Night fell over Equestria, covering it in a darkness that was only dimly illuminated by the light emanating from the surface of the moon. The night concealed many things in its cloak, such as predators who utilized the cover it provided to prey on those who would run at the first sight of them. Those were only the type of predators who felt this natural advantage was necessary though, for when monsters become more at home in the light, darkness becomes the haven for those too weak to protect themselves.
Trixie ran through the night, her breath heavy as she ducked through the trees and brush of the forest she had been traveling to for little under a week. Behind her followed several lights, around a dozen of them. She hadn’t stopped to make an accurate count, because she knew that didn’t matter so much as the creatures who were holding them, the caribou who had taken up occupation of Equestria.
It wasn’t too long ago that she was in Salt Lick City, performing on the street, and having her first encounter with the beastly men in a traumatic fashion. At first, she thought that would be the end of it, that this new threat on Equestrian soil would be defeated within a day, dealt with like many other threats against the nation. Then, she discovered that other cities were suffering the same infestation of deer men raiding the settlements, and that, as she had been told, the Equestrian Royal Guard was helping them. This was when she found out about the caribou’s sick goal, as she saw mares put into slavery, kept in bonds and cages, humiliated beyond the simple act of imprisonment and forced servitude, and publicly raped.
From that point on, she did her best to stay away from cities, not trusting her ability to avoid detection if she got too close, especially since Merryweather was still with her, the filly she rescued from her first encounter with Equestria’s invaders. Her original idea of what to do with the young mare was to drop her off at the first town they came across, but seeing as that was not an option, the only other choice she had was to bring Merryweather along with her. Now the two were being pursued, the pegasus filly being pulled along by the hand as they fled to their destination.
Merryweather looked back, fearfully eyeing the beacons of light heading their direction. “I told you not to try and steal that food!”
“I didn’t have a choice!” Trixie yelled back, but in more hushed tones than the filly, trying not to lead the caribou right to them.
Trixie knew in hindsight that Merryweather was right, but the two of them had been eating nothing but things they found in the wild for days, and a lot of that didn’t sit well with their stomachs. At the final stretch of their journey, Trixie felt that she had to risk a trip to a city to get some real food for the two of them, but she was discovered, which led to their current predicament.
“Just run!” said the unicorn, “We’re almost there!”
Trixie’s eyes darted around the woods, looking for a certain location, the one she had been traveling to since her cart had been destroyed. This was the right forest, but with it as dark as it was, and creatures on her hooves that had plans of defiling her body the moment they got their hands on her, she was having a difficult time finding it.
Then she saw it, a pile of large, purple rocks in the middle of the woods. That was the sign she was looking for, and upon spotting them, she made a sharp turn straight to their direction, jerking Merryweather harshly with her as if their very lives depended on it.
The unicorn made it to the rock pile with no issue, and circled them until she found a large tree. “This is it!” she said, releasing the filly’s hand as she began to touch the knots and branches of what looked to be a mighty oak.
Merryweather took this moment to catch her breath, but kept an eye on the lantern lights that were getting closer with each passing second. She watched as the lights lit up the forest around the tree Trixie was searching, surrounding the two in a pattern that told the young pony that they couldn’t have possibly missed them, but were setting up to close in on them.
“Trixie… they’re…” Merryweather forced out between pants, trying to warn the older mare between pants.
“Don’t worry, we’re almost safe.” Trixie replied, reaching for a branch.
“Safe?” said a deep, male voice that caused Trixie to freeze. The beasts were upon her, and she turned around just in time to see a caribou step into view from behind a bush. “Did you really think that you’d be safe climbing up a tree?”
A few bits of laughter joined with the caribou’s voice, as several other caribou males came into the tiny clearing Trixie and Merryweather had trapped themselves in, having heard what pathetic attempt the unicorn was planning on trying to get away, as if they were just going to walk by when her tracks vanished.
“I’ll admit though, you lasted pretty long out here for a female,” The caribou said, getting fairly close to the two ponies, who pulled in close to one another in futile act of defense, “I wouldn’t have expected creatures as pathetic as you to last one day before crawling your pretty little cunts into town and begging to suck a cock for sustenance. For that, I think I’ll reward you.”
The caribou reached for his belt, and pulled from it a red and silver collar, tossing it on the ground in front of Trixie.
“Surrender yourself and the foal, and I’ll make you my personal bitch,” said the caribou, giving the mare the last option she’d ever have, if only to make his job that much easier, “Put on that red collar, we’ll take you back to town, chop off that repugnant horn and pluck those useless feathers, and get a warm meal in your stomachs before we put you to work doing the only thing females are good for.”
Even as the caribou made his promises, he had little intention on keeping them. While the unicorn was pretty, she was hardly any different from any other common mare in Equestria, with no special title or features to use as a status symbol if he were to own her. He would probably sell her off to the first fat, ugly stallion that passed by, but not before downgrading the red collar he was offering to a black one to add insult to injury, making up some excuse to give to the mare that would make it seem like it was her fault for failing to live up to his ever-changing standards. Even the warm meal he was promising her would be nothing more than the sludge they had been feeding the female ponies since they took over, collections of slop and leftovers barely fit to feed to pigs.
No, the only things that he promised that would come true is that the two ponies would be mutilated and put to use at the end of a dick upon capture, with the caribou wanting to personally test the limitations of the endurance the unicorn had displayed by lasting as long as she did in the wild, and then wear it out so the mare could never attempt such a foolish act ever again.
Trixie looked at the collars, not understanding what being offered a red collar even meant. She had noticed the silver, black, red, and even purple collars when she spied on the cities that had been captured by the caribou, but to her, the colors had no meaning, the differentials in the treatment of those who wore a particular colors too minute for her to see how they varied. To her, all the caribou was saying was “Give up your freedom, so we can mutilate and fuck you into submission”, which wasn’t too far off from the caribou’s true intentions. Only a fool would accept such an offer, as there was clearly going to be no mercy given to anyone who came willingly.
So instead of reaching for the collars, Trixie instead reached inside her cloak. “You foals!” Trixie said, pulling out a small, glass orb filled with a purple substance.
Holding it up high in the air, she used the item as a threat to the slavers surrounding her. The caribou, however, were unimpressed, seeing nothing that could be produced by a pony, a female one at that, as threatening. To some degree, they wished the mare would use whatever it was she had, just to give them more of a reason to beat her before they brutally stuck their cocks into every hole she had.
Trixie, seeing how unafraid the caribou were, faltered for a brief moment, before slipping back into her performer’s persona. “Did you really think that you’d be able to capture the Great, and Powerful, Trix-”
The lead caribou, having had enough of this nonsense, rushed the mare, ready to pin her to the ground and rape her stupid cunt as the foal was forced to watch what happened to dumb mares who disobeyed.
“EEEE!!!” Trixie screamed, tossing the orb to the ground. Suddenly the area was covered in purple smoke, obscuring the vision of all the caribou, and making those who were close enough to breathe it cough and wheeze.
The lead caribou, coughing harshly from his direct contact with the smoke, practically choked on his own words as he screamed, “Fucking bitch!”
The smoke cleared within seconds, but once it dissipated, the two ponies were gone. No one in the slave hunting group had seen which way they went. Enraged, the group’s leader commanded the others. “Find them, now!”
The caribou went in different directions, ready to scour the whole forest if need be to put these two unruly females in their proper place. The lead one stayed behind, checking the area in case the ponies decide to hide somewhere close. He looked up the tree the mare had tried to climb, but nothing. He passed a light over the stone pile, and saw no space for them to slip between. He checked the bushes, but found nothing. What was worse, he couldn’t even find where their hoofprints lead off to, as it didn’t look like they had made a single step from the spot they had last been seen.
“Damn it, did they teleport?!” the caribou yelled to himself in frustration, rationalizing that it was the only way that a unicorn could have escaped him in such a situation. If that was the case, the likelihood of finding them was slim, unless they reappeared someplace close. “I swear, fucking unicorn sluts shouldn’t even be able to do that!”
Certain that the mares were no longer in the area, the caribou ran off to join the others, ready to inflict severe and torturous discipline on the two females should they happen to find them. Minutes passed by in that now vacant area where the deer men and the ponies had their encounter, long enough for the lights to fade away into the shadows of the surrounding trees. The area remained silent for a little while longer, just to make sure that the caribou were not going to come back, and then one of the rocks in the pile moved.
“That was terrifying,” Trixie said, revealing herself and Merryweather from under the ‘rock’
In actuality, the mare had taken off her cloak and used its undecorated inner lining to camouflage against the other stones of the same color, shrouding it over herself and the filly with her. It was a little trick she had devised a while back, setting up the whole thing in the event she would ever need to escape from someone in this very forest for whatever reason.
“Okay,” Merryweather said, stepping out from the rocks, “For a simple trick, that was impressive.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” replied Trixie, not intending the pun, “We still need to get inside.”
“Inside?” Merryweather asked, looking for a cave in her surroundings, but not seeing any, “Inside where?”
Trixie didn’t answer, and instead went back to the large tree the caribou had her cornered at earlier. Tugging at a few of its branches, and twisting a knot embedded in the tree’s bark, a loud ‘Click’ sounded, and a part of the tree’s trunk opened up like a doorway.
Merryweather’s eyes widened, not expecting something like this from a stage mare who performed simple slights of hand. “How did you-?”
“I’ll explain inside,” Trixie said, taking the filly by the shoulders and ushering her through the tree’s newly formed passage. With them both inside, Trixie took one more look outside to make sure no one was around to see them slipping away, before closing the passage behind them, returning the tree to its inconspicuous state.
The inside of the tree had a small chamber within it that could accommodate the two ponies, with a platform they could stand on. Above them was a ceiling made of the solid wood of the still living tree, and near the two ponies hooves was a set of stairs leading down into the earth.
“This way, follow me and watch your step,” Trixie said, lighting her horn with a magical aura before heading down the steps to the depths below. Having no other options, the filly followed.
The stairway spiralled downwards, heading into the ground tens of yards under the surface. Merryweather could almost see the bottom in the faint blue glow of Trixie’s horn, and the deeper they went, the more curious the pegasus got about what was at the bottom. Merryweather had learned over the past few days that Trixie wasn’t exactly the most reliable of ponies. She complained frequently, got into trouble often, and without her stage props, she was little more than a unicorn with slightly better magic than average. She was the last pony you’d expect to have a secret base hidden within Equestria.
After little over a minute, the two reached the bottom, and what awaited them was a large door with odd, arcane symbols etched over it. Without pause, Trixie went to it, grabbed the it’s knob, and opened it to the room on the other side. On the other side was more darkness - that was until Trixie reached up to touch a gemstone embedded in the wall on the other side, bringing light to the space beyond the doorway.
“Finally, we’re safe,” Trixie said exhausted, making her way through the room briskly in the direction of a very comfy looking couch. With as much effort as she could muster, the blue mare tossed herself upon it, sinking into the cushions a bit as she let out a loud sigh of relief.
Merryweather, being unfamiliar with where she was at, crept into the doorway, poking her head in first, cautiously looking around at what was inside. Once more to her surprise, what she saw far surpassed what she expected a stage performer to possess. The room was ovular and very large, being an open area so big that it had a second floor walkway, which was probably the reason the stairs had to go down so low. All around it were decorations and trinkets whose mere visage eluded to some form of magical nature, with bookcases filled with heavy tomes and strange doodads littering the many shelves and tables. Not to mention that the room was filled with floating crystals that lit up the underground chamber with glowing orbs of light emanating within them.
“Did… Did you make all this?” Merryweather asked, slowly stepping towards Trixie’s resting couch, taking in the wondrous sights around her.
Trixie, noticing that filly was addressing her with some level of shock and awe, shot herself up in her seat. “Why of course! Marvels like this are but mere foal’s play for the Great, and Powerful, Trrrriiiixie!”
Saying this with her usually dramatic flair, Trixie paused for a moment, before noticing that Merryweather was still looking at her skeptically, finding it hard to believe that the blue unicorn was the one who made this secret lair.
With a sigh, Trixie releanted, “At least, that’s what I’d like to say, but no, I didn’t make any of this. This place was an inheritance given to me by my grandfather. It used to belong to my great-great-great-grandfather or something, and since I was into magic as a filly, he thought I could put it to good use. I actually had to find the place when I first got it, and no one except me knows it exists. So as long as we’re here, we’re safe.”
“But,” Merryweather flapped her wings, and focused her attention to some of the magical items moving about on their own, one that occasionally shot up harmless, multicolored sparks that looked like mini fireworks, “Do you even know how these things work?”
“Some of them,” Trixie said, being honest, “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to turn the lights on for the first time, though. Then there are some things here that turn on when the room turns on, and I think they are just for decoration. Other things are pretty simple, like that rod over there.” Using what little energy she had, she pointed to a cylindrical object sitting on a shelf.
“This one?” Merryweather asked, flying right over and picking up the object in question, which was just a grey rod with a small button on it.
“Yeah, press that button on the side and bring it over to me.”
“Okay!” Merryweather said, genuinely excited to learn what the item did.
Pressing the button, she started flying over to Trixie as fast as she could, only to find herself impeded, as she found that the rod would not budge from the exact space where she had pressed its button. Trying with all her might, the filly pulled, tugged and shoved against the object, but it was as if something was preventing it from moving it in any direction. Even letting the rod go didn’t allow gravity to make it fall to the floor.
“Pretty neat, huh?” Trixie said, “I call it, ‘The rod that won’t move’.”
“Why don’t you just call it ‘The immovable rod’?” Merryweather said, shortening the name.
Maybe because I didn’t think of it… Trixie thought to herself, “Anyways, just press the button again and you’ll be able to move it.”
Merryweather was about to do as she was instructed, but then something else caught her eye, causing her to fly directly to an open book sitting on a table.
“What’s this?” she said, looking at the pages the book was left on.
“The books?” Trixie asked, getting to her hooves to unlock the immovable rob from its point in space and set it back on the shelf where it was before, “Those are just some books on spells and Equestrian artifacts.”
“This thing looks neat,” Merryweather said, before reading the title of what she saw on the page, “The Alicorn Amulet.”
Trixie’s eyes widened, having forgotten that the last time she had been here was for research on the Alicorn Amulet, before heading off to find it in order to get her ill-guided revenge against Twilight. She rushed over to the book and flipped the pages over by half the book.
“You don’t want to read about that,” Trixie said in an attempt to get the filly to forget what she saw, “It’s just some out-of-date information about an old necklace.”
“But what about this?” said Merryweather as she looked at the new page, “It looks like spells that can… remove and alter cutie marks?! Is that even possible?”
“Wait, let me look at that.” Trixie said, reading the pages of the book herself.
The unicorn mare had never read this far into the book before, having only opened in the first place in a fit of anger in hopes she would find something to make her a match for Twilight, and stopping on the first thing that looked like it would do the job. This entry, by its illustrations, did appear to be as the filly said, a means to remove a cutie mark, and then potentially bestow a new one. For what purpose the spell was made, Trixie couldn’t be sure, it could have even had just been something experimental on part of the books writer, but it looked like the spell required a lot of magical power to accomplish. More than most individual ponies would be able to produce, sustained over a long period while the magic took hold.
“What would removing or changing a cutie mark even do?” Merryweather asked curiously, very interested in what she was seeing for some reason, “Aren’t cutie marks part of a pony’s being or something?” Merryweather thought about it for a moment, then gasped, “Do you think that if you gave a pegasus a cutie mark for magic, that they’d be able to cast spells?”
“I really don’t think that’s how it would work,” Trixie replied, stepping away from the book, “And it’s not like we could test it to see if it did.”
“Why not?” Merryweather asked, following Trixie.
“To put it frankly, It’s out of my league.” Trixie said, sitting back down on her couch.
That level of magic was probably beyond any pony in Equestria, and only someone with immense power would even come up with something like that in the first place. She had always known that the books in her little hideaway were far beyond her meager skills, and even with the alicorn amulet in her possession, many were things she couldn’t dream of attempting with success. In her youthful naivety, Trixie had experimented with a few, and if there was one thing she learned from it, it was that spells beyond one’s ability were better off left alone.
“So wait a second,” Merryweather said, piecing together what little she knew about Trixie, “You have all this magical stuff and all these spell books, and all you know are stage tricks? Why? The stuff in here is, like, real magic.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing…” Trixie started with a bit of begrudging acceptance in her voice, “I’m not exactly ‘good’ at casting spells. I’ve got a few good tricks, but they are all simple spells that I use in ways that look impressive. Trust me, I’m no Twilight Sparkle.”
“Who?” Merryweather said, genuinely unaware who the mare Trixie spoke of was.
“Don’t worry about it,” Trixie said, the bruises on her ego from the Alicorn Amulet incident still fresh.
“But you’re a unicorn,” Merryweather rebutted, “You’re supposed to be able to do all sorts of stuff with your magic.”
“Can we maybe talk about something else than my magical ability?” Trixie said, becoming slightly annoyed at the prodding at such a personal topic, “Actually, what you should be worrying about is getting a change of clothes. You’re still wearing those torn PJs from when we escaped the first time.”
Merryweather looked down at herself, noting how dirty and battered her clothes had gotten.
“I’ll go get you something to wear,” Trixie said, believing that she had some of her old clothes stored away in here from when she was a foal, “In the meantime, you should go take a bath.”
“There’s a bath in here?!” Merryweather said, the news enough to distract her from the topic of magic, after having spent days out in the wilds of Equestria.
“It’s this way,” Trixie said, guiding her to a doorway formed by a pair of large roots that came from the tree they used to enter this place, “Lucky for you, this place has all the things a pony could need.”
Trixie ushered the young pegasus into the room, who gladly stepped inside, tossing her clothes out to the unicorn as she got the water running. The blue mare collected the discarded PJs with a sigh, not exactly accustomed to having guests, but accepting that said guest was both young, and had just escaped a terrible ordeal.
“So, what’s the plan from here?” Trixie heard Merryweather call out from over the sound of running water.
“The plan,” Trixie said, searching through her things for a filly sized outfit, having to push aside several boxes of extra magic supplies she kept stored away to get to where she believed one would be, “Is to stay here, lay low, and wait for this to all blow over.”
“We’re not going to do anything to help anypony?” Merryweather asked, “But what about all those cities we saw being held hostage by those creatures?”
“That’s something for the Wonderbolts to take care of, or the Royal Guard…" Trixie replied, before remembering seeing a few guards helping the caribou, “They can’t all be working with those creatures.”
“And what if they can’t beat them?” the filly questioned again.
“Then the Princesses will handle it,” Trixie replied again, “Nothing is stronger than Alicorn magic.”
“I guess you’re right, but…”
“But what?”
“If they’re gonna beat these creatures, then why haven’t they already?”
That was a fairly good question. It had been nearly a week now, and these deer men were still running about without any opposition to be seen. Then again, Trixie had been in control of Ponyville for a short time herself, so this wasn’t entirely unusual. If it came down to it, Twilight would no doubt swoop in and save the day, as she always did, something that Trixie would be grateful to see after what she had to endure to keep away from those evil creatures.
“Just give it time,” Trixie said, finding her filly clothes. Taking them over to the bathing room, she set them inside the doorway, “Equestria has lasted for a thousand years, and one little invasion isn’t going to topple a kingdom run by Princess Celestia.”
“Okay… but then, how are we going to know when it’s done?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Trixie said, going to an oddly shaped tree root hanging nearby, “I have my ways.”
With the lifting of a small branch hanging from it, a panel slid up to reveal the root to be a periscope. Looking through it, Trixie was given a view from the top of the tall oak she was currently underneath, the tree standing tall enough over the others that she was able to see towns and roads neighboring the forest in which it resided. With this, she would have no trouble telling when the problems plaguing Equestria would pass, and when it would be safe to return Merryweather back to her home.
“So… Mind if I ask some questions?” Trixie said, hearing the bath water stop running.
“Like what?” Merryweather replied, not having the slightest idea what the mare would want to know from her.
“Well for starters, what’s your deal with stage magic?” Trixie said, remembering how apprehensive the filly was to it when they first met, and noticing the way she dismissed it whenever it wasn’t directly saving her from capture.
“Oh… That…” Merryweather said, the topic bothersome to her, “Well, no offense, but I find it boring.”
“Boring?” said Trixie, “What’s boring about magic?”
“Nothing is boring about magic,” Merryweather replied, “The power to shoot beams from a horn, or levitate things, or teleport from one place to another is amazing. But fake magic is nothing but a bunch of cheap tricks ponies who can’t cast spells do to make themselves look special to others.”
“Is this a shot at me? Cause I think that I’ve shown you-”
“No, not you.” Merryweather interjected, “Believe me, I get that you’re kind of amazing with how you fooled those invaders.”
“Well… Thanks. Trixie appreciates your respect for her,” It was the first time in a while Trixie heard such direct praise, and even longer over something that wasn’t one of her shows.
“But most magician tricks are just for show, and aren’t as practical as what you do. At least you have some magic to mix with it, but when a pegasus does it, it’s all hand tricks and mirrors. ‘Oh, look, I can make somepony disappear from under a sheet because they were standing on top of a trap door’. What a waste of time.”
“Trixie is sensing this is a more personal matter then you are letting on.”
“It’s nothing,” Merryweather replied, “Just my dad… He’s a traveling magician, kinda like you. A pegasus named Abbray Cadabra.”
“Oh, I know him. We’ve crossed paths once or twice. Seems like a nice guy, has an ok act.”
“He’s the worst.” Merryweather rebutted, “When I was a foal, he used to do his tricks for me. You know, coins out from behind the ear, pulling a card from a deck, rabbits out of hats, sawing dolls in half. All the things you’d expect from a magician, I suppose.”
“And you didn’t like them?” Trixie asked, not seeing an issue with a father trying to entertain his child.
“I used to love them,” Merryweather answered, “But that’s back when I thought they were real. I used to think that my dad was the most magical pegasus in Equestria, until some of the ponies in my class started asking me how he did his tricks. I didn’t know what they were talking about at first, and told them it was just magic, like what unicorns did. I got made fun of for a while about that, and when I went to my dad about it, he showed me the truth about his stage magic.”
Trixie could see where Merryweather was coming from. Learning that stage magic was just a show must have been really disappointing for her, after growing up thinking it was all real. Pegasi couldn’t use magic though, that was a fact, at least not without some external item helping them. She might have grown up fascinated by magic, only to find out that she’d never be able to truly use it herself. It was something that even a unicorn could relate to, as foals sometimes were equally disheartened when they discovered they didn’t have the talent to become powerful magic users.
“Ok, I’m out! Are these clothes mine?” Merryweather said, having finished her bath, but before Trixie could answer, the filly shouted. “Are you serious?!
“Sorry, it’s all I got your size.” Trixie replied, somewhat expecting the pegasus to be unhappy with what she was given.
Less than a minute later, Merryweather stepped out in an outfit that made her look like a smaller version of Trixie, the outfit even having a cape that was stitched to the collar of her purple shirt. The only thing missing was a hat upon her head, as it was currently in her hands.
“I’m not wearing the hat,” Merryweather said with a stern tone, politely handing it back to Trixie.
Trixie took it back, stifling a snicker from the filly’s angry expression. She didn’t even know why she added the old hat into the costume to begin with, offhandedly putting the whole outfit together just because it was supposed to be a set. Still, even without the magician’s hat, the young pegasus looked rather adorable.
“So… what do we do now?” Merryweather asked, realizing that going outside was out of the question.
“Eh, do what you want.” Trixie said, returning to her couch, “Personally, I’m going to get some shut eye.”
“Can I… read some of your books?” Merryweather asked.
“Go ahead,” Trixie replied, closing her eyes, “Just don’t break anything. If you’re hungry, there is a barrel of apples over there. Don’t worry about taking too many. It refills itself.”
Having fulfilled her perceived obligations as a responsible adult pony, Trixie turned to face the back of her couch, and drifted back to sleep, leaving the pegasus to her own devices and a bunch of old tomes she assumedly couldn’t begin to understand.
The next few days were very odd for Trixie. What started off as what the unicorn had thought was mere interest in magic turned into a full blown obsession for the filly. Merryweather went through the books granted for her entertainment with great eagerness, inspecting every word on every page and committing what was on them inside her developing brain. It was the kind of dedication that only the most studious of magical practitioners showed, in order to learn magic that only the highest levels of unicorns could dream to perform, even though this filly would never be able to utilize what she was learning herself.
Trixie wondered for a short time if it was unhealthy to let Merryweather indulge in a vain pursuit such as this, but came to the conclusion that there really wasn’t anything else here for the filly to do. Besides, watching the filly’s eyes light up at each new discovery gave Trixie some form of entertainment too, and each time she asked Merryweather what had her so excited, the pegasus would explain what spell she had stumbled upon with a level of understanding one would not expect from a non-magic user.
After two days of waiting for signs of the invasion being over though, Trixie started to worry a little. Using her tree-stationed periscope, she had a decent view of view of a few cities, and what she saw was not comforting. Ponies being forced to go outside with no clothing on, made to stage public displays of sex for the amusement of their deer captors. When she first saw it, the creatures in her scope looking like ants, she believed that each pony was an unwilling participant. Then, she started to realize that the stallions were in no way chained up, and that the mares were the only ones suffering the abuse the deer men were dealing out. Then she witnessed the most horrid display as the caribou took their punishment of the helpless females a step further, as they stripped pegasi of their feathers and forcibly removed the horns from the heads of unicorns.
Trixie’s reactions to this abhorrent behavior didn’t go unnoticed, as Merryweather would lift her head from her books each time the blue mare went to take a look on the state of Equestria, though her questions on what was going on were never answered. So each time she would return to her magical studies, not having anything else to amuse herself with after the novelty of Trixie’s magical bobbles wore off, even to her.
On the third day, the pattern was broken, as when night fell and Trixie fell asleep, a curious young pony decided to see for herself what was going on. Having watched the adult mare carefully on how to operate the periscope, she was able to see for herself what the caribou were doing to the inhabitants of Equestria. While Merryweather lacked the context of it all, her mind not yet mature enough to understand the sexual nature of the actions these tiny looking figures were doing, she could recognize that the ponies she saw were being imprisoned, bullied, and generally mistreated by their captors.
Still, she also understood that two ponies could do little to help a town occupied by hostile entities, when the sum total of their combined abilities amounted to mere parlor tricks. At their disposal were hundreds of books with thousands of spells held within them that could casually toss aside the invaders, but neither pony that knew of their existence could cast even the simplest solution they provided. It ate away at the foal’s conscience that there was so little a pegasus like her could do, when if she were a unicorn instead, she might have been able to save... she didn’t know. Equestria, a town, somepony at least. She was sure that, had she had any form of magic, she’d be able to make a difference, even if it was something as small as a caravan of prisoners being hauled off by the Equestria’s oppressors.
While adjusting the position of the periscope from one town to the next, Merryweather saw just that, a small band of caribou traveling down a path towards one of the cities, a large carriage following behind them that was being pulled by two mares bound to the vehicle, with several more mares riding within it held inside a cage. Merryweather had no idea why they were being taken to one of the surrounding towns, but she did know one thing. If there was any time to act and help somepony, this was that time.
“Trixie, Trixie!” Merryweather yelled, knowing that time was important.
In response, the blue mare jolted awake in an instance, thinking something terrible had happened and that perhaps they had been discovered. “What?! What is it?!” she yelled back, dazed from the sudden upheaval from her slumber.
“Those creatures!” Merryweather started to explain, “There are a few of them on a nearby path, and they are taking some hostage ponies to one of the cities to be tortured!”
“You looked through the periscope?!” Trixie said, worrying if something the filly saw could have traumatized her. Up until this point, she was trying her best to prevent the pegasus from witnessing the vile acts the caribou inflicted on the mares of Equestria.
“There is no time to worry about that,” Merryweather said, flying behind Trixie to push her onto her hooves, “If we act fast, then we might be able to help some ponies.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.” Trixie replied, finally getting what the filly was so excited about, “You’re wanting to go out there and risk being captured again?”
“No, I wanna go out there and save some ponies before those monsters do something horrible to them. We can do this, I know we can.”
Trixie bit at her lower lip, the thought of facing those deer men again forming a dark pit in her chest, “Merry, I know that it looks like I have everything all together, but I really don’t work well under pressure. The last time I tried to fight something as hostile as these creatures, it just shrugged off everything I threw at it.”
“But we’re not going to fight them,” Merryweather insisted, “We’re going to scare them off with your tricks. Smoke bombs, fireworks, I’ve looked through your boxes and I know you enough of those to supply an army of magicians.”
“Merry, we… We just can’t!” Trixie said, worried about the filly’s well being, as well as her own.
If they failed and were caught, then they would surely suffer the same fate as all the other mares Trixie had seen. Being raped was not something Trixie wished to experience, and not only that, but the way things were going, Trixie had fears that this incident in Equestrian history was not ending quickly as she assumed it would. There had been zero signs of anyone coming to stop the invaders, not even a single guardsman or mare scouting around to investigate. Trixie wanted to believe things would just fix themselves, but the longer things went on, the more she started to think this wasn’t just another doomed to fail invasion like the changelings upon Canterlot.
“We have to stay where it’s safe, at least until the princesses take care of this situation.”
Merryweather didn’t take that well, tensing up every muscle in her body before flying over to Trixie’s boxes, snatching up as much as she could before flying to the staircase that lead back to the surface.
“Merry! What are you doing?!” Trixie asked, getting up from her seat to go after the filly.
“If you won’t help, then I’ll go save them myself.” Merryweather informed the older pony.
“But!” Trixie could tell that Merry was going to make it to the stairway before her, and if that happened the small pegasus would easily be able to fly up it before Trixie could catch up to her, and if she made it outside, there would be no stopping the filly from doing something foolish. “Fine! I’ll go! Just wait a minute!”
Merryweather stopped, turning back to face the unicorn, “You mean it?”
Trixie gulped, knowing that she just agreed to put herself in harm’s way, but she couldn’t let a filly go out to face danger alone. “Yes, I’ll go with you, but let me get ready first.”
Trixie went to her periscope, and noted where this alleged convoy of captured mares was. It was still a fairly long distance away from its assumed destination, and there were only about four of the deer men guiding it. If Trixie and Merryweather were careful, it might have been possible to save the prisoners, but Trixie also needed to plan an escape in case things went wrong.
“Ok, I see a rock formation that we can use that’s closer to us than them,” Trixie explained, “If we get there quickly, we can set things up, and get the drop on them.” Trixie stepped away from the scope, and stared sternly at the filly, “But if we are doing this, then you need to listen to me and do everything I say, got it?”
“Yes, of course!” Merryweather said, eager to get out and rescue some ponies.
“That means that if things go wrong, and I tell you to run, you have to run. Are we clear?”
Merryweather’s eyes drooped a bit at that, worry coming to her, “But…”
“Are we clear?!” Trixie said again, stressing the importance of the filly’s obedience.
“Okay… yeah, I’ll do whatever you say, no matter what,” the pegasus agreed.
“Good, then come with me,” Trixie said as she grabbed a few of her magic show items, before heading to the upper level of her hideaway.
“But the exit is this way,” Merryweather said, hovering in place right at the doorway leading to the staircase.
“Really?” Trixie said, walking around the bookshelves till she made it to a wall mounted candle holder, "I told you that this place was owned by an ancestor of the greatest magician Equestria has ever seen, and you don’t expect it the have a secret passages?”
With a tug of the candle holder, a small section of wall slid into itself, and then shifted to the side to reveal a new pathway out of the room.
“Now come, this will get us out of here much quicker than those stairs.”
Surprised and ecstatic, Merryweather flew up to the second level and right into the previously concealed hall, zipping right past Trixie. The filly went by so fast she didn’t notice the unicorn’s expression shift to pure nervousness, still believing that this was nothing more than a huge mistake. Still, she had little choice but to go along with it, as there was no stopping Merryweather from leaving regardless, and she would be better off with Trixie than without her. Reluctantly, the mare slipped through the secret passage just as it was trying to close, hoping that she would be able to return to this place soon.
“Trixie… Trixie… You in there?”
The blue unicorn’s eyes shot open, and she found herself inside the carriage, with Lyra bent over her, shaking her gently, as the other occupants exited the vehicle. It seemed that Trixie had fallen asleep during the ride, and as she slumbered her thoughts were directed back to the the Fall.
“You have a pleasant dream?” Lyra asked, seeing the other unicorn open her eyes.
“It was… Fine.” Trixie replied, sitting up in her seat as she struggled to become fully awake.
If somepony had been viewing her dream, they would have seen it as nothing more than a somewhat pleasant depiction of Trixie and the filly she had once saved from the caribou, but to Trixie herself it was just the reminder of a terrible event, the beginning of a nightmare that was at one point all too real for the mare.
“Well we’re back at the club house. Want to come in, or do you want to keep napping out here?”
No, no, I’m awake,” Trixie said, not wanting to see where her dream might go if she let it continue, “Let’s just go inside. I’m a little hungry anyways.”
Stumbling to her hooves, Trixie exited the carriage, Lyra helping her outside when she saw that the unicorn wasn’t completely awake yet. They both followed the others inside the building where they held their support group meetings, Trixie relieved to be back home after a long, exhausting day. She would go get something to eat, take a shower, and then practice her levitation spell some more before the day was done, in the hopes that all of that would push out any thoughts relating to the caribou, Merryweather, and the horrible events of her past.