You Wouldn't Believe Me if I Told You

by PinkiePiedPiper

Chapter 17: Tricksy Trixie

I don’t own MLP: FiM. That belongs to Lauren Faust and Hasbro.

You Wouldn’t Believe Me if I Told You

Chapter 17: Tricksy Trixie

Twilight and Steve remained motionless. Neither of them knew what to say. The mutilated pony in the crater some meters away just smiled back at them. It appeared to be a genuine attempt at a friendly smile, but with her face looking as it did, any expression would look unnatural and disturbing.

The fur on the left side of her face had been burned right off, revealing the skin beneath, which had become loose from the destroyed facial muscles. Dark scabs had begun forming in various areas where the skin had fallen off, mottling the redness of the remaining skin. Spatters of dried blood were also evident across her face. Pus had begun seeping from her dead eye socket under her fused eyelid, and was now frozen in streaked drips down her cheek. Scabbed cuts and scrapes dotted her body, presumably obtained from running through the underbrush. Her mane and tail were burned black at the tips, but were a vibrant rainbow colouration up and down their length. Both were twig-ridden and badly dishevelled. There was a bandage around her middle concealing two wing-shaped lumps at her sides, and her saddlebags were positioned on her flank, blocking out her cutie mark. A crossbow was hooked onto the one side of her bags, and she had a dangerously sharp, curved sickle in her blood-stained hoof.

“H-hey guys,” Trixie coughed, struggling to speak through her damaged vocal cords.

“Rainbow!” Twilight gasped, raising a hoof to her mouth, “What happened to you?”

Despite her urges to run to her friend’s side, she remained transfixed to the ground on the far side of Steve. Trixie’s physical appearance robbed all strength from her limbs for a moment, forcing her so sit down. Steve’s jaw still had not closed.

Trixie began to slowly limp towards them, hobbling on her leg which grasped the sickle. “It was horrible!” she croaked weakly. “They were all crazy! It took everything I had just to fend them off, one after another…”

She motioned to the ten stars adorning her collar and shook her head. “They aren’t my fault! There was nothing I could do. I had to defend myself…” Her voice betrayed a pain deeper than just in her vocal cords as she worked her way through her sentences.

Twilight got up and went around Steve’s battered body to greet ‘Rainbow Dash’. Trixie mentally prepared for battle and tightened her grip on the handle of her weapon.

Steve tried to respond to her and tell her it was all going to be fine, but with damaged cords of his own, all he managed was a gurgled whine and a croak. The effort sparked up immense pains in his throat and reignited the sensation from the rest of his wounds. He writhed uncontrollably and moaned in agony. The moaning did nothing but make it hurt even more. He contorted in pain as he tried to stop making sounds.

Twilight turned to him and rushed back to his side opposite the advancing Trixie. She grasped his head in his hooves and looked him in the eyes. They were searching wildly, darting around randomly as he fought to control the pain.

“Steve! Steve, look at me!” she commanded frantically.

His eyes took a second to comply, but they did eventually land on hers. The look of care and concern in the lavender unicorn’s eyes was enough to dull the pain to manageable levels. It still hurt like hell, but his spasms had calmed down into a shudder.

“Is he gonna be ok, Twi?” Trixie asked with feigned concern.

“I don’t know, but what I do know is we have to get him back to camp,” she responded decisively. “We have some food and water and a campfire, and I think we could all use it.”

Upon mentioning the campfire, Twilight and Trixie both remembered just how cold it was getting. Twilight was suddenly aware that she could see their breath. She grabbed Steve’s right foreleg and looped it over her shoulders. Steve stiffened and exhaled sharply at the unwanted movement, the foggy burst of air curling briefly before dissipating entirely. Having learned from previous experience, however, he made no sounds beyond that of his loud breathing. Twilight motioned for Trixie to do the same.

Soon, Trixie… Soon…

She sheathed the sickle in its holster with some reluctance and picked up his left leg. Hoisting him up elicited further foggy exclamations of pain, and brought the slightest smile to the far side of her face. Her good side was facing towards both Steve and Twilight. She suspected Twilight had oriented herself as such on purpose.

The two mares began walking towards the campsite, carrying the broken pegasus stallion between them, his back hooves dragging on the ground limply as his body racked in waves of willfully stifled pain.

Luckily for them, pegasi are magically lighter than other pony morphs. This made the journey to the campsite much easier than it could have been had he been a unicorn or an earth pony. Trying to take her mind off of the cold, she decided to strike up a conversation.

“We are the last three ponies here.”

Trixie looked at her over Steve’s hanging head. “How can you be sure?” she said. Her voice was less croaky than before.

“Steve used to have a device to detect where ponies were in the valley. We counted how many of us were left shortly before you met us, and according to the stars on our collars, everypony is… accounted for.”

“If we truly are the last three, doesn’t that mean the game’s over?”

Twilight sighed. “I suppose, but assuming Sauron and Discord were actually going to send us home before, it would appear that neither of them are paying all that much attention to us anymore.”

Trixie gave her a quizzical look.

“They’re fighting, using all of their powers and focus against each other. The world is coming apart at the seams. If this continues much longer, the whole area could collapse into nothing.”

Trixie turned her gaze forward again and mulled the information over in her head, weighing up her options. On the one hoof, she had won the competition and was eligible for a trip home. But on the other hoof, she was still here and so was the one pony she had dreamt of taking out this whole tournament. Just a few hours ago, she would never have been so conflicted; however a few hours ago she had been solidly under Discord’s influence. His battle had greatly turned his attention from individual manipulation, and, since he had obtained the last two ponies’ essence, he did not need her anymore.

Hence her battle raged within. She could claim her revenge and guarantee her victory by claiming the stars from Twilight and her dying friend, or she could hide her actions over the past two days, wait to get out of this, and gain a few powerful friends back in Equestria; friends such as Twilight herself and the Alicorn Princesses.

“Well, here’s camp,” Twilight said suddenly, shocking Trixie out of her soul-searching reverie. “Let’s lay him down by the fire and stoke it up some more. I’ll divide up the rest of our breakfast soup.”

Walking over to the fire, they laid him down on the cold ground. Their packs were removed and placed off to the side. Removing their sheets from their packs, they laid one flat on the ground and repositioned Steve on it, on his stomach with his legs set up comfortably at his sides and his head near the fire. The second one came from Steve’s pack in a ball, and Twilight placed it under his head. Trixie draped her sheet over him and herself, with her on his left, keeping her damaged facade on the far side. Twilight began scooping out bowls of soup to each member of the group. Once done, she took her place on the other side of Steve.

A magical prodigy, a human, and a homicidal murder huddled under the same sheet, all seeking warmth and basic comfort in a hostile world gone mad. Large portions of the sky had now opened up to the swirling purple and black darkness of interdimensional fabrics of space-time. The distant hills and forests had all but disappeared. The only distant object visible was the embattled tower of Barad-dur. The realm was dissolving, and it was just a matter of time before there was nothing left between them and maddening mixtures of nothingness and everything simultaneously.

Trixie looked over at her pack, at her sickle, and thought about the things she had planned for it. Part of her longed for it, but a growing part of her was repulsed by it, the things she had done, seen, and planned. She was suddenly sickened by her thoughts of torture and revenge against this kind unicorn mare. She almost couldn’t stomach the soup in her hoof.

Almost, she thought as she gulped the last of the warm liquid down greedily.

Resigning herself to their fate, Trixie looked over at Twilight, who gave her a small pained smile. Trixie could not manage one in return. As Twilight returned her gaze to the dark, smoky rifts, Steve opened his eyes and looked up at Trixie. He also managed a quiet smile.

Unsettled by her earlier thoughts, she nervously ran her hoof through her mane.

Then Steve saw her horn. Analyzing her stars, he saw that she had her original blank star… and one with a lightning bolt coming from a cloud. He immediately knew this was not Rainbow Dash, but Trixie.

Trying to remain calm, he glanced over to Twilight, who was unassumingly staring in front of her into the steadily approaching ominous cloudy abyss in the distance. He turned back to Trixie and motioned for her to come in closer. She leaned down until her head was nearly touching the ground and expected him to try and whisper something in her ear. Steve raised his head despite his body’s painful objection.

He opened his mouth. She leaned in closer.

He bit her horn.

The sensitive nerves in her horn felt like they had been set on fire. She leapt up screaming, throwing the blanket off of them. Leaping was immediately evidenced as a bad idea, as she had a determined pegasus clamped onto her head. She ended up dragging him around for a few moments. The pain induced on him by her movements just made his teeth clench harder.

“Steve!” Twilight yelled angrily. “What do you think you-” She stopped dead when she saw what it was he was biting.

Trixie screamed louder and gave her head a sudden thrash, yanking her horn from his grip. Blood trickled from the fresh wounds and teeth marks on her now exposed horn.

Racked with fresh pain, Steve lay on the ground once more. He spit in satisfaction, purging the small amount of her blood from his mouth.

“I- I can explain!” Trixie stammered, desperate to stay on the pair’s good side.

And then the world outside of their camp was gone.