Cutie Mark Crusader Magicians, Yay!
Chapter 10
Rainbow Dash swooped down and landed on the street in front of Trixie and Twilight. “I just scanned all of White Tail Woods two miles out, but no sign of them. Fluttershy’s still moving through on-hoof, so want us to turn back?”
Trixie shook her head. “Check further. I was out a long way when they found me. They could be halfway to Las Pegasus by now.”
Twilight turned to her. “How long ago did they leave?”
“I don’t know, it was morning when I left them.”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, could be a ways then. I’ll head back.” Rainbow launched into the sky and flew away in a streak of light.
“Trixie.” Twilight leaned forward to get Trixie to look at her. “Are you sure you have no idea where they could have gone?”
“No!” Trixie snapped. She slapped her forehead and grunted angrily. “Three young, mischievous foals with only a beginner’s understanding of magical theorem and a wealth of magical supplies. They could be anywhere, doing anything.”
“Hey.” Twilight reached out and gently pulled Trixie’s hoof away. “We’ll find them. Fluttershy and her animals are searching the White Tail Woods, Rainbow’s scanning the outskirts of Ponyville from the air, Pinkie Pie is leading a search of the town with Applejack, and Rarity is at the station checking the balloons and trains out of Ponyville. There’s nowhere they could have gone that we won’t find them.”
“Are you sure it’s enough? You know these three, Twilight. There’s no telling what they’re up to.”
“I know. But if they do something with all those magic supplies, it’ll just help us hone in on where they are.”
“Maybe…” Trixie shook her head and stared off into space. She let out a sigh and swivelled her head around to look over the streets, seeing nothing.
Twilight smiled softly. “You’re really worried about them, aren’t you?”
Trixie looked at her for a moment, then tossed her head and sniffed. “Of course Trixie is concerned! Her three apprentices are gallivanting about with dangerous magical supplies they barely know how to use. Furthermore, if they get into trouble, it’ll be on Trixie’s head, again. She is not keen on such a prospect.”
Twilight waited for Trixie to finish, then nodded. “So, you’re worried about them.”
“Immensely.”
“Right.”
Biting her lower lip, Trixie lowered her head. She breathed deeply. “They’re just foals, Twilight. Foals that just wanted to learn. If they end up blowing themselves up or something all because of an argument, Tri—I don’t need that on my conscience.”
“Don’t worry.” Twilight patted Trixie on the back. “They’re more responsible than you know. Granted, not that responsible, but I don’t think they’re going to go blow themselves up. We’ll probably find them behind a store or in a clearing in the woods practising some advanced stuff on their own.”
Trixie snorted. “Good, so they can blow themselves up and the forest with them. I don’t suppose you know a spell to rapidly remove tree sap from buildings, do you?”
“Yup. Use it all the time.”
“…Trixie will not even ask.”
“That’s really for the best.” Twilight looked over the area once more. “There’s some locator spells we could use to find them, so I’m going to go look them up. What about you? Want to come lend a hoof?”
Trixie shook her head. “I’m going to head back to the cart in case they find their way back somehow. And… I just wanna be alone and think for a bit.”
“Sounds good.” Twilight put a hoof over Trixie’s neck. “We’ll find them and they’ll be okay. Trust me.”
Trixie did nothing but nod and walk down the street.
The sun had begun to set on the horizon when Trixie reached the borders of Sweet Apple Acres. She looked at the barn and jogged over to it, peeking her head in. “Hello?” Her voice echoed off the walls and came back to answer her. “Apple Bloom? Sweetie Belle? Scootaloo?” She turned her head from side to side. “Trixie is sorry she lost her temper.” When several more seconds passed without response, she pulled her head back and turned to head towards her cart.
Maybe… Trixie stopped at the steps and looked at the ramp into the clubhouse. She went up it quickly and looked inside, unsurprised when she found it empty. She returned to her cart and pushed the door open. I should clean up.
Slowly, one by one, Trixie picked up the few magical props and tiny boxes of alchemy ingredients left behind and put them back in their places. They left me barely anything. Even if I wanted to help, I can’t do anything more than just be another pair of eyes. Trick hoofcuffs and a two-sided mirror won’t help anything.
Trixie saw a tiny wooden box under her alchemy table and looked at the label. “Ferrochrome.” She opened the box and saw a few flecks of green powder inside, barely enough to fill her hoof. She shut the lid and snorted. “Oh yes, don’t fear, Twilight Sparkle! Trixie is here with her ferrochrome! Why, just get her some aluminum oxide and she might be able to make a stink bomb! And they’ll all come running towards the stench!” She tossed the box on the table with a thud.
Trixie put a hoof to her forehead. Doesn’t matter if I can’t do much to help, I still should. It’s my fault they’re out there, running around with dangerous supplies going who-knows where… She looked at the small chest on the table and lifted the lid. “Well, at least they didn’t take Trixie’s bits and gems. So they aren’t getting on a train. Should go tell Rarity.”
Trixie walked to the door and put a hoof on it.
…Aluminum oxide?
She looked back at the still only half-cleaned cart and ran to the table. She grabbed an emerald from the chest and turned to a stack of boxes she had picked up. A thrust of her hoof sent the boxes scattering along the table and Trixie found the one she needed and held it up in triumph. “Aluminum oxide!” She grinned and grabbed a few other boxes, flinging them open. They took almost everything. But not quite. They left Trixie enough. Trixie ducked to the drawer under her bed and pulled it open, grabbing a canteen. “Tell me Trixie remembered to fill you!” She held the canteen next to her ear and shook it. “Yes!”
Trixie picked up what little pockets of ingredients were left clinging to the corners of the boxes on the table and lumped them into the canteen. She shook it vigorously and pulled the emerald on the table towards her. “All right, it’s a suboptimal mixture but it’ll do. You shouldn’t explode from this.” She uncapped the canteen and poured the now-red liquid on the emerald.
After several seconds of pouring, the canteen burst, sending clouds of black smoke into the air. Trixie turned her head and coughed. She dropped the ruins of the canteen and pushed open the door, using her magic to create a blast of wind. “I had to say it.” When the smoke cleared, she turned back to the emerald on her table.
A spot of bright green light pulsed in the middle of it.
“HA!” Trixie inhaled deeply and pulled the emerald towards her. “They left me enough to enchant a locator spell!” She held the gem under her nose and inspected it closely. “Okay… never used one to try and find ponies instead of locations, but the spell fundamentals should be the same.” She closed her eyes. Apple Bloom… Sweetie Belle… Scootaloo… She chanted the names, picturing the three faces in her mind. She cracked an eye open.
The green light wobbled, dimmed, then moved to one edge of the gem and began to pulse brighter and dimmer.
“Gotcha.”
Trixie turned her body the way the gem was pointing and began running, keeping it floating in front of her. The light oriented forward, confirming she was going the right way. She allowed herself a smirk, her cape billowing behind her and her hat bobbing on her head. “You are indeed a mischievous and rambunctious trio of trouble-makers, my young apprentices! But the Great and Powerful Trixie is more clever than you know, and once she finds you she shall—”
Trixie ran into a fencepost.
“Ow!” Trixie fell on her flank, the emerald dropping to the grass along with her magician’s hat. She rubbed her head and winced. “Once Trixie finds you, she shall deliver just retribution for that interruption of her monologue!” she finished. She pulled her hat back on and then looked up at the fence.
Her eyes went wide and her ears flattened against her head.
“No… no, no, no, no…” Trixie stood and put her hooves on top of the fence, pulling herself up to look. She looked back at the emerald and saw its light pointing straight ahead. “They wouldn’t… they wouldn’t.” Trixie looked between the emerald and what lay over the fence again, and gulped. “They would… they did… oh no…”
Trixie swung herself over the fence and grabbed the emerald from behind her. She held it in front of her to check the position of the guiding light and slowly raised her eyes.
The Everfree Forest loomed in front of her.
Sweetie Belle looked to the left and then the right, but the forest was too dark and too thick to see very far. “Apple Bloom, are you sure this is a good idea?”
Behind her, Apple Bloom nodded. “Ah told ya, it’s a piece o’ cake. The forest isn’t as dangerous anymore since Discord and those plants were taken care of. We’ll get there no problem.”
Leading the way, Sweetie Belle looked ahead again, where the path was just barely easier to see than the trees. “But we don’t even know where the Castle of the Two Sisters is.”
“Ah know. That’s why we brought this.” Apple Bloom gestured to the emerald floating in front of Sweetie Belle, a pulse of light coming from its far edge. “Remember, Trixie just said all we have to do is picture the place we wanna go in our minds and the gem will point the way.”
Sweetie Belle frowned. “Yeah, but we’ve never actually seen the castle, so I can’t really picture it. What if this thing is leading us to, I dunno, Canterlot?”
At the end of the line, Scootaloo shrugged. “Then we end up at Canterlot and turn around.”
“That’ll take days and we don’t have days.” Sweetie Belle sighed and rubbed her forehead. “My horn is getting kinda tired keeping it up and I’ve never kept something floating for this long. And it looks like it’s getting dark and we haven’t found it yet…”
Apple Bloom trotted up to her and patted her on the back. “Don’t worry. Ah’m tellin’ ya, this is gonna be fine. Twilight said there are all sorts of ancient magical stuff in the old castle, and it’s super dangerous and spooky. We’ll head out there – usin’ Trixie’s stuff to fend off anything we find in the forest – and explore the castle for some cool magical stuff. If that doesn’t prove we’ve mastered magic and get us our magician cutie marks, nothin’ will!”
“Apple Bloom,” Scootaloo started, “saying it again doesn’t make it sound like a good idea. It isn’t.”
“You’re just upset because you’re bringin’ most of the supplies.”
Scootaloo looked at the metal wagon she was pulling. Trixie’s alchemy chest had been loaded into it, along with a bag stuffed with props and books laying next to it. By comparison, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom each had a single saddlebag. Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah. Why do I always get stuck with the hard work?”
Apple Bloom smiled back at her. “Because you’re a great scooter rider and that means you’re stronger than us.”
“But you’re an earth pony, so shouldn’t you be stronger than me?”
“Didn’t we have this talk before?”
“I’m still upset over it.” Scootaloo pouted. “I always get stuck with the hard work. I was the one who got shot out of the cannon, too!”
“You volunteered for that!”
“…Oh yeah.” Scootaloo grinned. “And it was cool! Ya know, until I hit a tree. That kinda hurt.”
Sweetie Belle stopped and turned her head back and forth. “Uh, girls?”
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom stepped up beside her; the path split into two ahead of them. Either way looked identical, dried and trampled dirt leading into a thicket of large trees with leaves blocking out the sun and shadows obscuring their trunks.
“Which way does the gem point?” Scootaloo asked.
“Yeah, about that…” Sweetie Belle held the stone up higher. The pulse of light off one edge was now swirling wildly from one side to the other, trails in its wake.
“Uh-oh.” Apple Bloom looked around, eying the dark trees around them. “Twilight said this place was full of chaos magic. Maybe it’s not lettin’ the stone work.”
Sweetie Belle sighed and let the stone fall to the ground, her horn’s glow fading. She rubbed it tenderly and then looked at the emerald again. “Did Twilight ever mention the path she took the castle?”
“No…” Apple Bloom thought. “Now what?”
“Pick one?” Scootaloo offered.
A howl echoed through the woods and a gust of icy wind blew past, shaking the leaves overhead. The three ponies held onto each other, a shudder passing through each of them.
“What was that?” Sweetie Belle squeaked.
“Ah dunno… timberwolf?”
A second howl came, this one sounded much closer than the first. Then a warbled, staggered croaking.
Scootaloo began to breathe faster. “Okay. All in favor of going down the path that sounds like the opposite way those sounds came from, raise your hoof.”
Three hooves shot into the air.
“Good, great, awesome. So…”
A cracking sound came from their right.
“RUN!”
Sweetie Belle picked up the emerald and ran forward, the green light illuminating the path on the left. Apple Bloom followed her and Scootaloo stumbled after them, the wagon laden with supplies jingling with her hoofsteps. The trampling of their hooves filled the air, three pairs of eyes darting into the trees, behind them, even above them, for any sign of pursuers or other creatures.
They slowed and came to a halt as a line. Sweetie Belle flopped on her stomach, the emerald hitting in front of her with its light still swinging erratically. She groaned. “Did we lose them?”
“Ah think so…” Apple Bloom turned in place to survey the area. “Did we even see what ‘them’ were?”
“No, and I don’t wanna.” Scootaloo sighed. “Now what?”
“Well…” Sweetie Belle stood up. “This path has gotta lead somewhere, right?”
Scootaloo squinted into the darkness. “Or it could just go nowhere and we’ll end up trapped in a dead end.”
An involuntary shudder passed through Sweetie Belle. “Please don’t say that word again. Dead.”
“Hey.” Apple Bloom shook her head. “We ain’t gonna die here, ya hear me? We might be lost, but we got all sorts of magic stuff we can use to fight off monsters.”
“I’m not sure a smoke bomb is gonna help against timberwolves,” Sweetie Belle replied.
“Hang on…” Scootaloo was staring off to her left. She shrugged off the harness for the supply wagon. “I think I see something. Past the trees.”
“What? Where?” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle looked at her quizzically.
Scootaloo took a few steps off the path, twigs and leaves crunching under her hooves. “Something dark blue, maybe. And kinda glow—”
At the next step, the ground gave away under Scootaloo’s hooves.
Scootaloo pitched forward and fell. The ground gave away to a steep hill; the blue color she had spotted was the night sky visible past the narrower tree line. Scootaloo winced and cried out as she bounced down the hill. Her head hit a rock and she screamed, her skull throbbing. Her next landing on the hill was delayed and she looked down in time to see flat brown dirt slam into her. Clouds of dust kicked up in her wake.
“Ooooow…” Scootaloo let out a low groan and looked up. The hill ended with a drop of several hooves down a sheer ledge. Scootaloo rolled on her belly and slowly stood, stumbling in place. She began to raise her head to look around, and froze, staring forward. “No… oh no…”
“Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom’s voice came from up the hill. “Are you okay?”
“Quiet!” Scootaloo hissed. Her eyes remained locked ahead.
“What was that?”
Scootaloo let out a small growl and tilted her head up. “Keep it down!”
She looked for a way back up, but the ledge where the hill above ended was too difficult to climb. Then…
“Ah think she said to come down.”
Scootaloo’s eyes widened and she jumped in place. “No! No, don’t come down!”
The jingling of two saddlebags, a wagon of alchemy supplies, and staggered screams, filled her ears. Scootaloo watched as Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle sailed over the ledge and fell on top of her. The wagon of alchemy ingredients bounced down the hill behind them and into the air. Sweetie Belle screamed and her horn lit up green. The wagon slowed its fall inches from the ground and heavily descended, creaking as it hit.
“Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom looked down at her. “What the hay are you doing?”
Sweetie Belle groaned. “I think I broke my horn. Can unicorns do that? I barely caught the wagon and I don’t feel good.”
“Shut up!” Scootaloo shouted.
A low growl filled the air and the three fillies whipped their heads around. Burrowed under the ledge was a large cave. Before the shadowed form inside it rose and fell in the steady rhythm of snoring, but now the movement had stopped. The creature opened its eyes and looked down at the ponies in front of the cave.
Apple Bloom weakly lifted a hoof and waved. “Uh… sorry?”
Now fully awake, the ursa minor opened its mouth and let out a furious roar.