Speech Increased To 2.5

by EdBoii

Epilogue

Trixie glances up from her morning paper to regard you with an unamused expression written plainly across her features. Her eyebrow arches, her lips purse, and her coffee cup levitates up to her side from the little table where she’s seated. A sigh escapes her nostrils.

“Trixie sees that you’ve come back for more...” 

You nod.

“Well, it would seem you are in luck,” the showmare says, and lays down her paper on the table between you two. “There is one more slice of story left to be had... and the Great and Powerful Trixie shall be the one to tell it!”

The showmare clears her throat and smiles. “Now! After the Great and Powerful Trixie defeated the monster in the outskirts of Fillydelphia and victoriously departed...”

You frown and cross your arms. Trixie stops to regard you coldly.

“Fine,” she says, with a roll of her eyes. “After the Dumb and Blackmailing Guard defeated the Mayor of Hollow Shades...

...

...

...

“Hey! You’re finally awake!” Juniper beamed over the sleepy Guard as she jumped in place, her big ol’ pony grin as wide as could be. “Come on, sleepyhead! You’re gonna be late for your first day of class!”

Slowly, our Guard fully opened his eyes and turned to look at the vampire mare as the first rays of moonlight streamed into the room through the open curtains. She must have opened them, he groggily thought as his brain’s higher functions slowly turned on inside his skull. It was a rule of their household not to leave curtains or shutters open during the day, in case Juniper ever got up for one of her midday snacks. 

“What is it? Dragons?” our disoriented Guard said, and raised a hand from under the fluffy covers to rub sleep from his eyes. “Gotta keep my eyes open... Damn dragons-”

“Hey! Language, mister!” 

Oops. The Guard shut his lips and winced. 

“Sorry,” he said, and offered a sheepish smile to the frowning vampire. “Old habits... die hard.”

Juniper’s expression softened a little, but she still tutted at him and shook her head. “You can’t do that in school, you know? What if you have a dragon classmate? You gotta be more careful!”

“I know,” he said and stifled a yawn. Slowly he sat up and stretched. “I’m still... waking up.”

Juniper leapt from the bed and made her way to the door. “Well, you’ve been practicing really hard and it’s really paid off! So just keep it up, alright?” 

He nodded, and satisfied, Juniper’s smile returned in full force.

“Awesome! Now, up and at ‘em. No lollygagging!” 

The Guard rolled his eyes and got out of bed as the giggling vampire practically hopped down the hallway. She was in a good mood, though it was hardly a surprise. Last week’s election results had just come in, and Mayor Fields was due to begin her duties pretty soon. 

Either way, the scent of pancakes soon flooded the room and the Guard knew that they called for him. He took a moment to relish that scent, the feel of his soft pajamas against his skin, the wooden floorboards against his bare feet... it was a brave and wonderful new world he lived in, in more ways than one. But his stomach rumbled and broke through his reverie, and he headed downstairs as he ran his hands down his blonde hair to tame it a little.

“Good moooorning~!” Jelly Squish called out from behind a gigantic stack of pancakes, seated at the kitchen table with Juniper at her side. “Sleep well?”

The Guard offered a big thumbs up and a warm smile. “It was... fine.”

“Awesome! Come on and eat up, or you’re gonna be late!”

He took a seat and glanced over the kitchen counter, over at the stove where a familiar toad worked the pans and spatula with unholy dexterity. 

“Destruction magic's fine, just don't go burning down any buildings,” he called out, and the Toad answered with a hearty *Ribbit!*

“Be nice, boys!” Juniper said through a mouthful of pancakes coated in a very runny strawberry syrup. Or at least it I think it was- you know what? Definitely strawberry. Don’t question it.

*Ribbit!*

“I don’t care who started it!” 

With a flip of the pan in his dexterous tongue, the Toad flipped a ten-stack of pancakes high in the air and across the room, to land neatly on the Guard’s plate. 

*Ribbit*

“Hail, Companion!” The Guard stabbed into his pancakes with gusto, and all four sat at the table to enjoy their breakfast. 

It was just another morning, one of many since the fateful battle of Hollow Shades, and the first of many more to come. 

***

Elsewhere in a sandy beach east of Hollow Shades, a different group of ponies was also in the middle of breakfast. They just weren’t enjoying it as much.

“Come on, Grim! Cheer up a little!” Midflight smiled at his fellow bat pony, as he tossed a bucket of chum over the wooden fence. On the other side, the hundreds upon hundreds of mudcrabs who had survived the battle writhed and bunched up as they fought for the scraps of stinky fish the bat ponies fed them. 

Grim took a deep breath to calm himself, and immediately regretted it. The stench of fish guts, mudcrabs, and horker dung was so strong in the air it was impossible to smell anything else. 

“Midflight,” he said at last, eyes closed and teeth clenched shut, “next time you find ‘an easy job’, please don’t call me about it.”

“Oh, you grump! Come on!” Midflight slapped him on the withers with a big grin on his face. “It’s only thirty-four years to go! And you know what? There’s nothing a little song can’t help! Ooohh~!”

“HEY YOU TWO! THOSE HORKERS AREN’T GONNA SCRUB THEMSELVES!”

On the far side of the Fillydelphia Mudcrab Sanctuary and Correctional Facility, Betty the Horker belched a mighty belch that turned into a torrent of horker puke midway. It hit Billy the Horker square on the side, coating him almost entirely. Worse still, it set off a chain reaction of horker vomiting that stretched across all fifty pens. 

Ashen-faced and a little more dead inside, Grim Withers went to get the brush.

***

Behind reinforced steel doors, deep under Canterlot Mountain in the very depths of the earth, two unicorns lazily tapped away at a control panel under the looming gaze of a massive monitor—illuminated with strange, golden dots that blinked in and out of existence every few seconds to the sound of a vibrant ping!—while the clock on the wall ticked on and on. One of these blew a large gum bubble out of her mouth.

“Let’s get this bread, dawg.”

Beside her, the second unicorn groaned. 

“Please stop saying that, Glitter.”

Glitter snorted and a smirk tugged at the edge of her mouth. “Whatever, lame-o. You’re just not hip, like me! Swag.”

“Cringe slang won’t fix your marriage, Glitter. Nor will it earn you the love of your children.”

“Wait wha-”

“You lost them, Glitter.” Creamtart turned on her swivel chair to face Glitter’s shocked expression. Her own eyes were empty, black orbs in her gaunt face. In their polished surface Glitter saw stars and the cosmic void extend itself endlessly into forever, and her own self adrift in that blackness. 

“You made your choice, Glitter,” Creamtart continued, and her voice was a gurgling, guttural rumble that manifested itself inside the shocked unicorn’s mind. Creamtart’s lips did not move one centimeter. “When it mattered most, you chose your ‘long furby’ collection over your family.”

“H-hey! Those are vintage! They’ll be worth millions in a few years, just you wait!”

“You’re alone now. Alone in the void with furbys. With nopony to blame but yourself...”

An awkward silence descended on the room. Heavy, like the stack of divorce papers Glitter had signed just earlier that week, pierced solely by the endless pings! from the monitor and the sound of psychic energy crackling in the background.

Glitter scrunched.

“You’re kinda rude sometimes, you know?”

Creamtart’s eyes flooded with color as they returned to normal, and she shrugged. 

“At least I don’t hang around an arcade on my day off and try too hard to be included by a bunch of teens. What are you, 26? Yeesh.”

Before Glitter could reply, the reinforced steel doors to the laboratory slid open with a bright flash of green from the access panel, and Princess Luna entered the room. 

“What news have thee to report?” She strode into the room like a battering ram, and startled the fight out of the two unicorns in the blink of an eye. The two mares were all work in a matter of milliseconds, as they ran through every system scan and report on the console and secondary data displays, with frantic keyboard taps.

“Nothing to report, ma’am!” Glitter half-shrieked, as she hurriedly switched tabs and closed a few kitten videos she’d had on the side. To help her concentrate, of course. “Situation’s stable and hasn’t strayed from baseline for the last 24 hours, ma’am!”

“All sectors at ease, no new ingresses or egresses, and all known anomalies remain idle or contained, ma’am!” Creamtart droned in her usual monotone, but at a slightly higher pitch than usual. Sweat dripped down her forehead.

Luna stepped behind the two mares and stared intently into the monitor. “What of the psychic net?”

Creamtart’s eyes went dark once more as she delved deep into the psychic ocean that permeated the surface of the realscape. She probed deep into its darkness with her mind, and though it resisted, she had done it a hundred times over. Like a knife through honey, she searched.

“Chaos energy remains within expected parameters—so, all over the place—but aside from that, I haven’t detected any peculiarities, ma’am.”

Luna said nothing for a while. Her eyes scanned the surface of the monitor like she expected it to blaze to life in red alarms, pings and error messages blaring all over the place. Pandemonium. But nothing happened. 

“Where is it...” she muttered, and her gaze drifted to the area surrounding Hollow Shades. 

“Where is what, ma’am?” Glitter asked, her voice a tiny squeak.

But if Luna heard her, she didn’t show it. She had eyes only for the monitor, and the hellish memory of that dreadful thing, that abomination that had blackened the earth wherever it trod. That vampiric contraption that bled its victims dry, and lured the foolish and greedy with promises of power in exchange to be fed the very essence of living beings. 

Alas, it was nowhere to be found. And perhaps that was a good thing? Luna didn’t know. For all the relief she felt to know it was no longer on Equestrian soil, or anywhere else on the face of the planet, the lingering memory of its horrid frame still haunted her waking hours... the thought that it still existed somewhere out there, waiting for its next victim so it could feed... 

She drowned a shudder as she ran a final glance over the monitor. Nothing. The pings still came in their placid rhythm, and the map of her nation was undisturbed. Everything was in order, as a dear friend of hers was wont to say.

“Keep thine watchful guard, gentlemares,” she said at last, and turned to leave. 

“Princess?” 

Luna stopped and half-turned. She was met with the big, watery eyes of two scared little ponies, and her heart melted.

“Worry not, my dear subjects,” she said, and her voice was a little kinder, somewhat softer, and every bit as firm and reassuring as they needed to hear. “Everything’s in order.”

The Princess of the night left the laboratory and the steel doors closed shut behind her. 

Glitter turned to Creamtart. 

“You’re lucky I didn’t tell on you for being creepy in the workplace! So inappropriate!”

Creamtart rolled her eyes. 

***

Clearing her throat, Trixie nods once and smiles, pleased with herself. 

“...and there you have it, friends! The ugly truth!” She brushes a speck of dust from her cape and smirks. “Trixie told you it would be bad, but did you listen to Trixie? Nooo! You just had to hear it, didn’t you? Well, worry not! Trixie can now tell you all about the Good version of the story! Trixie’s Version!

Wait, where are you going?! Come back here this instant! TRIXIE DEMANDS THAT YOU—”