Things that go Bump in the Night
There was a loud ringing noise, coming from every direction. After a minute or two, Trixie realized it was her ears making the noise, as it began to die down, replaced by different, more normal noises.
In as much as groans and cries of alarm could be considered normal, that is.
“What the…” she began, blinking in confusion. Then recollection came to her as she looked up.
Berry’s bar now had significantly less of a front door than it had a moment ago. There were large chunks of wood and glass spread all over the bar itself, some of which looked scorched.
Right, Trixie thought to herself, an explosion. Why had there been an explosion? Even for Ponyville, Weirdness Capitol of Equestria (if not the world), that was out of the ordinary.
She looked about. “Is everypony alright?” she called out, looking to the bar, where there was no sign of the establishment’s owner.
“I’m okay!” An orange hoof shot up from behind the bar, followed by the leg, and then the entire body, of Fizzy Orange, one of the bartenders, who was indeed unharmed, beyond what appeared to be a piece of wood stuck in his mane, which he deftly removed.
“Where’s Berry?” Trixie asked, as she slid out of the remains of the booth she’d been sitting in, looking up and down. There didn’t appear to be anypony hurt, luckily. Seemed most of the bar’s clientele had been staying away from the door, what with it being the only thing separating them from the cold winter air.
Then her attention drew back to the door, which had clearly been blasted off its hinges, at the very least… and then something else, judging by a split second look, had smashed their way out through the remains.
“I think I heard her yelling something…” Fizzy murmured, helpfully, if uncertainly. “Then she leapt over the bar…”
And, if Trixie had to guess, went outside to find whoever or whatever was responsible for the sudden, unwanted redecoration and give them a piece of her mind. Possibly several, in fact. She felt a small stab of pity for them. If Berry was anything like her sister, one Cheerilee, they were going to be very sorry in short order, assuming they weren’t smart enough to just run. Which, frankly, she hoped they didn’t, since she wanted to know just who it was that was stupid enough to walk into Ponyville and start attacking bars.
She walked over to the door, and looked out into the night, the few streetlights Ponyville had barely lighting up the skies.
Then she saw the glowing ball of energy that was getting increasingly larger, hurtling forth from the darkness, towards her.
Trixie froze, and closed her eyes. There was a horrible several seconds as nothing happened, save the sound of something hitting something, but without the attendant feeling of it hitting her. She opened her eyes to see something glowing orange fade from view. She turned and looked to see Midnight, her horn dimming.
Looking back to the darkness, Trixie moved away from the doorframe, and back to the dark blue mare.
“Didn’t know you could cast forcefields.” She commented, quietly, in case whoever was out there was listening.
“I’m no Captain Armor.” Midnight replied. “They’re only good for two or three solid hits, at most.”
“Front door’s not an option.” Trixie noted, frowning. She was now feeling worried for Berry. Hopefully, the mare was okay. “But I need to get out there, see who these ponies are, and what they’re doing.”
“Oh.” Midnight said. Before Trixie could ask what she meant, the mare’s horn glowed again. In an instant, Trixie realised what the mare was about to do, but before she could say or do anything, there was a flash of light, and a pop, and the two mares vanished from the bar.
Some months prior, Trixie had tried her hoof at teleporting. She would have been the first to admit she was no good at it, but she’d felt the need to try. The end result had been first getting stuck in the middle of a storm, followed by getting struck by lightning, then stuck in a weird alternate universe while over-channelled, which even for Trixie had been an astounding string of bad luck.
This, and an incident related to that bad luck that nearly resulted in her being spread across the Everfree Forest, had left Trixie with an understandable disinclination to ever teleport ever again unless she absolutely positively had to, and with the understanding that the only other option available in such a situation was death (or severe embarrassment. Either one.)
She yelped in alarm, partly from the shock and anger of being teleported, but also because she’d gone from the relative warmth of Berry’s bar (even if it did have a large hole where its door should’ve been), to outside in the cold (even if her cape had enchantments to protect her from said cold). Then she kicked Midnight. There was an unsatisfying lack of any response from the mare.
“Are you insane?” she hissed, in case whoever or whatever it was that was attacking Ponyville was nearby. “Teleporting after you’ve been drinking.”
“Drinking?” Midnight repeated. “I am not inebriated.”
Trixie blinked. “You were at Berry’s. You had a drink. And you were…” she paused as she tried to think of the right words.
Midnight stared at her, and there was something in that gaze that made Trixie want to look away, only she didn’t want to give the mare the satisfaction (or whatever it was she felt). “I do not drink… alcohol.”
Trixie frowned. “So you were drinking…”
“Soda. And, all things considered, would you want to risk seeing me in an uninhibited state?”
Trixie found herself thinking on that. As she could see it, there seemed to be only two outcomes, which was either extremely hilarious or the exact opposite.
“Don’t think I do.” She admitted. She looked about, trying to get her bearings, and saw they were a short distance away from the Punch Bowl, still in the middle of Ponyville. She couldn’t hear screaming or shouting, which was definitely a good thing, but also something of a nuisance, since it meant she couldn’t follow it to the source of the trouble.
Still, she could at least guess, and hope whatever had caused it was still near Berry’s bar, rather than walking around Ponyville randomly. Knowing her luck, she’d find them quickly enough.
“Alright,” she said, turning back to look at Midnight, “first things first…” and then she momentarily stopped again, as she looked at the mare.
It was the middle of winter, it was dark, and it was cold for Trixie, even with the enchantments on her hat and cape meant to keep her warm (enchantments only did so much when you were nearly up to your hock in snow). But Midnight didn’t even seem to notice, beyond her breath being visible in the starlight.
“Aren’t you cold?” Trixie found herself asking. Unicorns, generally speaking, tended to be the least resilient of the three tribes when it came to matters such as the temperature.
“Fine like this.” Came the reply. Trixie shook her head. The mare could’ve at least pretended to be cold, she thought. Then she remembered what she had been meaning to say.
“I’m gonna go find whoever did this, see what I’m up against. Then I’m going to get my friends, and stop them.” She waved a hoof at the mare dismissively. “You should go home.”
Midnight stared thoughtfully. “Actually… I would rather stay near you.”
Trixie was glad for her cape, because she felt the need to shudder. “You would.” She repeated, her voice leaden. “What about Thesis?”
“She’s safe.” Midnight said. “I know that for a fact.”
“You do.” Trixie said, “how, exactly?”
“For one…” Midnight scuffed at some of the snow with a hoof, “observation. If whatever was responsible for these events was after her, why would they attack a bar? Second, my house does have a very expensive warding system. I felt it was prudent, given Ponyville’s reputation.” Trixie made a dismissive noise at that, trying to make it sound like she wasn’t acknowledging the point.
“Let us determine what we’re dealing with here, then I shall find Thesis. It would be difficult to protect her if I do not know what the threat is.”
The mare paused. “Also, in all likelihood, it is safer to be near you than not.”
Trixie’s mouth opened and closed several times as she tried to process that one, and come up with a suitable response.
“How do you figure that works?” she asked, incredulously.
“The number of incidents you’ve managed to get through unscathed speak for themselves.” Midnight noted.
Trixie felt it was probably not worth trying to point out how many of those same incidents had seen her attacked, injured or threatened with total ruination.
“Alright,” she said through clenched teeth, “alright. Fine. I’m going to go see what we’re dealing with. You, just… try not to get in the way.”
Trixie looked about, and tried walking in a direction she felt would lead her to some answers. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it, there was no throng of ponies running away from anything, which meant she couldn’t follow the chaos to whatever entity was responsible. In fact, there wasn’t any large amount of noise, beyond the slight crunch of snow beneath her hooves.
Either what had happened hadn’t sunk in yet with the town, or they just hadn’t noticed at all. Or worse, they had noticed, and just weren’t very concerned. Ponyville was that sort of town. Weird things did have a tendency to happen to it (or, given some of the ponies who lived in it, Ponyville had a tendency to happen to things).
Then, over the crunching, she thought she heard something. Voices, raised ones at that. She cast a spell over herself, muffling the sound of her hooves, and another to turn herself broadly invisible. It wasn’t full invisibility, but it was dark, so she figured it wouldn’t matter that much.
As she rounded a corner, she saw the sight of Berry’s Punch Bowl, from the outside. Despite the dramatic events of but a few moments prior, the bar didn’t look that badly damaged, all things considered. Nothing was on fire, and the building itself was relatively intact, beyond a destroyed front door. Then her gaze moved to the source of the voices, a group of ponies standing there, in the snow, arguing with one another. Trixie frowned. In the darkness, lit up by the light from Berry’s, and some lamps the town had, she could see a slumped pony-sized shape not far from them. She had a feeling that the shape was Berry Punch herself, and felt her stomach knot. She activated her magic sight to try and get a look at what she was dealing with. The almost-certainly-Berry pony lying in the snow had the familiar greens of an earth pony, but then she looked to the newcomers.
Different tribes of pony had different colours to their magic. But even at a distance, even at a glance, Trixie could instantly see there was something horrifically, tremendously wrong with the ponies she was looking at.
There were the unicorn pinks, pegasus blues and earth pony greens in there, but… there was also something else. Patches of purple, or dark green, and even red, shifting all over them, save for around their heads, where only tiny fragments of each pony’s natural magic seemed to be poking out. Like they were covered, or… infected.
Trixie found herself thinking of what had happened some months back. Oaton, the tiny town that didn’t exist, right on the edge of the Everfree. The town that had been sitting on top of a shrine to Tirek, utterly forgotten to the world and even the ponies who lived there, until a friend of Cheerilee’s had stumbled onto it, and woken it up. Trixie didn’t remember absolutely everything clearly about the events of those two days, possibly on account of having not gotten the right amount of sleep on the first day there, but she did vaguely recall, when she saw Tarnished Copper Coin at the entrance to that shrine, that there had been something off with her magic, the shrine beginning to take hold on her, changing the very colour of her magic’s aura.
Was that what she was looking at, she wondered, a group of ponies who, like the young noble with a love of animals, had just had the bad luck to be in the wrong place too long, and been corrupted into maniacs? Or was this something worse? Had they let this happen to them?
She saw something moving just next to her, and jolted, at the sight of Midnight standing stock still. Quickly, she clamped down on her mouth, before she made a noise that would give her away to the group of ponies.
“Don’t do that.” She hissed. Midnight was looking beyond to the group of ponies.
“What is the situation?” she asked. Trixie shook her head.
“Eight or nine ponies, I think. Mixed tribes, at least two unicorns, and there’s something seriously wrong with them.”
“Dark magic.” The dark blue mare said. Trixie raised an eyebrow at her.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“A guess.” Midnight replied. “You had your magic sight activated, you were looking at them. There are very few medical maladies that can be identified after but a few seconds with magic sight. And they have randomly attacked Ponyville. Dark magic corruption seemed like a reasonable assumption.”
Trixie snorted, and looked back to the group. “I don’t think they’re exactly one big happy family, whoever they are.”
“You do not recognise them?” Midnight asked.
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Well, from all the way over here, they sure don’t look like any of the beings who’ve picked a fight with me over the last year, and given they’ve already taken a pot-shot at me, I’m not in a hurry to go and ask. Though,” she added, “since they’re not setting stuff on fire and yelling about Corona, I’m going to assume they’re not working for her.”
Her gaze went back to Berry’s form, then to Midnight. “Can you still teleport?” she asked, carefully.
“Yes.” Midnight responded, her own gaze moving out toward the arguing ponies, “I take it you wish me to teleport into the midst of that throng.”
“Grab Berry, get her out, yeah.”
“I have enough magic left for that.” Midnight said, “however… the chances of being able to teleport back before any of those ponies sets upon me are slim.”
Trixie frowned. That would have left two ponies among the group, and while they didn’t seem to be paying Berry any attention at the moment, she still didn’t want to leave the mare stuck there. And, she supposed, leaving Midnight in their clutches was also bad, from a moral viewpoint.
Then the thought came to her. It slouched its way into her train of thought, and tried to look inconspicuous, but she saw what it was doing and where it was going nonetheless.
“What if somepony distracted them?” she asked. Midnight stared at the group, then back to Trixie.
“That could work, if they were sufficiently distracted.”
Trixie allowed herself a grin. “Oh, I can distract them alright. All you have to do is get past a group of possibly insane ponies, rescue Berry and get out without getting stuck yourself.”
It sounded so simple as she said it. But, she noted to herself, how many plans had she made over the last year that had ever gone right?
It was cold, it was dark. There was snow everywhere. They were in unfamiliar territory, surrounded on all sides by the enemy. It was entirely the absolute worst time to be arguing over plans, but that was what they were doing.
It might’ve helped if they’d had an actual plan before going in. But it might not.
The group did not have a leader, as such. This was not the sort of group that had a leader, merely the loudest voice.
At that moment, the loudest voice was a unicorn called Lamp Wick.
At least, he thought he was called Lamp Wick.
There was a time, Lamp Wick was certain, when he had been somepony else. Occasionally, when he wasn’t thinking, or was tired, he had flashes of memories he couldn’t place, names, voices, sensations. They belonged to somepony else, and he didn’t like them. It made him angry. Occasionally, he had this horrible feeling that he was lost, or missing something terribly, but whenever he tried to think of it, the memories slipped away immediately. And then the feeling of certainty reasserted itself. He knew who he was now, and what he was doing.
And when he felt doubt creeping in, there was the other voice. Sometimes as distant as a whisper, and others as loud as a storm. It had been the one to tell him to go to Ponyville, and that had been that.
But now that they were there, after they’d worked out where Ponyville was, he was bickering with one of the other unicorns of the impromptu group, whose name, it had to be said, eluded him at the moment. He was certain he did know it, or should have. Certainly, it seemed important to him that he knew the name of the pony he was yelling at, but there was another, more salient matter to deal with. For one thing, the voice was being abnormally quiet at the moment.
He could feel it. Somewhere in this odd town, the one sitting right on the edge of a cursed forest, was it, whatever the voice had insisted they come for. He could sense it on the wind. It was so close he could practically feel it.
Whatever it was. But the voice had assured him he would know it when he saw it. Somehow, this hadn’t actually been very reassuring.
“We can’t go blasting every building we see!” he was declaring, “or every pony we run into!”
There were concerned looks from everypony else. Some of them glanced at the unconscious earth pony lying nearby in the snow, the one who’d run out of the bar, screaming madly at them (at least until she’d taken a disorientation spell to the face). Some of those looks suggested they didn’t mind committing the later in this particular instance.
“Who cares if they see us?” the unicorn he was arguing with snapped, “They’re farmers and shopkeepers. What can they possibly do against us?”
“There’s more of them than there are of us!” Lamp Wick said. “We could have done this quietly, found it and left. Now they all know we’re h-“
“Hey!” a voice called out, drawing everypony’s attention. A short distance away, there was a unicorn mare in a hat and cloak, marching toward them, “who do you think you are, coming to the town of the Great and Powerful Trixie, looking for trouble?”
Lamp Wick paused. For a moment, if only a moment, he felt sheer confusion at this strange pony approaching them, apparently unconcerned as to who they were or what they wanted. And from the looks of it, this was shared by the rest of them.
The unicorn he’d been arguing with (for some reason the name “Torch” came to mind, even though the pony’s Cutie Mark wasn’t a torch) snarled.
“Can I at least attack this one?” he asked, his horn already glowing.
“Try and keep her conscious.” Lamp Wick said, looking toward the earth pony again. “Maybe she might know where it is.”
“Ha!” The strangely-garbed unicorn crowed, “you are no match for my magical might!”
In response, Torch fired a spell at the mare. It raced through the air, heading straight for the (alarmingly unconcerned, it had to be said) unicorn’s face.
And then passed straight through it.
“You should really just surrender now, and save yourself some pain and embarrassment!” the mare continued, as if absolutely nothing had just happened.
Before any of them could ponder the development, there was a strange sound, and a flash of light at the periphery of Lamp Wick’s vision. He turned just in time to see another flash of light in the shape of a pony, vanishing with the earth pony mare. He looked back to where this “Trixie” had been, only to see a rapidly vanishing puff of smoke.
There was a tense second as everypony looked to Lamp Wick, some smug, some angry, some confused. He grit his teeth.
“Ignore them,” he snarled. “Everypony split up. Search this town, tear it apart, do whatever you have to, but find it. Now!”
Trixie frowned as Midnight reappeared with Berry, who looked hardly the worse for wear, besides groaning slightly as the dark blue mare set her down.
She tentatively approached the mare, whose eyes slowly opened, making sure she wasn’t within leg’s reach. Berry was an earth pony, and a very strong earth pony at that, and more than that, Trixie knew she could be bad tempered on occasion.
“Berry?” she asked gently. “Berry, if you can hear me, say something.”
Berry blinked, and then her eyes focused on Trixie.
Later, Trixie would thank her reflexes for getting her out of the way of Berry’s wild swipe with a foreleg. Once it had passed where Trixie’s jaw had been, Berry blinked again.
“Trixie?” she asked, shaking her head, “sorry. Thought you were… something else.”
“You alright?” Trixie asked, before she could stop herself.
“Those jerks…” Berry grumbled, “I was going to give them a piece of my mind, or four, and they zapped me with some kinda spell. Was like I’d been hitting one of my own drinks a little too hard, couldn’t stand. Couldn’t see straight.”
Trixie looked to Midnight. “A disorientation spell.” She took in a breath. “I’ve been tinkering with those.”
“How are you feeling?” Midnight asked. Berry gave her an odd look, as she rubbed the side of her head.
“I’ve had worse hangovers.” She grinned weakly (or possibly grimaced, Trixie wasn’t entirely sure which).
“Powerful initial effect, limited duration.” Midnight stated. "Good to know."
“I’ve got a question, if you don’t mind.” Berry said, “how’s my bar? Those jerks didn’t smash it up more, did they?”
“Your bar’s fine.” Trixie said, carefully. “Though the doors have had better days.”
“Everypony else alright?” Berry asked. Trixie nodded, which seemed to relax Berry.
“Good.” She sighed. “That’s something at least. Just after I got everything fixed up after last time…”
Trixie decided it was probably safest for all concerned not to point out it had been some months since Berry’s bar had been damaged, along with the rest of Ponyville, thanks to a curse on the town’s drink supplies.
“And now I really feel like I need a drink.” She groaned. Then she looked at Trixie. “Who are these guys anyhow?”
“No idea.” Trixie admitted. Berry snorted. Trixie herself was looking around. There was still an absence of ponies coming out to see what was going on, which was getting confusing. Ponyville was attacked a lot, but not that much. Part of her wondered if it was something to do with the cold weather.
“Hey, Berry,” she began, carefully, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to go find Cheerilee, see what she’s up to-”
“Tell her to get off her flank and stop ponies smashing in my doors?” Berry finished. “Might as well. Can’t imagine she hasn’t noticed what’s going on though. Don’t you have some sort of system for summoning her, for things like this?”
Trixie sighed irritably. There had been a wide variety of plans and contingencies gone over during Cheerilee’s gruelling training sessions. Somehow none of them had concerned the situation Trixie found herself in at the moment.
“I’ll bring it up at the next meeting.” She said. There were a few spells she did know that would’ve caught the others attention, assuming they were near a window or outside (except in the case of Carrot Top, who lived right on the edge of town), but they also came with the little problem that everypony else would be able to see them as well (with the assumption they could see over Ponyville’s rooftops and trees).
“I’ll go find her.” Berry said, “don’t worry.”
“Would it be an imposition to ask if you could try and get to the others as well?” Trixie asked, “just in case I don’t.”
Berry stared thoughtfully. “If my sis isn’t in, yeah. I’ll see what I can do. But this hero stuff is your thing. I’m just a bartender.”
“Be careful.” Trixie said, as the mare got up to go. “I still owe you money.”
Berry grinned slightly. “Yeah. Yeah, you do.”
And with that, Berry trotted off into the night.
“So, what now?” Midnight asked, once Berry was out of sight and sound.
“Now,” Trixie said, “I think you should go home, make sure Thesis is alright. Let the actual heroes handle the crazy dark magic ponies. Don’t worry, somepony’ll come and tell you when everything’s over.”
Midnight was about to say something to that, when there was the crunching of snow behind them. Trixie turned to look, and saw two ponies standing there.
The first thing Trixie noticed, and wished she really hadn’t, was their eyes. They were a vivid mix of green and red that, as far as she had heretofore presumed, wasn’t found in nature. But worse than that was what she saw in them, a particular kind of rage. The kind belonging to the sort of pony who could kick through a stone wall without noticing a thing. The rage of a pony whose mind had passed beyond madness, and out the other side.
“You!” one exclaimed.
“Us?” Trixie asked. The strange pony bared her teeth.
“Where is it?!”
“What?” Trixie found herself asking, which if anything seemed to make the strange ponies’ moods worse. The second, a unicorn, lit up their horn. Before Trixie could say anything, she heard the sound of Midnight’s own horn glowing. There was a flash, a pop, and a rush of air, and Trixie found herself no longer facing two extremely demented and vague ponies, but instead… well, actually, she wasn’t entirely sure, besides “somewhere in Ponyville” and “by a fence”, which didn’t exactly narrow it down for her.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“They’re looking for something.” Midnight noted.
“I heard!” Trixie snapped. The two looked at one another. A horrible thought slowly began to crawl into Trixie’s mind. It was ridiculous, impossible even. There was no way they could’ve known, not when they were as clearly insane as they were.
“You don’t think…” she ventured.
“Possibly.” Midnight said, her expression as carefully neutral as ever. “But they said “it”. Not “her”.”
“How much are you prepared to risk that?” Trixie asked.
“Not enough.” Came the response. “I said I wanted to see what the nature of the threat was. Now I know.”
“That makes one of us.” Trixie muttered.
“You have never seen anything like this?” Midnight asked.
“Crazy ponies with glowing green eyes? No. I’d have remembered that.”
“And you’ve never heard of anything like this?”
Trixie found herself thinking of Oaton, of Tarnished Copper Coin, and the odd look to the mare.
“It…” she began, “maybe. I don’t know. I’m not exactly an expert on dark magic. Most of what Luna taught me was politics, art, history. You want weird and disturbing obscure knowledge, ask Cheerilee, or Lyra, or Twilight Sparkle. Or hay, try writing to Princess Luna.”
“I have some knowledge.” Midnight said, as casually as she pleased. “Not much, obviously, beyond what little the archives of Canterlot supply, much of which is merely theoretical guesswork, scattered across centuries.”
“And why do you have this knowledge?” Trixie asked. “Seems a little beyond the job description of a secretary.”
Midnight paused. “In the wake of all that has happened over the last year, both Captain Armor and Archduke Fisher argued to Princess Luna that important personnel in Canterlot be briefed on all matter of potential threats (though the Archduke’s grasp of what constitutes a “threat” dramatically differs from nearly anyone and everyone else’s) in case the Princess’ sister and any allies she might have attempted to use them to gain access to Canterlot.”
Trixie grunted, thought she doubted highly Midnight had been ranked high enough to count as important personnel. A more likely scenario in her mind was that she had just shown up to the briefings and nopony had bothered to get rid of her.
“And I may have studied the phenomenon in my own time. During public holidays and the like. Everypony has to have a hobby.” The mare stared for a moment, before adding, “and once to settle a disagreement with Captain Armor.”
“A disagreement?” Trixie repeated, “you? No. What in Equestria could it have been caused by?”
Midnight’s eyes darted toward the ground. “Whether dark magic had an impact on will saves.” She stated quietly. As Trixie tried to figure out what she had just heard, the mare turned around, frowning.
“Something the matter?” Trixie asked.
“Well, I must admit to being confused as to our location. That is a problem with a blind teleport, but that is not what’s troubling me.”
“Then what is?” Trixie felt her last nerves beginning to go. It was Friday night. She was supposed to be relaxing, and here she was, standing around in the cold with one crazy pony while several more were running around town. Midnight, for her part, was investigating a nearby bush.
“If I were to ask why, exactly, this bush appears to be filled with balls, would I regret the answer?”
Trixie frowned, as her curiosity got the better of her, and moved over to the bush, lighting her horn up to get a better look than the nearby lamplight could provide. And indeed, there in the bush was a sample of small balls.
One ball, she told herself, could’ve been simply misplaced. Two was odd. Three would’ve been careless. But in Ponyville, anything could happen, and somepony could’ve deliberately put them there. It took only a second for her to think of who would have been mad enough, even by Ponyville’s admittedly low standards, to do exactly that. The answer came to mind, and it was pink and grinning madly.
“Probably, yes.” Trixie said.
Midnight gave no response to that, simply moving away from the bush, looking about. Trixie looked about with her. Having had a few moments, she was now beginning to think, judging by some of the buildings she could see, that they weren’t far from Lyra and Bon-Bon’s house. That was something, at least.
“I know roughly where we are.” She said. “Does that help?”
“Provided the answer is not “we are in Ponyville”.” Midnight replied. “Hardly the time to be attempting humour.”
Trixie shook her head. Then she heard the crunch of snow. Somepony was running. Somepony nearby. She felt a surge of hope. Maybe the word was getting out that what was going on wasn’t just an ordinary night in Ponyville.
That hope sputtered out on the sight of two ponies with eyes that, even in the darkness, were glowing a particularly malevolent shade of green.
There was no shout this time, no utterance of “you!” or “get them!” One of the ponies just lunged. Trixie, acting entirely on instinct, moved out of the way and kicked. There was a satisfying grunt of pain. The other, a unicorn, began to light up his horn, only to stop when a brightly coloured ball slammed into his head with considerable force.
Trixie turned, and rushed past Midnight, heading toward the general direction of Lyra’s house. There was an angry growl from behind her. Trixie decided not to look. Nothing was going to be gained from looking, especially when she already knew what they looked like. She rushed around a corner, and stopped, preparing to turn herself invisible. Not her fanciest spells, just enough to make seeing her difficult, so she could get to Lyra’s (where, hopefully, she added, Lyra and BonBon were not otherwise engaged).
Then Midnight appeared next to her, breath just visible in the cold night air. Trixie frowned at her, hoping the mare recognised how unwelcome her presence was.
Then she heard the noise on the edge of hearing. Voices, and angry ones from the sound of it. If she had to guess, the crazy ponies didn’t much like one another. She looked over to Midnight and tried, as quietly as possible, to gesticulate for her to follow. In doing so, she was just barely aware of the voices getting increasingly raised, and then the sound of someone casting magic. Then there was the sound of smashing glass and masonry, followed by a scream.
Trixie looked at Midnight. She felt a sinking feeling that she was going to look around the corner to see what had happened. If the dark blue mare was feeling any such urge, she wasn’t showing it.
Slowly, cautiously, Trixie leaned around the corner to see what had happened.
What had happened, as it transpired, was that one of the crazy ponies had blasted a hole in the side of the nearest house. And, as Trixie saw, they were now arguing with their partner, apparently about said hole-blasting. Then they saw her, and Trixie remembered she was still visible.
She ducked out of sight, but not before she caught a glimpse of the mad pony’s horn lighting up. She grabbed Midnight and ducked out of the way. Seconds later a blast of magic punched its way through the fence, right at the height Trixie’s head had been at. And then another, and another. Trixie looked at the holes, which didn’t look large enough to necessarily cause serious harm, if she was any guess, but definitely would’ve hurt tremendously anyway.
“These ponies are attacking us.” Midnight felt the need to say.
It had been a long day. It had been a long week. And now, Trixie could feel her last nerve fraying and burning away into nothingness in the face of Midnight’s unimaginably unhelpful comment.
“I know!” she hissed, as she got to her hooves. For her part, the dark blue mare at least looked like she was aware of what she’d just said.
“Well, it’s a rare experience for me.” She murmured. Trixie shook her head, and turned back toward the fence. The nutjobs had stopped blasting holes in innocent fences, and from the sound of it had taken to arguing with one another again. For a microscopically small moment, she felt a surge of what might have been sympathy with the saner one of the two.
“Happens to me all the time.” Trixie grumbled.
This was not, technically speaking, true. Many of the threats she had encountered over the last year had not been attacking her (at least, not her specifically). Most had been content to restrain themselves and not fire off blasts of magic every which way. But the line just felt right to her.
Trixie prepared an invisibility spell. She was no longer feeling nice. She was feeling vengeful. These maniacs had come into her town, smashed up her favourite bar and taken pot shots at her. She was tired, cold, angry and beyond fed up.
This did, however, mean she was so distracted she managed to not hear what Midnight said as she turned invisible.
“You lucky cow.”
Luck is an odd thing. There are in fact many documented cases of ponies with Cutie Marks denoting that their special talent had something to do with luck, but the mechanics of how that worked were hardly ever explored by serious scientists.
There were reasons for this. Reasons such as rational, serious minded ponies not wanting to find out exactly how much bad luck could be scientifically generated at any one time, or whether good luck could potentially be finite, in case it ran out on them in the middle of an experiment, and ended with humiliation and / or death / loss of tenure (or all three at once).
That, and the high likelihood that anyone who suggested trying to scientifically measure luck would be accused of just being silly, and trying to waste time, and more importantly money.
Exactly where Trixie fell re: her own luck tended to depend on how she was feeling at any one time, but it hardly ever felt very high. Given at present she was marching toward two mad ponies in the snow on a Friday night when she should have been having if not a good time then at least a relaxing one… it was safe to say she thought her luck was reaching all-time lows.
She aimed at the two ponies, who were busy arguing with one another, evidently about Mr. Trigger Happy’s fondness for blasting everything in sight.
Over the last several months, it had been impressed on Trixie, and indeed all of the Element Bearers, that they could’ve stood to practice a lot more for if and when bad situations occurred. Mainly by an extremely emphatic Cheerilee. And while there had been some (well, more than some) initial issues with her methodology, the idea itself had been sound. Which was why Trixie had, admittedly with some reluctance, taken up studying new spells. Foremost of these was a spell designed for disorientating ponies, a more gentle way of subduing them (if far less satisfying than a good kick to the head).
So far, Trixie had not yet found anypony actually willing to let themselves be exposed to the spell, in the name of science. She had considered asking Lyra, if only as a joke, but after barely a few seconds had realized if anything had gone wrong, BonBon’s response would have been volcanic. In all likelihood, the authorities would never find her body.
She fired off her first spell. It hit the mare square between the eyes. She let out an oddly strangled shriek, and fell to the ground, her eyes clenched shut. Her associate whirled around, his face the image of mad fury as his horn lit up to blast his attacker (Trixie had to give him credit, he was at least consistent). She leapt out of the way, a dark green flash of magic narrowly shooting past her hat. She scrabbled back to her hooves, as the trigger happy maniac prepared another spell, staring intently at where Trixie had landed. For a moment, Trixie wondered if he could see her, or if the dark magic in him meant he was off in some strange fantasy world of his own, inhabited by goodness knew what.
He grinned maliciously. Then there was the sound of wood striking flesh and fur, and his smile turned slightly puzzled. Then he fell over.
Midnight glanced at the prone maniac, and set down the broken bit of fencing she was carrying.
“I had him.” Trixie said, as she turned herself visible again. She spared a glance at the maniacs, neither of whom seemed to be in any condition to blow anything else up again. The less violent one was curled up in a heap, groaning incoherently to herself.
“But thanks.” She murmured, looking at the prone mare, trying to work out whether her reaction was from the spell, or something else. She was reasonably certain it wasn’t her, since the spell was designed to incapacitate painlessly.
“I won’t tell a soul.” Midnight said.
“Trixie?” a voice called out. Trixie looked up, and then around, and finally saw the source of the voice – the broken window of the house that had been shot at, where an irritated face was just visible, that of Amethyst Star, Ponyville’s resident jeweller, and a pony Trixie had not that long ago called a friend. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, you know,” Trixie called back, “regular crazy day in Ponyville. It’s alright, I’m dealing with it.”
If Amethyst believed that or not, she didn’t give any indication, as her head disappeared from sight. Trixie looked to Midnight, who was still looking at the prone crazies.
“This is regular for Ponyville?” she inquired. Trixie shrugged helplessly.
“Not this exactly, but… this kind of thing, yeah.” She took in a deep breath. “Though it usually happens during the daytime.”
Luck is a very strange thing indeed. For example, the spell the mad pony had fired at Trixie. By all probability, it should’ve fizzled out, or struck something and disappeared in a puff of magic, its effects harmlessly dissipated. But it did not. Against all probability, it had careened off of one window, onto another, and then another, bouncing wildly around a small square of Ponyville property before, surprisingly, heading back in the direction it had come. The odds of such a thing happening, and happening in such a way as they did, were astoundingly high.
This wouldn’t have been any comfort to Trixie. Nor would knowing that the precise odds required for the spell to hit her square in the back of the head, rather than the dark blue mare she was talking with, were truly, amazingly high indeed.
Trixie yelled in pain and surprise as she felt the spell hit her. And then stopped, as the world started spinning uncontrollably, just as she tried to turn around to get her bearings on her attacker, trying to blink away the purple and green and yellow spots dancing in front of her eyes as she did.
“Where did that come from?” she asked, to nopony in particular. There were no crazy ponies rushing toward her, no distant shouts, save the calls of some of the townsponies emerging from their house to examine what was going on, finally, and noticing the two ponies lying unconscious on the ground.
The spots were still dancing in front of her eyes, and what light there was seemed too bright. It was becoming impossible to see. She clenched her eyes shut, but it didn’t stop the feeling of everything spinning.
There was the crunching of dirt and slush, and she looked to see Midnight staring at her.
Somehow she didn’t recall the mare being as tall or as thin as she looked a moment ago. And her fur hadn’t been that dark either.
“Lulamoon?” the mare inquired. “What is it?”
Trixie groaned, pressing a hoof against her head. “’m fine,” she muttered, “just a spell to the head, messing with my vision…”
She stared at Midnight intently for a moment, no easy task with all the spots getting in the way, and the way the world seemed to be rotating sideways. “Was your mane on fire before?” She blinked again. There really were a lot of spots now, and even trying to look away just made the dizzy feeling worse.
“Sorry,” she murmured, “I just… just need a minute.”
And then she fell over, and everything went dark.
Somewhere, just at the absolute edge of hearing, she heard a voice mutter what sounded like it could’ve been “perfect.”
Lyra Heartstrings, bearer of the Element of Loyalty, lived with her marefriend BonBon, in the earth pony mare’s apartment, which was located above BonBon’s place of business. It was a good several minutes’ walk from Berry’s Punch Bowl, and as a result Lyra had not heard the small commotion of the evening, as she had been idly composing on her lyre, by the small fireplace in the upper apartment, while BonBon had been spending her Friday evening going over the week’s earnings.
It hadn’t exactly been what Lyra had wanted to do that evening, and it hadn’t exactly been what BonBon had wanted to do that evening, but the accounts did have to be done at some point. And besides, the evening was young.
The relative tranquil ended when there was the sound of somepony knocking on the front door. Lyra set down her lyre, and made her way down the stairs to the door. She frowned as she went, not recognising the specific knocking. As she approached, she saw BonBon giving her a cautious look. Lyra returned the look, managing to wordlessly convey her belief that if it was trouble of some kind, they probably were not going to knock on someone’s front door. Probably.
She carefully opened the door anyway. A dark blue unicorn entered. After a second, Lyra noticed the sky blue pony she was carrying on her back, helped by the purple cape she was wearing.
“What the-?” Lyra began, then stopped.
“I apologize for the unannounced arrival.” The dark blue mare said, “your house was closest, and I didn’t wish to leave Lulamoon unattended.”
Lyra looked to BonBon, who was frowning deeply. “We’ve got a couch upstairs.” She finally said.
“So, what’s going on exactly?” Lyra asked, once Trixie had been rested on the couch, “and what happened to Trixie?”
“And just who the hay are you, for that matter?” BonBon asked from the little kitchenette the apartment boasted, where she was already putting together a drink of hot chocolate (for who exactly was unclear, but she was making a drink of hot chocolate).
“My name is Midnight, formerly employed in Her Majesty’s government.”
“Oh.” BonBon said. “Nice to meet you?” she ventured, looking to Lyra, who slowly shook her head. BonBon gave Lyra an expression asking whether it was a long story. Lyra’s look suggested it was, and that she didn’t know or care about all the details, but it probably did have something to do with why there was an unconscious Trixie on their couch.
“A group of ponies under the influence of dark magic have arrived in Ponyville, looking for an item or being that they seem unwilling or unable to identify. Lulamoon confronted some of them, and was struck by a disorientation spell while doing so.”
“Is she going to be okay?” BonBon asked.
“Judging by her reaction, the spell was particularly strong.” Midnight said, “though she is merely unconscious. The worst effects should hopefully wear off by the time she reawakens.”
There was a moment filled only with the crackling of the fire, and BonBon’s kettle starting to come to the boil. “A sufficiently powerful disorientation spell can have adverse effects on certain minds. Fortunately, Lulamoon is psychologically sound.”
“Trixie is psychologically sound?” BonBon asked incredulously. Lyra shot her a look.
“Be nice, honey.”
“I thought I was being nice.” BonBon muttered, though with little malice.
“Certain personality flaws, an occasionally overactive imagination, and burgeoning paranoia aside, Lulamoon is sufficiently sane. Relatively speaking.”
“Just wondering,” BonBon said, “but for those of us who aren’t into creepy tales of ancient monsters, what is the big deal with dark magic?”
“Well,” Midnight began, “you are aware of the psychological concept of the ego.”
BonBon tried not to look at the sleeping Trixie. “I’ve heard of it.”
“There also exist the theories of the super-ego-”
“That does sound like Trixie.” BonBon remarked, earning her another look from Lyra.
“Which mediates between the ego and id.”
“Oh. And the id is…?”
“Instinctual drives. And a pony in the thrall of dark magic typically becomes a creature of pure id. Impulse without restraint or rationality. Not a good combination when dark magic is fuelled by negative emotions.”
“So…” BonBon mused, “sort of like being a really angry drunk?”
Midnight stared at her. There was something in that gaze that made BonBon’s tail twitch, but she couldn’t put a hoof on why. “Essentially, yes. A rough analogy, but broadly accurate.”
Lyra was staring deeply at the dark blue unicorn. “How’d Trixie even get hit anyhow?”
For a moment, Midnight’s eyes seemed to dart, and she became very quiet. “That… may be my fault.”
“Oh?” Lyra asked, carefully, one of her eyebrows slowly raising. “And why’s that?”
Midnight looked to her hindquarters, and the blue moon plainly visible on her flank. “My Cutie Mark is to do with improbable events. It is a fact that strange occurrences have a tendency to happen around me, such as unfortunate circumstances happening to others. What might be called “critical failures”.”
Lyra’s eyebrow, having already risen, found itself having to tilt slightly. After a second, Midnight seemed to realize what she had just said and for an instant, just an instant, there was a shift in her expression.
“Damn you, Shining Armor.” She muttered, before her expression shifted again, as she recovered.
“The worst that should happen to her is a severe headache, and possibly some difficulty casting spells for a short time afterward.”
And then Trixie spoke. In a sense. Her voice was hoarse and distant, and her eyes remained shut.
“But Princess,” she groaned, “I don’t know how to play the trombone!”
“… though it is possible I might be wrong.”
“So, ah,” BonBon said, as Trixie shuffled in her sleep, “these crazy ponies have been dealt with, right? They’re not still running around blasting everything in sight?”
“I do not know, Mrs. Heartstrings.” Midnight admitted. BonBon coughed awkwardly at that.
“Oh, no,” she said hurriedly, noticing Lyra’s suddenly panicked expression, and the way her cheeks were beginning to turn pink, “we’re-”
“We’re not married.” Lyra said, with some speed.
“Not yet.” BonBon added, to which Lyra nodded vigorously, smiling the unnervingly thin smile of somepony who knew they were already in trouble, and there was going to be no talking their way out of it later on.
“Oh.” Midnight said, looking between them, “I am sorry, I must have…”
She trailed off. All three ponies were finding it difficult to look at anything. Mercifully, the kettle stopped boiling, giving BonBon something to do. “Regardless, Lulamoon and I merely encountered two. As to the others, I cannot say.”
“Great.”
“Though given their distinct lack of subtlety, I would not be surprised if the citizens of Ponyville have not contained most of them by now.”
BonBon made a non-committal sounding grunt, as she took a swig from her hot chocolate. She looked to Lyra, who had an expression on her face BonBon didn’t like.
“I do apologise for the inconvenience, and for leaving this matter with you, but I should be going. There are things I must see to.”
“Such as?” Lyra inquired.
“My sister.”
BonBon saw Lyra’s expression darken further, and moved closer towards her.
“Alright.” Lyra finally said, her voice taking on a maliciously cheerful tone, “shan’t keep you, then. You run along and let the heroes take care of the bad ponies.”
The mare looked like she was going to say something, but then nodded and walked out. BonBon followed after, and made sure the door was locked once she was gone. She looked to Lyra.
“So much for a quiet Friday evening.” She sighed. Lyra didn’t respond.
“Lyra?” BonBon nudged her with a hoof. The mint green unicorn jolted.
“Sorry, Bonnie, just… thinking.”
“About how creepy she was?” BonBon asked. Lyra’s expression changed.
“No…” she said, “I mean, yeah, creepy, but there was something…” Lyra frowned, in a way BonBon had never seen before. Then, almost as suddenly, it was gone.
“Eh. Probably nothing. And there’re creeps out there. I should probably get on that.”
BonBon felt a twinge in her gut. “Yeah…” she said, hesitantly. Lyra smiled reassuringly.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. And I’ll be back soon.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.” BonBon said.
Lyra grinned. “C’mon, Bonnie. These guys were stupid enough to pick a fight in Ponyville. How tough can they be?”
By Equestrian standards, Ponyville was not an especially large town, even without the unique geographical feature that was the Everfree Forest sitting right on its doorstep preventing the town from expanding in every possible direction.
Of the attacking ponies, there had barely been more than a dozen, counting the two Trixie had already encountered and dealt with. And while Ponyville’s citizens had, perhaps, been somewhat slow to realise what exactly was going on, once they had come to an awareness, their reaction had been swift indeed. Especially among those who had learned what had happened to Berry’s Punch Bowl.
Berry Punch had been true to her word, and quickly made her way to her sister’s house, and explained the situation in some detail (possibly with too much focus on certain damages inflicted on bars).
Two of the attackers found themselves waylaid by the town’s head postal worker, armed with a bat that, for reasons the two never learned, had been inscribed with the words “love” and “tolerance”.
One, having snuck off on his own, may have gotten somewhat distracted by the smells coming from one building, that of fresh baking, and had tried entering. He managed to force entry to the building, only to stop when a light dramatically came on, and found himself staring at a small, wall-eyed alligator. His confusion over this lasted only seconds, as he found himself bludgeoned over the head with a mallet by the alligator’s owner.
Two more found themselves nearer the town center, and were taken entirely by surprise when they were rushed by a silver-maned mare in an ascot. That said mare was also wearing a camouflage helmet might’ve had something to do with their baffled response, though her uppercutting the first she got close to doubtless did not help.
A pair of pegasi in the group had been circling the town, until they ran afoul of two of Ponyville’s weather patrol, who’d been working the night shift, normally a long and quiet job consisting of little more than nudging clouds every half an hour (if only to prevent someone waking up to find a raincloud that had drifted in from the Everfree parked over their begonias), when they’d heard the attack on Berry’s Punch Bowl. The weather workers had the advantage of knowing the town’s layout, and more importantly where the cloud silos were, and had quickly been able to grab a few, and rig them into a brief fog bank, long enough to get the drop on the two ponies while they were distracted, before returning the clouds back to the silo (and hoping, possibly a little too optimistically, that nopony would notice anything up with the clouds in the morning).
One particularly unfortunate earth pony, who’d been abandoned by his would-be partner following the scent of fresh pastry, wound up on the receiving end of a flying kick from a local tailor, who’d been informed by Cheerilee and Berry Punch of the situation.
Which left only two. The one who might’ve been called Lamp Wick, and another, who’d managed to get quite lost in the dark, even though Ponyville’s layout was not what could’ve been called labyrinthine by any standards.
BonBon sighed. Lyra was still out doing her hero thing, and all BonBon could do was sit by the fire.
She knew Lyra was safe. But it wasn’t any comfort to her imagination, which seemed determined to think up increasingly strange and inventive thoughts of what could happen to her. Nor was the idea that a group of crazy ponies could, apparently, just walk into Ponyville in the middle of the night and start blasting up the place. It was one thing thinking of Lyra and her friends going out to fight threats, but it was another when the threats showed up on their doorstep.
BonBon’s thoughts were interrupted by a groan from Trixie, as she stirred.
“BonBon?” she asked blearily, murmuring something in prench BonBon couldn’t catch, though judging by the way she was holding a hoof against her head, BonBon could’ve guessed.
“I have something I need to tell you.” Trixie said, her voice eerily firm.
“What?” BonBon found herself asking. Trixie took in a deep breath.
“Once upon a time, there were three sisters… and they all lived in a cherry tree. Their names were Mira, Marsh and Tiana. Are you listening, Lyra?”
BonBon could only stare. After several seconds, Trixie blinked and shook her head.
“My head hurts…” she groaned. “Feel disoriented.”
“Yeah…” BonBon said, “your friend mentioned you’d got zapped with a disorienting spell.”
“Friend?” Trixie blinked.
“Tall, dark blue, really creepy vibe?”
“Oh.” Trixie said, with all the warmth of a funeral. “Her.”
She looked about the room. “Where’s Lyra?”
“Went to deal with the nutjobs.”
“How long was I-?” Trixie asked.
BonBon looked to the nearest clock. “Since your friend brought you in? Ten minutes, ish.”
She felt a little surprise at that. It had felt a lot longer than ten minutes.
Trixie groaned again. “Guess that explains why I’m still seeing spots everywhere…”
“Apparently you’re lucky.” BonBon said, “a crazy pony would’ve had a far worse reaction.”
“Oh, I feel very lucky.” Trixie winced, “like someone’s taken an axe to my brains. Really not how I wanted my Friday night to go.”
“I know the feeling.”
Trixie slid off the couch, getting unsteadily to her hooves. BonBon bit on her lip.
“Should you be running around right now?”
“Probably not.” Trixie admitted, “but I can’t exactly sit around doing nothing, can I? “What is sickness to a knight? What matter wounds?””
With that, she walked away (though in a slightly unsteady fashion), leaving a confused BonBon staring after her.
“What does that mean?”
Thesis had been getting worried. She knew her sister had said she would only be a short while, but after a while she’d started wondering. Every few minutes she stopped reading and looked at the nearest clock. And sometimes she’d look out of the front room’s windows, to see if Midnight had shown up yet.
It was beginning to get late, and she looked up from the page she’d been trying to read over a dozen times already to see that it was, in fact, five minutes since she’d last checked.
Then she heard the noise of the key rattling in the lock. Grinning, she closed the book and slid off the sofa.
Midnight entered, an odd look on her face that Thesis didn’t like at all. It didn’t go away even when she hugged her, hoping the bigger mare would return it.
“You’re still here.” She said. Thesis looked up at her (which she kind of had to anyway).
“Of course I am.” It was occurring to Thesis that something was definitely not right, even more so than she’d thought earlier. “Did everything go alright with Trixie?”
Midnight wasn’t looking straight at her. “Complications ensued.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Midnight’s expression was really starting to worry her. “Is something wrong?”
The dark blue mare’s eyes flitted towards the window, then back to Thesis. Seconds ticked past before she responded. “Little one… Thesis, I need you to do something for me.”
“It’s not homework, is it?” Thesis asked.
“I… no. This is a serious matter. I need you to go upstairs, to your room.”
“I have to go to bed?” Thesis asked incredulously. “But it’s not even that late. Trixie lets me-”
“Thesis.” Midnight said, a note in her voice Thesis had never heard before. She stopped. “I’m not telling you to go to bed. Just to your room, for the moment. And I need your word that you will stay there, that if you hear something from downstairs, you will keep absolutely quiet.”
“Like if I’m playing hide and seek?” Thesis asked. Midnight was looking out of the window through the curtain again.
“Exactly. Like hide and seek.”
“Until you come and find me, right?”
“Yes.” Midnight said. “Hopefully, this will not take long.”
“But why-?” she began.
“Because I- …” Midnight paused again, “because there is something going on, little one, and I don’t wish you to get hurt because of it.”
Thesis was finding it difficult to look at Midnight’s expression. “You said nothing dangerous would happen.” She said quietly.
Midnight slowly knelt down next to her. “I know. And it will not. Not to you. Of that, I am certain.”
“You mean it?” Thesis asked.
“I do.”
Fortunately for Trixie, and her pounding headache, finding Lyra didn’t take long once she left BonBon’s house.
“So,” Trixie asked, as she got close to the mare, “what’ve we got?”
Lyra smirked at her. “Nice to see you up and about. But, to answer your question… pretty sure most of these crazy ponies have been taken care of.”
“Most of them?” Trixie asked. Lyra shrugged.
The two of them were nearing the town hall. Somewhere in the distance, Trixie could hear a raised voice, sounding angry about something. She knew the feeling. As the two rounded a corner, they saw a small group of ponies hiding behind a makeshift barricade that looked like it had, only a short time before, been someone’s cart. One of the huddled ponies was the town’s mayor.
“Representative.” She said, as if huddling behind carts was a perfectly normal action for a mayor. Trixie felt it was probably best not to comment on that, or the camouflage helmet she was wearing.
“Mayor Scroll. What’s the situation?”
“Almost under control.” Scroll said, “as near as we can determine, most of these maniacs have been subdued, it’s just…”
There was a flash of light, and a small explosion of dirt and cobblestones. “One last holdout by the gazebo. We can’t get close enough without him firing off magic in every direction.”
“Also,” came the voice of Berry Punch, “he keeps yelling about something. In my professional opinion as a bartender, this guy sounds like he should go home and sleep off whatever it is he’s on. After he pays for my bucking doors, that is.”
“Evening, Trixie.” Cheerilee said from next to her. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine.” Trixie lied, “where’s everypony else?”
“Well, pretty sure Carrot Top’s at her farm,” Cheerilee said, “Ditzy’s probably hunkered down.” The schoolteacher glanced upwards, “Raindrops should be about, I think she said she was doing the weather night shift, but apart from that…”
Trixie sighed. “Just great.”
Lyra was peaking around the makeshift barrier, as Scroll muttered to herself about “planning”. Fortunately, the holdout didn’t seem to notice her at that moment.
“You know,” Lyra observed, “it’s a shame we don’t have a teleporter around, otherwise we could just zap over there, knock him out and be done with all this.”
“Please,” Trixie groaned, as she felt her stomach suddenly churn. “Don’t mention teleporters right now. ‘s making me queasy.”
“Sorry.” Lyra said, as she shuffled away from Trixie.
Trixie rubbed a hoof against her forehead, hoping the world would stop feeling like it was jolting from side to side, and that her headache would go away soon. There was another flash and bang.
And like a light turning on, an idea came to her.
How, Lamp Wick thought to himself, how could things have gone so wrong? How could everypony else have fallen to simple, ordinary ponies?
Then there was the voice, in the back of his mind, cold and hateful. It said it was because he was weak, and foolish, and pathetic. He tried to ignore it.
Your chance for glory was here, it continued, and you failed to seize it. You should’ve burned this whole village to the ground, it hissed.
He clenched his eyes shut. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to burn anything to the ground. He wasn’t even sure he wanted glory, however it was being offered. What did he want? He tried remembering, and it was like ice was going down his spine. The voice hissed angrily.
He was nothing, it said, and he was going to fail, fall to these ponies.
He looked up. Some of the townsponies were charging towards him again. He still had some magic left. He aimed at the familiar looking one wearing the pointy hat. There was a green glow as a blast of raw magic soared towards the pony.
It hit, and she vanished in a puff of blue smoke. The others continued charging. He fired at them. Some dodged, others were hit and they too vanished in puffs of smoke. And then he saw several turn into puffs of smoke without ever having been hit.
Illusions, he thought. But hiding what?
He closed his eyes. He didn’t need to see them to know. There were other ways, he knew. He could smell the magic.
“Fools!” Lamp Wick declared. Or someone using his voice did. “You will not stop me fr-”
“Oh, shut up. I’ve already got a headache.” Said a voice from right beside him. There was a sudden, strong impact in Lamp Wick’s stomach, and he collapsed onto the ground.
A tentative few minutes passed after Trixie knocked the last pony out, and soon various other ponies began showing up, some dragging other unconscious ponies with them, the other crazies.
“Hey,” she heard Berry Punch comment, “is that a curtain?”
“Part of one,” the distinctive voice of Rarity replied, “I had a need to tie this maniac up with something, for his own sake if nopony else’s, and a room full of odds and ends just lying around, so... I improvised.”
“I’m not even gonna ask.” Lyra said, as she saw the one Pinkie Pie had deposited, though her gaze was drawn to the large hammer Pinkie Pie had in her mouth. She looked over towards Mayor Scroll, who was talking with two pegasi.
“Um, hey, Ivory.”
“Is it about the sledgehammer Pinkie Pie is carrying?” The mayor replied, without looking at her.
“It is.”
“She has a license for it.” Scroll stated, her voice betraying absolutely no sign of concern or alarm about this. Lyra looked to Scroll, then to Pinkie, then to the almost certainly concussed nutjob at Pinkie’s hooves. After several seconds of consideration, she shook her head and went to sit next to Trixie.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Getting there.” Trixie replied. “Not how I thought tonight was going to go at all.”
She looked toward the small pile of unconscious crazies. “Except for having to kick somepony.”
Lyra frowned at the ponies. “What are we going to do with them, anyhow?”
“I sent a letter off to Luna. She’s going to send some ponies to take care of it.”
“Good. Good… It’s just…” Lyra stared at them, “have you seen their Cutie Marks?”
Trixie raised an eyebrow at Lyra. “No,” she said carefully, “I’ve been kind of busy. Why?”
Lyra motioned for her to follow, and walked over to one of the prone ponies. Trixie looked, and when she did, she frowned as well.
The hindquarters of one of the ponies, a light yellow earth pony, had on it what looked like a pie.
Trixie had to admit, that when it came to the Cutie Marks of ravening maniacs, it was generally expected they had suitable Cutie Marks. Daggers, or skulls, or something unpleasant looking with lots of black and dark red in it. Pies did not factor into the iconography of evil.
“Check this one.” Lyra said. Trixie looked. Lyra was pointing to a pegasus, whose mark was that of a pair of binoculars.
“Sensing a sort of pattern emerging here.” Trixie said. Lyra shook her head. Cheerilee walked over to them.
“And the pattern is there is no pattern.” She pointed to another, “that guy over there has a mark of fabric swatches. The guy you knocked out? He’s got a wick.”
Trixie looked along the ponies. Unconscious, and without their glowing eyes or the threat of imminent pain to draw the attention away, even in the vague glow of the gazebo lights, they didn’t look like a horde of ravening maniacs. They just looked ordinary. She looked into Cheerilee’s eyes.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked, hoping fervently the answer was no.
“That these were just ordinary ponies who were in the absolute wrong place in the wrong time?” Cheerilee asked. There was an unspoken mention of a certain young Countess Cheerilee knew, lingering in the air between them. “Definitely thinking in that direction. Would explain why they were so easy to stop, I suppose. Not that I’m complaining.”
“You know…” Lyra said, “I’ve been reading up on stuff. There are stories. Ponies walking in the wilds, or getting lost in the wrong woods. Going too far off the beaten track. Disappearing, then reappearing as complete maniacs.”
She looked at Trixie. “I really don’t think these ponies asked for this.”
“Who would?” Cheerilee murmured. “‘Excuse me, I would like to be completely insane, thank you very much. How much do I have to pay and where do I sign?’”
“There are stories about them, as well.” Lyra said. “You don’t wanna know how they end.”
“I’ve read some of them. I can guess.” Cheerilee replied.
Berry came walking past, a concerned look on her face. “Hey, Trixie,” she began, “just a quick question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you sure this is all of them?” she asked. Trixie felt a chill down her spine.
“Why?” she asked, even though she suspected she knew the answer.
“Just… I didn’t get a good look at these guys earlier, but I’d swear there were more than these.”
“Scroll sent Rainbow Dash off to check around town, see if anything had happened, catch any strays.” Lyra said.
There was a sudden sound of laughing. The ringleader of the ponies had stirred. Trixie looked to Cheerilee, who looked to Lyra.
“Something you wanna share with the class?” Cheerilee asked. He turned to look at her, and Trixie really wished he hadn’t. It was the eyes. Not the glowing green or the deep red of their irises, or the way there seemed to be (and she really hoped it was just a trick of the light, or trick of the dark, she supposed) little wisps of shadow at the corners, but the fact she could see them, look into them. With Corona, her eyes glowed, making it difficult to look back. But there was something about these eyes that was somehow worse. Maybe it was because Corona was an alicorn, because even looking at her, half-insane and drained of power, one got the sense of power and age. Maybe it was because she expected Corona to be insane. Whereas here it was looking at someone who, at some point, had been an ordinary pony until something had happened to his mind.
“You have no idea.” He grinned, “none of you. We will find it, and bring it back to our lord.”
“And what lord would this be?” Cheerilee asked. He smiled a particularly unpleasant smile.
“Tirek.”
It was probably just Trixie’s imagination that there was a sudden burst of wind, one that managed to chill her through her cape’s enchantments.
Then she heard Cheerilee snort, before just laughing completely. “Wow. Your information’s way out of date, buddy. Tirek’s stuck in Tartarus. And he really doesn’t want to leave.”
The pony blinked in alarm. “What? Really?” he said, his bombastic tone vanishing, eyes widening in shock. Suddenly it seemed like he had turned into a completely different pony.
“Yup.” Trixie nodded. “He’d seen better days. He looked like a wreck.”
“I-” the pony faltered, and then suddenly grimaced, as if somepony had struck him. “No. You’re lying! Tirek i-” he suddenly stopped. This might have had something to do with the fact that in a blur of pink, he found a surprisingly large sock being shoved into his mouth. There was several seconds of confused mumblings as he realized what’d happened (and judging from the mumblings, tried asking what had just happened).
“See what I did?” Pinkie Pie beamed.
“Yup,” Cheerilee said, carefully, “I can see. Maybe you could’ve waited a second or two, let him finish his crazy ranting.”
“I don’t think we’re going to get anything coherent from him anyway.” Trixie sighed. “Let Luna deal with these nuts.”
Several minutes away from the center of Ponyville, and the mildly dramatic events of the evening, one pony slunk through the shadows, green eyes darting this way and that as he crept slowly along. Several of the houses had lights on. The townsponies were aware of his presence, and for all he knew he was the last of them still around. Still looking for it.
Whatever “it” even was, he bitterly noted.
You will know, said a voice in his mind that could only have been his own, even if it sounded so distant.
What he did know was that he had a spell that was detecting something. Something powerful, if he had to guess. Something that had justified their going to this village.
A thought occurred to him that he should’ve known the names of the ponies he’d been with. It seemed important, and yet he didn’t. Not a one.
Soon he came to a house, which looked almost exactly like all the others. But there was… something about it that seemed different. The spell pinged in his mind. Whatever it was he was tracking, whatever it was that had brought them to this mad town, it was in there.
He looked at the door. The first instinct was to kick, to smash it to pieces. But he recalled he had a spell, one that could open locks. He decided to try it.
There was a tiny click, and the door handle gave no resistance. He walked inside.
There was a staircase leading upwards, and a side room with a smattering of chairs, and a couch, and a dim fire burning low in a fireplace, but not so low that even in the winter cold, it wasn’t warm.
It reminded him of something… something on the edge of his memory. And then there was a sensation like ice. The voice returned.
Irrelevant. It hissed.
He shook his head, and moved into the room. There was a little kitchen in the back. He decided to investigate that. The spell told him whatever he was following was close now.
He wondered where the ponies who lived in the house were. He looked about, and saw a bookcase, sitting against the staircase. There didn’t seem to be much on it, beyond one or two books, an odd dark grey rock thing which was green and jagged at one end, and a small, clear crystal ball. He frowned, feeling it should’ve at least had something in it, like a tiny building or something.
The icy sensation came back, and he moved through to the kitchen. There was a fridge, and a tiny sink, with dishes sitting in it. He was getting an eerie feeling that something wasn’t right.
The spell pinged again. It had found something new. And it was in the room. And was moving. Toward him.
And then it moved right past him. He looked about, frantically, but still couldn’t see anything.
There was a gentle click as the front door of the house shut. He whirled around, horn lighting up just in case to see nopony there. There was not.
“Good evening.” Said a voice from nowhere. A mare’s voice. It sounded calm. In fact, she almost sounded amused. “And who are you, to come visiting my house unannounced and uninvited?”
He looked everywhere, but there was still no sign of whoever was there. “I…” he hesitated, “I’m no-one.”
“Indeed? And what brings you to Ponyville?”
He tried to say something. He wasn’t sure what.
“What’s your name, stranger?” the voice inquired, an odd tone to it he didn’t like.
“I…” the icy feeling was getting worse. The voice was now worse, and it was like something was pressing against his head.
“You do have a name, yes?”
“Of course I do!” he shouted over the voice in his head.
“You do remember it, don’t you?”
“I…” he struggled to get out. There was something he was forgetting. Voices, faces. This strange house was reminding him of something, just out of reach. Things he should’ve known. Things he had to know.
There was a name. Torch Light. Was it his? It sounded like it could’ve been his. It felt familiar.
Fool, weakling. The voice roared. It wasn’t his voice, it never had been. But he’d been listening to it. She is distracting you. It said.
“What happened to you?” the mare asked, almost gently.
“I can’t!” he gasped, “I can’t remember.”
He’d been somepony else once. And not that long ago. There were memories of other ponies, and the more he found himself thinking of them, the more his head hurt.
And the memory came to him, this had happened before. The pain whenever he tried to remember. Why? What’d happened? What had happened to him?
He’d been travelling somewhere… no, he’d been looking for something, for someone… and there had been a noise, which he’d followed, and ponies, all with eyes glowing green, and then…
Worthless, the voice snarled.
He was curled up on the floor now. There was a silence punctuated only by the low crackle of the fire.
And then the mare’s voice murmured in the gloom. “Damn you, Tirek.”
At this, the voice inside Torch Light hissed, and he snapped up. “How do you know that name?”
The mare gave no response. He looked around wildly, to see where they were. There was a noise behind him.
It was only a fork sliding out of place in the sink, but Torch Light was already half-mad with panic and uncertainty, and it was enough to make him fire off a spell in the noise’s direction.
Luck works in strange ways sometimes.
For example, a spell managing to hit somepony it was aimed at after having missed them.
Or a spell managing to avoid its intended target, bounce off a hanging pan, and hitting a pony in the middle of the face before they had a chance to react, thereby actually hitting what its caster had been planning to attack in the first place.
Just because it’s lucky didn’t necessarily mean it was good luck.
Up in her room, Thesis had been keeping quiet, just as her sister had told her. She wasn’t sure why she had to be quiet, but she was.
So she’d heard the sound of somepony speaking from downstairs, and tried to listen in, without leaving her room, because obviously then her sister would’ve been upset with her.
And then she heard the scream.
Torch Light stared at the sight in front of him, trying to determine what it meant. All the things he’d been thinking about had evaporated like dew in sunlight at the sound of the scream, as his wild spell had ricocheted and managed to hit a pony he hadn’t even seen, but who was the one who’d been talking to him.
She had black fur, and a black mane, and eyes that glowed orange. At least, he thought they’d glowed, but she’d slammed them shut before he could get a proper look in. She looked tall, at least by pony standards, but he could tell because she was curled up, head wrapped up in her forelegs.
And the noise she was making. It was almost like a whimper, except not. If he had to put a hoof on it, he might’ve said it was like she was trying to scream, only screaming was too painful.
Every instinct he had was telling to flee, while he had the chance. Meanwhile, the voice in the back of his head was entirely gone, like it had never been.
It felt strange. He couldn’t remember a time without that voice there… which would’ve probably meant more if he could remember much of anything at all.
Fleeing sounded like a good idea to him. But… wasn’t he supposed to be searching for something as well?
Thesis wasn’t sure whose scream she’d just heard. She didn’t want to think it was Midnight, and she wasn’t sure, even if it sounded like it might have been. Taking Smartypants, she scurried under her bed. It just seemed like a good idea.
Only seconds after she got under the bed did she realize this was not, for it was incredibly dusty under there, and it tickled her nose.
She sneezed, loudly (and with enough force to bump her head against the underside of the bed).
Torch Light had examined the kitchen, where the only thing he’d found (besides a sink full of dishes) was a small door apparently leading down to a basement. He’d been about to investigate it when he heard the muffled sound of somepony sneezing, and what sounded an awful lot like someone shouting in surprise and pain.
There was somepony else in the house.
He stood still for several seconds, and tried his dowsing spell again. There was the signature, the strange one he’d followed to the house. It was above him. And… next to him?
He was about to turn and head towards the staircase when he noticed two rather important details.
The first was that he couldn’t move. His body was wrapped in a soft orange glow.
The second was the mare on the floor had stopped whimpering. Now she was making a very different noise.
Specifically, she was growling. A deep, guttural thing that no pony could ever have made.
The next thing he knew, something tremendously large and angry had slammed into him, and from there he slammed into the small sink. And there was the curious scent of something burning.
Thesis heard the roaring sound, and the crashing sound, followed by some smashing noises. In the dark under her bed, she covered her hooves over her eyes and shut her eyes.
This did mean she didn’t hear the other sounds, such as the sound of breaking glass. But after several seconds, she became aware the noises had stopped.
There was a long, horrible silence. She wasn’t sure what to do. And Smartypants didn’t offer any solutions.
Seconds passed. Then minutes. There were odd noises from downstairs. Part of her wanted to see what was going on, but another didn’t, and just wanted Midnight or Trixie or Twilight or somepony to show up and say everything was alright now.
She jolted when there was a knocking at her bedroom door, her horn sparking just a little bit in her surprise and her wings flaring.
“Thesis?” came what sounded like Midnight’s voice, though it sounded off somehow. Deeper, slightly, though that could’ve been because of the door between them, she thought. “Thesis, can you hear me?”
She tried saying yes, but all that came out was a small squeak. She tried again. “Yes.”
There was another terrible pause. “Don’t come downstairs.” Midnight said, “there’s… it’s a little messy down there.”
“Is everything alright?” she asked.
“Yes.” Midnight eventually replied. “Everything is fine now. How are you?”
Thesis looked about her room. “I’m okay.” She said, though she didn’t feel okay. “Are you okay?”
“I… I will be fine.” Midnight said, eventually. “I’ll clean up downstairs, and then how about I make you some hot chocolate. How does that sound?”
Thesis looked at the door. “Okay,” she said hesitantly.
She waited until she was certain her sister had moved away from the door before she came out from under the bed.
“So,” Lyra asked, “did Princess Luna happen to say how long the ponies she’d be sending would take to get here?”
“I figure about an hour and a half, or thereabouts.” Trixie said, “assuming she manages to send them right away.”
“Really hoping she does.” Lyra said, “The sooner these guys are gone, the sooner I can relax.”
Trixie murmured in agreement, if only to avoid any potential discussion on how Lyra was going to relax. Mayor Scroll and a small gathering of Ponyville’s citizens were keeping an eye on the beaten maniacs, who oddly seemed content to stay where they were, even the ones that’d previously been happy to blast everything in sight. Well, maybe content wasn’t the right word.
She, meanwhile, just wanted to go home, possibly grab a book and curl up under her bedsheets. Even though it was barely somewhere past eight (at least as far as she could tell), it felt like much later to her. But a thought had been eating at the back of her mind while the stray crazies had been rounded up, that of Thesis’ well-being.
As she made motion to go, she saw something, on the far side of the square. A pony, running toward them. A pony with glowing green eyes. She wasn’t the only one who noticed him, though. Several others in the square tensed, and before he could get close, a multi-coloured blur knocked him to the ground.
“Nice work, Rainbow Dash.” Mayor Scroll said to Ponyville’s weather manager, as she struggled with the pony.
“Must’ve – hey, quit it!” Rainbow Dash yelled, as the pony struggled madly under her. Curiously, he didn’t seem to actually be noticing her so much, given the way he was kicking. “Must’ve missed this guy.”
“The eyes!” The madpony yelled, to no-one in particular, as his hooves dug into the ground trying to find purchase to escape. “The eyes!”
“I don’t suppose there’s anypony who has a calming spell available.” The mayor asked.
“If I did, trust me, I’d be using it on myself.” Trixie replied.
“Maybe he looked in a mirror.” Rainbow Dash grunted, “Seriously, buddy, stay still already!”
But wherever it was the pony’s mind was, it wasn’t anywhere where he could hear what Rainbow Dash was saying, and he continued fighting for several seconds more, until whatever energy he had finally ran out, and he suddenly slackened.
“This had better be the last of these guys.” Rainbow Dash muttered darkly.
“Best put him with the others.” Mayor Scroll frowned. The multi-coloured weather manager nodded, and lifted him up.
Trixie watched as they carried him over to where the others were, and then began walking away. If somepony needed her, they could find her quickly enough. And if it was a serious situation, she’d probably notice the screaming anyway.
The walk from the center of Ponyville to Midnight’s house wasn’t far, by Ponyville standards, but in the dark and quiet it was enough for doubts to start getting into Trixie’s mind, even as she tried dismissing them as just ridiculous fears. This didn’t stop her from accelerating her pace from trot to canter.
As she approached the house, she noticed something that made her momentarily stop dead. The house had one large front window, for the single room in the front, and even in the dark Trixie could see it was smashed open. The sudden cold Trixie felt had nothing to do with the weather. She rushed over toward the house. There was still a light inside. She looked at the front door, which seemed remarkably unbroken.
She made her way inside, noting distantly the door was unlocked. And then stopped dead again at the sight she saw on entering.
Thesis was sitting on one of the chairs in the sitting room, a small mug of something held in her magic, a column of steam wafting off it. She looked totally unharmed in any way.
“Trixie!” she grinned, setting down her drink and bounding over towards her. As she returned the surprisingly strong hug the filly gave her, Trixie noticed the kitchen in the back, and specifically the sink, which looked like something had smashed it, or possibly smashed into it. And sitting nearby was Midnight.
She didn’t look like her usual self. For one, her mane looked dishevelled. And that prompted curiosity in Trixie’s mind, since she couldn’t recall ever having seen the mare’s mane with so much as a hair out of place before, regardless of the circumstances. First thing in the morning, late at night, after running through the streets of Canterlot, her mane always had looked like it just been brushed. Somehow, now, she looked off in a way Trixie couldn’t put her hoof on, but which made her want to keep her distance.
“Lulamoon.” She said, on seeing Trixie. And now that she heard it, there was an odd edge to her voice as well.
“Hey.” Trixie said in reply.
“Little one, if you wouldn’t mind, run along now. Lulamoon and I need to have a talk in private.”
Thesis looked between the two of them, her smile faltering. Trixie decided not to comment that it was too early for going to bed in her book.
“Okay…” Thesis said.
“Don’t forget your drink.” Midnight informed her. The foal looked surprised, and turned back to retrieve her mug, glancing cautiously between the two mares before she scurried towards the stairs.
“Would you like some hot chocolate?” Midnight asked, after she was gone and both had heard the sound of a door shutting upstairs. “I don’t have any strawberry milk, but I have this recipe involving cream. Fresh, before you ask.”
Trixie wasn’t going to admit it, but it had been one of the first thoughts to cross her mind. “No. Thanks,” she managed to say.
“How is she?” she asked.
“Thesis?” Midnight replied. “Startled, if unharmed, by the goings-on of tonight. That is what the hot chocolate was in aid of. But otherwise, she seems her normal self.”
Trixie found her gaze moving to the front window, and the curtains ruffling in the breeze created by its absence. Her gaze turned back to Midnight, who was moving a mug of her own through the air. Quite suddenly, her horn stopped glowing, and the cup fell to the floor.
“Scheiss.” She muttered. Trixie raised an eyebrow. Her understanding of griffon was not utterly great, but she still knew just enough to know what had just been said.
“You speak griffon?” she asked.
“Enough.” Midnight said, as she walked over to a small cupboard. “I had always assumed my career would eventually require me to speak it on a daily basis, one way or another.”
She removed a rag from the cupboard, and began mopping up the spilled drink. “I suppose Luna thought it was a better idea to have me somewhere she could keep an eye on me.”
“What happened?” Trixie asked, “I mean, here.”
“One of those ponies made their way here.” Midnight said, “Whether by chance or design, I don’t know. I confronted him. I was hit with the same type of spell you were struck with. In the confusion, he escaped.”
“Through the window.” Trixie noted.
“I think I startled him.” Midnight said, and Trixie could’ve sworn she saw a slight curve to the edge of the mare’s mouth.
Trixie thought back to the sight she’d seen in the town square, of the manic pony struggling to escape Rainbow Dash. “Just a tiny bit.”
Midnight stared at the broken sink. “Ten years.” She said, eventually. “Ten years of trying to keep my emotions in check. I’ve tried everything. Ten years of breathing exercises, of meditation, of mantras, even aromatherapy on one occasion. And one spell was all it took to undo that.”
She brushed a hoof against the sink. She smiled. Or at the very least, the corners of her mouth pulled back to show some of her teeth. Trixie just wasn’t certain the resulting expression could count as a smile without calling in professionals for analysis. “And you know what? It actually felt… good.”
Slowly, the teeth faded away. “Aside from when he kicked me in the face and escaped.” She looked at Trixie. “The rest of them have been subdued?”
Trixie nodded, still trying to parse what she’d just heard. “Yeah. They’ve been rounded up. Luna’s sending some ponies to deal with them. Like I said, this sort of thing happens in Ponyville all the time.”
Midnight nodded, as she disposed of the soiled rag. “That would explain why the realtor was so eager to sell. And why this house was so affordable.”
Trixie thought about that. The only realtor in Ponyville she knew of was a pony by the name of Lotso Lots (and she could only assume his parents must’ve been slightly evil to inflict a name like that on their son), and from what she’d seen of him, though they’d never done business beyond him giving her his card, it sounded like him.
But then another thought came back to her, of certain aspects of the evening. “You know,” she said, her voice dropping low for a moment, “with all the excitement we never finished our discussion at Berry’s.”
“This ‘truce’ that you mentioned.” Midnight stated.
“That’s the one.” Trixie sighed, wearily.
“Truce would imply conflict.” The dark blue mare said. “Do you see us as being in conflict?”
Trixie had to fight down the urge to say they were in conflict the same way a performer was in conflict with a heckler. She was feeling tremendously tired and irritable. She wanted to go home, she wanted to get some sleep. Her headache was still clinging to life. She really wanted a drink of bourbon. And what she really, really wanted was to not be in a room with a pony she hated who’d just admitted she had enjoyed temporarily losing her mind.
She took a deep breath. Be the better pony, she told herself. Of course, she already was the better pony, but that wasn’t exactly the point.
She looked at the broken sink. “Which of you did that? You or the crazy pony?”
“By technicality, a combination of the two of us. He was the one who damaged it, after I tackled him into it.”
Trixie nodded. She walked over towards the mare, who was now using her magic to (with notable delicacy) pick up the coffee mug, and set it on the nearest counter.
“You know,” she began, “my aunt has a saying. If you aren’t willing to shed blood for the sake of your children, you aren’t willing to call yourself a parent.”
Midnight looked genuinely baffled. “Your aunt said that often enough when you were a foal that you remember this?”
“Yeah.” Trixie shook her head, “look, the point I was going to make is this: I don’t trust you. I don’t like you. I am still massively pissed with you and that’s not about to change. But…” the words she had been thinking of faltered, and she had to try hard to get them out. “I think… maybe, probably, on the balance of probability, you are genuine about wanting to look after Thesis.”
“I am not doing a good job in that regard.” Midnight said.
“No.” Trixie said immediately. “You’re pretty terrible at it.”
“And as I said earlier, I may not be able to make amends for my misdeeds, but that does not absolve me of the need to try. So, in regards to your “truce”… yes. My answer is yes.”
Trixie let out a sigh of relief she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in. “Good. Thanks.”
She felt a gust of cold air go through the room, and her gaze turned to the window again. “You know,” she began, “I know-”
She stopped herself. The last thing she wanted Midnight to know was that one specific window in her residence had been smashed so many times over the last year she was now on a first name basis with Windowpane the repair pony (well, it wasn’t the last thing, but it was definitely something she didn’t want to get out).
“I know of a pony who could fix your window.” She removed her hat and rummaged around in the top section for the business cards. You never knew when you needed a business card for one purpose or another, after all, and as Ponyville’s local representative, she had more than a few lying around (even more so, it seemed, since she’d been made a knight). “Here.” She thrust the card toward Midnight. “Take it; I’ve got dozens of the things.”
“Very thoughtful of you, Lulamoon.”
“Well,” Trixie shuffled her hooves, “you did get me somewhere safe after I got knocked out. This makes us square.”
She looked at the business card, and felt if she was going to inflict Midnight on Windowpane, she might at least say something on his behalf. “I’ve not met him,” she lied, “but I’ve heard from around town he does good work. Mind you,” she added, “I’m pretty sure he’s the only window repair pony in town.”
“Thank you.” Midnight said. Trixie stared in mock amazement, which she hoped hid the actual amazement.
“Wow. That spell must have been strong.” Her grin was broken by a sudden yawn. “Anyway, I should get going. See you around, Midnight.”
“Be seeing you, Lulamoon.”
She turned to leave, her hoof hitting something. She looked down to see an odd glass ball, not unlike a snowglobe, lying on the floor. She picked it up, and noticed it was entirely empty. There wasn’t even a tiny inscription on the inside of the globe, or the underside.
It figured, she thought, that any decoration Midnight had would’ve been as weird as her. She placed it on the nearby bookshelf.
“Right, going. Let’s try not to do this again, shall we?”
Trixie stepped out into the night, trying not to think about the events of the evening. As she walked along through the snow, parts of her mind which had been sitting inactive started to tick over, now that she was no longer focusing on getting out of a room with a crazy pony in it. She had agreed to a truce. She’d agreed to be the better pony.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t, in her own way, help Midnight get accustomed to Ponyville. After all, where was the harm in that?
And, feeling warmer already, Trixie began to smile.
Thesis heard the sound of the front door closing, and silence for a moment, before she heard the sound of hooves on the stairs. Soon her sister appeared at her door.
“Hey,” she said, waving a hoof.
“How are you feeling, little one?” Midnight asked. Thesis’ wings flapped a little.
“I’m okay, I guess.” She murmured. She looked at the empty mug sitting on her bedside table. “I liked the hot chocolate, though it tasted a little funny.”
“There was cream in it. A little extra treat, after such an experience.”
Thesis smiled uncertainly at her sister. “So, what did that pony want? The other guy, not Trixie.”
“He was looking for something.” Midnight said. “He and others. But I wouldn’t worry, little one, they won’t be back.”
Thesis tried not to think about the scream she’d heard earlier. “You promise?”
“Lulamoon and her friends have made sure of that.”
“Okay.” Thesis said, if slightly uncertain. But if Trixie and her sister were agreeing on something that probably meant it was true. Maybe.
“Now then,” Midnight said, “it’s almost nine o’clock. Bed time is no later than ten.”
“But I-” Thesis was cut off from declaring herself not tired by a sudden yawn. “Alright,” she grumbled.
“I would not advise missing the weekend, little one.”
“Hey,” Thesis said, “can you…”
Midnight raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Well, it’s just…” she trailed off into incoherent mumbling.
“Can I what, little one?”
“Story. A story. Can you tell me a story?” She managed to get out.
“I am not much of a storyteller.” Midnight said.
“You must know a story.” Thesis said. “Didn’t your mom ever tell you stories?”
For a moment, she could’ve sworn there was an odd expression on Midnight’s face, if only for a moment.
“Trixie told me stories about stuff she and the Element Bearers did.” Thesis ventured.
Midnight gave her a long, careful look. “What kind of stories?”
“Well, there was one about this town called Oaton where Trixie was a hero a- what?” she asked, on seeing Midnight’s expression change.
“What exactly did Lulamoon tell you about Oaton?” her sister asked. There was something in her tone that reminded Thesis of the way Miss Cheerilee got when catching somepony in class doing something wrong.
“Something about somepony coming to her house, and singing a song, and then there were these ponies who were lumber. I don’t remember all of it. It was a really long story, and it was all twisty. And I kinda… fell asleep the first time she told me it.”
“It is a long story.” Midnight said, “and certain aspects of it are… not appropriate for foals.”
“I thought the part where she fought a basilisk was cool.” Thesis said, feeling she needed to defend Trixie. Midnight gave her another funny look.
“Yes.” She finally remarked. “Unfortunately, little one, I know no stories involving anything so dramatic as Lulamoon’s exploits, especially when she is the one telling them. As I said, I am no storyteller.”
“Okay.” Thesis murmured. “It’s alright. I can just read that book Miss Twilight got me for Hearth’s Warming. I’ve already read it, but I like it…”
Midnight looked to the book, sitting on the bedside table. “If you wanted, I could read it for you.” She offered.
“You don’t have to.” Thesis said, “I’m sure you’d much rather do something else.”
“I feel I should. No, I want to. I’ve been remiss in my duties as your sibling.”
“You taught me how to use magic.” Thesis smiled. “Well, you taught me how to lift apples without breaking them. And you made dinner. And some hot chocolate.”
“Well argued, little one.” Midnight said, and Thesis could’ve sworn she saw what might’ve been a smile for a second. “But you asked for a story, and I shall try to provide. Just allow me a few moments to attend to some household matters.”
“Okay.” Thesis smiled weakly, not wanting to seem ungrateful. But there was something about the way her sister was looking that made her feel maybe she was the one who needed to go to bed. All the same, she quickly curled up under her bedsheets and drew Smartypants in close.
It was a few minutes later when Midnight returned to Thesis’ bedroom, stopping in the doorway as she took in the sight before her of the foal very definitely asleep, curled up with Smartypants held between her hooves.
There was the tiniest of murmurs from the dark blue mare, who closed the door as quietly as possible, and made her way back downstairs to the living room.
After a few seconds, her horn lit up, slowly and calmly, as she began casting silencing spells.
“Alright, she’s asleep.” She said once she was done. “I think you can stop now.”
“Thank goodness for that.” Spell Nexus declared, as he reappeared, his horn glowing brightly as the cloaking spell around him dissipated. He gingerly touched a hoof against his horn, and quickly retracted it.
“Thank you for the assistance, Professor.” Midnight said, looking at her own fur, which was now black.
“Well, I was hardly going to ignore such a frantic call.” He smiled, glancing toward the broken window. He walked over toward Midnight, and his horn lit up again. “Now, let’s see what we can see…”
His horn lit up gently again. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m f-…” Midnight began, only to stop. “I’m… I’m recovering.” She eventually managed. Nexus raised an eyebrow at her.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Midnight sighed. “Feeling disoriented. Tired. Angry. Like somepony broke into my house and kicked me in the face. And broke my window.”
Nexus nodded. “Any headaches?”
“Actually, no.”
Nexus hummed to himself. “What about dizziness, nausea, hallucinations? Urge to laugh insanely or conquer Equestria?”
“No, Professor Nexus. I’m just feeling incredibly irritable at the moment.” Midnight said, witheringly. The stallion murmured, as his horn dimmed again.
“Alright. I’m no physician, but from what I can tell all the normal wards and spells are still in place, despite taking that disorientation spell to the face. Your spell casting should be back to normal, if not now then by morning. Otherwise I recommend sleep, plenty of fluids, and an avoidance of spells to the face from now on.”
“Thank you for the advice.” Midnight replied. The other pony looked at the window.
“Where did they even come from?”
“No idea.” Nexus glanced askew at her.
“You don’t know?” he began to smile slightly, “You didn’t see them coming?”
Midnight shook her head. “No. The first I knew of them was when they blew up the door to the Punch Bowl.”
“Really? First Thesis, and now this…”
Midnight stared levelly at him. “I told you, just like I told Luna, the more things go on, the more something like this was bound to happen.”
“And it wasn’t that you weren’t paying enough attention?”
There was a sudden low hum in the room, as various items began shaking. Nexus looked around the room, and then straight at Midnight, whose expression was carefully neutral.
“No, Professor.” She looked around the room, and sighed. The hum began to fade. “I suppose that’s what I get for saying nothing would go wrong in Ponyville.” The mare scoffed. “And here I thought the worst that would happen was Trixie would hit me in the face.”
“So, what are they?” Nexus asked.
“Oh, that’s easy. Definitely Tirek’s work. They reek of dark magic. I just can’t figure out what brought them here…”
There was a long silence, the only sound the curtains fluttering in the night breeze, and a few stray crackles from the last embers in the fire.
“They weren’t tracking the phylactery?”
Midnight shook her head. “No. We scrubbed it completely. I made sure there were no tracking spells of any kind on it.”
She drummed a hoof against the floor. “It’s possible there were a few ponies we might’ve missed, but unless they have some method of tracking we don’t know about… I think they might’ve been brought here by Thesis.”
Spell Nexus hummed. “Are you sure?”
“Not entirely, but… she’s a miniature alicorn. All she’d need to do is show off her magic just enough. And she was surrounded by other foals. She’s the most likely reason.” She tapped a hoof against the floor. “The alternative is someone or something sent them here on purpose.”
The older pony began to frown.
“You really think Falling Star did this?”
“I…” Midnight began, “No. It’s ridiculous. She doesn’t know I’m here. If she’s like anypony in Canterlot, she wouldn’t even have reason to know Ponyville exists.”
“But you still think she’s out there.”
Midnight nodded. “She’s still alive. She has to be.”
“I’ll take your word for that.” Nexus said, dryly. “But I think we can rule out her involvement in all this, don’t you?”
Midnight paused, then sighed. “I suppose. But all we’ve got at the moment is speculation, unless there’s something to be gleamed from those ponies.”
“Didn’t you examine the one who got in here?” Nexus asked.
“No.” Midnight sighed again. “I considered it, but… the dark magic in him was very strong. I was… hesitant to try anything on him.”
“I see.”
“And he kicked me in the face, I point out.” She added, rubbing a hoof against her jaw. “Hell of a kick, too.”
“I gathered.” Nexus was idly examining the bookshelf. “And how did he manage to get into your house in the first place?”
“He had a lock-picking spell. And…” Midnight looked about the room, “I was curious.”
“Curious.” Nexus repeated.
“I wanted to ask him some questions.”
Something that could almost have been an amused smile spread across Nexus’ face. “I hope you got your answers.”
He looked away, the smile slowly fading. “What about the rest of them?”
“I didn’t get a good look, not as good as Trixie did, but… they were practically pickled in dark magic.”
Nexus raised an eyebrow at that. “Oh?”
“I don’t think there’d be any coherent information to get out of them, one way or another. Judging by that one, if there is anything of the original ponies anywhere in there, it’s not going to be much. Probably just a small fragment of their original selves, beating against the inside of their head.”
Nexus sighed. “That’s unfortunate to hear.”
There was another pause. “There’s something else. The one that got away saw me.”
Nexus jolted, and turned to look at Midnight. “Saw you?”
Midnight waved a hoof at herself. “This. If I know Luna, she’ll try and do something for them. I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done for them, but… if that one pony remembers enough, in just enough detail…”
Nexus frowned again. “I see.” He intoned, his voice leaden.
Seconds ticked past. “I’m going back to Canterlot.” Nexus finally said, “if there’s still a problem in the morning, then call, and I’ll see what I or Fleur can do.”
He raised a hoof toward the small crystal ball sitting on Midnight’s shelf, then stopped and looked back to her. “And I did mean it about sleeping. Get some rest. If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”
And with that, he touched a hoof to the teleportation beacon, and with a flash of light, he vanished.
Sometimes it is the smallest things that can make a difference. For example, when Torch Light had kicked his attacker in the face, and sprinted toward her window in a frenzied attempt to escape, he had been so distracted and confused that he had inadvertently collided with the mare’s bookcase, dislodging the teleportation beacon that had been sitting there, sending it falling to the floor. This hadn’t been enough to cause any serious, noticeable and immediate damage, not any that would’ve been noticed unless someone had thought to seriously check. And the initial crack was so small that really, only the most scrupulous of examinations would’ve turned up anything at all.
So it went unnoticed.
Several of Princess Luna’s Night Guard turned up almost an hour and a half after the initial letter had been sent, in a special armored train for transporting the prisoners.
Questions were asked of those who’d been present or involved (or most of them, at any rate), and the group of ponies were, with some care, taken to the train station and placed in the specially prepared cell.
Curiously, the ponies themselves didn’t seem to offer any resistance. One was ranting madly to himself, and another seemed to gibber, but the rest seemed… well, defeated, for lack of a better word. Though the impression that came across seemed also, to more than one pony, that they were like puppets which’d had their strings cut.
And that, as far as most of Ponyville’s citizens were concerned, was the end of it.
Only the mayor, Cheerilee, and the night shift of Ponyville’s weather patrol paid any attention to the train as it pulled out of the station.
In the dark of the night, the train chuntered along its route, from Ponyville to Canterlot. Normally, this was a journey that took between an hour and a half, assuming there were no delays or incidents. And the journey to Ponyville had been utterly quiet and uneventful, so what were the chances something could’ve happened in the time it had taken them to fetch the crazies and gather statements that would’ve caused any delays on the way back?
A good distance from the train line, on one of the many little hills that dotted the countryside, eyes were watching the train’s progress carefully.
“Okay,” murmured a black-furred pony as he adjusted the binoculars he was holding, from the cover of a tarpaulin (dark green rather than black, but in the middle of the night, most would’ve been unable to tell the difference). “I see them.”
“Yeah,” came the response next to him, in an unmistakable Manehatten accent. Between the two ponies sat what looked like a crossbow. Only a few things distinguished it, but foremost was the arrow. Or rather, the arrowhead, which was a large chunk of crystal, which even in the dark glowed with a faint purple light.
“Can you make the shot?”
Bitter Orange Squash turned to look at Frolic Flame (presently thinking of trying out “Fireball” to see if it worked). “I can make the shot.” She muttered darkly, “’less you wanna take it.”
Frolic shook his head. “Just wait for the moment.”
Orange grunted, as she gently took the crossbow up, a difficult prospect when only working with hooves, even when the crossbow had clearly been designed with that eventuality in mind. But to an outside view, it looked an awful lot like Orange was handling something she thought might explode at the slightest provocation.
In the distance, the train slowly moved across the landscape.
It was dark. It was quiet. The night sky was calm and clear. Besides the two of them, there was no-one and nothing else around.
“Okay…” Frolic eventually said. “Ready… now!”
There was the sound of a bolt being let loose, and the two watched as the purple glow quickly vanished from sight, as it headed towards the train.
The guards were cautious, but even so they were beginning to relax, now that it was clear their captives weren’t going to be much of a problem. They didn’t notice the small purple crystal hurtling towards the train, and with the sounds of a steam train going at full speed, none of them would’ve been able to notice the almost imperceptible sound of crystal going “tink” against metal as it hit the prison car.
They did notice the portion of train suddenly vanishing in a bright purple flash, though. But by then, it was a little too late.
There is a rule to teleporting. Actually, as Twilight Sparkle would’ve more accurately explained, there are many rules to teleporting. But for the train car that had just been teleported, the most important of those rules was the conservation of momentum. An object being teleported retains whatever speed it was going at.
Or, to put it another way, “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out”.
The train had been going at some speed before one of its carriages found itself teleported by a considerable distance. This meant on its reappearance, it did not stop suddenly, or gracefully.
Inside the carriage, the two guards standing (well, sitting) watch over the captives found themselves being rolled over as the carriage made its unhappy landing.
There was several seconds of crashing, shaking, the occasional terrified yelp from ponies, clanking, and finally juddering as the carriage came to a stop, slamming into the ground.
(And because even in situations such as these, there are things that must happen, the silence was immediately broken by the sound of one of the remaining wheels falling off its axle.)
“What the hay was that?” muttered one of the guards, a pony by the name of Steel Sheath, as he clambered to his hooves, checking to make sure nothing was broken or injured.
“Search me.” Came the response of his comrade-in-arms, who was looking at the jumbled pile that was the prisoners, who’d been smushed up into one corner by their sudden change in transit. There were a few groans, and swears, as they tried untangling themselves from one another.
“It’s him!” Lamp Wick beamed eerily, once he’d disentangled himself. “Our lord Tirek has saw fit to rescue us!”
“Please shut up.” Groaned Steel, looking to one of the small windows in the car, trying to see if anypony or anything was out there. His co-worker was doing the same.
“See anything?”
Sheath looked out. It was dark, but what he couldn’t see was any lights in the distance. His knowledge of central Equestria was maybe not as absolutely up-to-date as it could’ve been, and he might have been a little dizzy from the carriage’s acrobatics, but he would’ve sworn there were plenty of towns around Canterlot itself (relatively speaking), which should’ve been visible in the distance. Silently hoping his working guess was wrong, he tried to look out the other side of the coach.
There was a sinking feeling as the view was taken up by the night sky, the moon and constellations hanging against a purple backdrop, and no Canterhorn. Indeed, no mountains of any kind.
So, his best guess was they had been teleported some distance away. He didn’t regard himself as an expert on teleportation, but he was pretty sure only somepony like a princess had the power to teleport large objects great distances. Otherwise, he’d have heard about it at some point, right?
Like a princess. The words stuck in his thoughts and refused to leave. Like Corona. She could teleport, couldn’t she? Everypony in Canterlot had seen her teleport away on the Longest Night, and there were rumours (though he didn’t believe them) that she’d managed to teleport into the middle of the Night Court a while back.
Of course, that did leave the question of why Corona would bother teleporting train coaches around, but she was insane.
Steel Sheath looked to his partner, who was looking at the crazies. They were being very quiet. Before, it had been a sort of defeated quiet, like there was nothing they had to say. Now, it was a different quiet. A nervous quiet. No, not nervous… tense, even terrified. They were all staring in one direction, their creepy green eyes fixed on the wall of the coach.
“One of us has to go out there.” Sheath said. “See where we are.”
The other guard nodded, and drew his sword. He picked a lantern from the wall and lit it, before stepping outside.
“He is here…” Lamp Wick murmured.
There was a noise from outside. Then there was a very long and horrible silence.
Steel stared at the ponies sitting in the cell, and then to the spare lantern hanging from the wall. He gritted his teeth. There was nothing for it, but for him to go outside.
He walked out into the cool night air and looked about. Just in front of him was the massive groove in the earth the train carriage had dug on arrival, and nothing else, besides darkness.
He turned, and found the ladder to reach the top of the coach was still there, undamaged by its journey. With the lantern held in his mouth, he carefully made his way up, to see if he could find any sign of his co-worker, or even where he was (if it was possible to tell in the dark).
Soon, he reached the top, and looked about. There was no sign of his fellow guard.
Then, from behind him, there was a sound. He turned, and the last thing he saw was a flash of gold. Then everything went dark.
Inside the coach, the huddled ponies heard a noise from outside, followed by the sound of something rolling across the side of the roof, follow a second later by something glasslike shattering on the ground.
“It is him.” Lamp Wick insisted. “Tirek has seen our loyalty and come to free us.”
“No,” Torch Light murmured, and there was something in the way he said it that drew the attention of the others.
The far wall of the coach began to creak and groan. There was a great tearing sound, as the wall was torn and tossed away, with no apparent effort.
For a moment, the gathering of ponies stared at the sight before them, as the remains of the wall were thrown aside. But it was Torch Light who screamed, when he saw the glowing golden eyes staring at them.
“Tirek?” Lamp Wick asked.
The black furred and black maned pony standing before them growled. “Not exactly.”
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I'm calling it, considering the glowing green eyes and lack of memory. There is only one MLP villain who does such things and it's not Tirek.
Technically there's no particular reason why Trixie should be bad at teleporting herself, but on a meta level I want to keep her repetoire very different from Twilight's, an so she favors invisibility and other illusioncraft instead of the conjuration and transmutation that Twilight seems to favor. But I still want an in-universe explenation for why Trixie doesn't learn such an obviously useful skill, and "she just sucks at it" leaves open plenty of comedic opportunities.
"That's a lie! I was terribly scathed in most of them!"
"That is not a word."
"Not my fault Equestrian is the drunken product of Erdling, Unicorne, and Pigasa!"
Paretheticals are kind of weird to see in dialogue. Just a note, I don't think it's wrong, per se, just kind of weird.
[[[Sweeny Todd Intensifies]]]
Wait, was she serious about the time travel stuff from last chapter?
Well, technically he'd be fine with leaving, he just knows that right now he's badly outclassed by Luna or, really, any sufficiently powerful being (if Trixie played her cards right she might be able to take him).
9844934
Scathed is actually a word, according to the Old Father's Wiktionary.
"Past participle of scathe."
"Where'd you come from?"
"... I don't know. I was just in my bedroom, minding my own business and then all of a sudden I was here..."
Whatever gave you that impression?
<shifty glances>
She might've just been being presumptive about Lyra and BonBon.
<more shifty glances>
She said she was making it up in a panic. And if we can't take somepony like that at her word...