Trixie followed her for hours before saying anything. “Lancer, I’m sure we’re going the wrong way. To the west is the Everfree Forest, to the east is Ghastly Gorge, and there’s nothing this far south but wiregrass and hoagspawn for a hundred leagues.”
Lancer did not look back. “Did you lay bricks for years in the baking sun so that merchants might bring once more the enameled bronzes, spider-silks, and philtres of Neighropa to our fledgling nation?”
Trixie blinked. “...No?”
“Then I counsel patience and hush, mageling.”
The pair continued to trudge through the sparse plain. The ground was thick with clay and stones, dotted with tufts of inedible grasses. Knurds and antlions skittered away under the tall grasses as the travelers approached. Crickets chirped in the dark. The sky was black but for a thin slice of moonlight through the clouds.
Lancer stopped. She lowered her head to the ground, sniffed, and looked ahead. She broke into a run.
“Wait!” cried Trixie, but she was forced to chase after the alicorn.
The pair came to a halt at a bulge in the earth. Lancer sniffed deeply, pawed at the ground, and then cried out in triumph. She scratched at the earth until a patch of shiny black rock was revealed.
“Stand clear,” she commanded, and then slammed the base of her spear onto the rock. Dirt flew in every direction, causing Trixie to yelp and duck to the ground. When the dust settled, an obsidian dais the length of two ponies had been revealed.
"Behold," proclaimed Lancer, "the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters!"
Trixie eyed the construct dubiously. "...is it underground?"
Lancer laughed. "In a manner of speaking. Observe!" She grasped magically at a handle on the floor of the dais and pulled, revealing a pair of doors leading straight downward, and beckoned Trixie forward. Trixie peered over the edge, and saw what appeared to be a deep stone shaft leading directly into the earth. A dim source of light was visible in the depths.
"Um, heights aren't exactly my forte, is there some sort of elevaWAAAAGHH!"
Trixie screamed as Lancer pushed her down the shaft. Instead of the terror of falling followed by an unpleasant, squishy sound, her stomach lurched and her vision spun before finding herself on all four hooves. In front of her was the rest of the shaft--now a corridor. She looked behind her. The doorway looked out onto endless sky, with Lancer somehow sticking to a cliff-face of sorts and peering down with an amused expression. The alicorn took a step of her own, and followed onto the same plane as Trixie.
Trixie looked at Lancer flatly. "My extensive education and prodigious magical talent tells me that this is something of an enchanted castle."
Lancer snorted. "All castles are enchanted. An unenchanted castle is none more than a stone house with airs." She walked to the walls, found an empty torch sconce, and tapped it with a hoof. Along the hallway, dozens more torches lit up with pale blue glows. "Thrippenwing! Attend to us!"
There was a rustle of wings and fur behind them. Trixie almost screamed when she saw a pony closing the doors behind them. An elderly thestral with fuzzy blue bat-wings and ear tufts so long they fluffed out like dandelion seeds curtsied to the pair. "M'lady," she said, "what do you require?"
"Two baths, clean clothes, and a tankard of ginger wine."
"As you wish." The thestral opened the doors once more, but they no longer led to the desolate plains. Instead, they opened up to a well-lit drawing room with plush furniture and a roaring fireplace. Trixie surveyed her surroundings. Heaving bookshelves, free of dust or mildew. A bowl of fresh oranges on a meticulously clean table. Suits of barding untouched by rust or tarnish. It did not look like a long-abandoned castle. It looked like one that had never been left.
"Where are we, exactly?" asked Trixie. "This can't be the original Castle of the Two Pony Sisters, that's in the middle of the Everfree."
Lancer sat back on a couch and drank deep of her tankard. "T'was once there in the mundane sense, I suppose, but I changed it to meet my needs. It has many rooms but one door, and that door leads where I desire. Time here passes in my presence, and is still in my absence. Thrippenwing is still the young mare of sixty that she was 'ere I last saw her."
"So why is it built all the way out here?"
Lancer drained her drink and tossed the mug aside. "Did you not listen? This castle is wherever I wish it to be. Once I have anchored myself to a node, it becomes a construct in my mind. I could open that door there and walk out of any doorway in Canterlot."
"But that's impossible!" Trixie protested. “A pocket dimension as large as that would collapse under its own weight, even if you used a full-grown hydra as a living focus.”
“I used nothing as petty as a mere hydra. I built this abode within an elder dragon.”
Trixie’s jaw dropped. Draconic exuvia and viscera were equal parts powerful and priceless. Dragons guarded their burial grounds fiercely and hoarded shedded scales, fearing necromancy and execration. They were not known for their generosity. Even entering negotiations with the few dragons that remained in the world was dangerous. Canterlot University hadn’t acquired fresh supplies for almost a century. They had paid the one called Héofungsnaca a room filled with gold, many artifacts, and a dozen skilled mages as indentured servants. In return, they had acquired a box of dragon eyelashes, eighteen juvenile scales, and a bowl of blood. Dweomers cast seventy years ago with scales as the focus still ran strong today. Trixie could not imagine purchasing the corpse of a juvenile dragon—let alone an elder dragon—for anything less than all the gold in Equestria.
“Like, a whole dragon?”
“Nothing less.”
“How did you get the body of an elder dragon?” whispered Trixie, quiet with awe.
“I slew her,” replied Lancer.
Trixie’s jaw snapped shut. Her eyes widened. Her jaw dropped again. “That’s not—I mean how—”
“It is of no consequence,” said Lancer, airily. She raised her spear, and tapped the butt three times against the ground. “Go through the door behind us. Once you have bathed and dressed, come and see me."
Still in shock, Trixie did as commanded. A wave of steam hit her as she opened the door. She stepped inside to a hot, hazy bathroom. For a moment she was still, taking in the room around her. It was not as she had expected. She had always imagined royal bathrooms as a supremely opulent affair, everything either marble or mirrored, lit by glowing pearls, and stocked with enough soaps, perfumes, and concoctions to rival an apothecary.
By that standard, this room was almost austere. The floors were stone and the walls were timber, there was a lone mirror in front of a low basin, and a circular wooden tub big enough for five ponies--or perhaps one princess--and tall enough to warrant a set of wooden steps up into it. A bar of soap, a thick-tooth comb, a towel, and a brush were the only bathing equipment. The only scent was that of steam and sandalwood.
Trixie moved towards the tub, but noticed a small bucket of hot water next to the steps, with a wooden ladle sticking out. You were supposed to clean the worst of the dirt off before you got into the bath proper. She looked down at her hooves. They were filthy, coated in blood, clay and grass up to her knees. She filled the ladle with water and began to clean her hooves and tail, breathing in sharply as the heat soaked through her fur and onto her skin.
She gasped as she lowered herself into the tub. Cuts and bruises she didn't know she had tingled the water flowed over them. When the water rose to her neck, she actually moaned with pleasure. Hours, days, weeks of tension seemed to drain out of tight muscles, and stiffness evaporated out from cold joints. She began to work soap into her coat with the comb, giggling at the wonderful, tickling sensation of a good clean she had no experienced in too long.
The amount of tangles and dirt still in her coat surprised her, but it made sense. She hadn't had a chance to wash since she was expelled. A flush of embarrassment rose within her as she thought of those days of frantic worry, begging everypony she possibly could for help and both looking and feeling like an unwashed vagrant with every step she took. A familiar sensation of rage also flowed through her. Sunset Shimmer. The mare that had expelled her, mocked her, stripped her of dignity, forced her to come crawling on her knees to beg for mercy, and coldly cast her out.
Trixie remembered how the wind howled across campus, how the snow whipped cold shards of ice against her face, and felt a chill run through her, far colder than anything in this bathtub had a right to be. How long would she have lasted, a failed mage cast out onto the midwinter streets? A month, until the hunger crept up on her? A week, dead in her sleep of exposure? One unlucky night in the cold?
She tried to put the thought out of her mind, and think of better things. Everything still felt like a heady, hazy mess. The voice in the room. The summoning. Lancer. The Grail War. The wish.
These wonderful and terrifying thoughts swirled in her mind as she bathed, but the cold, sneering visage of Sunset Shimmer never quite seemed to leave her.
As she idly worked the knots out of her mane, she looked down at the frogs of her hooves. The skin was wrinkled from soaking in water for so long. There were no clocks in this room, no sand-timer, not even a window to see the level of the moon. The water felt as warm as when she had first climbed into it. Still, it was probably prudent to finish bathing quickly. 'Servant' or not, Lancer did not seem the kind of pony to take well to lateness.
Her cape and hat were gone, replaced with a fluffy white towel and a clean set of clothes. She donned the lilac doublet, the grey velvet cloak, and the supple traveling boots laid out before her. They all fit like a second coat.
Smoke and raucous laughter hit her as she opened the door. Cautiously, she stepped through the doorway into a familiar barroom. Dozens of ponies were packed inside, their hooves clacking on wooden floorboards, crowded around plastic tables, sitting on rickety metal chairs, smoking, drinking, and joking. Decade-old photos of the West Hock hoofball team in their blue and claret kit hung on peeling, moss-green wallpaper.
This was the Twitchy Fox, one of the better dives in Canterlot. Trixie had drank here a few times, working as a card sharp, never too often and always incognito. This was not a friendly area of town for mages and students. The clientele were businessponies, smugglers, and their guards, all of them local. They had a certain level of notoriety, and the clout to inflict reprisals on anypony foolish enough to target them. Students had no such protection, and a mugging was one of the less-awful things that could happen to anypony from the Academy caught unawares in these parts.
Lancer was already at the bar, talking animatedly with a group of escorts and hustlers. She beamed as Trixie approached, and tossed a hoof-full of silver coins down onto the laminate bartop.
“Innkeeper!” she boomed. “A round of drinks for the bar, and a flagon of mead for my companion and I!”
A cheer went up across the bar at Lancer’s announcement. The barmaid, a thin mare in her thirties with a tall perm, a grey coat, and bags under her eyes swept the silver coins into a purse. “We don’t do mead here, love,” she said, “can I get summat else for you and yer missus?”
Trixie leaned over the bar before Lancer could answer. “Two cups of Buckquick, please.”
The mare nodded and placed two chipped mugs on the bar. She took a green glass bottle and filled each mug to the brim with a syrupy liquid, such a dark shade of purple that it almost looked black under the fluorescent strip lighting. She pushed the two cups across to the pair, and then went to pour drinks for the rest of the bar.
Lancer lowered her head to the mug and sniffed at it. “Master, what is this concoction?”
“It’s a, ah, fortified tonic wine. There’s caffeine and vitamins and electrolytes and stuff in it.”
Lancer eyed it dubiously. “It does cause laxity and drunkenness, yes?”
Trixie giggled. “Just about, yes. You know what they said about Buckquick? ‘Buckquick gets you fu— drunk quick!’”
Lancer nodded, lifted the mug with her magic, and downed the contents in a single pull. She slammed the mug back down onto the laminate, further chipping the mug. “Excelsior! There’s a kick to this wine!”
Trixie stared at her in horror. She had broken the first rule of drinking—never use your magic. Even within the halls of the Academy, it was crass beyond words to use telekinesis for such trivial tasks. Out in the boroughs of Canterlot, it was a mix of insult, insolent challenge, and careless flaunt. Every patron who saw such a display would resent it, and size up the unicorn for a violent robbery later.
As her eyes roamed the room for an easy exit—incidentally noting that the door she had entered through was now a solid wall—she did not see any vicious glares, unsheathed knives, or even sidelong glances. Lancer’s faux pas seemed to have gone entirely unnoticed.
In fact, nopony else had noticed Lancer’s ten-foot spear, or her ultramarine-blue armored barding, or the silver she was throwing around like seeds in a furrow either. Or, for that matter, the fact that she was an alicorn with wings and a horn and she towered several heads over every other pony in the bar. This puzzled Trixie. She cradled her own mug in two hooves, took drink, and set it down.
“Lancer, how has nopony noticed you? I mean, ponies tend to notice when the weapons you carry are bigger than they are.”
Lancer shrugged. “I am the rightful ruler of Equestria, and these are my little ponies. When I wish to be noticed—” she lifted her spear and slammed the base against the floorboards “—I WILL BE NOTICED!”
Every pony in the bar froze and turned to look at Lancer, terror and uncomprehending awe written on their faces. Ash fell from lit cigarettes. An empty shot glass fell to the ground and rolled along the wood. Trixie squeaked in shock.
“And when I wish for them to mind their own affairs,” murmured Lancer, waving a hoof, “they will do so.”
The ponies of the room turned away from them. Cigarettes were re-lit, drinks were ordered, and conversation resumed. It was as if they had not noticed the outburst in the first place.
Trixie grasped her mug and drank greedily, before placing it down with shaking hooves. “Please,” she begged, “warn me before you do something like that.”
“Mayhap I will,” said Lancer, noncommittally. She glanced at the barmare and scattered silver. “Innkeeper, drinks twice more, and two measures of your finest spirit!”
The barmare pulled out two bottles, and topped up the mugs with one. “Only spirit we carry is Ratchaser.”
Lancer nodded, and the barmare filled two shot glasses with a straw-colored liquid from a ceramic jug. The alicorn picked up the glass, downed its contents, and made a face. “Vile! It tastes like minotaur sweat and smells no better. Why do they call it ‘Ratchaser?’”
Trixie gulped her own shot, and quickly followed with a mouthful of Buckquick. “Some say it’s what the city ratters drink. Others say it’s the only thing that can wash away the taste of rat meat.”
Lancer laughed, and then looked around. “Tell me, where is this place, exactly?”
“This is the Twitchy Fox bar, in Canterlot,” said Trixie, nonplussed. “Didn’t you bring us here?”
“I merely wished to visit an inn, I did not concern myself with specifics. Do you know this place well?”
“I’ve been here enough times to remember it. I’ve been to most of the bars in the city, not that there’s many. A mare has to get her money somehow.”
Lancer raised an eyebrow. “Money? Were you not a student of magic? Did they provide no stipend?”
“The Academy provides room and board, and not enough by half. They don’t like students to have money or other options. I’ve worked as a card sharp, a pick-pocket, a storyteller, even an illusionist—though spellcraft is more dangerous than sharping, thieving, and fencing put together at times like these. A lot of unicorns hate those of us that can still use magic.”
A wry grin crept over Lancer’s features. “A storyteller, eh? Tell me a story then, bard-of-sorts.”
Trixie looked thoughtful for a moment, and then returned a similar grin. “Have you heard the tale,” said she, “of the donkeys and the cucumber?”
“I have not.”
“Two donkeys, Murphy and Paddy, are drinking in a dive. They’re both thirsty, but they only have a half-bit between them—not even enough for half a pint. Murphy turns to Paddy and says, ‘Paddy, I’ve a brilliant idea.’ He takes the half-bit, leaves the bar, canters over to a grocery stall, and buys a cucumber. When he gets back to the bar, Paddy says, ‘Murphy, you git, that was the last of our money!’
“Murphy shushes him and orders two pints, both on tab. Paddy panics and says that the guard will toss them into the cells if they can’t pay, but Murphy ignores him. They both drink their pints, order another round, drink those, and order another round. Then, Murphy takes the cucumber, and shoves it in his sheath so it’s dangling out between his hinds. He tells Paddy to get down on his knees, and put the tip of the cucumber in his mouth.
“Paddy doesn’t know what’s going on but he does as he’s asked. The bartender glances over, and sees Paddy kneeling between Murphy’s legs, with his lips wrapped around something long and hard poking out of his sheath. The bartender cries out in disgust, calls them perverts and chases them out of his bar, forgetting the money entirely.
“Outside, Paddy is ecstatic. It worked like a charm! He says they should try the same thing again at another bar, and Murphy agrees. So they go to a second bar, drink a few drinks, do the cucumber trick, and get kicked out. And then they do the same at a third bar. And a fourth, and fifth, and seventh and tenth until they are both utterly bladdered.
“Paddy stumbles, turns to Murphy and says, ‘Murphy, we’ve got to go home—I’ve drank so much, I can’t feel my legs!’
“And Murphy replies, ‘How’d you think I feel? I lost the cucumber in the third pub!’”
Lancer stared at Trixie for a moment. Then she burst out laughing. “An atrocious tale, I love it!” Tossing more silver across the bar, she exclaimed, “Inkeeper, more Buckquick for my companion and I!” To a busker huddled in the corner she threw a coin, and said, “Troubadour, play with cheer! This is a grand night indeed!”
Trixie and Lancer continued in their vein for some time, drinking, dancing, joking and smoking. Ponies seemed to join their revelry depending on whether Lancer desired it or not. The pair burned through a hearty pouch of tobacco, and drank enough Buckquick that the barmare had to retrieve another crate from the store-room. By the wee hours, Trixie was woozy from drink, and Lancer was chugging Ratchaser from a bottle.
Lancer’s bottle clanked onto the bar top as she waved a hoof vaguely in Trixie’s direction. “So-oo, Master. How did thou become mired within the Grail War?”
Trixie blinked, her attention torn away from an easy set of marks playing cards at the far end of the room. Old habits die hard. She thought for a moment, and then told Lancer the abridged tale of her last days at the Canterlot Academy. She spoke of the brutal intrigue of the student body, the arbitrary expulsions, and Sunset Shimmer’s cold-hearted threat. She spoke of facing starvation and homelessness, of panic in a closing hallway, of stealing the artifact. She left out the fear-wetting.
“You made a dangerous enemy, stealing from your former tutor,” said Lancer.
“I didn’t have any choice.”
Lancer banged the bottle on the bar again. “‘Tis good! This ‘Sunset Shimmer’ is craven and black-hearted, and has no regard for those that should be in her care. There are few sights as delightful as the blood of a foe such as this! We shall seek righteous vengeance!”
“Y-yeah! If that nag thinks she can steal this Grail and become an even bigger tyrant, she’s got another thing coming!” A blue spark popped off the tip of Trixie’s horn for emphasis. She dimly noticed a few patrons glancing her way. Lancer’s glamors did not entirely extend to her, it seemed.
“It shall be as it is,” said Lancer. She took both of their mugs, muttered under her breath, and waved a hoof over the pair. She then pushed the now-filled mug over to Trixie. It was filled with a clear, brown liquid.
“What is this?” asked Trixie.
“Tea, of an old recipe. Drink it, lest the night’s revelries take their toll at sunrise.”
The tea was cool and tasted of mint and mace. As Trixie drank it, she felt the cloud of fluff leave her mind, and the drunken, drowsy feeling of too much alcohol fade away somewhat. The cup clattered out of her hooves onto the bar, empty. “Thanks,” she murmured.
“You are welcome,” said Lancer. “Master—” she paused to consider something, “—the summoning ritual imparted knowledge of the Grail War. I know of the rules, of the classes, of the boons and limitations of this ‘form’ I take.”
“Uh-huh?”
“I also know that the Grail only chooses Masters who desire a wish. I was curious as to what your wish is.”
“Hhmm.” Trixie leaned forward onto the bar, propping her chin up with her hooves. “It’s not simple to put into words, I guess?” She sighed. “I came from a big family. Lots of brothers and sisters and cousins, never enough food. My parents, my aunts and uncles, they... I got extra food, because only a few of us could use magic, and we were too valuable to the family to risk. The rest went hungry for us ‘lucky’ few, and they pushed us for it. We had to succeed, or our entire family would be doomed.
“I got through childhood, buried two brothers. Got accepted into the Canterlot Academy, buried a niece. I thought... I thought I was strong. I was clever, I was cunning, and though I was no prodigy and no foal of fortune, I was a good mage. I thought—Sky above, I honestly thought—that I deserved it. I thought that most unicorns were too weak, or lazy or stupid, and that I would not be like them because I was a better class of pony.
“And then... perhaps a professor left the Academy, and they had to cut the student numbers. Perhaps Sunset Shimmer decided the other students were ‘too complacent’ and wanted to make an example, to show that anypony could lose everything. Perhaps a rich pony wanted my room! Whatever the case, it was all gone. I could not support my family, I had no place to sleep, no food, no work, nothing. All in the dead of winter.
“I knew I didn’t deserve that, but the more I thought, I realized: nopony deserves that. I was the best hope of my family, and even I couldn’t run this gauntlet that the world had set for me. It’s cruel, it’s wasteful, it’s pointless. Ponies should just have stuff, right? If a pony can work hard, they should have food, and a place to sleep, and not die! They should be able to make friends, fall in love, play music and have kids and all the things that ponies should be able to do! I wish that ponies didn’t have to run some stupid gauntlet just to live. I wish ponies could have lives again, all of them, and—” she almost stammered the last words “—and if Sunset Shimmer thinks she can stop me, I’ll tear her damn horn out!”
“Hear, hear!” cried Lancer. She swigged the last of her bottle, and ordered another round of Buckquick.
Trixie drank, and licked the tangy tonic wine from her lips. A red-maned stallion brushed past her, but she paid him no attention. “Servants have a wish too, don’t they?”
“Indeed.”
“So, what’s yours? Revenge on Celestia?”
Lancer grunted out a laugh. “And why would I wish for such a thing?”
Trixie swallowed, “Well, um, I just thought with the whole banishment thing and uh, the business with Nightmare Moon—” She stopped when she felt the utter stillness that fell across the room. Every hair on her coat stood up, and a chill ran from her throat to her loins.
“What did you say.” Lancer’s voice was as cold as the void of space.
“Um, I said about the, ah, banishment—”
“You said a name.” Lancer’s eyes bored into hers. “Tell me that name.”
Trixie struggled to stay upright under her glare. “N-n-n-nightmare M-m-moon...”
“HUZZAH!”
Trixie expected at best, shouting, and at worst, an undignified death. She did not expect to be pulled into a warm, if bone-crushing, embrace.
Lancer wrapped her fores tight around Trixie, laughing joyfully and rocking side to side. She pulled away, leaving Trixie to gasp for air. Lancer’s face displayed a triumphant smile, and Trixie swore she could see a glimmer of wetness in the corners of her eyes.
“Nightmare Moon,” said Lancer. “Ten centuries have passed since I set hoof on this world, and the ponies of Equestria still remember my war name!”
Trixie took a desperate gulp of Buckquick, and looked up. “Y-your ‘war name?’”
“Indeed!” said Lancer. “In olden times, a soldier’s rank in a warband was known according to their most famed deed on the field of battle, and their comrades in arms would call them by this name. To have no war name was a mark of raw inexperience. If you were an exceptional warrior, if you did a mighty deed after earning your war name, a deed so great that your previous battles paled in comparison, you might be gifted a second war name. Nightmare Moon was my eighth name.”
Trixie’s eyes burned with curiosity, terror forgotten. “How did you earn it?”
Lancer quaffed her drink, and cleared her throat. “Harken back to the days of the diarchy! In our third generation of rule, before the rise of the Oculun Steppes and after my sister and I learned the secrets of the maliferous Thude, the nation of the Southern Caribou waxed in both power and evil. They were the foulest slavers we had ever known, and their nation equalled that of Equestria in size and might. My sister sent her diplomats to beg them to limit their evil. Our requests were modest: we did not even ask them to free all slaves, only that they emancipate the children of slaves, forbid the murder of slaves, and end the castration of colts, the clipping of pegasi, and the debudding of unicorns. The caribou demurred. My sister and I lost patience. She gave me the army.
“We marched on the caribou as my sister pretended to hold diplomatic talks. My forces slaughtered all who took up arms against us. I drew on dark magic, and raised all fallen caribou as zombies and revenants. As we marched further, we overran towns and forts with the corpses of their former brothers and sisters in arms. All caribou who owned a whip or tokens of ownership were rounded up by the hundreds and brought to me. I sacrificed them, dozens at a time, in massive blood rituals.
“I used the power to invade the dreams of the caribou. I kidnapped the crown prince, hung him slowly and reeled out his entrails while he still drew breath, and forced the hanging into the dreams of every member of their royal family. Foul visions plagued every moment of our enemies’ lives, waking or sleeping. Caribou came to our army camps to lay down their arms, begging for the chance to surrender to me personally, that I might allow them to sleep once more. In less than four months, the entire Southern Caribou nation had been dissolved. Their armies had surrendered, their civilians fled, their culture plundered, their slaves freed, their very history destroyed.
“For one-hundred years afterwards, the palace of King Dainn was a graveyard, staffed by my undead. At the start of the war, the king gave me the epithet of ‘The Nightmare Moon,’ and assured his subjects that their country, their culture, their slave-tilled fields of grain, would last long after I was in the ground. For one-hundred years, his corpse danced a jig in his abandoned castle, bleating that same empty promise to his feasting hall of cadaverous courtiers until his throat withered away and his bones turned to dust.”
Lancer laughed again, elation seemingly radiating from her face. “To know that my war name lives on, a thousand years after my departure? You have no idea the pleasure this brings me.”
For the next several hours, they drank and laughed. Lancer ordered a kettle of sweet potato fries and devoured them by the hoof-full. Trixie showed off her array of card tricks—mundane tricks that appeared magical, magical tricks that appeared mundane, tricks both magical and mundane that did not appear to be tricks at all, but funnelled bits into the trickster’s pocket all the same. They sang songs and sucked down Buckquick while the night wore on, as businessponies and craftsponies paired off with hustlers and escorts and left, and as even the barmare fell into an uneasy doze and her wife appeared to serve the few customers who remained.
They paid for their final drinks shortly before dawn, then walked out into the night air. The front door of the Twitchy Fox opened onto a stone balcony, high up above the filth of the street below. To the left was a goods crane, and to the right led a series of steps winding up and down the edge of the mountain face, leading to all the other homes and businesses on this level. The faintest hint of azure was visible on the eastern horizon. In the urban sprawl of the Canterlot foothills, fires burned in landfills and makeshift campsites. There was an ever-present smell of mold and sewage.
Trixie surveyed the city. “This is Canterlot, where I was born and raised. It’s a total midden-heap.”
“I remember the Canterlot of my era,” said Lancer. Her mouth was set in a hard line as she looked from the east to the west. “A new city, carved from the Canterhorn mountain itself after our victory over Bregu á Sceade. It was a tenth of the size, and a thousandfold grander. I recall walking across a path like this ‘ere my banishment. It was carved from crystal.”
Trixie said nothing for a moment. She looked at the ruin where her family once lived, burned down in a fire and never rebuilt. They had never had a home for long. The Canterlot Academy was the longest time she had lived in one place. She turned to Lancer, and said, “You never told me what your wish was.”
“I confess, I did not.” Lancer sighed. Her eyes seemed tired, as if a crack had formed in her mask of bold determination. The corners of her lips were turned down. “You asked whether I intended to pursue vengeance against my sister. That... is a fair question.”
“Oh?”
“My sister betrayed me. As I strode forth to fight for our nation, bring justice, and destroy evil wherever it may reside, she undermined me and turned the viperous nobles of Equestria against me. In fair combat, she could not defeat me, and even in her basest form she would not raise an army against me and plunge our ponies into the maelstrom of civil war. Instead, she worked to strip me of my powers, dissolve the Night Court, and reduce me to a muzzled guard dog.
“After her machinations became known, I went to depose her, demote her, and take leadership of Equestria as was my right. That fateful night, she raved that my ambitions were too grand, that I would overreach and lead to the downfall of all of Ponykind. I had not expected a fair battle, but she did something truly cowardly: she took the Elements of Harmony, six magical artifacts that represented the peak of Equine achievement, and turned them against me. We had used these things to defeat evil in the past, both of us, and to turn them against me, she also had to turn them against her. A thousand years ago, I was banished to the moon, and her, to the sun.”
Lancer thrust her hoof out and pointed to the city below. “Gaze upon this grotesquerie, this sprawl of filth and shit that calls itself a city! This is the grandest city of our great nation! This is the fruit of my sister’s cowardice! In her hubris she doomed Equestria to a slow death. Even her layers of delusion cannot protect her from seeing this. Her shame alone will stop her from turning a blade against me, and if she dares, my martial prowess outshines hers tenfold. No, Master, I do not wish for vengeance on my sister. I could not dream up a more just retribution than what she has arranged for herself.”
A hoof reached under Trixie’s chin, and turned her to face the alicorn. Lancer’s eyes burned with energy. “I wish to rule, Master. Help me do this,” she implored. “You wish to see a fair and bountiful Equestria, one where ponies live fully, and do not suffer short lives of misery? Help me. I will restore Equestria to its former glory as is my right and my responsibility. Your wish will be this nation’s saviour, and I shall be its safeguard.”
Trixie swallowed. In a small voice, she said, “You really think we can do this?”
“Master, I have pulled this nation from a mire of pure chaos, I have petrified a living god, I have freed a nation of slaves with a single duel! Everstone burned a dozen times, and each time we rebuild, grander and better! I can bring about a new golden age, and you alone can help me, Trixie Lulamoon. Swear that you will aid me, and you will become a hero the likes of which Ponykind has never seen.”
“I swear,” said Trixie.
“Again!”
“I swear to aid you,” said Trixie, louder.
“Again!”
“I swear to aid you and make the world a greater place than ever before!” yelled Trixie.
“Good!” said Lancer, clapping a hoof down on Trixie’s back. “Now come, we have preparations to make.”
Lancer led the way along the stone path, avoiding chips and cracks and dubious puddles. Past a flophouse, they made a turn into an alleyway that quickly became a tunnel, running through the mountainside itself. Pocks marked the wall where gems had been pulled clear. The air was fetid and unyielding. A thousand similar tunnels ran through the mountainside in a loose network, joining the different levels of Canterlot together.
Pebbles skittered in the gloom. Trixie shivered, and said, “Lancer, I hope you know exactly where we’re going, you really don’t want to get caught in a tunnel like this unawares—”
There was a click, a snap, and a resounding cacophony as a heap of scrap, dirt, rocks and garbage fell from a support behind them. Trixie raised a shield, but it was unmarred. The trap was not intended to hit them, merely to stop them from retreating.
Four ponies stepped out of the darkness ahead, one bearing a lantern. They were led by a red-maned stallion that Trixie recognised from the Twitchy Fox. There was no way past the four except directly through them, and no way back.
The red-maned stallion chuckled. He had a lead pipe slung over his shoulder. The two ponies to his sides had a knife and a club, and the pony at the back carried a length of rope. “You’re in the wrong part of town, sweetheart.” All four stallions took a few steps closer.
Trixie stood her ground. She’d been through shakedowns before. You gave up any bits you had on you, and they’d let you pass unmolested. “We’re just passing through.”
Red-Mane grinned. “There’s a toll. Hundred bits, each.”
“Two-hundred bits? Hah!” Trixie shook her head at their audacity. That was a year’s wages for many ponies. “That’s insane, you haven’t seen two-hundred bits in your life!”
All four muggers laughed. “You have, though,” said Red-Mane. “You’re an academy student. Saw you casting spells at the Twitchy Fox, and you weren’t short on drinks last night. We don’t appreciate slummers like you, so you’ll pay up.”
Trixie’s eyes darted from side-to-side. “I don’t know what kind of students you know, but I do not have that kind of money.”
Knife and Club laughed as Red-Mane shook his head. Behind them, Rope seemed almost bored. “That’s not a problem,” said Red-Mane, leering at the pair, “two pretty mares like you will earn that money soon enough working for us. It’ll only take a few months—after we take out food and lodging, no?”
Trixie felt bile rise in her throat. “And you’ll kill us if we say no?”
Red-Mane laughed. “Don’t be silly! We won’t kill you, we’ll just beat you ‘til you can’t walk and take you anyway.”
Lancer nudged Trixie. “Trixie,” she hissed, “you swore to aid me?”
Trixie stared forward at their assailants. “Yes.”
“You are a trained mage, willing to fight a war?”
“Yes.”
“Defeat these knaves.”
“Gladly.”
Red-Mane slammed the pipe against the stone path. “Alright, enough wasting time, roll on your backs if you don’t want your legs bro—glaaarhhh...” A bolt of magic hit him, and his tongue swelled to enormous proportions, forcing his jaw open and dangling to the floor. He fell to his knees in pain.
Trixie cast a smoke bomb and charged. Two more flashes of magic were visible through the smog.
When the smoke cleared, the fight was over. Red-Mane was struggling with his ever-lengthening tongue and losing. Rope was hogtied with his own rope. Knife stood triumphant, his blade sank deeply into Trixie’s throat. Trixie gurgled blood and fell to the ground, dead.
Trixie’s body flickered and then reverted back to the form of the now-deceased Club. Knife stared in horror at the corpse of the friend he had just killed, before falling to the ground as Trixie bashed him over the neck with Red-Mane’s lead pipe.
The real Trixie stood back, panting. Her heart thudded with adrenaline. She raised a hoof to wipe blood away from her eyelid.
A hoof came to rest on her back. “Well done, Trixie. An impressive display for a mare your age!”
Trixie swallowed, and nodded. “Thanks, Lancer, what should we—”
As Trixie spoke, Lancer drew her spear and made three swipes with the blade. All four muggers now lay still. Lancer cleaned the blood away, and returned the spear to its sling.
“A wise king once said, ‘A fair ruler must rush not to judgement, but be careful and exacting in their actions,’” said Lancer.
Trixie raised her eyebrows. “You just summarily executed three defeated ponies faster than it takes me to decide to get out of bed in the morning! You call that careful judgement?”
Lancer wore a satisfied smile. “Indeed. I let him prattle away about his vile intentions for almost a minute before I reached my decision!”
Trixie snorted with laughter. “I can’t ask for fairer than that.”
“Nor could I. Now come, mageling, we have much to accomplish!”