//------------------------------//
// End of Dreams 
// Story: Blood On the Moon 
// by sentinel28a 
//------------------------------//

  “Twilight Sparkle?”
Twilight looked up from the book she was reading.  The door to the library stood open, though she did not hear it open.  “Trixie?”
“Yes.”  Trixie did not meet her gaze.
“What are you doing here?”
“Princess Celestia has spared my life.  In return for it, I am to be your assistant.”  Trixie smiled a little.  “To learn the magic of friendship, or something.”
Twilight magicked the book back to its place in the library.  “Well, I already have two assistants, Trixie, but if the Princess wants you to learn about friendship…” Twilight smiled.  “You’ve come to the right place.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d accept me, after what I did.”
Twilight trotted over to her and put her hooves on Trixie’s shoulders.  “Of course I will.  I forgive you, Trixie.  Deep down, I know you’re a good pony.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that.”  Trixie lowered her head, and plunged her horn directly into Twilight’s throat.  
Twilight’s eyes widened in shock, then she gasped.  Her attempts to breathe became more frantic and panicked as she could not get air; her hooves went to her throat in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding.  After a few moments, the purple pony collapsed.  After a few more moments, her mouth stopped moving and her eyes became glassy.  
Twilight Sparkle was dead.
Trixie stared down at the lifeless pony.  At long last, her nemesis was gone.  Nothing else mattered now.  Not reforming herself, not Luna’s mercy, not Celestia’s justice.  Only her revenge.  She gazed at her reflection in Twilight’s blood and felt nothing.  
Something appeared in the red reflection next to her: a gray dragon’s head, with a white mane and goatee, a blue horn and an antler, and a snaggletoothed fang.  Trixie jumped, startled.  “D-Discord?”
“Ah, it’s always so nice to be recognized.  You must be the Great and Powerful Trixie.”  Discord suddenly acquired a top hat, which he swept off in a bow.  “I bow to your superior skill, madam.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He motioned at Twilight’s body with a show of shock.  “As if there was any doubt, Trixie! You have killed Twilight Sparkle!”  He bowed his head and closed his eyes, putting his top hat over his heart.  “Ah, poor little Twilight.  Shuffling off her mortal coil—“ he made a springing noise “—at the hands of a fellow unicorn.  She never saw it coming.  She always was a bit naïve.”  He opened his eyes.  “Granted, I wanted to mess with her a bit more, not kill her, but oh well…beggars can’t be choosers.”  Discord now was wearing a finely-cut business suit, and adjusted his tie.  “Now then, down to business.”
“I didn’t do this for you, Discord,” Trixie snarled.  
“No, no, of course not!" Discord seemed genuinely offended.  "I would never take away your revenge.  But let’s talk about your future now.”
Trixie did not look at him.  “I have no future.  Celestia will be here any minute to kill me.”
“Ah, but Celestia can’t kill you, my dear Trixie.”  Discord conjured a desk and chair, and he leaned back and put his mismatched feet up.  “See, Equestria will be under new management now—my management.  And it just so happens I need someone like you, Trixie.  Someone in, shall we say, the business of enforcement.”  His grin turned malevolent.
“I won’t help you, Discord.”
“But you already have.”  He pointed down at Twilight’s body and chortled.  “Thanks to you, there’s no Elements of Harmony now.  I got out of my statue once.  I’ll do it again.  And this time, nothing will stop me.”
Trixie laughed with irony.  “Celestia and Luna will.”
“But not if they’re distracted.”  Trixie whirled and was muzzle-to-muzzle with the gray-furred, aquamarine maned Queen Chrysalis.  Her deep green eyes threw back Trixie’s reflection.  “Celestia will be mourning her favorite student.  It will break her heart…and that just gives me an opportunity to move back in, won’t it?” Chrysalis laughed.  “I feed on all emotions, Great and Powerful One—including despair.  You’ve just provided me a feast, not just of Celestia, but of all of Twilight’s friends too.  Ponyville’s going to be a veritable buffet line.”
“Now you just hold on, Chrysalis,” Discord snapped.  “Trixie’s coming with me.  I need a middle manager.”
“Damn you, Discord!” Chrysalis hissed back, putting a proprietary hoof on Trixie’s shoulder.  “She’s with me.  I’ll need someone to rule as regent over Equestria while I conquer other worlds!”
“Don’t listen to her, Trixie,” Discord said.  “What can Queen Cheesehooves offer here?  I am offering you a chance to punish anypony you want!”
“I am giving you an opportunity to rule!” Chrysalis shouted with a thunderclap.
“I offer medical and dental and a decent retirement plan—“
At that point, Trixie woke up.  Very quickly, she realized that one, she was in bed, and two, it was a dream.  “Great,” she grumped, “I can’t even get my dreams right.”

There was no point in sleeping after that, so Trixie got up and paced over to the window.  It was still dark.  Her internal clock told her that dawn wouldn’t be for at least another two hours.  
A knock sounded at her door.  “Come in,” she called out, when the knock became insistent.  She wondered why whoever it was simply didn’t trot in; after all, she was still under house arrest.
“Trixie? Are you awake?”  It was Luna.
“Yes.”  
Luna walked over to her, her shod hooves clicking on the immaculate tile floor.  Trixie already noticed how clean everything in Canterlot was.  “I saw your dream,” Luna said simply.
“You did? How?”  Trixie rolled her eyes.  “That was a stupid question.  Alicorn magic.”
“Actually, no,” Luna corrected.  She looked a bit embarrassed.  “As Princess of the Night, I can see into other ponies’ dreams.”
Trixie was stunned, and a little horrified.  “That’s…kind of terrifying.”
Luna half-smiled.  “I do not do it on a regular basis.  If I sense a pony having a nightmare, or a spike of fear, then I might intervene.  Otherwise, I do not peek.  It would be poor manners.”
“You can sense fear, as well?”
“Intense fear, yes.  Sometimes,” Luna amended.  “It does not always work.”
“Can you change the outcome of a dream?”
“I can guide the dreamer onto a different path—make an unpleasant dream better.  But if the dreamer rejects me or ignores me, then there’s nothing I can do.”
“You didn’t intervene in my dream.”  Trixie sighed.  Was she about to be betrayed again?  “Well, now you and Celestia have intent.  I murdered Twilight in my dream—in a particularly gory fashion, I might add.  Is that why you were watching me?”  Trixie admitted to herself that the dream bothered her more than she could say.  She had killed Twilight Sparkle many times in her dreams, almost as many times as Twilight had killed her.  Up to this point, it was always with magic, never with her horn.  Twilight’s murder was almost casual that way.
“No.  I suspected you might have nightmares, so I watched you.  I know it was an invasion of your privacy—“
Trixie waved it off.  “I’m a prisoner, Luna.  Privacy is something I no longer have.”
“Nonetheless, I would not have done so normally.”  Luna paused.  “The curious thing is, you were not having a nightmare.”
Trixie sighed.  There was no point in hiding it.  Sooner or later, Equestria’s princesses would have it out of her.  “It’s not really a new dream, either…well, parts of it were.  I’ve never killed Twilight with my horn before.”  Trixie glanced upwards at her horn, half expecting it to be dripping with blood.  “Weird that we don’t use it for a weapon much anymore, huh?  Come to think of it, I’ve never had Discord or Chrysalis show up either.”
“Do you feel that either have any sort of…influence over you?”
Trixie laughed harshly.  “No, Luna.  It would be easy to claim that Discord controlled me, but I won’t make that excuse.  Whatever else I’ve lost, I still have my pride.”  She shrugged.  “For all the good it’s done me.”
“Then I know the reason why they appeared in your dream.”  Luna’s expression was sad and stern at the same time.  “Have you ever been in a war, Trixie?”  The unicorn shook her head.  “I have.  Long before you were even thought of, long before even Nightmare Moon.  I killed, Luna—with my horn, once or twice.  Other ponies.”  She turned away.  “I am not proud of this fact.”
“How did you feel?”  Trixie realized it was not a question she should ask, but she had to know if Luna felt the same emptiness she did.
“It was war, so I was killing rather than murdering—though I suppose that is a matter of semantics.  How did I feel?”  Luna was silent for a few moments.  “I do not really know.  Triumphant, which sounds sickening, but they would have killed me if I had not killed them.  Sad, that my sister and I were forced into that position.  And…shame.”
Trixie turned away as well.  “I didn’t feel all that triumphant in my dream, Luna.  But I didn’t feel sad, either.  I just felt…nothing.  I don’t know why.”  Another sigh.  “Further proof that I’m irredeemable, I guess.  As if there was any doubt.” She said her show-ending catchphrase deliberately, bitterly.
Luna put a protective wing over her.  “No one is irredeemable unless they choose to be, Trixie.  But there is a lesson to be learned here.”
“And that is?”
“When you kill someone, you not only take away their life, but you take away all they could ever be.”
“I suppose.”  Trixie stared at Luna.  “Wait.  You did that, didn’t you?  You put in Discord and Chrysalis!”
“No.”  Luna’s voice reverberated slightly, which Trixie had already learned was an imminent sign of anger.  “I don’t create dreams, Trixie.  I already said I can only guide them.  If anyone created Discord and Chrysalis, it was you.”  The alicorn turned her back on Trixie and stomped off; the latter sensed she had hit a nerve.  Was that how Nightmare Moon would’ve ruled? Trixie thought with an involuntary shiver.  By striking at us in our dreams?  Mother of Celestia…nopony would be safe.  She would have known about any plot to overthrow her or kill her.  Even in our dreams! Suddenly Trixie knew just what Luna’s burden must be like, and just what an insult she had given.  
“Princess Luna,” Trixie addressed her.  Luna stopped at the threshold.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have said that.”
Luna blew out her breath.  Her wing feathers visibly smoothed themselves, and her tail stopped lashing.  “No, you should not have.  But…I forgive you for it.”  She glanced back over her flank.  “The question is, can you forgive yourself?”  Luna continued on.  “I must go, Trixie.  The night is almost over.”
Trixie watched the door close with a note of finality.  Then she turned back to the window, putting her forehooves on the windowsill.  Gradually, the sky lightened, then the sun appeared and began its march upwards—pulled by Celestia’s magic.  An earth pony or pegasi would not have felt the incredible surge of magic radiating from the palace, and beyond Canterlot, it was doubtful that many unicorns would have either.  Trixie, on the other hand, almost always felt it; she was strong in magic.  She had always been that way: her mother had sensed it, and in the tough times—and those were many without a father Trixie had ever known—her mother sustained her with stories that she would be something special.  After her mother’s death and striking out on her own as a traveling magician, it was what still kept her going.  
Then again, it was also what motivated her to despise Twilight Sparkle and want her dead.
The magic faded; once Celestia gave the sun a tug, it was on its way and no further assistance was needed.  Trixie sat there, watching it rise.  She thought about Luna’s words, and the possibilities.  She’d never really thought about that before.  
First, Twilight Sparkle.  What if she had killed Twilight?  True, Discord was imprisoned and the Crystal Empire was free of the demonic King Sombra, but Chrysalis and her changelings were still out there, somewhere.  Trixie had avoided Canterlot and the hoopla about the wedding of Cadance and Shining Armor—after all, they would be the center of attention, not the Great and Powerful Trixie—so she missed the Battle of Canterlot.  Twilight and the other Bearers of Harmony were instrumental in Chrysalis’ defeat.  Of course she was, Trixie thought miserably.  Still, if Chrysalis were to return, or some other horror appear, and the Elements of Harmony crippled by Twilight’s death, then Equestria would suffer…and it would be Trixie’s fault.
Or would it?  Granted, murdering Twilight would not exactly be the way towards becoming a Bearer herself; Celestia would be a bit upset, Trixie chuckled wryly to herself.  Still, what if something happened to Twilight?  If she wasn’t available, if she was sick or incapacitated, or if someone else had killed her?  Then Trixie might be the next Element of Magic…
Trixie sighed.  She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.  No, she thought, I could never be that.  I’ve read the stories; it’s why I came to challenge them in the first place, to see if I was just as good as the Elements of Harmony.  To use the Elements requires all six of Twilight and her friends.  What was it, Loyalty, Generosity, Honesty…what were the other two?  Oh yes, Laughter—ugh, that idiot Pinkie Pie!  I can’t remember the last one that Fluttershy represents.  Whatever.  I don’t have six friends.  I don’t have…any…
She felt the tears coming and angrily fought them back.  They wouldn’t stop.  She had lost all control of herself.  Trixie dropped to the floor and cried like she never cried before.  Yet she was not crying just because she realized how alone she was.  She cried because it never had to be that way.  She cried because she knew that she would never have friends, ever.  The Great and Powerful Trixie would be mentioned in the same breath as the worst villains in Equestrian history, a genocidal, selfish maniac who had attempted to destroy the realm’s best defense against evil out of nothing more than jealousy.  Most of all, she cried because there was no way out.  Every path left open to her ended in her ignominious retreat, and likely death.
After almost an hour, Trixie finally had no tears left.  She shakily got to her hooves, staggered over to the mirror, and looked at the wreck that stared back at her.  Her mane was frazzled, her coat was bedraggled, her tail desperately needed a clipping, and she still bore the angry welts, cuts, burns and bruises of her battle.  “I am the Great and Powerful Trixie,” she sniffed.  
Resolutely, Trixie went to the washroom and bathed herself.  Canterlot’s royal palace did not scrimp, even for prisoners, and so she used the most expensive shampoo she had ever seen.  When Trixie stepped from the bath, her coat and mane shone like it never had before.  Using her magic, she brushed both coat and mane, taking an hour to do so.  To her surprise, she was able to conjure her cape and hat, or reasonable fascimiles thereof.  Then she stood in front of the mirror again.  “I am the Great and Powerful Trixie,” she told herself, with conviction this time.  “This is my final act.  And I will meet it with courage.”
She regarded herself once more, then walked to the door, thumping on it with a hoof.  A yellow-coated stallion in full armor answered it.  “Miss Trixie?”  
“Yes.  Flash Sentry, is it?”
“Ma’am.”  He gave her a small bob of the head.  She knew the stallion by name because he was one of the few who did not look as if he wanted to throw her off the highest battlement in the castle.  He had looked at her with pity, which made her truly hate him.  Strangely, she felt at peace now.  “What can I do for you?”
“I would like to see Princess Celestia.”
Sentry thought about it for a moment.  “I’m not sure what her schedule is, Miss Trixie, but I will see what I can do.  What’s it about?”
Trixie, to her credit, did not swallow nervously nor did her voice crack.  “My execution.”