“I don't think we should scare her,” Fluttershy said, rustling the bush they were hiding in.
“Shhh!” Rainbow hissed and pushed her back down with a hoof. “She'll hear you!”
“I think she may be asleep,” Rarity said, peering out into the meadow on the edge of the forest.
Some distance away from the trees, a small tent was pitched alone in an expanse of open grass. The remnants of a campfire lay beside it along with something that looked like a chest or a trunk.
“I'm goin' in!” Rainbow made to jump out, but three pairs of hooves grabbed hold of her and held her back.
Rarity held her tail. “This matter must be handled with care, grace, and attention to detail.”
“I still haven't forgotten what you said.” Rainbow glared at her. “What was that about blowhard, hot-air and-”
“Girls!” Pinkie pie stuck her face between them and frowned dramatically.
“Fine.” Rainbow crossed her front legs and sat on her haunches. “Look, can't we just all go?”
“Well, if you must insist. That would be the fairest option.” Rarity looked at them all in turn. She stepped delicately out of the bush, careful not to disturb a leaf or make a sound, and crept forwards until she was clear of the foliage.
Rainbow Dash burst out from the bush in a blast of noise and colour and hovered in the air with a huge grin on her face.
Rarity levelled a dead-pan glare at her.
Pinkie pie bounced out straight after. She was followed by Fluttershy slowly crawling along the ground with her eyes darting left and right.
Rarity rolled her eyes. “Oh, let's just get this over with.” She assumed the lead and walked forwards towards the tent, carefully watching for any signs of movement from within. Nothing happened though, and soon they all stood around the zipped-up opening. The remains of the occupant's last meal were scattered around the cold, blackened remains of her fire: a few wildflowers and the core of an apple.
Rarity dropped her voice to a whisper and leaned in closer to her friends. “I think we should try, very gently, to wake her-”
The tent exploded into a rain of sparkling light; its cover shot straight off with burst of sparks, erupting colour, and a high, piercing shriek.
They all scattered, running back from it, lost and dazed by the blinding brightness.
“Thieves, robbers, miscreants!” a familiar voice shrieked. Blasts of magical light exploded all around them, whizzing past like fireworks that left trails of sparks hanging in the air. “Trixie shall show you no mercy!”
“Aw haystacks!” Rainbow Dash darted around overhead, dodging left, right, and centre around the whizzing, flying bursts of magic. “Not her again!”
Rarity leapt to the ground with her hooves over her head. “My mane, my beautiful mane! Don't let it catch on fire! Oh Celestia my mane!”
“Wheee!” Pinkie pie leapt nimbly from place to place, effortlessly avoiding the hissing fireworks, a huge smile lighting her face. “So pretty and shiny.”
A silhouette leapt into the centre of the carnage. Standing on its hind legs, its hooves raised above it, the shape of a large, triangular hat on its head and the shadow of a cape billowing out behind. “You dare to rob the great and powerful Trixie of her show-stopping secrets?!”
Rainbow Dash shot straight overhead trailed by at least a dozen angry fireworks. “Keep your lame secrets!”
The smoke cleared before Rarity's eyes and she found herself in the maniacal, crazed glare of the blue and silver unicorn.
Trixie's cape and Wizard's hat sparkling with reflections from the light around them. Her eyes narrowed and she levelled her hoof straight at her. “You.”
Rarity put on her best smile, rose to her hooves, and carefully dusted off her coat. “Erm, why yes, hello again, er, Trixie...”
Trixie's glare turned into an evil smile. “Well, if it isn't rat's nest. Come back for another makeover, dearie?”
The smile drained from Rarity's face. Her eyes narrowed, and she lowered her head. “Oh, it is so on!”
“Hah!” Trixie's grin trembled on the verge of outright mania. “Trixie has dealt with you pathetic Ponyvillians once before, and she can do so once ag-”
“Yaahhh!” Rainbow shot from the sky in a streak of colour and slammed straight into Trixie's side. The pair of ponies tumbled into a tangle of hooves and star-speckled robes. The fireworks chasing Rainbow landed all around them, blowing bursts of colour into the ground, sending streaks of light and trails of sparks lancing everywhere around the campsite.
Rarity dropped to the grass and buried her head under her front legs. “Oh Celestia, what did I just say about my mane!”
The griffon crouched low to the leaf-strewn earth. Her wings scythed above her, held ridged and ready, her powerful lion's paws and eagle's talons dug into the damp soil.
A wall of unblinking eyes watched her from the black spaces between the trees. Their hunger radiated into the clearing, their drive to sate it like heat that Applejack could feel on her face.
Nothing moved save for the falling snow and the fire sputtering far above. Its light wavered and shifted with the wind, the tree-tops bending and creaking in the distance all around them.
Applejack just tried to keep breathing. Her side stabbed with fire every time she drew in air: the deep shock of being hurt so fundamentally numb and cold inside her. The griffon went in and out of focus: two images separated from one another, blurred away towards the edges of her vision, and then returned together again. Waves of heat and sickness flushed from her belly up to her head, and a pounding headache had taken root behind her eyes.
One of the monsters emerged from the trees. It crept forwards in silence, staying low, hiding most of its bulk in the shadows.
The griffon didn't move. She watched the monster come, her fierce eyes and hooked beak tracking its movements, her lean form utterly still.
The monster approached close enough for Applejack to see the ragged tufts of fur on its flat head and the shot-red veins of its eyes. It drew black lips away from jumbled, hooked teeth and gobs of thick saliva and rumbled a snarl that sent wisps of breath misting into the cold.
It leapt forwards in a flash of movement and a snarled roar, the noise rebounding from the trees at the clearing's edge.
Applejack flinched and covered her face with her legs. She pressed her hooves against her eyelids, waiting for the shrieks, the sound of feathers and fur being torn, the scuffle and the snap of bones. But she kept waiting. She waited with only the sound of the wind and gently spluttering fire in her ears. Curiosity overcame her fear, and she lowered her hooves to peer out.
The monster's open, snarling mouth was poised a hoof away from the griffon's beak, but she hadn't moved a single feather of her wings or disturbed even a leaf on the ground. Her eyes pierced into the creatures own; immovable, terrible, harder than the stone her kind had carved into the pillar beside them.
A shiver ran all the way from Applejack's spine down to the tips of her hooves.
The monster's paws slipped backwards on the soil. It began to slink back towards the trees, its teeth still bared, a snarl still rumbling from its throat. Its large paws scuffed on the dead leaves, retreating clumsily.
Applejack hung her head and kept on breathing. Short in, long out, anything to minimize the agony of moving her side. The ground seemed to sway from side to side underneath her, tipping her left and right as though riding a rickety cart. She laid her cheek against the damp soil and closed her eyes, trying to make it stop, trying to hold herself still.
When she opened them again a pair of yellow, talon-clad feet stood before her. She blinked, fought the urge to just lay still in exhaustion, and turned her head slowly to look up.
The griffon looked down at her. Her vivid eyes were striking this close, her amber irises flecked with speckles of gold. The scars on the left side of her beak cast ragged shadows in the firelight: hair-line cracks snaking from the fracture and the missing piece where both halves should have joined. Swirls of falling snow drifted from the dark sky above her, each orange-lit flake falling into reality above the treetops and landing in silence all around them.
Two shapes flew down through the black above the trees, appearing into reality along with the snow, and swept down somewhere behind her. A moment later, the heads of two other griffons appeared to either side of her; the two that had shadowed her in the clearing before. They stared down at Applejack together, examining her oilskin clothes and the gashes along her flanks.
Snowflakes kept landing on Applejack's eyes. She closed them and let her head fall back with the wave of exhaustion that came over her; unable to fight it any more, nothing left to give.
“Get off Trixie!”
“Hey, I'm not the one who can't control her own magic!”
“Remove yourself this instant!”
Rarity and Pinkie Pie looked down at a tangle of star-covered purple fabric, sky-blue legs, and rainbow hair. The bundle of purple fabric was struggling to untwine itself from the latter. Trixie's cape was wrapped completely around the Pegasus, and her crumpled hat sat on the grass a few hooves away.
“Now girls,” Rarity said, her nose held high, “do be civil about this. Rainbow Dash, make certain to hurt her only a little, but definitely hurt her.”
A faint blue glow lit up underneath the tangle of purple fabric. Rainbow Dash's legs started to glow with pale blue light, and began to move of their own accord away from Trixie's cape.
“Hey, what're you-?” Rainbow struggled, kicking and waving her hooves around, but was pushed away and dumped unceremoniously on the grass.
Trixie's cape lit up with the same glow and swished around to her back, revealing her lit horn and angry glare. She climbed slowly to her hooves in front of them. “You insult Trixie, you destroy all of her possessions, you chase her from your town, and now you assault her like common ruffians!”
Pinkie Pie giggled and waved her hoof at the unicorn. “Silly, it was the ursa minor that squashed your stuff, not us.”
“You Ponyvillians are the cause of every one of my problems.” Trixie pointed her hoof at the flat remains of her little tent. “I have been forced to live like a commoner because of you and that ridiculous Ursa. Everything was going well before Trixie arrived in this miserable little backwater and attempted to grace it with her magical talents.”
“Oh yeah?” Rainbow Dash leapt to her hooves, and flapped her wings into a low hover above the ground. “All I saw was a coward who ran away when that Ursa was smashing our town.”
“Trixie did not run away.” Trixie's glare smouldered dangerously. “She confronted the beast with what magic she had on-hoof after being woken so rudely and suddenly from sleep. She did her best to save your pathetic town, you ungrateful little whelp!”
“Hey, no-pony calls me a... whatever!” Rainbow Dash landed on her hind legs. She put up her front hooves up in fighting stance and jabbed the air in front of her. “You've had this coming since you zapped me, now put-em up!”
“Hey, wait a second-” Pinkie Pie walked closer to Trixie, “-you tried to save Ponyville? All I saw was you getting mad at Twilight.”
Trixie cocked her eyebrows. “Of course. The great and powerful Trixie would not abandon a town to a monster like that. The two small buffoons that fawned over her were the only ponies to witness her dramatic stand against the beast.”
“Wow, you actually tried to save us...” Pinkie turned to look at Rarity. “Maybe she isn't as bad as everypony says?”
“Yes, well-” Rarity glanced at Rainbow Dash, “-she still lied to the whole town, Pinkie, when she bragged about having defeated one before.”
“But she tried to save us, and that's gotta count for something, right?” Pinkie looked over at Trixie, her expression uncertain. “I think she deserves another chance; I don't think she's all that bad.”
Trixie's expression wavered for a single second but turned quickly into an aloof, satisfied smile. “Trixie thinks the pink one speaks the most sense of any Ponyvillian she has met so far.”
Rainbow Dash and Rarity shot a pointed glance at each other.
“No, Pinkie. She's a liar.” Rainbow landed back down on all fours and gestured at the blue unicorn. “She's making it all up; I bet she turned tail and ran when that thing smashed her carriage up.”
Trixie glared at Rainbow. “How dare you, you-”
“Look, girls, Trixie...” Rarity stepped forwards, eyes narrowed, head lowered. “We each have our differences and our arguments, but none of them really matter, because one of our friends is missing and we fear for her safety. I, for one, am willing to overlook certain transgressions-” she shot a two-dagger glare at the unicorn, “-for our urgent need to locate Applejack.”
“She can't help us!” Rainbow jumped into the air, her wings beating to hold her in place. “Come-on, you've seen how useless she is at magic; she nearly blew us up with those fireworks!”
“Humph!” Trixie folded her front legs across her chest and turned her head away. “What makes you think that Trixie will help a bunch of ponies that have done nothing but insult her and cause her trouble?”
Pinkie Pie winced. “She's kinda got a point...”
“Pinkie!” Rainbow slapped her hoof to her forehead. “You're on her side now?”
“Look, please, girls!” Rarity beat her hoof against the grass and glared at Rainbow Dash. “Right now, Trixie is our best bet. Like it or not, there are no other unicorns available who can perform non-regular magic.”
“Yes, that's right; a commoner such as you could never hope to approach Trixie's level of talent.”
Several hairs twanged from Rarity's mane. She blew steam through her nostrils and ground her teeth together, her burning glare locked on Trixie. “I will rise above such taunting, and ignore such superfluous insults for the sake of my missing friend.”
“It's just as well.” Trixie turned back and smiled wickedly at her. “Try any real magic yourself and you could end up with another rat's nest of a mane.”
“Yaaah!”Rarity leapt straight at Trixie, her hooves reaching for the other unicorn's neck.
Pikie Pie snatched her tail mid-leap. She pulled Rarity back, straining on her hind legs, leaning so far back she was almost horizontal.
“Hah!” Rainbow Dash beamed at her. “You'd stoop to violence?”
Rarity mumbled through clenched teeth. “Gladly...”
Pinkie Pie let go of her tail with one of her hooves to point up at the sky. “Wait girls, look, it's Fluttershy: She came back!”
Rainbow, Trixie, and Pinkie all turned to look up at the approaching silhouette against the backdrop of stars and dark clouds above. Rarity pulled against Pinkie's hold, her hooves still straining for Trixie's neck.
The shape flew gently downwards over the meadow, and Fluttershy's pale yellow and pink colours emerged from the dark. She alighted a few hooves away with her wings held upright and outstretched.
Rarity glanced sideways, finally noticing her, and instantly saw that something was wrong.
Fluttershy looked like she'd been crying for hours. She walked forwards, her head held high with nervous, trembling determination, and stopped in front of them all. Her wings lowered down, revealing something sitting on her back.
Rarity gasped, along with Pinkie and Rainbow Dash, and all of them watched the little yellow filly climb down to the grass in silence.
“Miss Trixie?” Applebloom said, her saucer-wet eyes trembling, the red bow atop her mane pale in the moonlight. “Can you bring mah sister back?”