The First and Foremost
Trixie looked out over the audience with a prideful smile. It was the largest crowd she had ever drawn, numbering close to two-hundred. Each and every one of their eyes were trained on her, sating the mare’s unending hunger for attention.
“Feast your eyes on the most magical unicorn in all of Equestria!” cried the magician. A thunderous applause was her response, leaving her beaming with her usual immodesty. But as she scanned the enthusiastic faces, she spotted one single pony who wasn’t praising her. A dark chestnut colored unicorn met her gaze with dull yellow eyes. They held a look of total indifference to Trixie. The mare’s victorious pose wilted slightly under the stare of the pony. Though it lacked any sort of aggression, it threatened her. That look of disinterest was what she feared most, so powerful that she forgot about the mass of ponies who admired her from the audience. But fear quickly turned to hostility.
“I see that one of you lacks enthusiasm,” the mare said, the venom in her voice barely hid behind her dramatic façade as she thrust a hoof in the direction of the unicorn, “Do you doubt the ability of the Great and Powerful Trixie?” A smug smile spread across her face as the audience turned to gawk at the stallion. But to the magician’s surprise, no nervous sweat formed on the unicorn’s brow. Pointing him out had not humiliated as she had hoped. Rather, he retained the apathetic look that made Trixie squirm beneath her skin.
“I’ve seen better,” he replied. He had the kind of voice that could never be picked out of a crowd; the kind of voice that would be forgotten moments after it was heard. Trixie regarded the unicorn with a stony glare.
“From who?” she hissed, “Who do you so wrongfully believe to be superior to the Great and Powerful Trixie?” Even though the stallion was a great distance from her, Trixie saw his lips move to form a small smile.
“Myself, of course.” Trixie let out a peal of deriding laughter, though she found nothing humorous about one pony claiming to be better than her. It was merely an act to convince the audience and herself of her supremacy.
“Well,” she said snobbishly, “Why don’t you come up here and prove it. Prove to us all that you’re better than Trixie.” The audience watched with silent smiles as the unicorn began to make his way towards the stage. Trixie’s eyes remained trained on him as he strode forth with a confidence she planned to break. But something was different about him now. She squinted at him as he drew closer, trying to deduce what it was.
Trixie’s eyes slowly widened as the stallion’s face began to shift proportions. His ears became rounded; his horn receded into his skull. No longer was she looking into the face of a unicorn, but into that of a snarling bear. Trixie’s terror-dried mouth fell open, unable to utter the scream in her mind. Her dilated eyes frantically searched the audience for some sort of reaction to the bear-headed abomination. She felt a cold tremor as she saw they simply continued to smile, as if nothing at all was wrong.
It was bad enough that the stallion now had the head of a bear. But now its body was subject to further changes. It morphed and flowed, becoming upright. The forelegs moved to protrude from hunched shoulders, and their hooves split into long, gnarled fingers tipped with claws. The legs lengthened, becoming like that of a human. All this happened as the creature continued toward the stage.
The magician felt her legs go numb as the hideous, hairy beast walked past the unwitting crowd, his yellow eyes shining with an otherness that filled her with dread. It was clear to her that nopony was going to come to her rescue.
“Hello,” said the creature as it climbed onto the stage. It still had the same, indescribably average voice, sounding disturbingly calm as he loped down the stage toward the unicorn. She could only stare back up at the beast.
“What are you?” Her eyes went wide as she saw the creature’s mouth move in perfect synchronization with her own, saying her words precisely as she spoke them. The creature grinned at the dumbfounded look she gave him. She again looked out at the audience. They looked at her as they always had, paying no heed to the beast that bore down on her.
“What is--” she stopped once more as the beast copied her words. She understood now, and the creature knew that she understood. He laughed, not wickedly, but as if she had told him a magnificent joke.
“Yes,” he said, “I can see your thoughts. And no, they don’t know what’s happening.” Trixie leaned back as the creature lurched forward, bringing his ursine head only inches away from her own. His yellow eyes blazed.
“It would only frighten you more to tell you of what I truly am,” he said, his voice a hollow void. Fear overtook Trixie, and like a frightened animal she tried to fight back. Her horn glowed a vibrant magenta as it built up with a magical charge, which discharged in a massive blast. It struck the creature head on, and he shattered into a million brittle pieces. They landed and danced about the stage in a jagged mess, coupled with ashes and flickering embers. For a moment Trixie thought she had won, but found herself cringing as she heard a single pair of hands applauding behind her. She whirled around. The creature was there, smiling at her.
“Flashy spells and sparkling lights don’t make you powerful,” he muttered, “You equines have no grasp of what power really is.” Trixie’s fear gave way momentarily to her contemptuous anger, and she shot the creature a poisonous glare. He let out a lighthearted chuckle as he began to circle her.
“Look,” the creature said as he held out an open hand. A copper hoop appeared out of thin air. He caught it in his leathery palm and held it out to Trixie. “Do you see this?” Unable to do anything else, she nodded. She now looked upon him with fear again. Summoning objects out of nothing was an extremely complicated magic, and the spell caster had to be extraordinarily powerful.
Without warning, the creature suddenly swung the hoop across her face. She howled in pain, bringing a hoof up to her mouth. The attack had split her lip, and Trixie tasted blood running down the grooves of her front teeth. The mare turned away as the creature laughed childishly. Her eyes shot open, filled with hatred and fury as he faced the bear-headed beast.
“You see?” he said, “I can do magic tricks too.”
“That wasn’t a trick!” the unicorn snarled, her voice saturated with loathing, “You attacked me!” The creature simply smiled and shook his head, holding up the hoop. Trixie’s eyes narrowed in anger as she saw a drop of her own blood running down the copper shaft.
“This hoop doesn’t exist,” the creature said, “It never did. I couldn’t have hurt you with it.” Trixie’s eyes went wide in disbelief, which quickly turned into anger again.
“Of course it does!” she screeched, “I’m bleeding! There’s blood on it! I saw you hit me with it! I felt it!” Her fury only made the creature’s smile grow.
“I thought you’d understand, seeing as we’re both illusionists,” he sighed as he twirled the hoop around his finger, “Fooling the senses is what we do.” Suddenly he sat above her in a magnificent throne of solid gold, its exterior patterned with looping grooves and flawless gemstones. It now only occurred to Trixie that she and the creature were no longer on the stage, but in a cavernous ballroom. Bright light shone from exquisitely crafted chandeliers above their heads. The light red walls were lined with a row of tall, arched windows, their panels surrounded by golden curtains. The floor beneath Trixie’s hooves was made of huge tiles covered in flowering patterns of red, orange, and gold.
“Isn’t it grand?” said the creature as he leaned forward. Trixie opened her mouth to curse him, but froze. She noticed that the tart, metallic flavor of blood was gone. With a bewildered look she gingerly put a hoof to her mouth to discover that the wound was no more. The mare looked up at the creature, who smiled in amusement of her confusion.
“I told you it didn’t exist.”
“It very well did!” shot the unicorn, “I felt-”
“You did feel it,” the creature said, “But nothing actually happened. I fooled your mind. Observe.” Trixie suddenly let out a piercing wheeze as she felt a shooting pain in her stomach. It seemed to skewer right through her body, as if some kind of object had been thrust into her. She doubled over in agony on the cold, stony floor, gasping for breath. The creature stood up from his throne and leisurely paced over to the writhing equine.
“You see,” the creature said as he touched his hoop to her panged stomach, “No wound. I simply altered your perception to make it feel like you’re being stabbed.” Trixie looked up at the bear-headed beast pleadingly through her anguished grimaces, her eyes begging him to make it stop. The unicorn suddenly gasped as the pain vanished, and she found herself struggling to catch her breath. She looked upon the creature’s malevolent smile with horror as he pulled her to her hooves.
“Another example,” the creature said, suddenly producing a bouquet of wildflowers in his gnarled hand. Trixie cried out as he pressed them against her muzzle. She could feel they were fresh, loaded with pollen. But a chill passed over her when she noticed one crucial detail. They had no smell. Immediately after she realized this, they exploded into a blazing fire. The unicorn screamed, thrashing her forelegs and pushing the being away. Blinded by the inferno’s flash, she ran her hooves over her face. She moaned miserably in anticipation of feeling scorched, cracked flesh and burnt bone.
Instead she felt the smooth, flawless skin of her face, and the beads of fearful sweat that oozed out of its minuscule pores. Trixie’s eyes snapped open, their pupils shrunken with terror as she looked up into the creature’s face. The playfulness it had momentarily held was gone now, and it gazed down upon her with a contemptuous smirk as he read the countless questions that swirled about in her brain.
“I can make anything real,” he said, his voice oozing like oil into her ears, “Your dreams. Your nightmares. All it takes is a little manipulation of the senses.”
“What…What do you want from me?” Trixie breathed, unable to look away from his blazing yellow eyes.
“From you? Amusement.” Trixie’s mouth dropped as he faded into nothingness. The rest of the room followed, its elegance extinguishing, becoming immaterial. The mare whirled around, watching it all vanish, taking the light along with it. In mere moments it was no more.
Trixie’s heart began to race as she stood alone in the darkness. She couldn’t see even the faintest outline of any solid shape.
“H…Hello?” she called out.
“Good evening.” Trixie screamed as she jumped. Her hooves stomped against tile as she landed. She breathed in deep, ragged spasms of tasteless air as the voice of the monster chuckled.
“Where are you?…” gulped the unicorn, her voice cracking with each word.
“In front of you…” came the ominous reply. Trixie forced her stiff legs to move backward until she came to a sudden stop. She felt her backside press against a pair of bristly, bony knees.
“And behind you,” added the creature. Trixie hurriedly began sidestepping away from the being, but stumbled as she impacted against something that stopped her like a wall. In the brief moments her skin touched it, she had felt it was lined with dozens of rough, jagged scales. The mare’s heart skipped a beat as she heard a low, reverberating growl. Her head pivoted wildly on its neck as the sound of thick, leathery claws padding across the floor reached her ears. A scream escaped her throat as a thunderous roar filled the air. The very same moment, her vision returned, and Trixie found herself looking down the jaws of an enormous, blood-red dragon, so massive that its dorsal spine brushed against the ceiling.
The magician scrambled back as the beast lunched at her, its razor-toothed jaws closing with a deafening snap. The noise sent a shock-wave through the air and into her body, weakening her stance. The dragon’s simmering yellow eyes bore down at her with mindless violence as it unleashed another wailing roar, giving chase to the mortified unicorn. She could barely control her limbs as she fled, her heart beating the primal rhythm of an animal on the run. Trixie looked ahead to the two red doors that served as the only exit in the enormous room. Pushing herself to the limits, she forced her legs to move faster, moving closer to the door by the second.
Half-blinded by sweat, the dragon’s searing breath pouring out only inches behind her, the mare’s horn came alive with energy as she telekinetically grasped the elegant handles of the double doors. In one swift moment she tore them open and dodged through the resulting opening, just as the rampaging reptile closed its jaws around where she had been seconds earlier. Trixie tripped over her hooves once through the doors and fell forward, her body sliding across the same tiled floor of the first room. As she clambered to her hooves, she caught brief glimpses of her surroundings. The exact same colors of red, orange, and gold flashed before her as he whirled around to see if the dragon would try and pursue her through the door.
Standing in the open doorway was none other than the creature, and the dragon was nowhere to be seen. Trixie grimaced as he walked toward her, leaning on a long, gnarled walking stick that sounded off with a loud clack each time it hit the floor. The sight of his predatory grin struck cold, sharp fear into her heart. The unicorn shank back, cowering as he strode up to her. She was too frightened to run as he reached down and ran a horrific hand through her mane. She cringed as his fingers brushed against her scalp. They were leathery and rough, frozen to the touch. All the while he looked into her fearful eyes with his own.
“I can see everything about you,” he said with eerie calm, “Everything you know, everything you don’t know, and,” he leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Everything you choose not to know.” The creature drew back suddenly, and Trixie noticed he had something in his hand that wasn’t there before. It was blue, it was pointed, and it was grooved. Her mouth fell open, and her eyes grew wide. The mare slowly reached to her forehead with a trembling hoof. It kept going, finally stopping right above her eyes, feeling nothing but skin.
A long, despairing wail escaped her lips as she realized what the creature had taken. Had it been anyone else she would have killed them to get it back. But all she could do was gape at the thief with frustrated fear, unable to do anything about it.
The creature held Trixie’s horn up to the light, peering at it curiously.
“There is a world beyond our own where people believe this to be medicinal,” he said, apathetic to the mare’s suffering. He closed his fingers around it. Time seemed to stand still as a loud crunch emanated from within his fist. Trixie watched, horrified, as he opened his digits. A fine blue powder began to spill out upon the floor in front of her. A scream of mindless anguish filled the air as she dove upon it, desperately trying to gather it into a pile and scoop it into her hoof.
“Why?!” she sobbed over and over again as she looked upon the remains of her horn, “Why?!”
“Because,” the creature said, “The fun is only beginning.” His chest expanded as he took a deep breath. He suddenly exhaled, breathing out a long, billowing stream of vibrant, green smoke. Trixie coughed as she tried swatting the vapor away, but it kept on coming, long after he should have been out of breath. It began to fill the room, and the more he generated, the less material he became. In mere moments Trixie was lost in a green fog, unable to see anything but her own hooves. It became thicker, its harsh, smoky aroma stinging her eyes and making them water. At last she had to blink.
Trixie opened her eyes and nearly had a heart attack. The faces of two hundred ponies grinned eagerly back up at her, their eyes aglow with anticipation. After getting over the initial shock, Trixie looked around, the look of horror slowly vanish from her features. She breathed quietly over the gentle, excited murmur of the audience that congregated in the town square. Everything was as it had been moments before the terrible creature had appeared. Her heart still racing, Trixie scanned the crowed for a yellow-eyed unicorn with a bored look upon his face. He was nowhere to be found. Eyes still nervous, Trixie reached to touch her forehead. Her hoof stopped at the rounded tip of her horn. A drawn out sigh of relief escaped through her lips.
But though everything appeared to be back to normal, Trixie still had the problem of not knowing what had happened. She didn’t even know if it had really happened at all. There were no indications it had. Her nose was free of any residual scents of smoke, no powdered horn clung to her hooves. The unicorn remembered what the creature had said about controlling the senses. Was it possible that everything she had been through was simply an extravagant illusion?
Trixie never had time to ponder this. Because at that moment, a tremendous roar echoed out through the night. The very sound of it chilled her bones and froze her blood in its veins. She watched the excitement of the crowd turn to horror as the noise reached their ears, and Trixie could see panic emanating from their eyes. Another roar sounded off, this time accompanied by a series of crashes that rattled the earth. Each one grew louder, as if some terrible beast was approaching. A terrible beast was approaching. A shadow was draped over the town as an impossibly huge shape rose up against the moon.
Trixie found herself looking up into the purple-hued face of an ursine beast, its cavernous mouth drawn in a snarl. The mare stood rooted to the spot as it gnashed its boulder-sized fangs in hunger. She felt unparalleled terror as she saw the hunger in its fiery eyes. Eyes that looked directly at her. With an unearthly bellow, the monster started forward, its terrible claws raking huge trenches in the earth as it moved. The crowd in the square was suddenly alive in a flurry of motion. Stallions, mare, foals, all scattered down the streets, some heading into their homes, others fleeing the town altogether.
Only Trixie remained, unable to move her fear-ridden body. She wanted, needed to move, but couldn’t. Her mind held the same terror as the audience that had left her moments ago, but she was unable act out the primal instinct to run. Her eyes were locked on the gargantuan bear as he smashed its way through the town, its paws splintering entire buildings as it bulldozed a path for itself. The sound of breaking boards and cracking timbers rose over the pitiful whine that came from the back of Trixie’s throat. The monster came faster and faster towards her, the ground rumbling beneath its weight. Its jaws opened, growing wider and wider until they seemed to touch the sky and earth.
Trixie screamed as they closed around her.
Trixie awakened, and was first aware she was sitting against something soft. Her eyes weakly fluttered open. A faint light shown overhead, allowing her to see the soft, white padding that covered the walls, floors, and ceiling of the tiny room. Breaking the pattern was a grey door, with a long, thin window above a metal plate where a handle should have been. Trixie shifted trying to rise up from the ground. She paused half way as she realized she couldn’t move her forelegs. The mare tiredly looked down to see her torso wrapped in a long, white shirt of some kind. It took her a moment to realize what it was.
A straight-jacket.
Panic overtook Trixie once more as she tried to figure out what was happening. The mare took deep breaths, trying to suppress it. She tried to reach out with her magic and mentally undo the restraints that held the sleeves in place. Nothing happened. The unicorn blinked, then glanced up. Her pupils shrank as they spotted the small metal cone that was affixed over the end of her horn. She struggled for a moment over the padded floor, writhing about in the straightjacket, pulling, twisting, trying to get at the straps. She let out a grunt of frustration as she curled up, trying to grab the metal cone on her horn with her hind-legs.
With grim realization the mare let her body go limp, falling back against the padded floor. Her tearful eyes grew wide as she saw the terrible grin of an ursine face looming only inches away from her own.
Six mares trotted across the green-and-white tile floor of the Gage Memorial Sanatorium, lead by a an aging stallion in thick glasses. Each one regarded their surroundings with an increasingly melancholy demeanor. It was far better than they expected. There were no gibbering lunatics crouching in corners or shrieking madly and grasping at the attendants’ throats. But the place still held a feel of hopelessness within its white, sterile walls. The patients were mostly quiet, and most appeared content. All the unicorns had dull, metal tips on their horns. Aside from that, there were no ponies with restraints of any kind. All except one.
Twilight Sparkle stared at the blue unicorn who sat in the corner, her forelegs bound up in a straight-jacket. The bookish mare had never seen a pony so utterly miserable. She watched as the unicorn’s magenta eyes darted left and right, as if watching things that weren’t there. Those eyes beheld a fear that Twilight couldn’t fathom; a helpless, tortured, terror. The pony’s face screwed up in a number of ugly grimaces as she cringed from something that wasn’t there.
“…What happened to her?” breathed Twilight, turning back to the stallion. The grey-haired unicorn looked at her apologetically.
“We…don’t know,” he sighed at last, “She was found in Hoofington last week. Locals said she’d been in the street for hours doing one of her shows, but nopony was watching.”
“Wait,” interjected Twilight, “What do you mean?”
“They said she didn’t notice there wasn’t an audience,” explained the stallion, “When they finally tried to get her off the street, she started screaming.”
“Then she was brought here?” The stallion shook his head.
“She ran first. Not very far, she was apprehended quickly--” A long, terrible shriek suddenly cut through the quiet like a jagged knife, its piercing tone chilling Twilight’s blood. Immediately she looked over at Trixie. The mare’s pupils were shrunken with horror, her mouth open in a hideous scream. Another one followed, and another and another. She twisted and turned in her restraints, her adrenaline-fueled muscles tearing the seams.
“Stop it! Please! Make it stop!” Her pleas were followed by a long, agonized sob, so powerful that brought tears to Twilight’s eyes. The purple mare watched as several attendants crowded around the screaming equine, grabbing her arms to keep from breaking loose of the straight-jacket. Her sorrowful gaze followed the writhing mare as she was led out of the room.