Trixie floated about, surrounded by a bottomless abyss of infinite darkness. Before her laid the endless nothingness at the edge of her subconscious mind, yearning to swallow her whole, to devour the light that was her life and extinguish it forever, enveloping her until there was nothing, would always be nothing, allowing for the existence of absolutely nothing. So, this is what happens when you die, eh? She wondered.
Boooooooorrrrr-ring. That was it! It was just nothing! Nothing at all! Celestia above, she hoped this wasn’t what really happened when you died, or else some religious ponies had a ton of explaining to do! As it was, maybe she could just dismiss this as something that happened when you were only near death. Yes, denial seemed a lot less existentially terrifying than the alternative. As it was, she just wished she had something to do while she waited for Twilight to do her hero thing and pull her little azure ass out of the fire.
As if responding to her wishes, a little light flared up on the edge of her vision. “Finally, something’s happening!” She muttered. Ignoring the problems with muttering to oneself in a semi-existent subconscious state, she maneuvered herself around and angled her body towards the light, floating at it by gyrating her hooves like she was swimming. It didn’t take long to get close to the light, except as she got closer, she realized it wasn’t glowing white. No, it was more of a…
“…red…” she gasped, immediately turning around and trying to ‘swim’ away. Too late: a red bolt arced out of the light and wrapped around her barrel, dragging her in closer. “Lemme go!” She screamed. “Release the Great and Pow-I mean, the Great and Apologetic Trixie this instant! Or she will…”
“Oh, come now, Trixie,” a deep, throaty voice rumbled. “Is that any way to treat an old friend?” Trixie shivered with the sound, recognizing it instantly, and why wouldn’t she? It had only haunted her nightmares every other week or so since she’d first put on that accursed Amulet.
The lightning dragged her in closer to the source of the light, where a bald, powerful-looking unicorn sat upon a throne made of cookies. Both his coat and eyes were tinted red, bolts of red lightning curling away from his back like tentacles. He gazed down upon her from the only-too-familiar throne with a glare that reeked of ego and self-righteousness, a little smirk twisting the corner of his mouth. Swallowing her fear, Trixie forced herself to look the unicorn in the eye. “So, I take it you’re the mental manifestation of the Amulet’s power,” she scoffed nervously. “Somehow, I was expecting somepony a bit more handsome.”
“Just as I was expecting somepony with a bit more power to act as my avatar on the plane of mortals,” he replied in that awful, booming, hissing voice. “But we must play the cards we’re dealt, Lulamoon. Sometimes, that just requires a bit more creativity.”
“Oh, drop the act. You aren’t real, none of this is!” She spat accusingly. “This is just the result of Trixie’s oxygen-starved brain. Right now, she is lying under a column in the Town Hall at Ponyville, waiting for Twilight to come and revive her, and when she does Trixie will live happily ever after with Sethisto and the thanks of Equestria for averting a war.”
“Hmm, yes, Twilight. Let’s talk about her, shall we?” The unicorn leaned back in his throne and held a hoof out, a wine glass filled to the rim (red wine, of course) materializing in his grip. Trixie would have rolled her eyes at how cliché the whole thing was if she hadn’t been terrified out of her wits. She knew what this creature was capable of, after all. “It’s not like you have anything better to do.”
“Actually, Trixie was just considering taking up calligraphy, or perhaps…GACK!” She choked as the lightning around her waist arced up and wrapped around her throat, clenching tightly. It was only a few moments before the grip was released and she could breathe again, but that was more than enough to send a spike of terror through her mind. Though she couldn’t feel it, she knew her heart would be racing right now.
“Don’t play games with me, Lulamoon, not after we’ve shared the same head for as long as we have.” The unicorn said dryly, taking a sip from his glass. A whimper escaped Trixie’s throat despite her best efforts. The unicorn grinned. “I just wished to offer an alternative for your future.”
Trixie sneered, finding just a tiny scrap of her courage remaining. “Y-you no longer have anything that Trixie is interested in!”
“Oh really? So you no longer have any interest in power? Wealth? The ability to bend other ponies to your will?”
“Trixie has everything she needs now, things you’ll never understand! Things you could never give her!” She bellowed defiantly. She hung limply, suspended in the spirit’s magical grasp, not even giving him the ounce of satisfaction from squirming futilely in his magic’s grip.
“Are you very sure about that? Because there is still the mare in question,” the unicorn waved a hoof, and an image of Twilight’s face materialized in the air by his head.
Trixie bit her lip, but remained defiant. “T-Trixie no longer wishes Twilight Sparkle any harm! She only wishes the best for her now!”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that. We share the same head, after all. In fact, I think it’d be safe to say you wish even more for her now.” Setting his glass down on the armrest, the red unicorn clapped his hooves and an image of Trixie’s smiling face appeared next to Twilight’s. Smiling wickedly, the unicorn clapped again and the images faced each other with a blush, drawing closer and closer until the image of Twilight suddenly turned and planted a kiss right on the image of Trixie’s lips, desperate and full of passion, cheeks flushing red. Trixie looked away while the unicorn dispelled the embracing images with a wave of his hoof.
“Poor widdle Twixie,” he said mockingly, his voice oozing with fake sympathy. “You get the stallion of your dreams in the end, but will it be enough? Won’t there always be that nagging little thought at the back of your mind, wondering what could have been? Such a shame you can’t have both, or…” he summoned the images again, only this time the pale yellow head of Sethisto appeared next to them. After a quick second, the Trixie-image turned away from the Twilight-image, who looked on with a contented smile as the blue mare embraced the yellow unicorn. “…can you?
“In reality, you know you could never have both Sethisto and Twilight Sparkle. Even if both were to accept such an…open relationship - and trust me when I say that’s a very big ‘if,’ - it would still earn you the scorn of everypony around you, no matter how many good deeds you perform for their sake.” Once again, he dismissed the images with a wave of his hoof. “I can change all of that. I can change both Twilight’s and Sethisto’s minds. They’ll both welcome you with open hearts; you won’t HAVE to settle for just one! And I can do the same for the other ponies! You will all be accepted with open hooves wherever you go! Why just settle for what the world is willing to give you when you can change it to give you everything you desire!?”
He settled in his throne again, the wine glass back in his hoof. “I can give you all of that. All you need to do is keep me around when you open your eyes again.”
Trixie bit her lip. It’s not like she wasn’t unhappy with Sethisto, of course! He was the kind of stallion that hopped on a day-long train ride just over a little bit of concern for her, the kind who occasionally surprised her in bed with breakfast and made it a point to attend as many of her shows as he could, but then there was Twilight. Over the past few days, she’d come to realize just how special the Element of Magic was: kind to a fault, forgiving, blindingly intelligent, and just so…so…cute! An adorable little bookworm that threw herself at her studies with a kind of passion that was like a rare gem amongst a sea of ponies, a passion that burned away into the night, leaving anyone lucky enough to witness it staring in awe. She just wanted to know what it would be like to be the focus of all that passion and love and hope. Not that she’d ever throw away what she had with Sethisto just to act out some fantasy, but a part of her would always wonder…
Wait…what was she doing!? She wasn’t really considering this maniac’s proposal, was she!?
“I-if Trixie said yes, you’d just use her to hurt ponies again,” she said.
“Oh, but what does that matter when you have love?” He asked, clapping his hooves and summoning the three semi-transparent images again, all nuzzling one another, only this time Trixie’s image wore the Amulet. “And they would love you, for as long as you wanted them to.”
Trixie gasped when Sethisto and Twilight’s images opened their eyes, revealing the red glow of the Amulet’s influence. Immediately, she shook her head in disgust and let loose with a quick firebolt on the three images, dissipating them once more. “NO!” She screamed. “That wouldn’t be real! It wouldn’t be their love! It’d just be you, messing around inside their heads! They wouldn’t be the ponies Trixie wants!”
“Oh, like you would be able to tell the difference,” the unicorn scoffed, his already-red eyes blazing with hatred. “Besides, it’s not like you’ll have much choice in the matter! I was just offering you the chance to come along willingly!”
“Huh-“ Trixie gasped as the bolts dragged her closer to the throne, forcing her to stare directly into those wretched, scarlet orbs as he glared at her.
“All this time we’ve been together, and you still don’t know how much power I have over you!?” He unleashed a deep, evil laugh that echoed far into the distance and sent shivers up her spine. “I was just giving you a way to join me willingly, but now I see I’ll just have to take you by force!”
“I-that won’t happen! Twilight is on her way! She’ll know what to do!” Trixie gasped desperately, suppressing tears. “She’ll bring the Princesses down on you before you can hurt anypony else!”
“Oh? Somehow, I don’t see how you’ll do that if you don’t remember this conversation.”
“What…” she started before he touched his horn to hers. Her eyes instantly went blank as red lightning bolts danced down his horn and cascaded around her head, flickering around her eyes.
“I-where am…I…” she trailed off, immediately falling into unconsciousness. Again. Which made this the mother of all sleeps, the unicorn guessed, kicking the little pony away just as the tendrils of wakefulness snaked their way into her mind and wrapped themselves around her, pulling her towards a dim light glowing somewhere far off.
“I’ll be interested to see if you reject me twice, little pony,” the unicorn grinned. “Not that you’ll be able to. I mean, what’re you going to do? Defeat me with the power of love and friendship!?”
And then he tossed his head back and laughed and laughed and laughed, his voice booming in the darkness.