In Reflection, The Same

by Faedelaide

So Cometh the King of the Dead

Twilice watched helplessly as the group dragged Twilight's unconscious body back towards the cabin. He could faintly hear the muffled sounds of arguing from within Twilight's head. After trying his hardest to glean something... anything from their barely audible bickering, Twilice finally gave up.

He was so, so close. He could taste freedom... and those crystal loving, grass munching, kingdom crashing, life ruining wretches took it from him again! Of course it was that disgusting crystal princess and her mindless drones that were going to do him in again.

He must have been blinded by Twilight's mind not to see it sooner... yes, that was it. Never in his countless years of living had he met an entity with as labyrinthine a mind as hers, and it was only made worse by this Boiuna forsaken ice. A wily mind wasn't difficult to conquer were Twilice at full power, but it seemed this ice would stand tall to its last second. How infuriating.

Of course Twilice had figured out the ice's power of absorption many years ago, but the true difficulty came from wearing the spell down. No spell was perfect of course, there were always small mistakes present in even the most practiced incantations. A slip of the tongue, a wrong pronunciation, even a crack of the voice was enough to provide a point of weakness in your average spell, but Ma Vie's spell was anything but average. If he didn't know any better, Twilice might have thought Ma Vie had cast her spell perfectly, but he did know better. The weak spots that were present in her spell were minute, incomprehensibly so to all but the most powerful aether magicians. Fortunately, Ma Vie had gifted Twilice, as well as the others within the Wall, never ending life, so long as they stayed within the ice's protective embrace. This might have been torture to anyone else, a fate worse than death, but to Twilice, it was exactly what he needed. With all the time in the world now at his disposal, Twilight spent his time probing every micrometer of his cell, looking for any weak link, no matter how small.

It took what must have been hundreds of years for him to find every weak link, and thousands more to wear down the ice, weakening the spell until now, where it was nothing more than a shadow of its former self. To Twilice, this was a hollow victory. Ma Vie had gotten what she wanted: Time. Twilice might not have been upset by this if the ice hadn't started weaking his already cast spells. All the thousands of individuals under his thumb slowly faded away as his hypnosis spell wore off. Year after year, his connections dwindled, until all he had left were those too mindless and animalistic to try and fight against him.

Now, in addition to escaping from his prison, Twilice had to create a whole new army, try again to convince the other lords to join his side, and exterminate any threats who might stand in his way. Only then would he be able to finally take revenge on the rotten little insects who trapped him here in the first place.

But then a memory swam into the great black ocean that was his mind. Wasn't it Twilight who told him about the Lunar Solstice? That's right, the pegasi of Equestria ban together to bring about a great winter storm. Perhaps it was due to his imprisonment, but Twilice had never heard of ponies being able to control the weather so easily. Sure, the Akampeshi controlled rain and thunder in the old days, and there were plenty of creatures who thrived in storms, but creating one at will? That was something that interested Twilice greatly.

Twilice gurgled as he imagined the chaos he could wreak with an army like that at his disposal. A fog to hide his approach? a blizzard to freeze his foes? Perhaps a bolt of thunder to set a village ablaze? The possibilities were too numerous to count, and far too useful to pass up.

But of course, before he did any of this, Twilice needed to do something else first.

How disappointing it was to have Twilight taken away so soon. If she had paid more attention, she would have seen them coming. Maybe it was for the best, Twilice was in no condition to use his hypnosis spell again. Using it once proved ineffective, and of course he had to try using a malfunctioning hypnosis spell on the single most neurotic pony in all of Leudnan Righrean, or "Eek-west-ree-uh".

What a disgrace of a kingdom, held together by the power of "friendship". This "Equestria" was nothing more than the cumulative mistake of thousands of little morsels. The only reason these morsels weren't wiped off the face of his kingdom, was because one of them got cocky enough to freeze him in some rancid magical sheet of ice! Oh how he wanted to scream and roar and tear at the world around him, but his jaw was still frozen, locked in place for who knew how long. So were his claws. he tried to wiggle his fingers, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and even his thumb, but none of them moved an inch.

Well, if Twilight wasn't going to help him, it looked like he was going to have to improvise. And what a pity too, with the mind of a princess completely in his control, his takeover might have been much easier. But, as usual, the crystal ponies ruined everything. No matter, he would fix his pawn's mistake. And maybe, if things went his way, he could kill two princesses today.

But no matter what he did, he would do it today. Today would be the day that Twilice freed himself from his tomb. Today would be the day he took back his kingdom from the rotten hooves of those princesses.

Today would be the day that all of Equestria would remember, whether they liked it or not.

Comments

[ponepony]

Of course Twilice had figured out the ice's power of absorption many years ago, but the true difficulty came from wearing the spell down. No spell was perfect of course, there were always small mistakes present in even the most practiced incantations. A slip of the tongue, a wrong pronunciation, even a crack of the voice was enough to provide a point of weakness in your average spell, but Ma Vie's spell was anything but average.

Then recording was invented and it changed everything.

Also I keep imagining him as a male Twilight for some reason.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2021/11/8/2741092.png
It's actually very hard to find a picture of an evil looking male Twilight annoyingly.

[Faedelaide]

11314044
I've been thinking about drawing Twilice just for the heck of it, but I really really wanna finish this story before I go branching off doing anything else. Might get around to it eventually.