The Guard
The Wyrd of a Dragon
Chapter One
"Thank you! Thank you all! The Great and Powerful Trixie will be signing autographs after the show, so stick around!"
With a final bow and a puff of smoke, Trixie disappeared from the stage. As the audience cheered and stomped, the curtain fell on Trixie's most successful performance to date. Every trick had been perfect, from escaping a safe underwater to turning a volunteer into an orange tree. Her show kept getting better and better, drawing crowds from as far as Vanhoover to see her little Manehattan act.
From beneath a trapdoor in the stage, Trixie took a moment just to listen to the ponies yelling and chatting happily amongst themselves. This was what magic was all about. Bright lights, a real stage, ponies from all over Equestria screaming her name; it was heaven. Well, she thought, adjusting her star-adorned hat and matching cape, Trixie can't stay here forever. There are fans waiting!
With a spring in her step and a smile - a real smile! - on her face, Trixie trotted over to the door that would take her backstage, where her assistants would be ready to freshen up her makeup and be sure her fans would see only the best Trixie there was. Not that Trixie needed much help; she was Trixie, after all. Still, they were good at what they did, and having a few extra eyes looking out for her was a comfort. A flourish of pink magic threw the door open, the lighting backstage forcing Trixie to shield her eyes until they adjusted from the darkness of the hidden room.
There were no stagehands waiting for her. Where they should have been, instead stood a pony with a coat the color of the morning sky. She towered over Trixie, even without the spiral horn that could have held three of Trixie's own comfortably, or the wings spread lazily at her sides, the feathers casting odd, dancing shadows in the bright light. Her mane looked for all the world like a section of the night sky, dotted with stars and fluttering in a wind that wasn't there.
"Princess Luna," Trixie breathed. She barely even noticed that she'd dropped to a knee, her mind racing to figure out why the princess of the night would be here. Had she done something wrong? Not recently, as far as she could tell. Was this about her last visit to Ponyville? That was where Twilight Sparkle lived, and she was a princess herself, now. The very memory of that meddling unicorn—alicorn, now—was infuriating. Thrice Trixie had challenged Twilight to a test of magical skill, and the only time she hadn't been thoroughly humiliated, she'd been drunk with stolen power.
Trixie fervently hoped this unexpected appearance didn't have anything to do with one princess of friendship. Besides, that had been a long time ago, and she'd even apologized! No, Princess Luna had probably just come to watch the show. She must have come backstage to congratulate Trixie on her act, or to offer her a job as the royal magician. That made much more sense. Trixie would have to decline, of course; her audience could never survive her absence. The princess would understand.
"Trixie Lulamoon," the princess said, as though she could possibly be talking to somepony else.
After no more than a moment's hesitation, Trixie answered, "Yes? Ahem, yes, Your Highness?"
"Princess Twilight Sparkle has requested your immediate presence. Please, come with me." Without another word, Luna turned and exited the building onto the busy Manehattan street, a spluttering Trixie following a moment later after trying and failing to get her heart rate back under control.
"Wait!" Trixie yelled, doing her best to keep up with Luna as she weaved through the veritable stampede of Manehattanites on one of the city's busiest streets. While ponies parted around the princess like a stream around a stone, they afforded Trixie no such courtesy. Luna did not reply or look back, but she did obligingly slow her pace and allow Trixie to catch up to her protective wake.
Only when the unicorn was beside her did Luna speak again. "Apologies. But we have little time to delay. Please try to keep up."
"Is this about that incident in Ponyville?" asked a desperate Trixie. She had no idea what sort of punishment was merited by forcibly enslaving an entire town with dark magic, but it couldn't be good. Was that why they'd waited so long? Had they just been trying to think of something suitably painful to subject her to? "Trixie has changed! She never—"
A sidelong glance from the princess abruptly halted Trixie's words. "You have no need to fear. Twilight has asked for your horn, not for your head."
"Horn?!" They were going to cut off her horn! It took Trixie all of frantic heartbeat to throw a smoke bomb to the pavement and turn to bolt for the docks, with the intention of boarding a cargo ship to the homeland of the griffons, but Luna caught her in an iron grip before she could take more than two steps.
"Trixie Lulamoon! Calm yourself!" Luna's words had the force of a runaway train, and for a brief, hysterical moment, Trixie was almost hopeful that she'd gone deaf. At least then she wouldn't have to hear Princess Twilight give the order to break her horn and cast her into the dungeons, stripped of her magic for the rest of her days. Alas, sound soon filtered back into her perception, accompanied by a sharp ringing.
Princess Luna looked... apologetic. "I am sorry, Miss Lulamoon," she said, the soft tone a distinct contrast to her last outburst. "I did not mean to frighten you. What I meant to say was that Twilight needs your magic. She believes your talents may be uniquely able to help."
"Oh." Trixie flushed with embarrassment and relief. Twilight wasn't going to punish her after all. Quite the opposite, in fact; Twilight needed her help! Trixie straightened up proudly. Princess Twilight thought Trixie had the magic to do... something. Well, whatever it was, it must have been something that Twilight couldn't do herself. That thought made her deflate a little bit. What sort of problem could stump one of the most powerful ponies in Equestria?
"What is Trixie being asked to do?"
The princess started walking again, once more waiting for Trixie to catch up before giving an answer. "You are familiar with her assistant, Spike?"
The name didn't sound familiar. Trixie thought back to her previous encounters with Twilight, trying to remember. "The dragon?" she guessed. The one Trixie turned into a basketball, she left unsaid.
Luna nodded in the affirmative. "He collapsed last night. At first, it seemed no more than exhaustion from a long day, but when he would not wake this morning, Twilight rushed him to the hospital." She paused, glancing at the buildings passing them by. "Equestrian medicine has precious little understanding of dragons, and without knowing what ails him, we have little hope of undoing it. That," she said, turning to Trixie, "is where you come in."
"Is Trixie missing something here?" This didn't make any sense. Judging from Luna's stern expression, it didn't seem to be an elaborate joke at Trixie's expense, but that was the only explanation Trixie could think of. "The Great and Powerful Trixie is many things, but she is no doctor."
The mention of Trixie's title seemed to amuse the princess. "Were Spike awake, we could at least ask him what happened. If he were dreaming, I could find the cause in his memories. But whatever keeps him from waking does not let him sleep."
The pair of ponies turned down another street, presumably where the hospital was. Trixie turned the information over in her head, trying to work out why it had been given to her. "And Twilight thinks Trixie can, what? Pull the memory out of his head?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
"Wha– Trixie was joking!"
As Princess Luna led Trixie down the halls of the Bridleview Hospital Center, Manehattan's oldest hospital, Trixie felt distinctly ill-at-ease. Nopony was ever happy to be in a hospital. It wasn't the harsh light or the constant smell of disinfectant, unpleasant though they might be. No, it was because the only reason to be there was because somepony was hurt. They were places of sickness, stress, and too-thin sheets.
Stress was definitely the word at play here. Luna was being infuriatingly vague, refusing to elaborate on the bombshell she'd dropped on Trixie earlier, so Trixie's imagination was left to fill in the gaps. Her attempts at rational explanation were hampered by the way her instincts kept telling her to jump out a window or pull a fire alarm; Luna had picked the wrong pony, and as soon as she and Twilight realized that Trixie couldn't help them, they would banish her for wasting their time.
No, Trixie insisted to herself, trying to fight the paranoia. That would be illegal. It would, wouldn't it? The princesses don't have the power to arrest somepony for no reason. But they do have the power to change the law... Is that one of those ex post fructo things? Oh, if only Trixie had paid attention in history!
Princess Luna finally came to a halt outside an otherwise unremarkable door, so abruptly that Trixie very nearly failed to stop in time. "We are here," she announced.
When the princess made no move to open the door or show Trixie inside, Trixie said, "So, will you tell Trixie what she is expected to do now, or is she expected to divine Your Highness's intentions? If so, Trixie would have brought her Tarot cards."
The venom in the unicorn's voice seemed to take Luna by surprise, and she rounded on Trixie with something that could have been amusement. It was the most reaction she'd shown since they'd left the theater. Well, after the yelling. "You are unusually bold, knowing your past. I cannot tell if it is arrogance or bluster, but perhaps it does not matter." The humor left Luna's face in an instant, leaving Trixie to face a coldness older and harder than mountains. "Spike and Twilight Sparkle are beyond this door," she said. "I consider myself fortunate beyond words to call them both my friends. Twilight has asked for your help. On her behalf, I have brought you here, but the decision to offer your aid, or not, must be yours."
Trixie opened her mouth to answer, but Luna wasn't done. "You are here because Twilight believes you can help. If she is wrong, it would be better for us all if you turned around and went back to your stage. It will save us all time and anguish. If, however, she is right, you may be Spike's best chance at a prompt recovery, and in my experience, Twilight is rarely wrong."
Trixie turned over the choices in her head. If she had understood the princess correctly, this was her way out. She could leave now, go back to her performance, and think no more on the matter. Luna would not hold it against her; Trixie didn't know how, but she knew that the Princess of the Night would accept her decision. Twilight Sparkle would... probably let her go, Trixie thought. Their friendship, if one could be so bold as to call it that, might never recover, but Twilight Sparkle's accomplishments were legendary; she would find a way to wake Spike up, with or without her help.
On the other hoof, Twilight Sparkle had asked for Trixie's help. It had not been an order; there was no royal weight behind the words, no legal repercussions should she refuse, but if word got out that Trixie had balked at a cry for help from the Princess of Friendship herself, it could be the end of her career. Again.
And what if she succeeded? What if the Great and Powerful Trixie managed to heroically swoop in and solve a problem that even Twilight Sparkle could not manage? She would be a legend! More than that, Twilight Sparkle would be in Trixie's debt; there was no denying it was an attractive thought.
That was, of course, assuming she did succeed. As proud of her fantastical talents as Trixie was, she knew that Twilight was in a different weight class when it came to magic. Luna, too, was unable to help; what chance did Trixie have? To go into Spike's mind and find a way to wake him up was so far outside of Trixie's experience that she still couldn't quite believe Luna had said it.
There was a door before her. It looked like plain wood, painted white many years ago and yellowed by time, with a brass number plate and a simple knob, but it might as well have been the gate of Tartarus itself. If Trixie opened it, there would be no going back.
It was a long minute before Trixie made up her mind. "Trixie will... I will do it."
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IT BEGINS
I have been writing this story for more than a month now, and I only just noticed that Spike and Trixie have the same expression in their character tag icons.
What's a wyrd? You respond to comments by moving your mouse over to the right hand side of the comment that you want to respond to and then clicking on the >> that appears.
6451897
From Wikipedia: "Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. Their concept of fate, wyrd, was stronger than that of the Classical Pagans as there was no resisting it. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, which retains its original meaning only dialectically."
I actually took it from Macbeth's Wyrd Sisters. Most versions I've seen name them the Weird Sisters or just the Three Witches, but the first time I read it, they were Wyrd. It changes the meaning somewhat, and it's appropriate for what they do.
Very poor choice of words on Luna's part when speaking to Trixie. Looks like that princess needs a few more lessons on getting her point across. But, it was funny.
Curious to see how this plays out. Till next time!
I love the writing style you have. Cannot wait to read more of your story. Its captivating to say the least.
A good start. I look forward to more.
