The stage was a slab of black rock, vivid and hot in the blaze of a dozen large torches flanking its sides. The audience was a mad carnival of screaming, laughing ponies, dressed in chains and torn black fishnet, manes spiked and bodies painted in livid colors, dancing — or at least jumping and slamming into one another — to the tune of an unseen organ that rumbled more loudly through the dirt beneath them than the air above. Behind them a massive roaring bonfire warred with the torches, tossing the shadows of the ponies back and forth between them in jagged orange flickers.
The raucous crowd gradually fell quiet, subsiding to murmurs of excitement as the announcer's gravel voice rolled deep and ominous over them.
"Chlidren of the night... prepare to wreck yourselves against the horror and the glory of your Black Queen: the incomparable, the unstoppable, the unspeakable TrrrrrrRIXIE!"
A line of sparkling explosions flicked across the stage, raising in their wake a billowing curtain of thick purple smoke, rising to join the black breath of the bonfire in blotting out the stars. Another bang and a flash, and there was Trixie, tall and magnificent in regalia of black straps and iron armor, banishing the smoke with a thunderous slam of her forehoof. Leathery dragon's wings flexed iron-grey talons on her shoulders, and her tail, scaled and spiked, lashed in elegant curves behind her. The broad black brim of her pointed hat cast her features in shadow, a grinning darkness from which she surveyed the throng with dangerous, amused eyes behind her domino mask
The audience howled for her, a single wild beast with a thousand throats, as the scarlet glare of her magic raised a pair of long, thick bullwhips over her head and cracked them in peals of thunder. She laughed and paced the edge of the stage, stabbing and stunning random audience members with the weight of her direct gaze.
"Now you will all bow down, my foals! Now you will learn to serve your Queen! For now is the hour you face Trixie!"
A flash of lightning, another burst of thunder; the crowd was electrified, their screams resolving to a chant of Trixie's name as she reared onto her hind legs and spread her forehooves over them, anointing them all knights and vassals of her reign. But an angry stallion, with mane of leafy green and coat of chocolate brown, pushed forward to the space between the audience and the stage, stabbing an accusatory hoof upward at Trixie with venomous fury in his glowing amber eyes.
"There is no Queen!" he snarled in a thick bubbling voice, anger so heavy in his breath that oily dark vines curled from his lips and crawled across his face. "Your stone is worthless."
Trixie glared ice at him and reared back, touching the silver and ruby medallion at her throat. "You know nothing!" she snapped. "The stone was made for Trixie!"
The vine pony laughed an alligator laugh and moved toward the stage, gripping its edge with a paw of twisted branches, scratching the slab with vicious thorn claws. "Then why can't you keep it?"
"Well, really, there is no stone," Twilight Sparkle said, reasonably, from just behind Trixie. The Black Queen turned to jab her hoof toward the tiny purple Princess.
"YOU! The center of all my woes! Why is it always you hiding behind my curtains?" Trixie demanded, her outstretched leg beginning to tremble and smoke with the strength of her fury.
Twilight Sparkle shrugged and gave a sheepish, humble smile. "Golly, it doesn't mean anything."
"Nothing!? Fraud! Buffoon! If you knew the first thing about anything, you would have driven away the wolves by now!" Trixie screamed in the alicorn's face, but Twilight Sparkle only repeated the same aw-shucks shrug and grin.
Trixie waved her hoof across the audience of vine-ridden timber wolves, slowly creeping up on the stage with their luminous, lethal green eyes. Already her own limbs were half dissolved into thick plumes as her smoke-bomb body burned away.
"She can't. Nothing works that way," growled the lead wolf. He leapt across the stage, but the Black Queen had become an untouchable body of smoke, a dark cloud with a hat and an amulet. She gave a cruel metallic laugh as her vapor closed around the wolf, seizing him in place.
"I'll take you apart," she said, almost playfully, tightening her grip around the vines and branches that made up his body. He howled and snapped, writhing in her tendrils of smoke. Twilight Sparkle rushed to the front of the stage and gave frantic orders to the pit of baying timber wolves, trying to organize them to put out the bonfire.
Trixie found herself separate from the Black Queen, hovering inside the massive body of smoke, powerless to do anything but look out through its eyes, and hear it speaking with her voice, while it focused on cracking open the timber wolf. The wolf shouted strident, guttural slogans about ethics, and with each point he made, his teeth sank more firmly into the cloud that gripped him. But too late, to no effect; his wooden bones creaked and the tangled vine mesh of his ribcage split ever wider open, spilling sickly green light from inside.
Twilight's fire brigade managed to get buckets of water onto the bonfire. As it hissed in protest, so did the Black Queen, and she paused in her work on the lead wolf to flow her black choking influence out over the whole pack. Twilight Sparkle tried to explain why she should stop, but only Trixie, unable to act, paid any heed. The Black Queen just laughed, and puffed herself up even bigger, as she set about pulling all of the timber wolves apart.
"Stop," Trixie whispered. She tried to move her legs, to move the smoke-thing's legs, but she couldn't even do that. Closing her eyes did no good either. She could not stop seeing through the Queen's glowing red eyes as the wolves broke open, their inner lights exposed.
"Please, stop!" Trixie couldn't stand to see into the sickly green death-light inside the wolves, but the Queen was determined to dissect them. Twilight Sparkle screamed and so did Trixie, struggling to find her hooves and cover her eyes.
The Black Queen roared as she uncovered the secret of the wolves. Inside each one was curled a helpless, sleeping pony. As she ripped open the foliage shells, sharp edges of branch and thorn collapsed in on their soft, frail bodies, tearing them apart in their sleep.
Trixie tried to curl herself up in defense, but her body was as unresponsive as the smoke-creature in which she was trapped. Some part of her mind recalled something about a hospital and a shot. There would be no escape from the depths of this horror; she was caught in the darkness of sleeping drugs and could not awaken. She screamed in desperate terror, feeling jagged branches biting into her own sides.
"Stooooooop — !"
In the waking world, on a bed in a darkened hospital room, Trixie's hooves twitched and her head jerked side to side, face clenched in agony. A faint, tiny, dry little groan escaped her throat.
"BEGONE!"
The voice boomed from the heavens, scattering the bonfire's smoke before it, and a blast of brilliant silver light shot down from above. With it came a scouring hurricane wind, crashing onto the Black Queen and unmaking her. The monster of smoke had not even time to scream defiance; as the light touched her, she was already made unreal, a fading withering dream, and an instant she was gone, scrubbed from existence by the force from on high.
Not only the Queen, but the wolves, and Sparkle, and the stage, and all the world around Trixie; all reduced in a flash to dust and then to less than dust. Trixie floated in darkness for a moment, the wind a sweet soothing breeze on her body, and then her hooves touched on cool grass.
All at once Trixie found herself sitting on the crest of a rolling hill, beneath a tapestry of brilliant starlight. She was just a filly now, her cloak draped like a tent around her small body, only the immature stub of her horn keeping her hat from dropping down over her eyes.
Wide-eyed and panting with lingering terror, she looked frantically around. The landscape was placid, crickets chirping carefree in the gently rippling grass. Soft strains of music and golden light from beyond the curve of a nearby hill spoke of happy ponies living without fear of monsters or foul magic. Gradually the pounding of Trixie's heart steadied and her breathing slowed, at least until she spotted the silver-shod hooves of a pony standing right next to her.
"Gaah!" Trixie made a froglike hop backward, looking up, and up, and up some more, jaw dropping as much from the awkward craning of her neck as from surprise. Her hat tumbled backward off her head as she met the calm gaze of the tall dark stranger's brilliant aquamarine eyes.
Aside from those eyes, the features of Trixie's unexpected companion were cast in shadow by the bright disc of the moon directly behind her. But the mere fact of her height, the ethereal billowing of her night-sky mane, and the silver moon crest at her throat — not to mention the frankly overdramatic placement of the moon itself — made no mystery of her identity.
"Puh-Princess?" Trixie managed after bobbing her chin fruitlessly for a few tries. "Princess Luna?"
"Indeed," replied the Princess of the Night, smiling gently as she lowered herself to sit on the grass. "Fear not, your nightmare now is fled."
Out of the lunar backlighting, the Princess seemed less a creature of magic and power, more a warm and living mare with a hint of mischievous humor in her composed expression. By instinct Trixie wanted to scoot up closer to the reassuring royal presence. Instead, she stood to retrieve her hat. As she did, she realized something so obvious that she felt a bit stupid for having needed to notice it.
"Of course. Trixie is still dreaming," she said. Luna nodded. Feeling less than dignified to be seen as a little filly, even in imagination, Trixie went on analytically, "I — Trixie supposes it makes sense that her mind would conjure you as a protector against nightmares."
Luna gave a soft snort. "You flatter me. But no, I am no phantom of your dreaming; I am here in fact, in my capacity as guardian of the night."
"Really?" Trixie found, somewhat to her surprise, that she believed the claim at once. Something about Luna's presence was too... real, for lack of a better word; too clearly not of Trixie's own self to doubt. She had heard rumors about this sort of dream visitation since the Moon Princess's return. Cautiously, she said, "You... do Trixie a great honor, Your Highness."
Luna tipped her head with a knowing smile. "Fret not. I cannot read a pony's mind, only see what she projects onto the canvas of dream. And even there, I do not idly spy, but enter only when I sense the cry of terror or sorrow too great to bear."
"How very intriguing," Trixie said, sinking to a seat beside the Princess. Again Luna seemed to discern with ease the thoughts behind Trixie's words, and she held up a hoof to forestall any questions.
"Would that I had time to discuss the nature of dreaming magic, eager pupil, but my domain is wide and I cannot tarry long. There are more immediate matters on which I would speak with you before I part."
Trixie frowned, and briefly opened her mouth, then checked herself and settled instead for a humble nod.
"Too often recently have I detected distress in your nightly journeys, but judged you strong enough to stand without my help." Luna ducked her head slightly in apology, but Trixie smiled, more pleased by the implied compliment than bothered by the lack of assistance. "I fear, though, that I have held off too long, if your worries have grown so severe as to put you in a hospital bed."
"Hospital?" Trixie grimaced, and let out a squeak of distress as memory flooded in on her from the waking day before. "The show — the, the fire —"
"Yes, alas, that part was real," Luna said casually, then caught on to Trixie's panicked reaction. "Oh! But soft, soft! Please, forgive my blunt and foalish tongue!"
She reached up to put a comforting hoof on the fretful filly's shoulder, drawing her closer. Gently she held Trixie's right forehoof, which, with the easy suddenness of a dream, was now swaddled in bandages. With her attention drawn to it, Trixie could feel a distant tingling sensation, not quite pain itself but a warning that pain existed, shut away in another realm by thick heavy curtains of anesthetic.
"All is well, I promise thee — promise you. You've sustained burns on this leg, along with scrapes and bruises, and a bump on the head from your fall. But your injuries are minor, and all signs for quick recovery are good."
Trixie allowed herself to be calmed, but couldn't help giving Luna a sour look. The Princess replied with a small sheepish grin which said, all too clearly, both that she was sorry and that Trixie's scowl was just too cute. Trixie took a deep breath and, with a slight roll of her eyes, composed herself in chin-raised dignity.
"As you were saying, Your Highness..."
"Yes, right," Luna said without quite giggling. "As I was saying... bad dreams I can banish on the spot, but I cannot reach into your heart to resolve the deeper turmoil that brings forth these nightmares. That which weighs on your mind is for you alone to face and vanquish, lest it continue to haunt your sleep."
Trixie looked out across the shadowed hills, silent for a long while.
"Well. Of course," she said, voice dry and quiet. "Trixie has... any pony has her share of troubles in life."
"And if I might presume, I would hazard that some of those troubles have to do with your experiences in Ponyville — in particular, your dealings with a certain librarian?"
Biting her lip, Trixie pulled her chin from Luna's grip to look down and away, with a sideways bob of her head that wasn't precisely a nod. Luna dipped her head lower to peer beneath the shield of Trixie's hat-brim.
"Trixie Lulamoon, Great and Powerful, I cannot tell you precisely what to do. I am not half the heart-wise counselor my sister is. But if you would take my advice, it would be that you should consider carefully the nature of Twilight Sparkle's achievements: that they rely on the power of friendship."
Trixie blinked. "Umm? Friendship? What do you mean?"
"Friendship is magic, Trixie. No mere slogan that, but profound and simple truth."
Luna rose to her hooves, a rising wind and a pale blue light surrounding her. Trixie stood as well, reaching up as though to hold the Princess back. "Wait! Trixie doesn't understand!"
"Friendship is magic!" Luna declaimed in a lofty, ethereal voice, her form glowing ever brighter at the center of a vortex of wind-tossed leaves and swirling ribbons of sparkling magic. Trixie tried to approach her, bouncing in frustration, but the Princess seemed to get further away with every hop Trixie took toward her.
"What does that even mean —" Trixie shouted against the rushing wind, blinded by Luna's light. The light grew brighter, the roar still louder, and then...
... darkness, and silence.
"— friendship is magic?" Trixie whispered, opening her eyes. After a scant moment of confusion, she grasped that she had awakened, and lay in a bed at the hospital, returned again to her heavy and aching grown mare's body.
At least this time she hadn't woken to stark terror. The aura of security brought by Luna's presence had not departed, and while the room was dark, light from beneath the door and the soft sounds of activity beyond combined with the cool, magically processed air and its faint medicinal scents to create a feeling that things were, essentially, under control; that Trixie may be in solitude, but was not all alone.
She drew a deep breath and let it out again, pouting at the ceiling. The Princess of the Night could have been more clear with her advice, she felt. Riddles and mysteries were all part of the night's domain, of course, but that was no reason to be deliberately obtuse.
In the waking world, the pain in Trixie's foreleg was sharper, though muffled still under the thick fog of the injection she'd been given. The same fog shrouded Trixie's thoughts, in collaboration with simple exhaustion, but she paddled against the undertows of sleep, trying to make some sense of Luna's words.
Part of the message was clear enough. It was something Trixie had been thinking herself, in recent months, though she hadn't really examined it consciously amid the distractions of the day-to-day. There was something out of balance in Trixie's life.
Even as her career came back together piece by piece, she hadn't been happy, not deep down. Leisure time, things she used to do just for fun, had faded almost entirely away — in part because she was busy, but even when she had time to spare, she hadn't much felt like doing anything with it. She wasn't even taking guilty pleasure in the amount of junk food she'd been eating; it was just cheaper than real restaurants and less effort than cooking for herself. The bad dreams were only the sharpest tip of something bigger and darker that shadowed even her greatest moments of triumph onstage, and clearly the time had come when she could no longer throw herself into professional work to avoid dealing with it.
Grimly, she prodded at the things it hurt most to think about.
Of course, right at the center of all the worst was Ponyville. Wretched little train-stop of a town! She never should have gone there in the first place. But of course, she had, and sometimes it seemed as though all of her problems flowed from that, even those that happened earlier, like a shadow of looming fate reaching back to her birth.
The first visit was bad enough: financially ruinous, personally humiliating, professionally disastrous. But it hadn't left her scarred and sleepless, only aggravated, and determined to claw her way back up from the mud.
She had fostered a certain grudge against Sparkle, but it wasn't genuine, not deep down; it was really more of a sour running joke, something to grumble over as she broke rocks and waited tables, saving up her bits while seeking out any kind of bookings anywhere that she wasn't known as a laughingstock.
The purple creampuff hadn't been trying to overshadow Trixie, just defending her town against the blasted Ursa. It wasn't anypony's fault that Sparkle happened to possess a freakishly high level of natural power, and it certainly wasn't Sparkle's fault the Ursa was there; being perfectly honest with herself, in the hospital darkness, Trixie knew that the blame for that rested with those two idiot colts.
But then there was the second visit, when the joke had been picked up and taken too far by... by the artifact, and things had gotten out of control. Trixie had thought she knew enough to manage more power than she was born with, but she just didn't; it was too big, it ran away with her, she had been hanging on in its wake while things happened she never intended, and then... and then Sparkle had beaten her, even with all that power...
For too long Trixie had been hiding behind the self-assurance that it wasn't a fair victory. By the strictest terms of the magician's duel, Sparkle had cheated. But the duel was an old tradition, and in the modern age, it was more widely understood as a battle of wits than a contest of technique. Among the countless rifts dividing the scholarly community, one was between those who held that cheating in a magic duel was an unforgivable breach of etiquette, and those who believed that part of the legitimate challenge in a duel was cheating without getting caught.
Trixie winced with a pain unrelated to her burns. No, it wasn't cheating that bothered her. The fact was that even if Sparkle hadn't won by the honorable terms of a magic duel, she had beaten Trixie fair and square... with stage magic.
Not even with good stage magic. Switching ponies out behind a puff of smoke? A move so basic it couldn't even be called a complete trick. Sparkle may as well have defeated Trixie, and the amulet, by pretending to find coins behind a filly's ear.
If she had been outdone with proper magic, Trixie could have swallowed that with only a trace of bitterness. Magic of that sort was Sparkle's talent, after all, and not Trixie's. But deception and misdirection were Trixie's domain, and being beaten in that was a sting. Oh yes, that burned, worse than her current, literal wounds.
Trixie realized that she was barely breathing, her entire body clenched with tension, and she forced herself to take another deep, calming breath.
Bruised pride notwithstanding, all of that was the past, and nothing could change it. Clearly, the experience had left traces on Trixie's mind that wouldn't leave her alone until she went forward and addressed them. Equally obvious was that Princess Luna, in her enigmatic way, was trying to point toward a way to do that.
Friendship is magic... the words lingered in Trixie's mind, as Luna no doubt intended. It was a line Trixie had heard often enough over the past year or so, quoted in nearly every article about Miss Sparkle Pants, all part of her acclaimed breakthroughs in magical research. It sounded like high-class hokum to Trixie, who knew her hokum to be sure, but she couldn't dismiss it as casually when it came as counsel straight from the lips of a Princess — a proper Princess, that is.
This so-called 'magic of friendship', and the Elements of Harmony, were all the rage among magical scholars these days. None of that had been on the curriculum while Trixie was attending Celestia's Academy. Perhaps she should have been keeping up more with magical studies since leaving the school, but after coming to realize that her talent lay in entertainment rather than magic itself, there hadn't seemed to be much point.
She couldn't see what the fuss was about, really. The magic of love, now, that had been a topic of study — one of the fundamental principles, so essential to modern magic that it was among the prerequisites for every major. From Trixie's understanding, it seemed that 'friendship' would be, at most, a minor subset of that. Seriously, if there were a Princess of Fire, why would anypony fuss over a new Princess of Matches?
Still, the whole friendship and harmony thing was being taken seriously by some quite distinguished ponies, whose opinions Trixie couldn't brush lightly aside. There must be more to it than she knew.
So... what, was the message that Sparkle's power came from having friends? Trixie had friends. Her mobile lifestyle meant she couldn't see most of them very often, but there were ponies she corresponded with, and others she could always look up when she came to certain towns. Of course, it wasn't as though her friends were these marvelous Bearers of Harmony, whatever that meant...
Could that be it? Was Sparkle's success based on having the right friends? Trixie's features clenched into a scowl. Too many things in life were determined not by who one was, but who one knew. It would be a horrible irony of the world if magical power itself worked on the same good-old-bays-network principles.
And then suddenly, it clicked, the proverbial light snapping on in Trixie's head. Her eyes widened and a small, calculating smile broke out on her lips.
"Yes... Trixie can be a good friend..." she muttered to the night. Her smile spread to a bright sharp crescent, widening as a plan took shape all of its own, complete and elegantly simple in its outline, even if it would take considerable work to execute.
"Trixie can be the most magnificent friend in all of Equestria!" she added, beginning to laugh.