Spike put his head against the door to Twilight's bedroom, concernedly listening to the sniffling within. "Twilight, you okay in there?"
"No, not really, Spike."
The sniffling stopped as he sat by the door, replaced by the sounds of Twilight's abused bed creaking, squeaking, and groaning with her movements. The baby dragon twitched as he thought of how distressed his guardian must be. If Twilight was wallowing in self-pity on her bed like Rarity occasionally did, just how stressed was she?
Spike sat down against her door. He leaned back, letting the scales on his back soak in the cool of the door's wooden frame as he called in to Twilight once more. "What's wrong, Twi? Why was it so important that you get the Elements? Who's this friend of yours that needs help?"
The baby dragon fell over backwards as Twilight yanked the door open behind him. Magenta magic coated him as he laid in surprise on his back. It picked him up and floated him across the room to Twilight's bed as another tendril slammed the door shut and locked it behind him.
"Twilight, you're scaring me."
"I'm scaring me too, Spike." Twilight laid him down on her prone form, hugging him tightly to her chest with her forelegs as she lay in bed. "I'm so lost and worried, and I don't know if I can control what's happening."
Spike struggled with Twilight's hooves, shifting them down to hug around his lower chest so she wouldn't strangle him by accident. "Is that a serious 'I can't control myself anymore', or is it 'I lost the manual to the castle's mainframe' again?"
"Not a time for jokes, Spike. Even if it is kind of, well both really."
Spike twitched again. The last time Twilight couldn't control herself had been when she had triggered a security spell that had taken over her body and marched her into a closet for arrest in the library. He didn't even want to think about what it could be this time. More relevant, though, was the band of blue magic that had sprung up around his body, hugging him even tighter to Twilight. "Uh, Twilight? When did your magic turn blue?"
His guardian sniffled and nuzzled him with her chin silently. Spike shook and squirmed to get free so he could look Twilight in the eyes as she silently cried beneath him. "Twi, talk to me. C'mon, you know that the number one rule of being a number one assistant is talking! Say something, please Twilight?"
"It's not my magic, Spike. Remember that friend, who was petrified by a cockatrice? It's hers. She's the one I need the elements for. It's the only way that I know of to save her." Twilight hoarsely sniffled as she spoke. She concentrated and began casting, showing Spike how her horn glowed with her normal color of magic.
"Wait, how are they casting? How are they casting through you? And where are they?"
"She's in my head, Spike." Twilight lifted a hoof and poked her beloved assistant in the noggin to physically demonstrate to him.
"Okay, Twilight. Now i know you need help. You're hearing voices and casting magic that isn't your own. Wait, wait! Maybe whatever it was that possessed Princess Luna got into your head! I don't want to be tardy forever because of Nightmare Dusk!" Spike threw his paws up into the air, jumping off of Twilight to stare at her worriedly.
Twilight facehoofed in exasperation as another voice broke the tableau.
"She is referring to Trixie, actually."
Spike jumped back, running to the locked door in fright. "Ghost!" Tugging on the handle a few times, he gave up and dived under the frame of Twilight's bed in his panic.
"SPIKE! Knock it off!"
Trixie stopped Twilight from diving under the bed after him with a touch of her magic against the purple mare's shoulder. She shook her head as Twilight looked at her, silently disapproving Twilight chasing after Spike. "Twilight, he might as well be right about Trix-... about me. No elements, an untested spell that all the major researchers of magic would declare suicidal, no other way to- I- I'm-"
"Not doomed. Plan B is still the Elements, one way or another. Plan A is getting that spell to work without the Elements, no matter how hard it seems. It's what friends do, and you've got a friend in me." Twilight accepted Trixie's magic-based hug as best she could, wishing she could pat Trixie on the back and tell her it was all going to be alright."
Spike slid his head out from under the bed, looking up at the pair. "Wait. Trixie? She got turned to stone by a cockatrice and now she's a ghost inside your head? I think my head hurts too much to actually hurt."
"And I think I need to explain this from the top for Spike, Trixie..."
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"So, that's everything that's happened so far, Spike." Twilight passed him a mug of hot chocolate with pearl sprinkles as the pair sat in the library's moonlit kitchen. Giving him the whole story like that was a lot for him to adsorb.
Spike nodded as he thought through everything, looking back up to look Twilight in the eyes. Ugh, eye. The other one was just a few shades off, the one that Trixie had borrowed to see. The ghost's magician watching on through HIS Twilight gave him the willies. Hay, it'd give everypony the willies if they knew. They looked so close, and yet so different.
"Okay, I can get hiding Trixie's condition from everypony in town. Dash is still pretty angry with her. But why hide it from Princess Celestia? She's always reasonable." Spike scooted over slightly, still unnerved knowing that Trixie was looking at him even if he couldn't see her.
Twilight sighed, unsure of how exactly to explain her objections to him. "Spike, do you ever remember Princess Celestia talking to one of the victims they've rescued over the years?"
The baby dragon nodded. "Yeah. Actually, she talks to all of them once each year. Asking something about whether or not they still want to pray for a false hope, or if they want to go for help in some other place. I think she called it the Summer Glens, or something. She said it was a one-way trip, though."
Twilight twitched once more, her hair frazzling a little further in distress. "Spike, that name is a euphemism."
Trixie spoke up first, interrupting Spike with her disembodied voice. "Small words, Twilight. He is just a foal."
"Oh, right. It means it's a fancy nickname or another way of saying or describing something. Princess Celestia was talking about freeing victims from being trapped by sending them onto the next life. The only reason Trixie can do what she can is because of the spell I found from Starswirl. I guess it's because she doesn't want to torture them unintentionally with false hopes and the twisted existence they face alone in the dark in this life." Twilight steadfastly avoided Spike's gaze, hoping that he wouldn't lose faith in Princess Celestia. She was almost like a second mother to him.
Spike's mug set down with a shaky clatter onto the tabletop as he finally spoke up. "How bad is it, Trixie?"
"Can't move, can't see, can't hear, can't feel. Just a big black void you're all alone in, knowing that something could shatter you or eat your soul or..."
"Oh." Spike slurped loudly at his drink again, humming to himself as he weighed Princess Celestia's options in his mind. "Twi, you said there's no way that you've found to save her other than the Elements, right?"
Twilight shook her head somberly. "I haven't found one yet. Starswirl needed most of his life to create the spell that he designed to fire through the Elements. But, the world is a big place, and those things are in other countries too. Maybe somepony else figured out how to do it and is keeping it a secret."
Spike nodded, starting to know where Princess Celestia was coming from. "Well, I can see why she'd do it. It'd be like being bored, except a thousand times worse and it'd never end! It'd drive me crazy in a week. And that's completely forgetting about the whole risk of getting eaten like the way I eat a gem."
Neither noticed the involuntary shudder in Twilight's body at that afterthought. Or the way that her fur tinged blue.
"Oh Spike. Why is it that sometimes it feels like you're the adult here instead of me?" Twilight took a slurp of her own mug's hot chocolate in despondency.
"Nah, it's probably 'cause of my brain. You know, dragon? I think differently than you do because of all the chemi-whatsits and the wiring up in there, you know? But really, why not just tell Celestia? Trixie doesn't want to go, so it's not like she's going to force things."
Twilight licked some of the chocolate mustache off of her upper lip as she sat silently in thought and reflection. "Spike... I don't know. She's told me not to study the victims in the castle in the past. From what I know, somepony close to her was hurt badly by trying to help a victim. She's afraid, I guess. And I'm worried she might try to take Trixie, trying to help and keep me safe from whatever it is she's worried about. And then... I won't be able to help her at all."
"I guess she is a friend, if you're willing to pick her over the Princess."
"SPIKE! I know she's harsh, and blustery, and more arrogant than Dash, and that she dresses lousy-"
"Hey! Trixie stage-dresses! It must be attention catching!"
Twilight grumbled, continuing on over Trixie's objections. "Or what she said. But, underneath all that I found somepony who's... not all that different. Spike, before I came here, was I really all that different? I rejected everypony; I always was using my knowledge to get them to leave me alone even if it hurt them. I was the personal student to the Princess, and I knew it."
Twilight tinkered with the condiments in the middle of her table half-heartedly, tilting them and setting them back upright to try and stop herself from thinking of Canterlot. She'd been a real jerk. At least she could feel Trixie mentally blushing at the faint praise and compliments. Twilight wondered what could have happened, if Trixie really had been the Princess's personal student beside her, like the two of them had been dreaming of.
"You know what, Spike? Even if she didn't deserve it, she needed a friend. She can still be so much better. I know she could be better, if I could help her learn like me."
Trixie stammered, mentally and audibly at Twilight's declaration. No, nuh-uh! Trixie manifested her visible form, trying to pose meekly for the pair to demonstrate her disbelief. She wished she could show her blushing embarrassment, but already some "Trixie... err, I'm just a simple showmare. It's all I was raised to be, all I can be. I couldn't be like you."
"You. Could. Be. More." Twilight poked her hoof at Trixie with each punctuated word, forgetting that Trixie couldn't feel it.
Spike grumbled, as he thought about what Twilight might possibly try in her efforts to free Trixie. "So Twi, why won't the Princess just hoof over the Elements?"
Oh, great. "Spike, she's kind of right. The Elements are more than just our personal tools. There's a lot more resting on them than most ponies realize. Remember when I talked to you about how some ponies are just plain mean?"
Spike nodded to her statement, and Trixie raised an eyebrow in curious inquiry as to where Twilight was leading them.
Twilight cleared her throat, and continued, getting up from the table and leading them into the main lounge of the library. "Well, some nations are like that as well." She sighed, remembering that Princess Celestia had asked her not to go into detail with other ponies unless she had to. "Do you remember the party we had after we freed Princess Luna?"
"Oh yeah, you kind of missed the best part of that party! You never told me where you went." Spike licked his lips, thinking of a gemstone Rarity had passed him.
Trixie moved her visual avatar closer to Twilight, hoping for answers. "Did Princess Celestia take you aside?"
"Yes, she did. She was explaining to me why she was taking the elements for safekeeping, and explaining to me why she was keeping our identities secret from everypony." Twilight walked over to the globe to pick it up and spin it around for them both to see.
"Spike, Trixie, there are horrible countries out there. Countries that Princess Celestia tricked into thinking that the Elements are a weapon. One that she could use by herself to protect Equestria from them." Twilight yanked wavery spectral images of a few countries off the globe and hung them in the air for Spike and Trixie to see.
"The Drakeslands... Trixie was told never to go there when she was younger."
Twilight nodded, knowing why. "The drakes are an immature form of dragon as far as anypony knows. They think that the world and everypony in it belongs to them. They're secretive, and just plain old mean to everypony else." Twilight shuddered, remembering something else. "There's a rumor going around that the Great Dragon Migration is all the dragons who were exiled from the country for being too nice to other species."
Trixie bleaghed in distaste, even as Spike stared up into the outline of the other country. "Yeah, nopony knows, since the Migration doesn't talk to anypony else. Though I never knew that the Glasslands mattered either. Aren't they all... made of glass?" Spike poked the outline of the other infamous nation, watching it ripple around his claw.
"Well, Trixie would have gone, but she's heard how it's rather painful to travel there. Other than the cities, they mean it literally when they call it the Glasslands."
"Well, whatever the reason, they hate Princess Celestia for something she did before she came to Equestria. Something that they think is evil enough to still hate her today. They're just kind of crazy, and willing to do anything to hurt her." Twilight banished the two images with her mind, slowly turning to walk towards the window looking towards Canterlot. Beautiful, unearthly Canterlot, hanging so high on the side of the mountain. "Either one of them would steal the Elements, or foalnap us, or worse. Well, if they knew where the Elements were, or who we are."
"That's stupid. What if another Nightmare Moon shows up?" Spike set his cup down on one of the tables in the main library room, upset that somepony in the world might be that self-centered and crazy.
"Nations rarely act smartly. Trixie has found in her few dealings with government that many politicians only desire power, no matter whom or what they have to step on. Nothing at all rational there, Spines." Trixie grumbled in memory of her worst encounters, times that had nearly seen her in jail for crossing a politician by accident.
"It's Spike." "Sorry."
"Well, if you two are done, it's because they either don't know enough about the Elements, or because they think they can take on whatever comes." Twilight wondered what the real motivations were, what hidden secrets those two nations hid that had left them so confident. Why couldn't they all get along?
"Well, hmm. Would going to Canterlot work? It's not like Princess Celestia can complain if the Elements never leave where they're being kept." Spike pointed out the obvious solution, hoping that Twilight would take it.
Twilight nodded slowly, working out in her mind where they might be kept even as she spoke. "You're right, it would work, Spike. But I'm afraid of what might happen if we set off the Elements in the city. And I don't want to betray the Princess like that, going around her back and putting her in such a tight spot. And what if she finds out about Trixie?"
"Trixie doesn't like the thought of being added to the statue garden. Such a plan should be a last resort."
Twilight nodded once more, closing her eyes in silent comptemplation. "I'll do it, if I can't find any other way."
Spike watched as Twilight tensed up, reaching out to her in hopes that he could soothe his mother figure. Trixie's magic beat him there, working into Twilight's fur and ruffling it in a mana-fueled hug.
"Please, no more than a year. Trixie doesn't want to stay in the dark that long."
Twilight deflated as she made up her mind, opening her eyes to look up at Canterlot once more. "No more than a year."