Home is Where the Hearth Is

by TheCrimsonDM

Chapter ten: Boundless Boon

“Rarity, no. No, no, no, no. You have to be okay.”

Rarity coughed and more crimson hit the earth. “Oh, Celestia, what I did. It was wrong. So wrong of me. I know you’ll never forgive me but I’m so sorry. For the show, for amulet, for your career, I’m sorry.”

I blinked. What was she trying to tell me? She didn’t have to be sorry, she was an element of harmony, even if she was a bully she couldn’t do anything too wrong. What this monster was saying, what it was doing, it couldn’t be right. This was all just a dream wasn’t it?

Rarity’s horn lit up and she looked at the monster once more. “At least, let me, do this, for you.”

A stunning series of lights flashed from her horn, each one sending ribbons of blue light into the monster. They cut through the monster, tore tendrils and limbs off. Once its head was removed the black ichor holding it together fell apart and it landed into a pile of goo. Rarity slammed into the earth.

I galloped over and slid to a stop at her side. “Rarity, stay awake. Please, the others will be here. Competent ponies will come save you, I promise!”

She looked up at me. Her eyes hardly opened. “It hurts. I thought you couldn’t feel pain in dreams.”

“It’s not just a dream, something is wrong. Seriously wrong.” I looked up and all around. “TWILIGHT! LUNA! HELP!”

Rarity coughed. “They can’t come in. Luna said it was an outsider. It blocked them from coming in.”

“What about you, how are you here?”

Rarity closed her eyes. “I came in first, so I was ahead of the others.”

“Rarity, keep your eyes open. KEEP THEM OPEN!”

I looked again at the puddle of goo. That vile abomination had done this. It was gone now so where were the others. Why wasn’t this done with. That was when I saw it. In the middle of the pile of goo was a book. The book was dark, near enough to pitch black in that ichor that one could hardly see it. There was an image of an alicorn burned into its cover. The binding and cover were made form leather, real pony leather.

“I burned you,” I whispered.

The book shot up a few feet into the air and the ichor wrapped around reforming the monstrous vision of Rarity. “Yes you did. I offered you the ability to find the alicorn amulet a second time and you burned me! I offered you power, a chance to break free from your farm pony shackles but you choose an orange dirt pony over me!”

“Applejack is not a dirt pony.”

“It doesn’t matter you’re all dirt beneath my power. My creator made me and the amulet so we could create true absolute safety in this world and you threw that away. You killed me and my physical form so I’m going to kill you and your mind, but not before I torture you, before I kill everyone you love and care about before your eyes. This pathetic thing died trying to fight me, but it’s just the first. The first of many.”

I closed my eyes. “Rarity is not pathetic. She might be cruel, she may have done something bad, but she is far from pathetic.”

“She’s only the start, Trixie. Wait until I get my hooves on Pinkie. Ohhhh, I’ll do absolutely horrible, wonderful things to that mare before she’s gone. Maybe you’ll recognize some of them.”

My eyes shot open and I felt power flowing into my horn. “No.”

“You can’t stop me. You can’t even stop yourself from going to a cliff to commit suicide by instinct alone.”

“NO!” I screamed as my horn lit up brighter. A purple aura cast over everything in sight.

The monster stared at me. “Oh, so you think you can challenge me. After everything horrible you’ve done, you’re just garbage. Remember what your father said, you’re garbage and your only family is long since dead.”

I unleashed all the magic I had into three spells that I knew, three of them that had all of my broken heart, all of my wrath, all of my rage at this stupid messed up world inside them. “I am good at three schools of magic. First, I am a master of illusions.” My body grew in size, it continued to grow and grow until I was the size of an ursa minor. “Second; I am good at weather magic.” The fog around me was swept up into a sudden wind and blasted toward the sky revealing the red bubble shield that stood around us. “Third: I am really good at telekinesis.” I lifted my giant hoof and slammed it down toward the monster.

The monster laughed. “You’re nothing but an illusion, you just said so. How could telekinesis frighten m-“

It was cut off as the weight of the hoof, of my hidden telekinetic spell slammed into the top of it. The monster was instantly crushed into the mud. It struggled and pushed against the might of my spell. I increased the weight of my spell and watched as it was squished into the earth with a sickening splat.

Once I was sure it was as flat as it could possibly be. I lifted my hoof and dropped the illusion. I had moved up to only a couple feet in front of it. The book was lying face up and open, the pages muddled and the binding torn. My horn lit up with one more spell and a lightning bolt struck it, burning the book and its pages.

“I am the great and powerful Trixie, and you have hurt me long enough. I will not let you stay.”

For a long moment I stood in silence watching the book burn. The shield had dropped around me. Rarity… she’d sacrificed herself to help me. I shook my head but the pain of this realization came crashing in. I closed my eyes and let out a quiet sob.

“What did I do? I already hurt her and her family once, now she’s gone. Her sister just lost someone because of me…”

Rarity’s voice chimed in behind me. “Who lost a sister now?”

I spun around. She was standing. The wound in her chest gone. Her body cleaned and mane perfect. She was smiling at me. I galloped over. “You’re not dead!”

She froze for a moment, staring at me as if I had said something shocking. “O-of course not, darling. A foolish thing like a book could never hurt me. Well… not a second time.”

Luna’s voice broke in. “I believe I had mentioned something before this endeavor.”

I looked to see everypony there. Luna, Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie and even Rainbow Dash. Rarity faced Luna. “You mentioned that actions have consequences, and you were right. I helped cause this whole mess.”

I looked at her. “No you didn’t.”

Rarity wouldn’t look at me again. “The monster wasn’t lying, Trixie. I sabotaged your career. I haunted you, found out where you were working or were going to work and used my influence to get you fired or make sure you never would be hired in the first place. I did this for weeks, months. I only lost track of you after an incident in Canterlot, the last pony I had spoken with was your father… I have no excuses for my actions. All I can say is that I am terribly sorry. You were never the real villain. It was me.”

“But… but why?”

She laughed, it was cold. “Because you humiliated me in front of the entire town and back then, I was still so stuck on myself that I thought it some kind of horrible offense worthy of taking revenge. Yet, once I started I couldn’t stop. I had really hoped maybe my actions were not so terrible you couldn’t get another job, but it turns out I did far more damage, was far more effective than I ever dreamed.”

“B-b-but-“

Rarity shook her head. “There’s no words for it. I promise from here on out I’ll stay out of your life. If you and Pinkie wish to start something wonderful together, I’ll stay out of it and hope you two have the best of luck.”

Everypony was silent for a long minute after that. It gave me time to think. To really think about how awful a thing it was Rarity had done. Yet I knew more now, I knew that everyone of these elements of harmony had at least once done something incredibly stupid, mean, or evil. I’d even heard rumor that Rainbow Dash committed an act of treason by blowing up the Weather Factory in Cloudsdale once, of course that was just a rumor.

It seemed like Rarity was truly sorry for what she’d done. It wasn’t like I had been much better myself. I enslaved an entire town, tormented them, and did horrible things to them all. I enslaved children forcing them to do physical labor until they were broken and bleeding… Was I really in such a high place now as to judge Rarity for something she did so many years ago. Probably, but I wanted to be better than that. If she was willing to apologize and change her ways, maybe I could do something similar.

I swallowed and spoke the hardest words I think I’d ever had to speak. “I forgive you.”

Rarity’s head snapped back to look at me. “Darling, you can’t mean that. If you’re just trying to impress Luna or Pinkie, please don’t. I can accept that I’ll never be forgiven.”

“I’ll forgive you because it’s what I want to do, to prove that I’m really trying to be a better pony.” I smiled, this was easier than I thought. “Of course I only have one condition; tell me what happened with my father?”

Rarity looked at the ground. “Simply put, he had already heard of your actions, long before I even got there. Seems he was keeping an eye on you. From the way he acted, I got the feeling he was looking at you in terms of usefulness and with your career destroyed he had no further interest in you. Since his other children are simple village ponies he has no interest in them either.”

“Yeah, that and there dead.”

Rarity blinked. “Nixie and Pixie are not dead.”

I looked directly into her eyes. “But he said they were.”

Rarity’s jaw dropped and she mouthed a few words in silence. “That… that’s even an evil I could never… that I would hope I could never do. They are perfectly fine and healthy. They live just outside of Ponyville after all. To tell you they were dead, to say such a vile lie… he must truly be a villain.”

“That or he thought I would just abuse there kindness.”

Rarity shook her head. “Still, it is something that I cannot abide. I will introduce you to them myself and explain the situation. They’d be more than happy to meet you.”

I met her eyes. “Really?”

Rarity smiled. “Of course.”

I looked at the others. Rainbow Dash walked up to us. “Guess it’s my turn. Um… sorry about stealing your thunder when you first came to Ponyville. You were running a free gig and everything and I kinda ruined that with my awesomeness…”

I shook my head. “It’s alright.”

Rainbow Dash grinned. “I’d like to see your show again though. After I got into wrestling I realized that pretending to be a self centered villain is actually kinda cool. The Thunder Tanker is one of my favorites and he’s all like, throwing people’s soda’s in their faces and stuff, and he’s really popular so… yeah, I realized I was kinda a jerk.”

I smiled. “Glad to see some fake pony grappling changed your mind on my performance.”

She glared at me. “Wrestling isn’t fake.”

Twilight walked in between us laughing nervously. “Hey, let’s finish what we’re here for okay?”

Luna was already examining the book’s charred carcass. “I believe she may have actually killed it, however I would like to continue the investigation to make sure no more traces of dark magic are hiding. After all, we are here to save Trixie’s mind are we not?”

I looked back at her. It was true even with the book gone and dead, there might still be damage to my mind unaccounted for. Yet, somehow I felt like maybe something good was finally happening to me. Life really was looking up for once. I made up with all these ponies, even got apologies I never knew I needed, and even found out I still had family left alive. Could it be true? Could life really be good for once?