cutting Twilight off mid-stanza. “So, you are willing to cavort with infinitesimal uncertainty in a feeble attempt to resist Trixie’s Power and Greatness? Clearly, you have gone stark raving mad, and therefore extreme measures must be used to remove your delusions.”
The storm clouds overhead seemed to grow darker as the Alicorn Amulet began glowing brightly, and shortly afterward, drops of rain started falling. “So, you’ve changed your mind about weather magic, then?” Twilight asked.
Trixie responded with a guttural shout of rage as her eyes glowed an even brighter red than before; the breeze suddenly escalated into a gale, picking up debris and tossing it around the town square. Most of the ponies who had gathered to watch the duel now ran for cover, with the exceptions being those lucky enough to be within a calm area around Trixie herself—the eye of the storm, which, Twilight soon noticed, was shaped like a regular hexagon rather than a circle.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” Twilight muttered as the diagonal sheets of rain started transforming muddy puddles into shallow, turbulent ponds. She glanced over at her opponent, who was starting to breathe heavily, though whether this was the result of fatigue or an attempt to keep her fury under control was impossible to tell. The storm’s eye began contracting as the wind speeds increased. Twilight’s initial instinct was to focus on staying inside this zone of relative safety, but that changed when she heard glass shattering behind her. She glanced around and saw large branches getting ripped off of trees and loose boards of wood flying through the air, smashing through the windows and doorways belonging to ponies who’d been caught by surprise—though they weren’t in half as much trouble as those who’d been caught outside and were now scurrying to find some sort of shelter.
Twilight grimaced as she turned back towards Trixie. She’d expected the mentally unstable unicorn to try something extreme, but not this quickly, nor with this much danger to others. She heard a high-pitched scream from behind her, but she didn’t bother turning around to locate the source; she’d made up her mind to set everything right. Holding back wasn’t worth risking anypony’s safety; she was going to end this insanity now.
Twilight took a deep breath and closed her eyes, igniting the pink aura around her horn. It didn’t take her long to locate the Nightmare’s unicorn magic in her metaphysical storage cellar; as she’d said, the trace magic from the other pony races made it feel distinctly different. For a moment, Twilight hesitated, wondering whether to try continuing under her own power. This, after all, was the point of no return. The sound of some unidentifiable pony screaming behind her, audible even over the noise of the wind and rain, banished that idea from her mind. Twilight Sparkle grit her teeth and allowed the alicorn magic to flood into her. When she opened her eyes, her magical aura had acquired a deep indigo tint. No turning back now, she thought to herself. Time to wrap this up.
Twilight had been practicing her shapeshifting in private ever since Penumbra’s manifestation, but she hadn’t come close to repeating her transformation into mist as she’d done during her stint as the Nightmare’s host—at least, not under the power of her own magic. Now, however, evanescence seemed to come naturally to her, though the physical sensations still felt utterly bizarre and alien. The feeling of disintegration, of air rushing into every part of her physical being, was strange enough even before considering how she was seeing without eyes or hearing without ears. Then again, the shocked look on Trixie’s face as Twilight’s cloud expanded made that weirdness much easier to tolerate.
With Trixie’s concentration broken, it was foal’s play for Twilight to bring the storm to a halt. The incorporeal mage spent a minute or so floating around the town square, undoing the damage that Trixie had caused. Once she was certain that everypony present believed that she and the mist were one and the same, Twilight decided to move on to the most impressive trick in her repertoire.
Reforming into a solid pony felt far more comfortable than disintegrating; it was almost like returning home from an unpleasant job, but in this instance, that home had undergone some rather significant renovations while its owner was away. There wasn’t anything particularly surprising about the tall, svelte body into which Twilight Sparkle had reconstituted herself—after all, she’d used that body shape in public for a week before her attempt to seize the throne. What was new was the pair of large, elegant wings made of beautiful lavender feathers that she splayed out at her sides, seemingly increasing her physical size even further as she stood on the ground in front of Trixie, staring coldly at the unicorn. Twilight did her best to ignore the sound of some of the spectators behind her dropping to their knees in the presence of an alicorn and focused her attention on her opponent, who was looking at her with her mouth agape. “Your move, o Great and Powerful One,” Twilight said with an ever-so-slightly detectable smile.
After several excruciatingly long seconds, Trixie somehow managed to squeeze out a rather forced chuckle. “Trixie has figured out what you’re doing. You aren’t really an alicorn. Clearly, you’ve just studied shapeshifting at some point. You don’t even need to be a unicorn to do that.” Technically, this was true. Because shapeshifting didn’t require any magic to be channeled out of the shifter’s body, any creature with a significant amount of magic could do it with enough practice—in theory, anyway. In practice, most ponies didn’t have a clue how to begin practicing, as it was nothing like the usual application of any of the three types of pony magic. And of course, causing one’s body to shift into a new shape was nothing compared to vaporizing it.
Trixie, however, seemed determined not to let her ignorance of the subject derail her efforts to prove her superiority. After all, she had the Alicorn Amulet, which would no doubt make replicating such parlor tricks a simple matter. “Okay,” the showpony muttered to herself, “first, the mist...” Trixie shut her eyes and began to focus her concentration. Her aura surrounded her barrel as she attempted to make wings sprout. This effort achieved little more than a contorted grimace on her face.
“You’ve never even tried shapeshifting before, have you?” Twilight asked wryly.
“Quiet, you! The Great and Powerful Trixie has modified her shape on multiple occasions.”
Though Twilight was sorely tempted to make a joke about plastic surgery, she decided that Trixie wouldn’t need much assistance in embarrassing herself. “Well, then you must be using a new technique. Perhaps we can swap notes later.”
Trixie, on the other hoof, was in no mood for pleasantries. Twenty seconds of effort had caused her to begin sweating profusely. “Come on, it shouldn’t be that different from an aging spell; it’s the same basic principle, right?” she asked rhetorically. She shut her eyes again, determined to make this bit of magic work the way she thought it ought to. One minute passed, and Trixie thought that she was finally making progress. She could smell traces of ozone in the air around her—surely a sign that she was getting hazier. She tried pouring more power into the amulet, but for some strange reason, it seemed to be resisting. Trixie dismissed that idea immediately. Surely, it was just her imagination. Trixie focused her mind on the image of herself dissipating into a blue mist, and dumped as much magic as she could into the Alicorn Amulet, forcing it to obey her whim.
Trixie felt an intense heat building up at her neck as the rays of light emanating from the Alicorn Amulet’s ruby brightened from red to white. Still, she kept pushing the amulet farther, ignoring the vibrations that she began feeling. She was going to succeed. She had to succeed. And just as it began to feel like her being was beginning to expand... she heard a tremendous crack followed by a gasp from the crowd and felt the energy she’d built up rapidly drain away. She looked down and saw the shards of the Alicorn Amulet’s ruby lying on the grass.
“No,” Trixie whimpered as she shook her head. “No! That wasn’t supposed to happen. That amulet was supposed to be unbeatable!”
Somehow, Twilight Sparkle managed to retain enough willpower to avoid smirking at her fallen adversary. “Do you concede?”
For a moment or two, Trixie did nothing but stare at the alicorn looking back at her with a neutral expression on her face—though the showpony had never known neutrality to feel so judgemental before. She opened her mouth, as if to reply, but shut it again before saying anything. Instead, she started to slowly back away from her opponent, as if any sudden movements would invite her wrath. Twilight watched this with great bemusement for a few seconds before asking, “Should I assume that’s a ‘yes,’ then?”
The blue unicorn nearly lost her balance in her agitation. Rather than answer the alicorn’s query, the Great and Powerful Trixie turned around and galloped out of Ponyville as fast as she could, leaving an eruption of cheers behind her.
——————————
Penumbra leaned back on her haunches, admiring her work. The reception for the Saddle Arabian diplomats had proven to be an unqualified success for all involved. The Princesses had their treaty, Ponyville had its reputation as a cultural hub boosted, and, most importantly as far as the pegasus was concerned, the notoriously finicky art critics from Canterlot had adored the centerpiece she’d installed outside of the town hall—indeed, she’d already made several contacts with various movers and shakers in the art world on this night alone. Now, as she admired the rotating helices of her cloud sculpture from a park bench, Penumbra couldn’t help but feel like she’d reached some sort of milestone. Granted, she didn’t have any sense of what that milestone actually was, but the overwhelming sense of accomplishment was there nonetheless. This had been a very good night, indeed.
“It is quite beautiful, isn’t it?” noted a calm voice to Penumbra’s left.
The pegasus nearly jumped into the air; she hadn’t heard anypony move beside her. Yet there was Princess Celestia, her warm smile beaming down on the cloudsmith (and making her feel distinctly awkward, at that). “Oh, um, good evening, Your Highness,” Penumbra said, not quite making eye contact. The prospect of having to talk with the pony whose consciousness she’d tried to destroy and whose identity she’d tried to assume always made her feel a bit uneasy.
Fortunately, Celestia seemed willing to avoid that particular topic for the moment. “It certainly was an eventful week in Ponyville, wasn’t it?”
“You could certainly say that, though from what I gather, eventful weeks are unusually common in this town.”
“Still, you must admit that it’s not every day that the local librarian saves the town by revealing herself to be an alicorn.” Celestia smiled a little bit wider as she continued, “Nor is it the usual practice for the local party guru and cloudsmith to follow suit.”
Penumbra chuckled. “That’s certainly true.” She could still recall Rainbow Dash’s disappointment upon learning that Twilight’s shape-shifted wings weren’t actually functional with vivid detail—the weatherpony had been overwhelmingly excited to get a new flying buddy for all of five seconds. Her attention briefly drifted over to the town hall’s porch, where the librarian was engaged in an animated conversation with one of the Saddle Arabian diplomats; Twilight’s wings were nowhere to be seen, as she’d shifted back to her normal body shape. “That said,” Penumbra continued, “what truly surprised me is that the three of us managed to make this information public without revealing my rather... um... sordid past.”
Having thus broached her least favorite subject, Penumbra was quite keen to change it. “Incidentally, have you any idea where Trixie might have run off to?”
Princess Celestia sighed and stared at the rotating cloud sculpture for a few seconds before responding. “She was last seen on the outskirts of Dodge Junction two days ago. I’m not certain why she’s on the run; I can’t think of a more straightforward example of magically-induced temporary insanity than her encounter with that artifact.”
“Maybe she isn’t aware that it’s a valid defense in court,” Penumbra offered.
“Perhaps,” Celestia replied, but the troubled look on her face suggested that she doubted this was the case. “That, however, can wait for another day. In the meantime, I’d like to briefly return to the matter of your ‘sordid past,’ if you wouldn’t mind.”
Penumbra responded with a vague, noncommittal grunt.
“Twilight Sparkle told me you forgave her for attempting to harm you,” Celestia continued. “That was quite noble of you.”
The cloudsmith sighed; she could see where this was headed. “I assure you that I have never taken your forgiveness for granted—”
“I know,” the Princess interjected. “That’s the problem.”
“Excuse me?”
“Penumbra, it seems to me that you believe that I might rescind my forgiveness at any time, and as a result, you are constantly treading on eggshells whenever I’m around—or even when you think I might be eavesdropping, given what my sister has told me about your correspondence with her.”
The dark blue pegasus slowly exhaled before she answered, “Were I in your place, I wouldn’t be so willing to forgive.”
“You were in my place, and you did forgive Twilight.”
“Twilight has never been a danger to all of Equestria.”
“Neither have you. Luna has said that bringing about eternal night was her idea, not yours, and nopony doubts that I’ve forgiven her.”
“She’s your sister.”
“And she created you in my image. There’s no reason I can’t think of you as a member of my extended family as well. Moreover,” Celestia continued, her smile once again returning to her face, “I would like to think of you as a friend as well.”
Penumbra eyed the white alicorn with moderate suspicion. “And there’s no catch?”
“As a matter of fact, there is: You will have to trust that I won’t seek retribution, because there is literally nothing I can do to demonstrate that I will not.”
“You could make a Pinkie Promise.”
Celestia mulled this over for a while before nodding in agreement. “I suppose I could, but I greatly prefer friends who trust me to do the right thing without coercion.”
Penumbra grew silent and stared at the ground for a few seconds before looking up and nodding. “Alright. I’ll... I’ll do my best to trust you.”
“And I shall do the same.” Celestia pulled the smaller pony into a hug, shrouding Penumbra with her massive white wings (and drawing the attention of a few scattered onlookers).
When she finally released the cloudsmith from her grasp, the smile on the Princess’ face had not diminished. “I am glad to have you as a friend, Penumbra... or should I call you ‘Penny?’”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Penumbra replied grumpily.
“Well, in any case, I am honored that you have accepted my friendship.” Celestia stood up and began to walk towards her chariot, motioning for the pegasus to follow her. “And now that we’ve taken care of that matter, I’d like to discuss something else with you. You see, I was hoping you might be able to help out another friend of mine. I think the two of you have a lot in common....”