Living Mark of Courage

by Moowell

Mirrors' Thoughts

Mirror Child shivered as a tingle ran up her spine. Trixie glanced at her as she shook it off. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," the filly replied. She shook it off and placed a hoof on the cliff face. "I just don't understand. This is where I heard the pipes, but I found nothing when I searched the immediate area."

Trixie observed the cliff. "Hmm... Give me a moment." She closed her eyes and charged a spell. When she reopened them, her eyes were purest white. The world brightened with varying shades of blue as scanned the area. "Interesting. Nothing appears to be an illusion, nor do there appear to be any tunnel systems or caverns."

"Then where are they?" Mirrors growled. "I know I heard music right here."

"I wonder..." Trixie's horn flashed again, and a bubble of magic blasted outward. In her periphery, a large boulder shimmered and glowed before turning red. She turned and smirked. "Clever." As the pair approached, she cast the spell a second time. The rock disappeared, revealing a wide shaft underneath. "There you are."

"That rock was an illusion? How did you not see it before?" Mirrors asked her mentor.

"I wasn't expecting the illusion to be two-fold," Trixie replied, still regarding the hole in front of her. "This illusion looked like a rock to the naked eye, but the one on top of it looked like reality to scrying spells. I should have expected this sort of thing from the masters of their craft." She turned to Mirrors and attached a small tendril of magic to her. "Ready to get started?"

Mirrors was down the hole before Trixie even finished her question.

*****

"You look like you've been having fun," Trixie mused as Mirrors bounded up the shaft and back into the open desert. "Did you find her?"

"No. Even after weeks of searching, still nothing." the wolf replied, shaking off dirt and blood caked in her fur. She reverted back into a pony and turned away with a grimace. "If only I had been closer to the shaft. Maybe I would've been able to find her cavern's offshoot before the music stopped..."

Trixie eyed her curiously. "...Tell me, Mirror Child. Why exactly are you here?"

Mirrors snorted. "You tell me. You're the one who called me out of hiding."

"Don't give me that. We both know that's not the real reason. Who is Epona to you?"

She cocked her head at Trixie. "What do you mean?"

"Your relationship with each other."

"Hah. What relationship?" Mirrors shook her head. "We haven't seen or spoken to each other for over a month, and I didn't even know she existed several weeks before that. What sort of relationship could we possibly have?"

It was Trixie's turn to snort. "Don't pretend like she doesn't mean anything to you. Your emotions are like glass to me. After all, a poker face is just an illusion, and I am very good at seeing through illusions."

Mirrors paused for a moment. "Alright, fine. She makes a great partner in the field. We work well together, covering each others weaknesses and boosting each other's strengths. It would be a shame to lose somepony like that. Happy?"

"I don't care about any of that. We both seen good partners come and go and think nothing of it. I'm talking about off the field."

She grimaced. "I don't know what you're getting at, Trixie. What do you want me to say?"

Trixie locked eyes with Mirrors. "I want to know your thoughts on Epona. Not as a hunter assessing a mark, or an agent assessing a partner, but as a pony who went to school with her. Who lived with her. Who ate the same meals and drank the same water." Her eyes widened as Trixie took a step toward her. "Ever since you met her, you've been uncharacteristically soft. When she was your target, you spared her life. When she became your partner, you worked as a teammate and not an individual. And now you're putting your life on the line to save her from a fate that may already have happened." She tried to take a step back, but Trixie put up a barrier behind her. "I want to know why you're here, instead of somewhere the ADDC, Gryphona, or even Canterlot. And don't say it's because I called you to do this. You may have put up a token resistance when I first summoned you, but we both know that you would have, as you have in the past, refused my summons in order to continue a mission you felt was more important." She made as if to speak, but Trixie continued on, not giving her the chance. "And that means that not even a mission coming directly from the Empress was more important to you than rescuing this one filly." She found herself staring eye-to-eye with her mentor. "So think hard about your answer before you give it, because I'm only going to ask one more time. Who. Is she. To you?"

Silence. Mirrors found herself unable to move or blink, much less turn away from Trixie's piercing gaze. "I-- I don't..."

"You don't what?"

"I don't know..." she finally eked out, barely a whisper. Trixie backed up a step to let her speak. "She's... just a school filly who nopony likes, with no real family or friends. She isn't very smart, and has no instinct for trouble." Her eyes fell. "She's just some nopony who did something incredibly stupid and got a lot of attention from places she probably hasn't even heard of. And now it's gotten her into bigger trouble than anypony can hope... can hope to escape..." Her voice lowered as her head sank. "Does she even know we're trying to save her? She's been changeling for weeks... Does sh-she even care anymore?" Her flank hit the ground. "Will I even recognize her when I s-see her? What if she saw me and didn't... didn't recognize me? What if... What if she saw me and she did, and I just... just p-passed her by...?" Two knees fell to the dirt.

"Are you alright?"

Her forehead met the soggy desert sand. "...My chest... It hurts so much..."

Comments

[squall_wave]

and then her heart grow three times
very nice update i like the character development in this chapter