The woods were dark this early in the morning, but not so dark as to hide the bright orange vests that both Relena and Trixie had shrugged on. It made stealthily sneaking up on prey, especially the smarter animals, quite a bit harder, but it was well worth it for the reduced likelihood they would get themselves shot by another hunter. Especially Trixie.
Trixie still wasn't really comfortable with hunting, even the way Relena did it, but she set aside her queasiness as she always did, in order to keep a protective eye over her new friend. Quickly they made the rounds, searching for rabbits and other small creatures that had gotten caught in their snares. The first hare was quickly dispatched with a knife and bagged, the rest gently set free. At least until Relena came back to reset the traps again. All of the traps that had had no luck she disabled, so as not to be wasteful. It was clean, efficient, and as painless as she could make it, which honestly set Trixie even more ill at ease. But she also accepted that humans generally did best with a bit of meat in their diets, and Relena needed to do as much as she could without tapping into her very limited funds.
The next part she wouldn't be able to watch. The part where fur was removed and added to her pile of raw materials, meat prepared for cooking, and the rest either used for various purposes or disposed of. Disassembling a recently living creature for parts was just.. ghoulish.
But before Relena would sequester herself in the shed and begin that process, literally butchering the slain rabbit, they had to get home. It was normally a simple walk home, filled with friendly conversation, their way lit by Trixie's horn. But this time something interrupted them. Something big, tall and red, with plenty of well toned abs at just above eye level.
Trixie was paralyzed with fear for just a moment, before she was paralyzed with another sensation, as the big red centaur began sucking the magic out of her. A loud bang ran out, deafening her but allowing her to run, and she immediately did, before she had enough wits about her to think of her ward.
Tirek roared out in pain. His front left knee was shattered, bleeding heavily, and burning with pain the likes of which he had rarely experienced. The little pink pistol was aimed at his face now, directly between his eyes, a thin trail of smoke wafting up from its barrel. From what he knew of firearms, it was an empty threat: she hadn't taken the time to reload yet, and he would surely cross the distance between them and kill her, even hobbling along on three legs, before she could do so. Nevertheless, he commited much of the infusion of magic he had just gathered to a transparent shield. Relena's eyes didn't look like those of someone bluffing, and he didn't feel like risking his life on calling her on it.
"That was a warning shot," she informed him. "Lie down on the ground, with your face in the mud and your hands on the back of your head."
He opted to charge her instead. The next bullet pinged off his shield directly before his eyes, and when the shield-flare had cleared, he saw her running away from him in three directions at once. Illusions. With a deep breath, he sucked the magic out of the two false humans, evaporating the spells, while the third escaped from sight.
He smelled for her, but burned gunpowder overwhelmed his sense of smell. He looked for her, but she was well hidden, amazing considering her bright orange- there it was. Discarded on a bush. The little girl was invisible to his sense of magic. Despite how clear this area was of even the usual background magic, the humans here lacked even the normal aura of something relatively mundane like an earth pony. Speaking of ponies, however, the unicorn stood out like a flame in the night, obvious enough for him to track her from miles away, which was why he was here in the first place.
He hobbled after her on three legs, burning a little more magic to keep the pain from slowing him too much. He faced the classic predator's paradox: he needed to make sure he didn't expend more energy pursuing his prey than he would gain from consuming it. But in this case, there were precious few other prey on this entire world. He was aware of each and every one of them, and this one was a relatively easy catch. Her magic would go a very long way toward consuming the others'.
A false Trixie tried to assail him with fireworks, but he consumed it. The real Trixie tried to blast him with her own magic, but he consumed that too. Thrice, shots rang out from the girl's little pink pistol, but thrice his shield deflected it. Trixie tried to run, but by now his magic was strong enough to catch her, hold her aloft, and drag her to within his reach.
And now he held her neck within his powerful hands. As her struggling faded, he drained every last bit of magic from her, even as ten more bullets pinged off of his shield. He was almost worried, but she finally stopped firing. He was impressed with the gun's capacity, but it was far from infinite, and surely it would take a long time to reload such a weapon. He was wrong in principle, as the handgun's clip was easy to replace with another, but right in practice. Relena had foreseen a remote possibility of needing her firearm for protection, but had not foreseen the eventuality of needing a second clip on her person.
Tirek tossed aside the drained unicorn, caring not that she was still alive, and began to walk away, deeper into the woods, chuckling to himself at his victory. It had been less flawless than he would have liked, but there was no sense wasting his time and effort pursuing the magicless human girl. He had other prey to seek.
When the big red beast was out of sight, Relena abandoned her cover and rushed out to her friend. Trixie was unable to move, her breathing labored and her pulse weak. She couldn't manage any words, just a tear-filled look of absolute defeat.
"Don't! Don't you dare leave me, Lulamoon! You're- you've got to be stronger than this. Come on! Don't give up! I need you.. Don't leave me alone..." Relena begged the unicorn.
But the heartfelt pleas were the magic words the Text had demanded. And so, Trixie's form evaporated into a flurry of glowing lights, drifting up into the sky and dissolving into nothingness. At last, Relena was left with nothing but a puddle of her own tears, and a puddle of Trixie's own.
Relena realized what she needed to do quickly, but it took time to muster the will, and additional time to run back to her home, or at least close enough to get a signal on her cell phone.
Twilight!
Trixie just disappeared right in front of me. I'm pretty sure she went back to Equestria, but she's been hurt badly. Find her! Save her! I beg of you. I think something ate her magic or something? She can barely breathe now. Help!
-Relena Swift, Trixie's BFF
The waiting was painful, but an hour later she was filled with fresh anxiety as an email arrived in return.
Dear Relena,
Trixie is so lucky to have such a dependable BFF. Thanks to your quick thinking, we were able to locate her in time and begin treatment immediately. It will be a while before she recovers enough to do any magic again, but she is stable now and safe.
Trixie told me a bit about that thing that was hunting her. Are you safe from it now? If so, I think you should contact Detective John Miller right away! He's been looking into Zeke's disappearance, and I think we may have found our perpetrator. I just hope Zeke is still alive.
Stay safe!
-Twilight Sparkle
Knowing her friend would survive was a big relief to Relena, but it didn't solve one very big problem for her. She was alone. Really alone. So very alone. She went up to her bed. The big master bed that had been her father's and more recently shared with Trixie. She curled up in it, bringing the covers to her face and breathing them in deeply. The bright blue furs that had woven themselves into it carried Trixie's scent strongly, while she imagined she could just barely make out hints of her father's own scent, the lingering traces of his aftershave and deodorant.
Her mind raced, largely in circles, while her body did nothing but tremble, sob, and dampen the cloth. She was alone now. Her father had spent her whole life preparing her for this day, but she felt so very, very unprepared to face the reality of it.
Alone.
Cherry Blossom, by contrast, wished she could be alone. More specifically, she wished she could be alone in her own dreams. Every night, and now every day as she collapsed into sleep from total exhaustion at least once, he mind was filled with visions of a multi-limbed, undead monstrosity. It spread out underground, and dug its rotting hooves up out of the ground anywhere and everywhere within the town that filled her dreams. It was Citrus Hills, she eventually recognized, after a week or so of nonstop nightmares. She had passed through it plenty of times in the past, enough to tell the subtle landmarks that distinguished it from all of the other tiny, rural towns that dotted the area.
She really didn't understand why. Why did she spend every sleeping moment in a small town with no real significance to her, running from the hooves of the damned? If Luna were still with them, surely the dream guardian would have dispelled this nightmare once and for all.
Now the earth filly was finally going to face her fears. And not alone. For some unfathomable reason, her increasingly unpredictable ruler had seen fit to send a detachment of no less than two dozen armed and trained lunar pegasi to join her on this little expedition. They were even joined by a unicorn with a royally sealed scroll poking out of his saddle bags. Cherry Blossom really wished somepony would explain this all to her, but they seemed more clueless than her.
"Alright, so where is the, uh, entrance?" one of the pegasi asked her.
"Entrance?" Cherry asked. She wracked her mind for an answer of any kind, and something sprung to mind, nearly making her fall over shuddering. "Come with me." She wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew the way. Deep into the woods, away from all the buildings, away from everypony. Away from everypony except a pair of thuggish looking ponies guarding an abandoned well in the middle of nowhere. "There," she pointed, somewhat unconfident. In her dreams, the hooves often clamored out of the well. But.. she had never seen it before in person. Strange that her memories of running away from this place in her dreams would prove so adequate for leading ponies to it now.
The thugs saw what was coming, and quickly abandoned their post, dropping down into the well itself. The unicorn broke the seal on his scroll, opened it, and cast the spell within on everypony in the group. Suddenly, Cherry Blossom felt her fears melt away completely. Nothing could scare her now, but she still had no desire to go down there. The lunar pegasi, by contrast, dropped down into the well in tight dives, spreading their wings and spreading out as they reached the relative open of the cavern below.
The unicorn stayed by her side, and they listened to the sounds of battle echoing up from below. It sounded so fierce! But it did not last long, and once it was gone, it was Cherry's turn to descend into the well, lowered in a grip of golden magic before the unicorn teleported down to join her.
The scene was grisly, but Cherry was unafraid. A bit nauseated, but she dealt with it and moved on. Nopony had actually died, she saw, the night guard's training allowing them to overwhelm the dozen ponies trying to kill them, without resorting to lethal attacks of their own. The black crystals everywhere down here, even jutting from the enemy combatants' snouts, seemed like they ought to scare her, but magically they did not.
The poor, half-dead ponies who had been forced to mine the crystals earned Cherry's sympathy, as the lunar pegasi aided them in their exit from the cave. Their eyes looked dead to her, though they still drew breath, and she hoped for a miracle to restore their hearts and minds in time.
She approached the large pit in the center of the cavern, one of the rescued ponies telling her in passing that it was where the dead were dropped. But she was unafraid. She got up to the edge and looked down. Sure enough, corpses lie rotting at the bottom. While she didn't know the science behind it, the lack of air flow had slowed decay to a crawl, leaving much more flesh on the older corpses than they had any right to have at this point. But none of it moved in any way, much less reaching up for her.
Behind her, the unicorn drew a second scroll, broke the royal seal, and began casting as directed. As the spell completed, Cherry Blossom lost consciousness and dropped to sleep. Unnecessarily, he grabbed her limp form in his magic, pulling her a little farther from the edge of the pit as a precaution. He wondered why the mad Princess could possible want him to knock out the little earth filly, much less precisely here under precisely these circumstances. The rescue mission made plenty of sense, and even the fearlessness spell had obvious application. But this? Oh well, best to follow her orders, however bizarre. They always seemed to work out in the end, even more reliably now that she had gone 'mad'.
In her dreams, Cherry Blossom appeared right where she had fallen asleep. Down here at the edge of the pit, there was nowhere to run from the dead limbs. They were everywhere, surrounding her. And she wasn't afraid.
A dead hoof touched her, and suddenly she was in a field of flowers, standing snout to snout with a nearly identical copy of herself. Something about the copy seemed slightly off, though Cherry couldn't immediately place what.
"Cherry Blossom! Finally! I've been trying so hard to reach you for so long," the fake said.
"Who are you? What are you?" Cherry asked, confused, looking around the beautiful flowerscape in confusion.
"Most ponies call me Cherry Blossom, but I call myself Nightmare Core. I guess that probably feels extra fitting to you. I am, well. I am what you became in another time. After you died," she said sadly.
"How, what. You're a ghost? Or.. I'm so confused," Cherry admitted.
"I'm.. hard to explain. I'm not dead, nor alive. I'm not really you, but I remember being you. When I felt you.. your mind.. I wanted to talk to you, most of all to warn you. To let you know about the bad ponies under Citrus Hills, the ones that murdered me. You need to get some guard ponies to take them out, the sooner the better," Nightmare told her.
"I just did, they're all being taken away now, and those poor ponies have been saved. I couldn't have done it without you.. showing me the way, through those freaky nightmares. I'm sorry I ran from you," Cherry apologized.
"It's okay, I would have run away if it had been me. But I didn't have any other way to try to reach you, until now. But now, I was able to bring you here. To my dream realm. Welcome to Elysium. Do you like it?" Nightmare asked.
"It's lovely, really. And I think I'll definitely spend some time here with you. I.. feel like I can finally rest easily. Thank you," Cherry answered.
Nightmare Core gave Cherry Blossom a deep hug, crying a bit onto her fur. "No. Thank you!"
Cherry didn't know what else to do but hug her doppelganger in return for a few minutes, before they broke apart and commenced a rousing game of tag.