The Voice

Trixie walked beneath the moon, her hooves angrily kicking up dirt with each step. She stared ahead down the empty road with embittered eyes. She hadn’t seen a sign since she’d fled from the little town, but it didn’t matter. She had no idea where she was going. She had nothing. Her cart was laying back in Ponyville, nothing more than a shattered pile. The same could be said for her reputation.

Trixie snorted as she remembered the purple mare that had done what she herself couldn’t. Twilight Sparkle. Every time Trixie thought of the unicorn, her face darkened. To be shown up by a country pony, a nopony… It was driving her up the wall. It wasn't fair. The purple unicorn hadn't gained anything by it, not fame or money. Trixie, on the other hand, had lost everything to her name. The unicorn continued to seethe over her humiliation. It was all she had to go on, all that she had left. She could never be a star again. She was well aware of what would soon become of her, and was dreading it with every fiber of her being. At the next town she would be a shameful mockery, something for even the lowest being to look down upon.

And it would go on for a while, town after town, until she would inevitably fade into obscurity. She would be remembered only as the fool of a unicorn that fled like a frightened rat from an Ursa Minor. They wouldn’t even recall her name. Thoughts such as these were almost enough to bring tears to Trixie’s eyes. But she pushed aside these sorrowful thoughts, and instead focused on her hatred, the burning fire that fueled her in her journey into the unknown.

It was the late hours of the night when she saw a wooded area ahead. A sign stood outside of the entrance, but it was too far away to be read. Trixie shivered. It was cold out, and she had nothing to protect herself from the gnashing teeth of the night wind. This strengthened her resolve to reach the forest before her. Long ago before she had her cart, she had spent the night in the woods. The trees dampened the force of the wind and provided shelter from snow and rain. But back then she had a cloak, and now she didn’t even have that. It was just one of many items taken from her by the defeat at Ponyville. Trixie had every intention of returning to that wretched place and taking back what it owed her. She would never be a star again, but she would make sure that nopony else would either.

By now she had reached the sign at the edge of the woods. It stood atop an ivy-covered pole, and the writing could hardly be read on the weathered wood. Yet Trixie could make out what it said: Murkery Wood.

Trixie felt her heart stall for a moment. She knew that name, having heard it multiple times in her travels. Though it was quite famous, people rarely spoke of it. There were rumors of a legend that something dwelled within the towering trees, something that had driven ponies mad. It was something that should have been vanquished long ago, but had survived into the current age and lived on to spread its evil, going unnoticed by those with power. They called it the Voice.

Trixie stared at the words scrawled across the board, recalling all she had heard about the forest. She’d heard many a tale of a friend of a friend going into those woods, and returning the next day with their minds gone. Some had managed to survive the ordeal with their sanity intact, but refused to say anything other than that they had encountered a formless entity that had spoken to them. This left the identity of the Voice to the morbid imaginations of ponies everywhere. Among them was Trixie. She had first head the tales from when she was a filly, and had stayed awake in her bed wondering what was so terrible that it would drive ponies to madness in a single night.

Now standing before Murkery Wood, those memories became clear as day. But Trixie also remembered another part of the tale. The Voice didn’t speak to everyone who entered the woods. No one could ever figure out why. There was no pattern to the ponies that it chose or didn’t choose. Anyone who entered the forest had just as much chance of being a victim as they were to passing through unharmed. Trixie’s heart was beating loudly as a drum as she looked down the path that went twisting through the ancient trees that clambered up to the night sky with their crooked branches, forming a canopy over the road. Trixie felt uncertain, but this was tempered by her anger, still burning strong within her heart. Why should this scare her? Though disgraced and humiliated, she was still the Great and Powerful Trixie. There was nothing that could take that away from her.

Trixie started forward down the path. Her hoof beats seemed to echo through the forest. The whole area seemed as silent as the grave. Trixie didn’t notice. She was too busy thinking about the events of the past few days, brooding over her wounded pride and imagining how she would get her revenge. She would return to Ponyville with even more tricks than last time, with more power than her enemy possessed. She would humiliate her ten times as worse as she had done to her. Trixie smiled as she imagined the look on Twilight Sparkle’s face when she outshone her.

“Hello Trixie. I’ve been waiting for you.” Trixie’s head snapped up and looked among the dark, twisted branches of the trees. She didn’t want to believe it, but she knew what she had heard. The Voice. Though quiet and soft, it sounded off as clear as a bell inside of her head, saturated with contempt, derision, and mockery.

“It took you long enough to show up,” it continued, “I knew you were coming. I have to say that you look worse than I expected, and I had pretty low expectations.” Trixie felt her already seething anger grow worse.

“No matter,” said the Voice, “You’re here now. And let me tell you, I’ve got an awful lot to say.” Trixie’s anger turned to fear, and she felt herself quicken her pace down the path. The sound of snide laughter echoed in her brain. “Don’t bother. You can run from your problems, Trixie, but you can’t run from me.” Trixie knew it was right, but she kept on moving quickly.

“I just can’t believe how horrible of a pony you are,” the Voice said, “You’re a liar, a braggart, a coward, and a bully. You deserve that pathetic cutie-mark. You’ve been condemned to perform petty magic tricks you can’t even do because you never bothered to learn any. You said you were too good for that tutor your parents hired. Well, you should have listened to them. Yet even now you try to use your worthless talent for your own selfish ends. You try to get ponies to like you? Who’d ever like you?”

Trixie felt as though each word was a needle being driven into her heart, turning it into a beating pincushion.

“I’ll never know how your parents cared about you as much as they did. You were an accident, you know.” Trixie felt her blood run cold. Her parents had always referred to her as a ‘surprise’, and even when she was old enough to understand what that meant, it had never bothered her until now. “Yet they still loved you even when you were born, and everypony saw your horrible buckteeth. All the nurses pitied your poor mother.” Trixie suddenly froze in her tracks. Her eyes went wide, and her lower lip trembled.

“Oh yes, I know about those. You could barely talk. ‘The gweat and powerful Twickthie!’ You sounded ridiculous. But your parents loved their little filly. They scrimped and saved, and worked their hooves to the bone to get your teeth fixed. They treated you like a princess, which I suppose accounts for how spoiled you are. They did everything for you, they bought you toys that you’d break, they helped you with homework that you’d cheat on anyway. They were too stupid to realize that they were wasting their time with an evil, ungrateful brat of a child who’d never return their love, a stupidity you inherited.” Trixie felt anger again. The voice was not only insulting her, but her parents as well.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she shouted at the empty trees.

“Yes I do,” answered the Voice, “It’s clear to anyone that you’re stupid. It’s the only explanation for your behavior. I mean, how are you supposed to make friends by treating ponies like dirt and acting like you’re Celestia’s gift to them? You go from town to town, telling lies that get bigger and bigger, and now it’s finally caught up with you. Everyone saw the Great and Powerful Trixie turn and run at the sight of an Ursa Minor.”

“I didn’t run!” Trixie whimpered, her voice faltering, “I-I tried-”

“You tried?” said the Voice, “Why did you try? It wasn’t out of bravery, I’ll tell you that. It was out of pride, and fear of being exposed as a liar. You’re really a coward, Trixie. You’d have let that monster slaughter the entire town if it meant you getting away. And you wouldn’t care one bit, because you’ve never cared about anypony but yourself.”

“That’s not true!”

“Yes it is. You’ve always put yourself first before anything else. Even if you made friends, what would they be to you? Just things to manipulate to get what you want. That’s all friendship is, really. I’m surprised you never capitalized on it. But seeing as you’re not that smart, I guess I shouldn’t be.”

“Shut up!” snarled Trixie as she shot a murderous glare at nothing, “Just shut up!” The Voice let out an evil chortle.

“No, I’m not going to shut up. If anypony should shut up, it should to be you. You never shut up. All you do all day long is talk about yourself. It’s sickening. You’re so full of yourself you’re overflowing. Of course, it’s easy to tell that there’s nothing really to talk about. You’re just in denial about your own worthlessness, aren’t you, Trixie?” Trixie let out a mindless scream of anguish. She stopped running and clamped her hooves over her ears, though she knew it would do nothing.

“Leave me alone!”

“Why? I thought you always wanted attention. Your parent’s attention and support weren’t enough for you. Remember in grade school, when they all liked you because you could do magic better then anypony else? You had attention then. And then everypony stopped paying attention because they realized that all you could do was a few gimcrack tricks. You could never do real magic, like Twilight Sparkle can.”

“Yes I can!” screeched Trixie, but the words were hollow. The confidence her voice once held was gone.

“No you can’t. Look at your cutie-mark. Why do they call it a magic wand? It’s just a stick with a fake star attached to one end. There’s nothing magical about it at all. There’s nothing magical about you.” Trixie began to feel tears in her eyes.

“What do you want from me?” whimpered the unicorn. The voice rose to unbearable volume as it replied.

“I want to tell you the way things really are. You’ve lived in your own delusion all your life. You think you’re this big star who deserves to have hordes of cheering fans? Think again. You never had any of that. And now you want revenge on a pony you barely know for taking away something you never had in the first place. You want to make her feel worse than you do, because she’s happy and you aren’t. Well boohoo, that’s how it goes.

"You’re just angry because you know you’ll never be as great of a pony as she is. She’s smart, kind, and humble. Envious, prideful, and vain, those are the words to describe you. I’ve seen so many like you before, but of all them, you’re the worst. I know exactly how you’ll end up. You’ll wander around forever, bitter and unhappy with no home or friends because you’re so unlikable, until you die in a ditch somewhere. Then when a stranger passes your bleached bones, do you know what he’ll do? He’ll walk right past you, and wonder who would be so horrible that somepony would leave them dead in a ditch without a proper burial. And then you’ll be covered up by leaves and dirt, and that will be the end of you.”

The voice let out a monstrous laugh as Trixie began to cry. Tears ran down her face and fell into the path before her. The Unicorn had started running, but no matter how fast she ran she couldn’t get rid of the deriding laughter of the Voice. Its words ate their way to her very core, leaving jagged, invisible wounds. They hurt. They hurt so much that Trixie could hardly stand it. She was faced against something that she couldn’t beat, something that was slowly destroying her without any force at all.

“Keep on running,” the Voice said, “See how far you can get before you get what’s coming to you. You won’t change. You can’t change. Even if you make it out of here, you’ll always be a miserable, spiteful wretch, and you can’t do anything about it!” The Voice broke off into laughter. The horrible noise echoed in Trixie’s head as she ran, blinded by tears and full of pain.

*****************************************

The sun rose over the edge of a forest. The rays appeared just as a lone figure emerged from the dark trees. She walked with a tired step, her hooves and legs aching from running. Her head was hung in despair as tears trickled down her face. Her eyes, once lit by the burning fires of anger, were now melancholy; extinguished. All of her fury had turned to sorrow and misery, which was evident from her every movement.

Trixie had ran all night from the voice. She had survived, though she no longer saw the point. The voice had scathed her all night, leaving her as broken as her cart was. Trixie had never in her life been so unhappy as she had been in that forest. She didn’t know if she would ever be happy again. She just wanted the pain to stop. She wanted more than anything to forget what the Voice had said to her.

Because every hurtful word, every scathing speech, had been said to her in her own voice.

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