• Published 8th Jun 2016
  • 9,635 Views, 97 Comments

Legacy of the Greatest - Emperor



The greatest trick the Great and Powerful Trixie ever performed was convincing all of ponykind that she was a mere unicorn. Years later, Princess Celestia and Trixie have a discussion by Twilight Sparkle's grave.

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Four Leaves

It was rare for it to rain at night in Canterlot. With the number of evening outdoor parties that occurred in the Equestrian capital, nopony wanted his or her planning work to go to ruin. As a compromise, the weather corps tended to schedule a few heavy days of rain a month, and let the sun shine on the mountain city the rest of the time.

Tonight was one of those rare nights where the rain was unplanned. The pegasi had limited control over the winds, and a heat wave had swept through Canterlot. A warm shower was just what was required to temper the heat, but as a result almost nopony was out on the streets, hunkering inside their dry homes instead.

One mare, however, was walking the streets of Canterlot. She didn't care about being drizzled on. After all, she had traveled in wild conditions across lands untamed by ponykind, through rain, sleet and hail, not to mention the accursed snow, snow and more snow. A light splattering of water was nothing in comparison.

How long was it since she had last been to Canterlot? She had stopped measuring in years long ago, but the mare didn't think it had been more than a few decades. Maybe. It was funny. Time was once something she had bent to her whim, surpassing even her master in. In the end, time had gotten the better of her.

She surveyed her surroundings. Rows and rows of gravestones stood next to one another in solid formation, like the tight ranks of a disciplined platoon of Pegasus soldiers. Some of those buried here dated back to before Canterlot became Equestria's seat of government, back when Celestia and Luna ruled from the castle in the Everfree. Some had only passed away in the last few years.

She wandered the rows, memories of individual ponies flitting back and forth, faces and voices long since forgotten, as she looked for one marker in particular. After a few minutes, she had located it, at the front of the plot allocated to those born into the House of Twilight.

"'Lest We Forget', hmm?," the mare said aloud, reading the epitaph engraved on the tombstone. Only the falling rain bore witness to her reading the epitaph. Above the words there was a carving of a six-sided star, a crude representation of the Cutie Mark of the pony buried here. "After her lifetime, that was the best they could come up with? Or was it something she requested? I suppose something modest would have suited her, even in death."

She sighed, unsure and uncaring if those were tears coming from her eyes, or water dripping from the side of her snout. After so many years, she had resorted to more and more undignified ways to inject excitement into her life. For a brief blip in time, Twilight Sparkle had entered her life like a shooting star, a brilliant beacon of light and fire that had drawn her to Twilight as if she was nothing more than a moth following a flame.

Unfortunately, like a shooting star, Twilight's time had burned up all too soon, her lifespan snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Now, with Twilight gone, she was back to wandering the world listlessly, her final destination never in sight. Even the thrill of the journey was losing its luster.

She felt the hoofsteps of another pony entering the cemetery. Had it been anypony else but for this one or her sister, she would have fled by now.

"While it behooves the younger generation to pay respect to its elders, you shouldn't do it in the rai—oh. It's you," Princess Celestia said. "It's been some time since we last met. Er, what name were you going by in this age again?"

The mare turned around, holding her head up high, violet eyes shining with intensity as she said, "These days, I go by Trixie, The Great and Powerful. Although, tales of Trixie's exploits in Ponyville still linger enough that I will soon have to leave her behind, not to mention how old she is supposed to be by now."

"I see. It is good to meet you again," Celestia said with a nod, looking past Trixie to the gravestone of Twilight Sparkle. "I had always wondered if you met my faithful student, but I have heard of The Great and Powerful Trixie's reputation and her incidents in Ponyville. If you are she, I suppose that means the Alicorn Amulet there was a fake, and it was all a test. Interesting. Didn't we nearly meet the one time, when Twilight invited me to come have a dinner with her new student?"

Trixie wracked her memories, before she at last recalled what Celestia was talking about. "Oh yes, the dinner date with her friendship student, Starlight Glimmer. I remember her, Starlight, that is. I found a kindred soul in her when we first met, even if she only knew Trixie's secrets, and not my own. No offense to you, but Twilight Sparkle was ill-equipped to help that pony work through her deeper issues. Friendship is not a salve-all."

"No offense taken. Like teacher, like student," Celestia said, staring past Trixie again. This time, Trixie knew Celestia wasn't looking at the marker where Princess Twilight Sparkle was buried. "I should have taken more care when I had Twilight as my own student. Even in her last days she still had panic attacks."

"Unsurprising," Trixie said.

"But then, age doesn't always bring with it maturity. The way I heard it, you were jealous of Twilight Sparkle and sought to away the affections of Starlight Glimmer. That wasn't a part of your act, was it?"

"I—" Trixie cut herself off, feeling her cheeks burn. She looked Celestia over. The alicorn wasn't using magic to protect herself against the rain. Rivulets of water pounded Celestia from head to tail, dripping down her muzzle and barrel.

In this cemetery, they weren't ponies who had to outmaneuver the other with words. They were two beings battered about by time's cruel passage, each needing the other, and perhaps to poke holes in one another's shells that had been calcified by time.

Trixie took a deep breath, and she said, "Yes, it made me jealous to hear that somepony had improved on one of his spells, and in so doing achieved apotheosis. Even when I met her twice before, Twilight Sparkle never struck me as the one. It was only later that I learned Starlight too had done the same, even if she didn't achieve ascension. But Starlight was different than Twilight. She might not have had the same spark as Twilight did, but there was something special about her, too. Starlight drew me to her. Only later did I find out she had founded her own village to live her ideology. Even though her intentions were misguided, Starlight showed initiative."

"I can understand that," Celestia said. "I'm not surprised you felt kinship with Starlight. To find another pony who had tinkered with Star Swirl's time spells, I'm surprised you didn't drag her off with you once you left Ponyville."

"I don't like dragging others into my life, or others dragging me into their lives. I had a purpose a long time ago, and I lived up to it."

"Yes, and Equestria still owes you its eternal gratitude."

"But I accomplished it. I should have died long ago. I don't know why I still live through every day, when it's been a struggle."

"You went through this sort of existential crisis before," Celestia noted. "At the time, you said you wanted to explore new lands, and await what the future would bring."

Trixie nodded, and said, "And I have, yet there's still so much more to explore. One of these days, I think I'll cross the ocean to the Western lands. Nowadays however, nowadays, I feel like I'm in a rut. Luna's return brought a new age to Equestria, and the return of several of history's monsters with it, but now it feels like everything has settled. Not that I'm saying I want Grogar to return from beyond the veil, or even worse, for the Windigos to emerge again, but in those few years there was a dynamism in Equestria that I haven't felt in a long time. Now, now it feels like Equestria is merely cruising along again."

"I'm actually envious of you," Celestia said.

"Oh?" Trixie asked. She wasn't honestly surprised. There were a number of things each had that the other didn't, but each of them also had several lifetimes' worth of baggage.

"For a thousand years after Luna's banishment, I had to stay strong, keeping my little ponies safe and holding this nation together. Every day, I regretted not paying more attention to my sister. I could never leave Canterlot to meet ponies in an informal environment. Even the alicorns that appeared throughout the centuries, sharing my rule with me, were only temporary salves," Celestia said, sighing. "After all, none of them had the immortal lifespan of my sister and me."

"I'm not teaching anypony. I reverse-engineered his spell and came up with something different, but the sacrifices I made to do it...no, I won't let anypony else even know it exists."

"I didn't think so. But still, you were about the only constant I had, and your visits are rather infrequent."

"Do you need them anymore? After all, Celestia and Luna are reunited."

"Even now, you do not call me Princess," Celestia observed.

Trixie gave her a piercing look. "You know I'll only ever swear fealty to one Princess, and she's been dead for a long time."

"Not even to her descendants?"

"Not even. Half of them lack her strength of will, and the other half are fops."

"You are the same as always, unwilling to get to know new ponies if they do not interest you first. Speaking of my sister, you should see Luna again. You've only seen her, what, twice since her return?"

"Three times," Trixie corrected Celestia.

"Of course. I forgot you encountered her in Griffonstone during the one summit. Luna has asked after you on occasion since then, but you are difficult to get a hold of."

Trixie paused, and thought that over. She liked her isolation, but she would not begrudge meeting more often with Celestia and Luna. "I'll tell you what my new identity is once I come up with it, how's about that? It should be easier to trace me once you know what name I'm going under these days."

"That would be nice to have," Celestia said, and then dropped the matter. The Princess seemed to cast about for a new topic to discuss, and then looked back at the grave marker. Trixie knew what question was coming before Celestia even asked it. "Do you think Twilight ever had any suspicions about who you were?"

Trixie furled her eyebrows, and said, "I don't think so. Twilight was only in middle-age when I last visited her. Maybe she noticed I hadn't aged a day, but we saw each other so infrequently she may never have realised it. Perhaps Twilight would have realised I was more than just Trixie, but I doubt she ever had a clue who I truly am."

Celestia closed her eyes, looking down at the ground as she let out a soft sigh. "That would make sense. She never did ask me about you. If she had mentioned a blue unicorn mare who seemed to be as young as the day Twilight first met her, I would have known who you were in an instant. Oh, something that just came to mind, now that I remember what 'Trixie' did in Ponyville. Do you know where the actual Alicorn Amulet is?"

Trixie scrunched her nose, thinking of when she had last seen it. At last, she answered, "No, I do not. The last I saw it was in the North, and it has been like a day in Tartarus trying to follow its trail since. I had a lead on the Amulet in Salamagne during the salamanders' civil war, but wasn't able to find it then."

"That is unfortunate. After your 'reign' over Ponyville, I went to retrieve the Alicorn Amulet, glad that it had been found after all this time so I could seal it away, only to be disappointed. It had been an enduring mystery to me these last few decades why the Amulet I retrieved was a fake, when it had been used only a few days earlier. I thought that perhaps somebody had stolen it from the zebra shamaness responsible for safeguarding it after your fight, and replaced it with something that looked very similar. Another one of my students once attempted to do the same with the Element of Magic, though she failed. I had been expecting somepony to use the Amulet any day now, but it seems it is still lost to us."

"That's probably a good thing," Trixie pointed out. "The last time somepony used the real Amulet, it didn't end well."

Trixie could see the pain in Celestia's eyes as her old friend raised her head back up. It surprised Trixie to see, for a brief moment of weakness, Celestia's face carrying the weight of millenia. "Even the Elements of Harmony are not all-powerful."

The two were silent for a few seconds after that. Trixie gave a silent prayer to the thoughts of those who had died the last time the Alicorn Amulet had been used.

"Master did tell you that before, many times," Trixie said, but then she backed off. That brief skirmish had been a long time ago, but she could tell it still pained Celestia. Trixie instead chose to change subjects back to what she had visited this cemetery for. "Twilight Sparkle made a good effort out of it, didn't she?"

Celestia's eyes refocused, honing in on Trixie. "Yes. Her as well as her friends, the new generation of the Element-Bearers. She changed so many lives, and her friend Fluttershy even managed to reform Discord. Discord! I had thought we would forever be at odds, but then, I never knew until then that friendship and chaos were compatible."

"Fluttershy passed away years ago, though" Trixie said. "Do you still trust him?"

Celestia frowned at that. "I am sorry, but it would be inappropriate to discuss such a thing with somepony else. Fluttershy and Discord had a close relationship."

So she didn't trust Discord. Trixie wasn't too concerned in any case. Discord had been fairly tame since his freedom. Outside of his betrayal during the Tirek incident, the draconequus hadn't kicked up too much of a fuss. If he were to pose a threat to the peace again...well, Trixie was no alicorn, and she hadn't been an active war magician in a long time, but the winds of time and wave of change hadn't yet worn her down. She had outlasted whole empires. In the past, serious opposition to Equestria had refocused Trixie, breathing new life into her as she fought to protect the homeland she had once forged long ago. Another go would be no different.

"But again, Twilight Sparkle was something I think we'll never see again in Equestria. Twilight saved my sister, and she saved my last student before her. In a few decades, only a handful of us will remember her as a living, breathing pony than a pony who is present in history books. I hate to think the day will eventually come to pass that I forget what her voice was like, or the colour of her eyes, and someday even the colour of her coat," Celestia said. "She admired you, you know. I suppose Twilight Sparkle will never realise how ironic it is that a pony so often found on the stage would become a pony on the stage."

"She admired me? Which me?" Trixie asked. She knew the answer, of course. Trixie wasn't a pony who could have been admired by the Princess of Friendship and Magic.

"The real you."

Trixie didn't know what to say to that. Instead, she settled for reading Twilight Sparkle's epitaph, "Lest We Forget, indeed."

The two fell silent at those words. There was no more that needed to be said.

Minutes or hours passed. Trixie was certain it wasn't days, since the sun hadn't yet risen. Then again, considering who was standing next to her, that was no longer a reliable measure. At last, Celestia bowed her head to the gravestone, touching her horn against the top, before raising her head again. "I hope to see you at the palace soon," Celestia said. "We really do miss you."

Celestia waited for a few minutes. She added, "Now that the Researcher Princess has left us, perhaps somepony could take her place again?"

Not getting a verbal response, the regal alicorn at last walked away, leaving Trixie behind in the cemetery.

"I didn't think much of you when I first saw you on that day in Ponyville," Trixie said, keeping her eyes straight forward on the tombstone. "Imagine my surprise when you actually managed to get rid of an Ursa Minor, all on your lonesome! I researched you, found out you were Celestia's student. I gave you a test, one you passed with flying colours. You became a Princess, something I would never have predicted. When you took on a student, I attempted to nudge you as hard as I could without creating a schism between us."

Trixie sighed. The rain was falling harder now. "You have your legacy, Princess Twilight. I have mine, the legacy of the greatest, but until I die it'll never be complete. Celestia envies me sometimes. I envy her sometimes as well, but I think I envy you even more. You took with you to the grave a legend that will likely surpass my own. This world doesn't need me anymore, but here I am. I still endure."

Giving the Cutie Mark engraved into the tombstone one last glance, Trixie turned around, leaving the cemetery.

Perhaps Trixie would take Celestia up on her advice about returning to her studies on magic. Maybe she would pay Luna another visit, while she was at it.

Author's Note:

If you haven't figured out who Trixie is, it'll be spoiled in the next episode (watching a certain Season 2 episode is essential to realise it).

On seeing the cover art, the words 'The greatest trick the Great and Powerful Trixie ever performed was convincing all of ponykind that she was a mere unicorn' sort of sprung into my head, and it evolved from there. Originally, I intended to leave Trixie a complete blank. After a little bit of brainstorming, I actually came up with an idea for who or what she is. You can suss it out of the text, but I'm not sure how subtle I made it. If you're going to post your guess in the comments, please spoiler it.

UPDATE: Since so many people guessed correctly anyways, Trixie is Clover the Clever, who reverse-engineered a time spell created by Star Swirl and used it so she doesn't age.