VI. To Return Home
I really like how this chapter came out. So that was a long wait. No excuses available. Read muh story plx <3 If you find any errors in this chapter, you should check yourself into Broadhoof immediately, because you’re probably hallucinating.
Solitary Locust
Chapter Six: To Return Home
Barely visible through all the trees and foliage was the top of the dying sun, which was headed once again toward the horizon to sleep. A soft yellow and orange scheme had replaced the bright sunlight beating down through the spaces between the Everfree’s branches. There was very little noise now except for the distant buzzing of mosquitoes, the chirping of crickets, and the other nocturnal animals that were beginning to come out. Almost unnoticeably quiet in spite of the near silence was the shallow breathing of the battered black-and-green insect-like creature lying in a shimmering golden sphere suspended between some particularly deformed old trees.
The painkillers had worn off some time ago, so the feeling of weightlessness and relaxation that had previously been filling Twilight’s entire body had given way to a miserable ache. She had lain down as best she could (which meant tucking her legs up and resting uncomfortably on her side) to try to quell the leftover nausea from the drugs. There was still an unpleasant emptiness atop her head since her horn still hadn’t fully regained feeling after the violent magical shock it had been subjected to.
Every so often she tried bumping her hoof listlessly against the bubble, but she’d all but given up any hope of escaping long ago. It had simply become too much effort to fight against what she’d known deep down would be the inevitable end of her situation since the ordeal began: that she wouldn’t be able to run and hide forever; that somepony would eventually catch her.
A part of her wanted to believe that Princess Celestia had received her notes, but the majority of her exhausted mind could no longer find the energy to commit to thinking about the matter. Trying to dwell on it only redirected her focus to vague images of her time as the Princess’s student as she slowly slipped more and more into another realm; a fantasy world of memories and what-ifs. She remembered the examination for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. That had been the start of what she knew was the most wonderful life a unicorn could ever have lived. It was a strangely distorted memory, as though worn down by time, but the overwhelming joy she’d felt when Princess Celestia stood there in the examination room and told her she wanted to make Twilight her personal student was still imprinted on the unicorn’s mind, even after so many years.
Unlike the previous evening, this sunset was not maddening or heartbreaking for Twilight to watch—it was simply the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t know why, as it was no different from any other sunset she’d ever witnessed; the emotion was probably coming from the realization that it could very well be the last glimpse of Celestia she would ever see, like her mentor was bidding her a melancholic farewell. Twilight didn’t mind—she felt at peace. It was a terrible and cowardly thing of her to just give up, but she just didn’t have the will to fight anymore. All Twilight wanted to do now was rest. She was so, so tired, and it felt good to just lay down and stop caring.
Abnormally, so.
The realization finally wormed its way into her sluggish, fog-clouded brain: that it wasn’t just her body that seemed like it was shutting down, but her brain as well. Twilight’s extremities buzzed and tingled, while her head felt far too light and was spinning around in circles. Something in her subconscious screamed at her not to fall asleep, because if she did, she wouldn’t wake up again. Clumsily staggering onto her back hooves, Twilight pressed her good foreleg against the side of the bubble and leaned the side of her head on it. The world was spinning and blurring together before her eyes, like it sometimes did when she celebrated a little too much with her friends during cider season.
Twilight’s breathing had devolved into weak, feeble gasps by then. She collapsed onto her haunches, her head lolling stupidly around, momentarily confused about what to do next. Then she put her hoof against her chest and listened to her heart rate. It was very irregular, and she probably couldn’t have kept up with it clapping her hooves together as fast as she could, even without a broken leg.
Putting all her physical symptoms together was a chore with her brain running so sluggishly, since each individual thought had to be fished out of the ocean of tar in her head and cleaned off before she could make sense of it. After what seemed like forever (though she couldn’t really be sure, as she was beginning to lose her sense of time), Twilight finally came to the conclusion that she was suffering from some form of hypoxia. This led her to rather idly wonder why she was suffocating, and what she could do about it, which took some time to produce a conclusion worth the effort taken to find it: that the magical bubble around her was airtight, and that Twilight had been breathing the same recycled air for hours until there was simply no oxygen left.
Instead of being alarmed by the developing situation, Twilight felt a surge of irritation sweep over her. Who in their right mind would go through the trouble of setting up such a magically complex trap, only to have it accidentally kill the creature it caught because it had no airholes? It was a waste of time and magic! After everything she’d survived—angry mobs, living in the Everfree, exploding horns, desperately trying to convince ponies of her identity—she would be ended by the sheer incompetence of somepony who likely knew magical theory as well as she did.
“You... pliohippus... Let me... out...” she croaked, not really talking to anypony in particular. It just felt so very good to refer to the trap’s creator with such a terribly degrading term. “There are... no... airholes... in... here...”
Twilight rose up again and bumped her body weakly against the rounded wall. Leaning on it, she used her uninjured hoof to punch the shimmering gold with about the same force that a fly might have been able to exert by buzzing into a solid brick wall. Each time her hoof came in contact with the magic barrier, she mumbled to herself.
“Open... up... open up... open... I want... some air...”
After a few more half-hearted strikes, she dropped it back to her side, gasping ever more heavily with each breath. Because it was getting so hard to stay balanced, Twilight soon thudded back heavily onto her rump with a soft oof that cost her quite a bit of air. Unfortunately, she was so dizzy that she ended up keeling over onto her side, horn scraping viciously against the side of the bubble as she slid down it.
She didn’t bother getting up this time beyond turning to get her face out of the small pile of dirt at the bottom, as she’d completely run out of both the energy and the willpower to fight her fate. Instead, the asphyxiating changeling just stared up at the sky, aimlessly jerking her limbs on occasion. Strangely, the fact that she was going to die seemed of surprisingly little importance at the moment—Twilight felt absolutely fine. In fact, she had never felt better in her entire life.
The lack of oxygen was making her feel giddy and euphoric inside, removing all her doubts, and eventually replacing her frown with a contented—if confused—smile as she simply stopped worrying about the fact that she couldn’t breathe anymore. There was an oddly warm tingling sensation spreading all over her body, setting off the nerves wherever it touched in a pleasant but very alien way.
It was actually kind of funny that she was going to die as a changeling, she realized.
Without all her panic and fear clouding her mind, Twilight could objectively see the irony in her situation. After all, she had helped defeat the changeling army in Canterlot. Moreover, she was the Element of Magic! She’d helped defeat Nightmare Moon and Discord! And yet they were going to take her and dump her body in a ditch. Desecrate it. Destroy it. Her friends and family would never know what happened to her and would spend their lives wondering whether or not she was being tortured in some underground cavern. She was going to be thrown in a ditch when she was found dead in a few weeks, if at all; or simply left to rot in her floating tomb. Would she rot? Were there enough bacteria trapped with her to carry out a significant part of the putrefaction process?
The trees above her were spinning around and around like she was a passenger on a toy top, making her stomach churn nauseatingly. Her breathing had been reduced to pitiful gasps as her lungs tried to extract oxygen that simply wasn’t present. The initially underwhelming euphoria had become a furnace which now lit her entire body from within, and it just felt so very good that she couldn’t bring herself to worry about the future anymore.
What does it matter if I’m dying? thought Twilight lightly, closing her eyes. It’s not so bad.
As the simple tingling within her grew into a hot, churning glow, her world began to melt into a palette of brilliant colours. Her shuddering body was filled with an overwhelming sense of weightlessness and formlessness independent of the sleep that had just taken her. A sudden, sharp jolt of pain shot through her chest and through one of her forelegs; pain so severe she felt it even in unconsciousness.
And then Twilight was no longer an entity, but a mass of blissful sensations—and then just a collection of electrical impulses being swallowed up into the most fantastic new world she could have ever imagined. It was endless, infinitely warm, and brighter than a thousand suns. Disconnected from any need for a physical body, Twilight could embrace all ideas and know all things at once; be everywhere and nowhere without being at all.
Out of all the white and the rainbows, the stars eventually settled and she landed in a puff of golden dust a short distance outside Ponyville, which was the last of her world not covered by darkness.
The unicorn sat on a blanket with Rarity and Fluttershy, watching Dash and Applejack race from one end of the field to the other while they shared Pinkie’s baked goods from a picnic basket (Twilight was splitting her attention between the food, her friends, and the open book floating in front of her face). Behind them, Pinkie was doing an all-out cheerleading routine, throwing pom-poms and shouting encouragements to the pegasus and earth pony. Spike wasn’t far away from Twilight, and he was gazing—lovestruck as always—at Rarity instead of at the two competing ponies. The sun watched over them from up above with a faint hint of a familiar, caring smile hiding behind it. It was such a very simplistic scene, and yet at the same time it was also everything that truly mattered to Twilight Sparkle gathered together.
It was perfect.
Twilight wasn’t immediately aware that she was feeling anything. The stabbing bolt in her chest grew rapidly in its intensity, however, until she was sucked back up to the surface and violently jolted back to consciousness. Gasping desperately, she gulped down breath after breath of badly needed fresh air. Her limbs were already moving spastically on their own when she woke up from her bout of stupification, her body shaking and shivering in the cool evening chill. Trying to remember where she was and what was going on, she shook her head clumsily back and forth, setting off an explosion of twisted empathy colours as the sensors on one side of her head dragged against something rough.
Everything was melted together inside, preventing her from sorting out her thoughts or her memories from the confusing mess that was all the sensory input coming from her body. She let out a ragged gasp the moment her brain had finally rebooted enough for her to realize that she was in terrible pain all over her body. Burning stripes blazed up and down from head to hoof, as though she’d been doused in kerosene and set alight. A terrible soreness inhabited the left side of her chest beneath the burning; flaring with each beat of her heart and bursting each time she inhaled or exhaled.
She was so confused and overwhelmed that she didn’t even think to open her eyes until then; when she did, she opened them wide in her agony to accompany the aborted, choking remains of a scream scraping the back of her throat. A dizzying blur of shapes similar to the effect of vertigo spun in front of her, as her vision had not yet coalesced enough that she could make out very much in detail.
Whimpering softly, Twilight tried to crawl to her hooves, but she was simply in too much pain to do so and remained spread out on her back. The changeling blindly felt around with the hoof she could still move instead, attempting to figure out where she was. She felt something earthy; something hard and rough—dirt, rocks. She was on the ground, on a slight incline.
The blurry remains of the magical sphere Twilight had been imprisoned within lay in two separate halves not far away, still sparking and fizzing at the edges. She didn’t know how she’d gotten out of it, but it looked like it had been sawed all the way around until it just fell apart. She squinted down at her own chest, rubbing at her eyes, as her vision resolved a bit more, and found a complete mess below. Mulberry-coloured blotches of hair and skin marked where her body had deformed and twisted into a more familiar shape; the muscles, and even the bones, were warped in places into mismatched combinations of changeling and unicorn anatomy. Also present in many of these places were lacerations around the edges, which were oozing a sick-looking grey-green fluid.
The absolute horror of seeing her body so ruined drove Twilight’s mind straight out of her stupor and into Analytical Scientist Unicorn Mode. Everything became detached, impersonal data, incapable of hurting her because it was just information without emotion.
Subject A shows distinct signs of an partially aborted transformation from changeling into unicorn. Experiences extreme physical pain as a result of conflicting systems attempting to interact. Previously demonstrated dissatisfaction with the changeling form. Subject A is unable to consciously control transformation. Spontaneous minor transformation has occurred on occasion, usually during times of severe emotional stress. Injuries to horn and environmental factors may affect transformation. Subject A does not remember transforming. Memory loss present. Conclusion: Subject A most likely experienced an aborted transformation as a result of emotional stress over body-related dysphoria, but was unable to complete or fully reverse transformation for undetermined reasons.
Subject A may possibly have been slowly suffocating to death in an airtight magical bubble in the middle of the Everfree Forest due to her lack of vigilance and not giving a flying feather about how she was about to lose her life at the time of transformation...
Above her, the majestic colours of the sunset were still blazing in the sky, not much changed from the last time Twilight had seen them. Now that her sight was no longer vibrating like a struck tuning fork, she was able to more clearly make out the mesh of branches and leaves overhead.
And, with the improved clarity of her vision, Twilight was also able to make out the dark shape moving around near her.
“...made her wait for hours before you finally pass out, and then you go and die! You’re lucky she’s talented enough with magic to restart your shriveled cockroach heart, or you would still be stone-cold dead!”
Twilight instinctively shifted away from the threatening, aggressive voice’s ranting, then jerked her foreleg up in a feeble attempt to block the object that had suddenly been thrown at her. It hit with surprisingly little impact—nothing more than a soft pfump and—and fell in the dirt beside her. Without thinking, Twilight reached over and felt around until her hoof felt something very familiar: the smooth plastic of one of the empty water bottles she had carefully made sure to hold onto in order to avoid littering and polluting the environment.
A creature in an ugly brownish cloak slid into the center of Twilight’s vision, oozing triumph and narcissistic delight from its aura like sap from a tree. It held something small up in a faintly reddish aura; an aura identical to the three burning lights set in its powder-blue face and the fourth burning around the base of Twilight’s horn. Moments later, Twilight was hit by another object, which she thought might be her pen.
“You foolish creature—you just don’t know what to take with you when you travel, do you?” Twilight’s poncho, bunched up, landed by her hind leg. “Let me see... Oh, you have a prescription. Is your name ‘Poe the Raven’? The Great and Powerful Trixie sincerely doubts it.”
“Trkkzzy?” repeated Twilight, voice slurring. The name, and the obnoxious, arrogant female voice that accompanied it, triggered a fuzzy memory—one that seemed distant and fleeting at the moment, like it was from another life entirely—of a haughty showmare in a star-spangled cape and hat who boasted of having defeated an Ursa Major, only to run herself out of town over the embarrassment of being proven a liar later on.
“That’s ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie’ to you, changeling!”
Upon hearing the word changeling, Twilight’s brain kicked into the highest gear it was physically capable of—which, at that moment, wasn’t much, but nevertheless it was enough to drag her back into the town square on that awful day once again. The forest exploded into a wild blaze of angry colours and voices that wanted to harm her, and those ponies who now haunted her day and night with hatred like she’d never known before. They simply wouldn’t leave her alone, even when she was beaten and torn and couldn’t fight back; even when she couldn’t even get up and run away.
With nowhere to go, and no more strength to carry her even if there had been a place to flee, she did the only thing left in her pathetic inventory of reactions and curled into an awkward ball of agonizingly mismatched body parts welded into one another; leaking green blood everywhere. Her empathy sense still hadn’t resolved on one side, leaving her half blinded by a mess of colours that reminded her of the time she’d heard a couple of colts press about a dozen keys at once on a pipe organ in Canterlot.
“Changeling! The Great and Powerful Trixie commands you to stop your pitiful sniveling!” Trixie’s voice reverberated strangely through Twilight’s head; like her memories and thoughts, it seemed to come from so very far away from her. “Stop it, I said!”
Trixie kicked her in the side; right in one of the lines bisecting two changeling and unicorn parts of her body. Reflexively uncurling from her protective position, Twilight rolled onto her back, holding her hoof against her side as she whimpered inequinely. The unicorn tried to shove something into her mouth, but she spat it right back out and turned her head away, clamping her jaw firmly shut.
“Have it your way, changeling,” Trixie muttered. “Trixie will just enjoy ‘Mr. Poe’s’ pills for herself, if you’d rather sit there in agony than accept kindness from a stranger!”
“No... Please. It hurts. Please give me the pills. I’m sorry,” whimpered Twilight. “Sorry. Please, it hurts.”
Though she sighed and huffed in obvious irritation, Trixie did eventually fulfill Twilight’s request by forcing her mouth open with magic and jamming the last of the painkiller pills into it. Twilight choked them down them, then curled up again around the saddlebag, clutching it tightly against her chest with her good leg like it was her friends, family, mentor, and number one assistant all rolled into a single object. The swamp’s fetid stench still clung to it, but the smell hardly registered in her mind as she cried. Trixie had apparently been fairly neutral toward her—as neutral as ponies were capable of being towards changelings; neutral enough to help her when she was in pain—but Twilight had already taken a step towards souring a potential good relationship with the unicorn by being so oppositional.
Ever since that day she’d given her changeling lecture, everything good she touched seemed to shrink away from her.
Still glowering darkly and snorting derisively at the pathetic creature shivering before her, Trixie trotted slowly in a circle around Twilight. She looked quite haggard and worn, as though she’d been living rough for quite some time. Her mane and tail were in utter disarray, her coat mangy, and her horn in need of a good filing. Rather more sinisterly, her eyes, which were baggy and bloodshot from sleeplessness, were burning with crimson red fire—the aura of the most basic tier of dark magic. The same colour surrounded her horn and the amulet around her throat, rippling eerily like fire. Something about her—something unidentifiable—seemed much more unpleasant now than the first time Twilight had met her.
Trixie was speaking to her, Twilight realized. With some effort, she managed to tune herself away from her own thoughts and back in to the world around her.
“...been wasting her valuable time and her equally valuable power scouring this Celestia-forsaken forest for the last two and a half days, so you had better tell her where Twilight Sparkle is!”
“Twilight Zparkle?” Twilight buzzed. She was struggling to stay focused; her brain wanted her to go back to sleep and rest, having just gone through a thoroughly traumatic experience.
“Yes! Where is she being kept!” demanded Trixie, leaning over to glare at Twilight. “The Great and Powerful Trixie commands that you answer her immediately!”
Twilight cringed and drew back into her protective ball, frightened by Trixie’s aggressiveness. Her exclamation of “I’m Twilight Sparkle!” was reduced to a mumbly, almost inaudible squeak.
“What was that?”
“Please... please... I can prove...” She desperately searched her memories for something—anything at all—that might convince Trixie that it actually was her.
“Prove what, changeling?”
Rime and Drizzledrop had given her a chance before, when they had no reason to do so. A previously muted voice within Twilight spoke up just then, reminding her that others—others like Trixie, however mean she may have been—might do the same for her as well if she trusted in them.
That, after all, was what making a friend was all about: reaching out to others and taking the risk of trusting them. Sometimes you might get a flake or a fraud for a friend, like Rainbow Dash’s old griffon classmate Gilda—but you could just as easily get a lifesaver, a listening ear, or an inseparable compliment to yourself.
“Talk to Trixie! Talk, will you! She has places to be and things to do!”
A sudden blow to her thigh dragged Twilight out of her musings and back into reality. This time, it didn’t hurt quite as much, as that leg had been largely unaffected by her transformation—the other had a half-formed cutie mark on it, among other things—but it was still jarring and unpleasant nonetheless.
“I-I r-remember you, y-you know!” she stammered, holding her good foreleg in front of her to ward off further abuse. “You’re a showmare! Y-your shows were very—very... um... sp-p-pectacular?”
Trixie narrowed her eyes. “Of course Trixie’s shows were spectacular! They could be nothing less, being the work of her own magnificent horn and incredibly powerful magic! How dare you even think to imply otherwise, changeling? No, wait—Don’t you change the subject, you filthy equine insect! Tell Trixie all about Twilight Sparkle!”
“I-I think y-you were very b-brave, when you s-stood up to the Ursa Minor—It was v-very brave of you! I was right there—I saw—I saw it—I saw how brave y-you were—”
“Of course Trixie was brave!” Trixie cut in very sharply, sounding both furious and self-satisfied at the same time; as though Twilight had inadvertently dealt a grievous blow to her narcissistic pride by complimenting her in such a way. “The Great and Powerful Trixie never runs from danger, changeling!”
“I’m s-sorry! I didn’t mea—”
But Twilight’s apology was sliced right in half as Trixie continued ranting. “Trixie is sick of ponies calling her a coward and a loser—and laughing at her, and heckling her when she’s trying to make a living—and making her work under the hot sun at rock farms to support herself—and pranking the comeback performance she put together with the bits she’s spent months and months of hard work earning! And when she gets her hooves on Twilight Sparkle, she’s going to teach her a few lessons about who’s really the most powerful unicorn in Equestria! And no changeling is going to stand in her way! The Great and Powerful Trixie bows to no pony—and no non-pony, either!”
Breathing heavily, she leaned over and glared down at Twilight, who shrank back as much as she could. The changeling could smell her breath, at such a close distance, and unfortunately it was quite clear that Trixie hadn’t had a chance to brush her teeth in the last few days.
“Trixie will not ask you again...” said Trixie, blazing red eyes boring holes in Twilight’s own fearful blue ones. “Where is Twilight Sparkle? Come on! Fast! Fast! Trixie’s time is very valuable!”
At that moment, as she cowered beneath the showmare’s hateful gaze, Twilight came to the frightening conclusion that Trixie was not at all right in the head: she seemed to blame Ponyville, and Twilight in particular, for her misfortune following the Ursa Minor attack, and also for the ill will some ponies had exhibited toward her. Worse, she apparently had some insane, delusional revenge fantasy fueling her current actions—a revenge fantasy that would probably be carried out if the showmare learned her real identity and actually believed it to be true. Twilight could feel what was left of her hope breaking apart inside her as she realized the only pony who might listen to her about being a unicorn was out for that unicorn’s blood.
“I’m... not... Sh-she’s in the—the old r-ruins—The Castle of the Two Sisters,” she mumbled. Maybe, if she gave the right answers, Trixie would go away and leave her to crawl into a ditch and die in peace.
“That’s the crumbling old duskheap not far from here, isn’t it?”
Twilight nodded as best she could. “Mmhm...”
“And if I look around inside it, I’ll find Twilight Sparkle?”
“Yes...”
“How many changelings are there?” demanded Trixie. “Are there hordes of them? Is there a queen in the highest tower?”
“N-none...? No?” Twilight ventured.
A contemptuous sneer crossed Trixie’s face. “You may think The Great and Powerful Trixie is as stupid as all the mundane ponies you’ve fooled—but she sees past your trickery, changeling!”
“O-okay, I lied! I lied, then! Lots of changelings! There are lots... And there’s a—a queen, too—”
“Ha! Your pathetic ruse wouldn’t have worked even if Trixie hadn’t already spent the afternoon searching the completely empty castle. There are neither changelings nor Twilight Sparkles hiding there!” Trixie gave Twilight another rather rough shove with her hoof as she barked these words out.
“M-maybe you just didn’t look ha-hard enough...?” the changeling squeaked, her voice trailing off uncertainly into a mumble. She would have curled up on herself a second time over if she’d been able. “Don’t hurt me, p-please...”
She was abruptly dragged right into the air by a vise of red magic that locked tightly around her left hind leg—the one with the poorly formed cutie mark on it—and jolted to a stop several feet above the earth, dangling upside down and feeling like she was going to be sick as she swung back and forth slightly. Trixie pressed her nose up against Twilight’s smashed one, turning the changeling’s head to the side with her hoof so that their eyes met.
“Trixie will ask you once again... where is Twilight Sparkle? Tell the truth this time!”
“I don’t know!” sobbed Twilight as she tried to pull her head away. “I-I c-can’t tell you what I don’t know!”
Grinding her teeth together angrily, Trixie said, “You do know! Tell Trixie what she wants to know or she’ll—she’ll—she’ll put you back in the trap again! She can easily repair what she’s broken!”
“I can’t... I-I can’t answer your question any differently...” Twilight whimpered. “I can’t! Please, I can’t!”
“Stop lying!” There was a muffled thump as Trixie stomped on the ground.
“I c-can’t g-give you a d-different answer...I’m s-sorry... Don’t hurt me anymore. I’m sick of b-b-being hurt...”
Trixie stared at Twilight for some time without saying anything, eyes burning furiously, then suddenly released her without any warning at all. Throwing her good foreleg out in front of her to direct the impact away from her head, neck, and injured other leg, Twilight crashed heavily back to the ground in a heap. Meanwhile, the powder-blue unicorn had already turned away from her to pace around in circles, muttering to herself.
“Probably long-gone anyway,” she said, stepping over Twilight as though she were nothing more than an inanimate obstacle in her path. “No sense in Trixie wasting her time looking for such a pathetic unicorn just to challenge her to a duel she knows she would win... No, no, she’s a practical pony; she can make something better of this situation.”
Whirling around, Trixie dramatically rose up onto her hind legs and jabbed a hoof at Twilight. “You, changeling!”
“Yeah?” asked Twilight in a tiny, anxious voice, afraid Trixie was going to ask her another impossible question or hurt her again.
“You’re going to come back to Ponyville with Trixie and tell everypony how you easily defeated the weak and pathetic Twilight Sparkle. Tell them you abducted her to be taken away to your dank little nest in the ground, or—or wherever it is your kind live. Tell them how you were going to get away with it until you ran into The Brave and Heroic Trixie.”
“But—No—But if I do that, th-they’ll nev-ver—”
Twilight shut her eyes, put her hoof over one ear and pressed the other against the dirt, hoping to block out as much of the world as she could. She began to hyperventilate again as she thought out the logical progression of events that would follow a declaration like that. Nopony would ever believe her story if she did something like that, even if she did get an opportunity to tell it. Any chance she might have had of convincing somepony to let her explain herself would be gone forever.
It’s not fair, she thought miserably, blinking tears out of her eyes. I deserve a chance... Just a chance.
“Once Ponyville sees that The Great and Powerful Trixie is the superior unicorn, they’ll praise her instead of praising that wretched Twilight Sparkle!” Trixie hadn’t stopped rambling yet. “They’ll know Trixie defeated a foe Sparkle couldn’t, and Trixie will have proven herself! Even if Sparkle returns someday, Trixie can just duel her then! Ha! Trixie will show that fraud one way or another!”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Twilight mumbled.
Trixie, either not hearing or not paying attention to her, surrounded her neck and the base of her aching, still sparking horn with magic. There was only a moment for Twilight to panic and try to prepare for what was about to happen to her before she was half-dragged onto her hooves.
The exhausted changeling was hardly able to remain standing on her own with her legs wobbling the way they were. Resistance to Trixie’s plan was absolutely out of the question at that point in time—Twilight simply had no strength left; and her horn, damaged and still slightly numb, was as likely to create some bizarrely mutated spell as it was to successfully cast whatever she put through it.
A sharp jerk on the leads connected to her horn and throat forced her to stagger sideways as Trixie purposefully turned her back on that part of the forest, hauling Twilight along after her.
“Come on, changeling! The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t have all day!”
Twilight remained silent as she followed Trixie through the forest, stumbling over whatever obstacles the other mare didn’t allow her to wander around or slow down for. Her body was operating more on automatic than by her own will, following the same set of directions and hardly reacting to changes in her surroundings. Not caring what injuries she sustained in her daze, the changeling allowed herself to step on sharp rocks and inclines without moderating the force of her steps in the slightest until a small trail of greenish blood marked each place where one of her hind hooves had fallen. Even the occasional tumble as her terribly balanced, weak legs gave out under her elicited little more than a confused grunt, as she was locked too far away in her own mind and too well-protected by a shield of endorphins to really acknowledge the pain.
It was the end for her, and she knew it. She felt a pervading sense of dread at the knowledge of what was coming, but somehow she was unable to bridge the gap between her mind and her body to actually show it. The terror just built and built inside, like the pressure within her horn had done before her bombastic explosion in the church. Even if she had been able to do something, she thought dismally, what was left to do? There was no running, no hiding, no pleading with them, because Trixie was about to ruin what miniscule chance Twilight had left of getting anypony to hear her out. Her body was all but broken, and it wasn’t going to matter if her horn was torn from her head if her magic had already fled from her, as it seemed on the verge of doing.
Eventually, the two mares reached the outskirts of the Everfree; near where it met the perimeter of Sweet Apple Acres. Trixie seemed to have followed some invisible compass, perhaps generated by an orientation spell, to find her way back to Ponyville as it took less than an hour for them to get there. Nevertheless by the time they got out into the open, Luna had completely taken over for Celestia, and the moon and stars were shining down upon them. The amulet around Trixie’s neck, as well as the incandescent auras blazing around her eyes and horn, shone red in the night, while the mare herself was given an eerie bluish-white shine by the moonlight.
In the distance, Twilight could make out the glowing lights of Ponyville, which she imagined was probably at the height of its evening activity boom. She would have given anything to be on the other side of the situation; to be able to walk up and down the streets outside her house with her friends, bite into another apple from Sweet Apple Acres, argue with Spike about reshelving, and all the other things she’d taken for granted again. The changeling shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to control her trembling lip and the tears threatening to fall from her eyes again.
For some reason, she felt like she was marching to her death—and it was not the same kind of feeling as her near suffocation in the magic trap, where the impact had been so cushioned by her oxygen deprivation. It was a deep, dark, and terrifying feeling; facing the empty void that lay at the end of life, and the darkness that came after. Or, rather, whatever it was that was going to happen to her when they reached Ponyville. The unknown was just as horrid, if not more so, than what she could imagine. It was the kind of fear she hadn’t felt since she’d lain curled up in bed as a filly, afraid to peek out above the piled up bedcovers for fear of seeing some unearthly monstrosity lurking in the dark shadows.
She was afraid.
But, at the same time, seeing the lights of the place that, until only a few days earlier, had been her home stirred something inside her, too. The lights were coming from civilization—civilization that she, Twilight Sparkle, had lived in it. She, Twilight Sparkle, was not a changeling; she, Twilight Sparkle, was a unicorn. A pony. A civilized being.
It didn’t matter what kind of a body she was wearing. What mattered was the kind of pony she was, and that she remembered to keep being that pony no matter what happened.
Whatever her fate was, Twilight decided, she would accept it with dignity instead of fighting the inevitable like a pathetic, mindless animal. Like the proud unicorn she was on the inside, she would go with her head held high and her eyes dry of tears. She had fought monsters, battled gods, defeated alicorns, and saved Equestria time after time—with all that to her name, Twilight thought, she had a right to hold onto the last of her equestrianity, even after everything else had been stripped from her.
Thus motivated, she lifted her head and held it high, and her defeated, aimless stagger turned into a simple but determined limp. She put all her willpower into not letting herself slouch and did her best to carry herself like what she was: a proud unicorn, Princess Celestia’s handpicked personal student, the most powerful magician in centuries, and the Element of Magic herself—not some monster in chains.
I’m Twilight Sparkle, and I know it’s true! Even if nopony ever believes me, I still know it’s true!
Twilight was still holding herself tall—probably more so than she ever had in her life—when they reached the bridge and stream that marked the edge of the town. On the other side, she saw ponies coming out to meet them—ponies wearing the dark armor of the Night Guard. Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment all she could hear was her own thumping heartbeat as a thousand horrible scenarios jammed themselves into her mind’s eye at once. She felt like she was going to be sick. But, in spite of her fear, she forced herself to go onward before Trixie could tug on the lead, unwilling to let herself falter in what felt like her last steps.
Appearance-wise, the Night Guard were quite different from the regular Royal Guard. Leathery-winged and dark in their colour schemes, they seemed rather sinister and intimidating, but Twilight knew they were really just ordinary pegasi enchanted to look a bit like the vamponies of legend. There were at least six of them coming now; moving swiftly to head off Twilight and Trixie halfway across the bridge. Twilight guessed, although she couldn’t really find it in herself to care one way or another, that she and her captor had probably tripped some kind of alarm spell cast around the perimeter of the forest or the town; perhaps one set to respond to changelings.
When they saw Twilight, the six guards immediately bristled—Twilight felt the aggression and excitement coming off them through her empathy sense as clearly as she were the one feeling it to begin with.
“Whoa, where do you think you’re going with that?” said the one Twilight assumed to be the leader—she was, after all, wearing the appropriate rank insignias on her armor—as she moved in their direction with two of her comrades in tow. The other three took flight, vanishing for a moment, and then reappeared when they landed behind Twilight and Trixie.
“Trixie does not have time for this,” Trixie huffed back, sticking her nose in the air. “She’ll go where she pleases, and she’ll take whatever she wants with her, thank you very much.”
“Turn the changeling around and put it down on the ground, and move away from it.”
“Just who do you think you’re talking to?” the red-eyed unicorn demanded. “The Great and Powerful Trixie does not take orders from anypony—most certainly not from Clopula impersonators! She’s going to take what remains of this fallen horde of changelings that she heroically defeated and show the ponies of Ponyville—”
“Get back, you stupid mare! This is your last warning!”
“—that she is indeed The Great and Heroic Trixie! Have you no sympathy for the dead? It was the last wish of The Tragically Expired Twilight Sparkle that her tale be told to the unwashed masses in Ponyville—”
For a moment, the changeling turned and gawked at her, as much as a changeling could gawk; more for her absurd abuse of the Equestrian language than anything else, until it sank in that Trixie actually was claiming she was dead. Then she closed her mouth very tightly and looked away, focusing on the ground and trying to tune out Trixie’s rambling. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much success.
“Are you for real, lady?” said the Night Guard captain. “Fine—Both of you turn around and get down on the ground. Right now! Keep those horns facing away!”
Twilight backed up a little bit in alarm as two of the guards each unfolded a short but clearly razor-sharp spring-loaded blade that was mounted on one wing. Though she refused to throw herself into the dirt on her own just to survive another five minutes, she didn’t want to die if she didn’t have to, and had no plans to resist the guards if they pushed her down.
On the other hoof, Trixie continued to sneer arrogantly at the guards, her nose turned up in disgust. “Oh, please. The Great and Powerful Trixie has more important things to do than deal with a couple of stupid little pegasi playing Commander Hurricane. Your little plastic swords don’t scare her.”
“She’s probably a changeling, too—Bet she was trying to sneak in by hoofing over the other,” said one of the guards with the blades. “I heard they’ll stab each other in the back if it gets them what they want. Guess it’s true...”
“Either move out of Trixie’s way or she’ll move you out of her w—”
A sudden whump announced the arrival of a ninth party from above in a blur of fire-coloured mane, coat, and feathers. Twilight was scared so badly by it that she stumbled backward, slipped, and fell onto her haunches, where she sat for a moment to catch her breath, hoping Trixie wouldn’t decide to leave before she was able to stand up again. The other ponies present were also startled, though to a lesser degree than the repeatedly traumatized changeling: Trixie backed up against the side of the bridge beside Twilight, eyes flicking back and forth, while the guards whipped their heads to look in between their two groups and their leader saluted her apparent superior once she saw who it was.
“Captain Spitfire, ma’am!” she said.
Spitfire, the pegasus mare Twilight recognized from the gala, the flying competition, and the many Wonderbolts posters plastered on Rainbow Dash’s walls, glanced rapidly over the situation in front of her and frowned deeply. Her gaze lingered on Twilight for some time before she snapped back to the guards again. “What, exactly, is going on here, Milky Way?”
“Trixie w—” started Trixie, but the female guard talked over her.
“She thinks it killed Twilight Sparkle, and she wants to tell everypony about it.”
“You shut up!” the powder-blue unicorn snapped as Spitfire’s gaze returned to her again. “Trixie merely wishes to receive the appropriate recognition for her heroic contribution to this town’s safety in destroying the horde of changelings planning to viciously annihilate the inhabitants, and for personally bringing the changeling responsible for the tragic death of Twilight Sparkle.”
The look that came over Spitfire’s face in response to this was a very strange one indeed; a combination of surprise, excitement, and panic. “You don’t say?”
“Does Trixie look like the kind of mare who would say something untrue? You can hear all about it when Trixie tells her tale. Now, move. She’s starting to get annoyed!”
“I’ll give you five hundred bits for the changeling,” said Spitfire. “A reward of sorts.”
“This changeling is very important in Trixie’s upcoming performance,” Trixie snorted. “It also fought ferociously and cost Trixie a great deal of pain, suffering, and misery to capture. Trixie will accept nothing less than five hundred thousand.”
“What?” Spitfire imitated a goldfish for a second, eyes growing wider and wider, then exclaimed, “I don’t have that kind of money! What do you think I am, the First Bank of Equestria?”
“Then Trixie will be on her way, miss not-the-Bank-of-Equestria.” But Trixie didn’t move, and Twilight could almost see the green glow in her eyes—and in the amulet around her neck—as the unicorn seemed to realize that she was still in a position to exploit a mare who probably could write her a good check for five hundred thousand bits. “You’re that one Wonderbolt, aren’t you? Typical of you rich ponies to pretend you have less than you really do. Well, if you want the changeling so badly, Trixie will take her reward in equivalent gold bars, thank you very much.”
“Pack Rat, go get Moondancer,” said Spitfire to one of the other guards, not taking her eyes off Trixie and Twilight.
“But Moondancer is w—”
“I know!” she hissed. “This is more important!”
“‘Moondancer’ had better be a euphemism for ‘a lot of bits’,” Trixie snarked.
“You’ll be a euphemism by the time I’m through with you,” muttered Spitfire. Other ponies were starting to gather near the Ponyville end of the bridge, attracted by the argument taking place on it, and the more ponies there were, the more annoyed Spitfire seemed to get. “Fine, I’ll give you a thousand, then.”
“Not good enough, you cheap skan—”
“Will you just take the damn bits? I’m offering you a way to keep from embarrassing yourself and come out of this a few hundred bits richer, lady!”
“Ha! Trixie can see how badly you want this creature, and she’s not going to give it to you without some compensation for all her hard work!”
Twilight hoofed the ground anxiously, not really sure what was safe to do and what wasn’t. She felt like a workhorse in the ancient slave era; tethered to Trixie by a leash around her neck, simply waiting to be sold for a couple of pieces of metal. Still, the changeling—No, the unicorn held her head up as best she could, even though every muscle in her body screamed for her to let them sleep.
“Fine—five thousand. That’s all I have.” Spitfire almost snarled at Trixie when she said this. “Is that enough for you?”
Smirking in a very supercilious manner, Trixie said, “You have more than that. Trixie knows better than to trust the words of greedy ponies like you. She knows you’ll say anything to hold onto your wealth.”
“Fine, you can come into town with me and I’ll write you a check for ten thousand bits, if that’s what you want!” Spitfire seemed on the verge of desperation, and Twilight didn’t understand why. Her team of Night Guards seemed anxious as well, shifting back and forth and flexing their wings. “You can have every single damn bit in Equestria when we get into the town! Just give me that changeling!”
“Ten thousand bits?” repeated Trixie, sounding as though she were trying to seem disinterested and failing badly. “Hmm... Trixie will take your ten thousand bits... and she’ll take a public announcement that she’s a better magician than Twilight Sparkle.”
A couple of regular Royal Guards pushed their way through the crowd gathered at the end of the bridge. Like with the Night Guards, their auras inevitably turned to excitement and fear when they saw Twilight, and she heard the word changeling spoken at least once. Twilight knew she could have made out exactly what they were saying if she’d tried, because her hearing was so much more sensitive now—but she chose to block it out instead. It didn’t matter.
But it did seem to matter to Spitfire.
“Yes, okay!” the pegasus mare blurted out, looking completely panicked as she glanced between Trixie and the guards. “Okay, deal! Give me the changeling now!”
“You misunderstand Trixie,” Trixie told her with the air of somepony who had just won a game of chess and felt that rubbing it in was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. “She will give you the changeling after she’s done with her show. The Great and Powerful Trixie, you see, is far too clever to allow herself to be cheated by the likes of you. She knows you just want to steal her rightfully earned glory in addition to whatever you want this insignificant insect f—”
“You dumb bag of horseapples!”
With a frustrated snarl, Spitfire lurched forward towards Twilight, forelegs outstretched and wings snapping open with blinding speed in preparation to seize the changeling and take off. But Trixie, reacting with equally unnatural speed—it could only have come from some spell she was using to enhance her normal abilities—threw her hooves around the unresisting Twilight’s barrel and lit up a blindingly bright light on top of her horn that enveloped both is caster and her prisoner.
Twilight’s ears were filled with a terrible roar, like a canon going off, and all the other noise around her was swept up into it. Similarly, the lights of Ponyville, the Night Guards, Spitfire’s wide and panicked eyes, and the starry night sky, all whirled into a tornado and disappeared; all except for Trixie herself. For a brief moment, she passed through what felt like an empty void with Trixie, and then she felt solid earth under her hooves again. She didn’t have much of a chance to look around, as her tired legs gave out as soon as the light died away. Falling onto her front knees, Twilight emptied what little there was in her stomach—which amounted to a bit of fluid—onto the ground in front of her.
Few unicorns had both the skill and the raw power necessary to teleport, so Twilight had rarely been teleported as a passenger by another pony before. She had never been teleported without warning at all, making the experience an unpleasantly novel one as well.
“Trixie has not put on a real show in years,” Trixie was muttering as she feverishly cast a spell over the area around herself and Twilight. “She’s not about to let some pompous cloudstuffer ruin this one. Let’s see her try to ruin it now! And if she comes here, Trixie will give the tabloids some things to write about her anyway...”
Twilight finally raised her head, having finished being sick, and took stock of her surroundings for the first time. Not two meters away there was a stone fountain with a statue of a pony atop it; one she knew very well, as she saw it every time she stepped out through her front door each day. The buildings behind it were instantly recognizable as well, each one impressed upon her after seeing them over and over again for years. Alarmed, Twilight looked wildly around from left to right, and then scuffled about in the dirt until she could look behind her. There was the circular, multi-tiered town hall, and the empty space where her audience had gathered to listen to her speak about changelings. Everything in the town square was exactly as it had been when she had fled, except that it was night time now and the podium was gone.
Before she could do, say, or even think anything beyond oh dear Celestia please let it be over quickly, Twilight was yanked upward by the magic still leashing her to Trixie. She gagged and thrashed around, desperately struggling to get back to her hooves before the line wrapped around her throat choked her to death. She didn’t even make it all the way up before Trixie threw her down on the ground so that she lay in front of the unicorn like a defeated foe on a battlefield. Refusing to let Trixie humiliate her in such a way, the battered Twilight struggled up until she was resting on her good foreleg and not sprawled out pathetically in the dirt. By then, Trixie had turned her attention elsewhere.
“Citizens of Ponyville! Fillies and gentlecolts!” Trixie shouted, ignoring Twilight. Red magic dripped from her mouth along with her booming, magically amplified words, which had taken on an almost parodic imitation of the self-indulgent tone she’d announced herself in the first time she’d come to the town. “Come one! Come all! Learn the tragic fate of Twilight Sparkle, and learn how your very lives hung by a thread before The Great and Powerful Trixie came and vanquished the changeling threat!”
She reared up onto her hind legs and spread her front ones in a grand gesture of invitation as the water in the fountain began to glow on it own, soon casting a dancing red light over the whole town square. Other lights appeared around the perimeter soon after, where doors had been opened by ponies curious about the nature of all the noise. They congregated around Trixie, but seemed unable to pass closer than a few meters around her. Twilight concluded that was what she had been casting before she made everypony aware of her presence—a spell to keep hecklers away from her and her prize.
Soon, Trixie’s shouting had attracted a number of Ponyvillians, including several Twilight recognized; though she could see none she actually knew well. Just like her very first moments in the alien body she now inhabited, the changeling was surrounded by a terrifying mess of hostile emotions: anger, fear, hatred, disgust, and even pity; the last somehow worse than all the rest because of how insulting it was. Twilight did not want to die being pitied by the same mob that was tearing her to pieces—No, she would go out like a real pony when Trixie inevitably finished her show and had no more use for her; when the unicorn dropped the shield and teleported away, leaving Twilight at their mercy.
All her struggling finally paid off as she managed to lever herself back onto her three useable hooves and stood, shaking violently, to face her judgement. She was absolutely terrified, and she wanted Princess Celestia; but as the Princess’s personal student, she had to hold herself to a higher standard before these ponies, even when they didn’t know her real identity.
Twilight was ready to be judged.
“Aren’t you that crazy showmare that came through here a couple of years ago?” said one stallion to Trixie. He was looking her over with an unamused expression that didn’t seem to fit his laid back appearance—dark coat, blonde mane, and a smiley face for a cutie mark.“‘Cause if you are, you owe me about eight hundred bits, lady. You and your ursa smashed half my stuff.”
“Does keeping your town safe from a horde of murderous changelings not make up for Trixie’s supposed ‘crimes’?” Trixie shot back with a sneer. Not getting the contrite reaction she seemed to be hoping for, she added, “Fine! She’ll just let the next one overrun you if false accusations are how you’re going to thank her!”
“All I see is one beat-up changeling, not a horde of them!” another stallion yelled. Some of the other Ponyvillians expressed their concurrence with his statement, and he added, “And you shouldn’t have even brought it here to begin with! We’re supposed to let the guards handle them so we don’t get replaced!”
“Somepony get the Royal Guards!” a mare’s voice in the back called. “Y’know... if you haven’t already.”
“Every one of you shut up! The Underappreciated and Often-Heckled Trixie has not yet been given her rightful chance to tell her tale of heroism and bravery in the Everfree forest! All of you shut up and let her tell it!”
Several ponies started to snap back at her, but Trixie preempted them by setting off a huge bang from her horn. Startled off her hooves, Twilight fell back onto her haunches, but this time Trixie didn’t force her to get back up again—a good thing, too, because she didn’t think her body could handle getting up again at the moment. She settled instead for straightening her back and holding her head up high as she faced the showmare’s agitated audience.
The sudden, unnatural quietness from the collected ponies following the blast quickly made it clear to her that Trixie had cast some kind of blanket silencing spell on them. It was an impressive feat for a pony of any level of magical power at all, as there were very few books that told how to take away a pony’s voice and none at all that told how to do it on a large scale. Twilight figured—not that it really mattered to any part of her but the one that always needed to come up with explanations for such things—that Trixie must have had a background in spellcrafting, or at least made a very dedicated hobby of it at some point.
“Many of you, of course, remember Trixie... and the disaster she was unjustly accused of!” boomed Trixie, whose voice was still amplified, though to a lesser degree. She glared around as though daring somepony to disagree with her—but, of course, her spell prohibited such a thing. “You remember the damage done, and how it was unfairly blamed on the newcomer to spare a couple of wretched worms the punishment that was due! All that, in spite of her attempts to save everypony!”
A visual narration of Trixie’s story large enough to fill up the side of Applejack’s barn sprang up behind her, depicting a two colts—one fat and guffawing, the other skinny and vacant—leading an Ursa Minor into Ponyville. The image was soon replaced with one of destruction and carnage that far outstripped the real event, while a battered and bruised Trixie battled the Ursa with all her might. The rest of the story was told in a similarly exaggerated and edited manner, with a chubby, greasy, unattractive caricature of Twilight eventually taking credit for Trixie’s defeat of the creature. Truthfully, Twilight was rather glad for Trixie’s bias—seeing a real image of how she used to look would have hurt beyond words.
“Thanks to the lies that were told about her,” the increasingly angry unicorn continued, “she became a laughingstock! A joke! She couldn’t make a living by any means you’d want to talk about at your dinner table! Everywhere she went, she was persecuted and ostracized! She even had to take a job on a rock farm just to earn a decent living! A rock farm!”
Panting furiously, she paused and sat back to catch her breath, the amulet around her neck glowing brighter than ever. It seemed to actually pulsate with a faint heartbeat of its own, as though it were feeding off her anger.
The image of Trixie laboring beneath the sweltering sun on a rock farm to illustrate her plight—which had been preceded by images of her staring at herself in a lake, wandering around in the rain, having trash thrown at her, and so on—turned to a shadowy, foreboding sequence in which an indistinct mare who resembled Trixie’s caricature of Twilight was set upon by equally indistinct shadows that looked a lot like changelings.
“When she learned of the terrible, tragic fate of poor Twilight Sparkle—abducted and tortured at the hooves of changelings—” Trixie gave Twilight a violent shake for emphasis, whipping the changeling’s head back and forth. “—Trixie knew that she had to do something, in spite of her completely reasonable aversion to all things associated with the town that unjustly destroyed her life and livelihood. So, leaving her only source of food and income behind, she plunged into the Everfree forest to save the helpless, innocent pony!”
Now in full showmare mode, Trixie started animating her adventures with increasingly vivid displays of magic: a miniature Trixie fought her way through various mythical monsters said to live in the Everfree Forest—among them, a manticore, a hydra, a basilisk, Nightmare Moon, a suspiciously Discord-like draconequus, and a pack of timberwolves. Many of the ponies watching were rolling their eyes or otherwise expressing disbelief, but a few here and there seemed mildly interested. Something seemed to prevent them from leaving or turning away; perhaps Trixie had cast a spell on herself to make everypony pay attention to her, like many of Twilight’s professors had when she was at the Academy.
“At last, Trixie tracked the missing unicorn to the old fortress of Nightmare Moon, where she found a hive of changelings preparing to invade Equestria! She could not afford to take the time to go to the Guard, so she plunged in by herself, with only her wits and magic to keep her alive! Though she was set upon by the entire hive, she threw them off using arcane spells she learned in the far corners of the unexplored, uninhabited world!”
Little see-through changelings poured onto the illusory Trixie from all directions like a black and green flood. Many of the ponies in her audience opened their mouths in silent exclamations of surprise as the show suddenly became three-dimensional. Behind the army of insects, Twilight saw real soldiers—the Royal Guard—coming into the town square, but they, too, were stopped by Trixie’s barrier, and Trixie seemed utterly indifferent to them.
“Knowing that defeating the queen would stop the seemingly endless tide of changelings that threatened to pour into Equestria,” Trixie went on, surrounding Twilight with a faint red glow as she spoke, “she fought her way up to the highest tower of the castle, where she found the queen of the changelings herself...”
At first, Twilight’s tired brain didn’t fully understand that her legs were moving without her consent. Once it actually sank in, she panicked and tried to stop herself, but all the muscles that weren’t being manipulated by Trixie’s magic were being held in place. She could only watch, trapped as a prisoner inside her own body, as she rose to her hooves and became the queen in Trixie’s performance, exchanging senselessly cliched lines with the miniature Trixie as they ‘battled’. The only solace she could find in the incredibly humiliating role was that the spells being cast on her weren’t real, and didn’t actually hurt her.
“At last, after hours of fighting, Trixie and her forgotten arcane magic defeated the evil changeling queen!” shouted Trixie. As she said this, Twilight was allowed to slump against the fountain, where she struggled to keep from dry-heaving after the harrowing dance she’d been put through. “And as the queen lay there with her crown broken, Trixie demanded to know: Where is Twilight Sparkle?”
A sick, cold feeling entirely unrelated to her nausea spread through Twilight’s body, because she could already guess what was coming.
“And she said to Trixie...”
The ‘changeling queen’ struggled to keep her mouth shut when the magic surrounded her again, but it was a futile battle. Her mouth opened, and she said, “I killed Twilight Sparkle.”
Whatever Trixie said after that was lost on her, because everything that was Twilight was busy crashing down into an endless pit of hopelessness. As soon as she was able to move again, she lay down on her side and curled up, and began to cry silently.
How dare you, Twilight thought. How dare you do that to me. How dare you make me say that.
She repeated this out loud, though it was muffled by her jaws trying to clench together in anger: “How dare you...”
To her outrage, Trixie didn’t even pay attention to her; just continued rambling on about some absurdity only she could possibly dream up. Twilight was beginning to see red, but her body just seemed too sluggish and too disconnected from her mind to react; nor could she come up with a plan for how to proceed—though that really should have been her first option, she belatedly noted.
“...alas, Trixie was too late,” Trixie was saying. “She had found the dying mare, but poor Twilight Sparkle was beyond saving. The evil changelings... had coldly and cruelly murdered her! Trixie held her as the very life drained from her mortal body!”
Trixie then paused dramatically, shedding a theatrical tear as she stepped back and conjured up an image on the ground before the now solitary Twilight.
Twilight peeked out around her hoof, her interest drawn more by the sudden flash of light than by real curiosity about what was going on. She quickly averted her eyes from the sight of her own dead body, with its empty, staring gaze, and broken limbs, and snapped horn. Beside it, she discovered, was an image of Trixie kneeling beside it and weeping—the ultimate picture being Trixie sobbing over the body of her friend while the murderer lay dead nearby, killed in a furious battle for the dying mare’s life.
Without even having to glance at the audience, Twilight could feel their anger and their disgust. They wanted to hurt her so badly that she could feel it driving into her brain, flowing into her own body. Everypony wanted to hurt her. At least, they all wanted to hurt her on one side—she was still blind on the other.
“...and she told Trixie as she died, that she wished for The Great and Powerful Trixie to take her noble place as Princess Celestia’s student,” said Trixie. “She said that Trixie was the only unicorn in Equestria great enough to fill such a role; that Trixie is, perhaps, a greater unicorn than Sparkle ever was...”
“How dare you...” Twilight whispered again, trembling with combined fury and hurt. A couple of tears slid down her cheeks. “How dare you use me like this... How dare you... How dare you...”
And thus would end Twilight Sparkle. Former unicorn, personal student of Princess Celestia, Element of Magic, the most powerful unicorn in centuries, and so on; now a changeling, a parody of herself, a broken and helpless shell too weak and timid to lift a hoof or say a word in her own defense, only able to look on and cry as another mare used her as a stepping stone towards fame and power.
After everything she had done, her studies in friendship should not have culminated in her own murder. She had never felt hate towards another pony before, but she did now—for the first time in her life, Twilight was angry in a way that made her want to hurt somepony; to inflict pain on them and make them hurt the way she had. Images of burning, dead, and dying ponies filled her head, and though she was absolutely terrified by her own thoughts, a part of her enjoyed it—let them feel what it was like to be afraid, and to be abused, and to be alone, and to be scared, and to suffer, and to know that everypony wanted them dead.
Sickened by the contents of her own mind, she pushed the disturbing thoughts as far away as she could. The feelings, however, kept coming, bombarding her from all sides, as though she were wrapped very tightly in a blanket of undiluted anger that was squeezing her mercilessly, trying to crush all the love out of her.
“...it was then that Twilight Sparkle died in Trixie’s very hooves,” said Trixie, who had now spent quite a while rambling in absurd detail about her attending to Twilight in her last moments. “Trixie buried her in the secret place she asked to be buried, which she will never reveal to any of you, and she is now fulfilling her last promise: to tell Twilight Sparkle’s story to Ponyville.”
The illusion of Trixie, which had been sitting by a translucent grave bearing Twilight’s name, disappeared, and the real showmare looked around for a moment in silence.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie thanks you for your attentiveness.”
Then her horn glowed scarlet, and another loud bang suddenly echoed around the town square. It was followed by a strange revving sound as everypony present had their voice returned to them. Those who had been mouthing silently at Trixie were suddenly given full volume with the breaking of the spell, causing a sudden cacophony of noise to bombard Twilight’s sensitive ears. She automatically pressed down on them to stop the unholy , causing another blast of random, painful empathy input to erupt from the one that wasn’t fused to her half-formed mane.
“You lying fraud!” was the first intelligible thing Twilight was able to make out from the noise. It seemed to be the first thing Trixie was able to make out, too, because her eyes widened and an expression of disbelief crossed her face.
“W-what?” the unicorn said. The gut-punched tone in which she said it wouldn’t have been out of place coming from a filly who had just been told their cutie marks were just identical and conveniently placed blotches of paint after having invited everypony in town to their cute-ceañera. “What did you say?”
“That story was completely made up,” the blonde stallion from earlier, the one with the smiley face for a cutie mark, said. “We’re not stupid.”
An angry-looking mare added, “Twilight Sparkle came back here this afternoon! I guess you missed the memo about that, though! Or maybe you just don’t care!”
Though Trixie didn’t appear to catch that one, Twilight did. She stopped breathing altogether and began desperately struggling to control her oversensitive hearing so that she could pick out more individual statements that weren’t just insults directed at the increasingly shaken Trixie.
“Stop it, all of you! The Tormented and Persecuted Trixie won’t stand for this! Stop heckling her!” Trixie shouted. “Stop it!”
“You’re a terrible pony, trying to exploit something like what Twilight went through!”
“First she brings a changeling into Ponyville, and then she makes up a story like that just to—I don’t even know...”
An empty bottle sailed through the air and clinked against the barrier Trixie had erected, though it didn’t break when it hit. At that moment, Twilight realized that the hostility she had sensed from Trixie’s onlookers had never been directed at her at all; it had been for Trixie. They were angry at the showmare for what she had been saying, not Twilight for her role in the insane performance.
“Cut the horseapples!” yelled a pony. “Twilight Sparkle’s not dead, and you know it, you psychotic fraud!”
“Then where is she, hmm? This changeling here told me she’s dead! It killed her! Where is she?” Trixie demanded.
Nopony appeared to buy it. “Get out of Ponyville, liar! Get out before you destroy the town again! Take your changeling with you!”
“Could everypony calm—oh, whew—calm down, please!” puffed a voice that seemed faintly familiar to Twilight. “Regardless of what she said or did, nopony should be throwing bottles at each other, for any reason at all! Oh, and I’m, um, not dead... Just to clarify.”
A frazzled, sleepy-looking unicorn mare wearing a bandage around her head slipped out from between some of the others gathered around Twilight and Trixie. She was panting heavily, having apparently galloped very fast for some distance to get there using a body that wasn’t exactly in the best physical shape.
This body was also quite familiar to Twilight; more so than the voice, which sounded a bit higher than she remembered, oddly. She knew that body better than anypony else alive, because she’d grown up wearing it, and looked at it in the mirror every morning when she got up. The mulberry coat, the violet-streaked mane, the carefully maintained horn, the starburst cutie mark that she herself was wearing a piece of on one flank—they all belonged to her.
Twilight was staring at a perfect replica of her true self.
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2720020
lol there's just a lot of hate for Past Sins
which sucks because I like it a lot
It's easy to make fun of too
because pen stroke is so defensive
of his oc's virginal innocence ._.
2725020
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/59019/6/solitary-locust/vi-to-return-home
I spotted an error in the first paragraph, nothing serious, but it counts.
" Almost unnoticeably quiet in spite of the near silence was the the shallow breathing..."
2664150
boo!!!!1
2642272
That's literally what I told Animus on skype last night
2740562
I'll call the mental hospital. Just hold tight
2740565
but I just got released yesterday. I don't want to go back.
You managed to make Trixie extremely irritating and annoying. Thank you for that. Also, cliffhangers are mean.
Why do I feel like the 'real' Twilight is the 'fake' one?
Um. Wow.
So, wild guessing for the sake of wild guessing.
1) The changeling is the real Twilight, and the bandaged unicorn is a magical clone created during Twilight's last thoughts and temporary death. Obviously, the town would have any lavender unicorns with starburst cutie marks coming into town tested, but the other Twilight is a magical clone, so of course they wouldn't pick up anything.
2) The pairing will be the two Twilights. Twiling and Twolight will bond over the mutual problem of not being 'real' any more, and find solace in each other and maybe a few cups of aged cider.
2740608 I second this theory!
2740592
i like it when trixie is endearingly self-absorbed instead of just angsty
she's upset and hurt over something unfair that happened to her
but she's still over the top like in the show
just with a darker tone
or something
whatever
God i've had to use this so many times i've made a recording of it.
Let me see....
*mumbling*
Yelling
screaming
booing
yawning
*end mumbling*
Ah here it is the 'dun dun dun' one
*flips switch*
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN!!!
2740597
i love how ambiguous this is because you don't specify which twilight you're talking about
but what if they're both fake
or worse
what if they're both real
Wat.
Which one is real? Tough question. Haven't seen enough of this new 'Twilight Sparkle' to make any calls yet.
2740608
good wow or bad wow
24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkd25ibmRS1qj70oko1_250.gif
shit son that's heavy
why would she clone herself as she died though?
perhaps her body/brain/magic were trying to ensure that some part of her survived?
derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTMvMDUvMTQvMjNfMjdfNDVfMzY2XzMyNTE2M19fVU5PUFRfX3R3aWxpZ2h0X3NwYXJrbGVfZXhwbGljaXRfNTExN2FlODZhNGM3MmQ3ZGUzMDAwOWViLnBuZyJdXQ/325163__twilight%2Bsparkle_suggestive_selfcest_artist-colon-cladz.png
2740622
wat
Hell if I know what's what and who's who.
I am seeing at least one benefit to Amuletified Trixie being in town, maybe it'll be cause for Celestia to show up and let the Twilight we've been following along with get some resolution from her.
Great to see an update. Hope the next one is sooner, but whatever is best for the story.
P.S. Past Sins was a good read but I hear he rewrote it to make Spike terrified of Nyx for stupid reasons just in order to make room for a sequel/side-story.
2740672 it's me being me ^_^
*cough*
Anyways it's an ongoing joke between myself that i say the DUN DUN DUN alot. So i make up wierd shit... this one was a bit out of the ordinary but what you gave at the end... *whistles* man that was some serious dun dun dun stuff
2740677
it's good but it's not that good
people are like blughsghdf past sins is so great anfhhghdfhgsfjfgd
and it's just like ok it's fine
shut up now
2740674
yeah it's about fucking time that ancient sun bitch had better show up soon goddamn
Ag... aguh... gwuh...
Marvellous!
Ok so Twilight was replaced by another changeling.
I probably called it: Changeling Twilight was Twilight all along, but came to honestly believe she was Twilight herself. That, or this is a very elaborate assassination.
Interesting portrayal of Trixie having never removed the amulet. That shit was making her insane, and, well, she's pretty much fucked in the head here.
2740711
OH MY GOD REALLY??
and here i thought i knew what was going on
thanks for correcting me <3
2740708
2740576
are you on your meds yet
2740717 I kind feel glad that the new Twilight is there now we can see Trixie kill the false Twilight and then get hated even more by the town.
...this...is really not a good situation.
The turned Twilight may be the true one, but her mind has taken so many scratches that even if she wanted to, she could not possibly convince the ponies that she truly is Celestia's student.
Why is the turned Twilight the true one? Because the fact that the pen answers to her may be the sole key to the case.
Awaiting further releases.
Damnit all...
Missed the update. Still.
I should probably pay attention to the Skype.... I'd have some semblance of an idea of what's going on...
~Skeeter The Lurker
2740597 Wouldn't be the first time it has happened.
The question is, who is the real Sparkle?
...
I shall stop here before I go into Inception mode.
Oh gosh a new episode!
And that final part, oh my...
Btw my first thought was that somepony altered herself to look like Twilight for whatever reasons... obviously not a real changeling because they'd have ripped her apart the moment she entered the town and set off the changeling-alarm.
And uh, whatever you mean by pairi-
Oh, there's a romance tag, wow, I didn't notice that until now :O
2740731
you sick sadist
it's like i have two minds
2740735
media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8cv2zpjKl1qegw8v.jpg
Solitary Locust has a lot to do with identity, and Twilight's just about had hers stripped from her by this point. That would drive anyone insane.
It would take some really good writing for the Twilight we've been following since Chapter One to not be the real Twilight. You're certainly capable of it, and if you have Daemon of Decay helping you out, then all bets are off on what's real and what isn't, even at this point of the game.
Not sure what you're referring to by "pairing." Is there some shipping waiting to be set up?
2740668
-Why not both? Bad because our protagonist is in serious trouble, good because things just got that much more interesting.
wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/File:Pyro-bgz0jk0.jpg
-it's magic i ain't gotta 'splain sh*shot*
Possibly just wishing with all her heart to be with her friends again, and being too delirious to notice the debilitating pain and likely-terminal strain that casting such a spell in her state would cause. (man you can write an explanation for just about anything)
-That's still quite a ways away, if my wild guessing is even correct, considering how Twiling needs surgery and rest and therapy and so on.
Here is my theory. The twilight we have been following has always been a changeling, but she had her memories rewritten with twilight's.
As for shipping IDK.
What a Twist!
2740765
you had better appreciate my hard
onworktwilight gave a lot of important but indirect information back in the 1st chapter that nobody's picked up on
a lot of her statements imply things that will become important later
and it's not necessarily 'da reel twilight got killed lel'
there used to be a sex tag too even though it was t-rated but people bitched so i took it off
that's probably why some retard added it to clopfics ._.
2740797
twist is worst pony
2740764
this would not be original content if i wasn't being original
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2740790
q: does that still make her twilight?
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Interesting. Maybe other changeling used that for self :P
2740766
Hey, it is my purpose to state what has occurred.
Its obviousness is given.
2740812
derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTMvMDYvMTgvMTVfMjJfMzNfMjEzXzM1MTU3OV9fc2FmZV9hcnRpc3RfY29sb25fc3VwZXJyb2JvdHJhaW5ib3dwaWdfd2hlZWx5X2JvcHBlciJdXQ/351579__safe_oc_solo_artist-colon-superrobotrainbowpig_wheely%2Bbopper.png
2740807 Twas only being a drunkard with my mind dear boy. Ti's be pure speculation on my end, or whatever counts for it with the clutter of disorganized chaos.
I was merely referring to other fictions that I have read in the past that had similar themes.
2740819
derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTMvMDYvMTYvMTZfMDdfNDdfMTQ2XzM0OTkwNF9fc2FmZV9vY19hcnRpc3RfY29sb25fdmFwZ2FtZXNfd2hlZWx5X2JvcHBlciJdXQ/349904__safe_oc_solo_pegasus_scrunchy%2Bface_artist-colon-vapgames_wheely%2Bbopper_road.jpg
2740808
Arguably yes.
Kind of.
In a way.
It's complicated.
2740766 I have an interesting proposition/conundrum. How about Twilight as a changeling try and follow the other Twilight back home as some form of penance deal for taking her Identity only to have the other return to changeling form, they decide to talk a bit then the changeling asks the real Twilight how she's supposed to act and in return the changeling will try and help Twilight return to her true form as long as she promises to help the changeling remain free in ponyville.
Wonderful chapter again.
And poor Twilight... changeling? ... Twilight? 
I hope Luna and Celestia will give Trixie the reward she deserves.
Does not compute.
The twilight we have been following all of this time is the real twilight.
2740823 By Scott's Hooves, that was a most uncalled for reply, my dear Watson!
Come! We must make haste to the uh...
Contraption rifle machine transport to Alternia that I have made for such a specific journey, where our mind will then be probed for such ill, odd anomalies.
Then reverted to standard hardrive status.
I am mumbling abomination of no logical sense of any proportion!
Quickly, we must retrieve the sacred medicine for the treatment of ADD!
Lest this cruel mind lead to unpredictable jellywagons!
It appears that the excreted fecal matter has just impacted the rotary air circulation device.