• Published 10th Jan 2013
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The Magician and the Fiddler - The Fool



Tartarus's demons break loose when Trixie and Fiddlesticks meet in a tavern and perform together.

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Chapter II

"Next stop, Ponyville!" Fiddlesticks heard the train attendant call from the aisle outside her cabin. Cracking open her eyes and feeling very disoriented, she raised her head from the pillow. As she watched the early morning sun and clear blue sky reflect off the river whisking past the window, the memory that had kept her awake most of the night receded into the back of her mind, replaced by the memory of how she had boarded the evening train to Ponyville upon arriving in Fillydelphia. Having neglected to ask Pinkie, Fiddlesticks had figured Applejack would be her best lead on Tartarus's location.

When the scenery changed to simple wooden cottages with straw roofs and distant fields lined with apple trees, Fiddlesticks reluctantly threw back the white sheet and climbed out of bed, ignoring its pleas for her to let its luxurious softness embrace her in the veil of sleep once more. She took her clothes from the bedside drawer, pulled her shirt over her head, tied her bandanna around her neck, slung her case, brushed her mane in the bedside mirror, and donned her hat just before the train screeched to a halt. Seeing the well-traveled dirt road to Sweet Apple Acres directly outside her window, she smiled, opened her cabin door, walked down the aisle to the next car, and exited via the door on the left.

As she approached the farmhouse, a tall, muscle-bound stallion whose red coat and short-cut peach mane camouflaged him against the front porch set his bottle of cider down, trotted up to the railing, and called, "Howdy, Fiddlesticks!"

"Howdy, Mac!" Fiddlesticks called back, grinning. She cantered the rest of the way, threw her forelegs around his neck, hugging him over the railing, and asked, "Am I late for the reunion?"

"Nope," McIntosh replied, shaking his head and smiling with his leaf-green eyes but not his mouth, which was occupied with a stalk of wheat. As she pulled away and straightened her hat, he added, "'Bout 11 months early, I reckon."

"I need to talk to Applejack," Fiddlesticks said, her light Marish lilt contrasting with his resonant Southern drawl. "Is she around?"

McIntosh nodded. "She's workin' the north field."

"Thanks," Fiddlesticks said, wasting no time in galloping around the farmhouse and weaving through the groves of stubby trees whose bright red fruit gleamed in the morning sun.

Turning a corner, she nearly plowed into an orange earth pony who was in the midst of landing a powerful buck on a tree trunk. The branches rattled under the force of the impact, dropping their fruit into the surrounding baskets. A stray apple knocked the brim of Fiddlesticks's hat over her eyes. Fiddlesticks pushed it back with her hoof, picked the apple off the grass, tossed it into a basket, and said, "Howdy, Applejack! Do you need any help?"

Applejack looked up from beneath her tan cowpony hat. She had been so absorbed with gathering stray apples that she hadn't noticed Fiddlesticks's lemon-yellow hooves in her peripheral vision. "Howdy, Fiddlesticks!" she said in a less-pronounced drawl than McIntosh's, rising to eye level and grinning. "I wouldn't say I need help, but I can't turn away a cousin I only see once in a blue moon. How 'bout gatherin' the rest of these apples with me?"

Fiddlesticks nodded and set to work, putting her mission on hold for the moment. There was always time to lend family a hoof, especially when about to ask said family to do the same.

After tossing the last apple into its basket and hearing it land with a satisfying thud, Applejack wiped the sweat from beneath her blond bangs, turned to her with a friendly smile, and asked, "What brings you back 'round these parts, couldn't wait to see us again?"

Fiddlesticks adjusted her case's strap, tilted her head, and nonchalantly answered, "I'm actually just passing through on my way to Tartarus to save a mare I barely know from an immortal demon whose jaw I threatened to dislocate. I was hoping you could give me directions."

Applejack stared at her blankly for a moment before remembering how her vocal cords worked. "Mind runnin' that one by me again?"

Fiddlesticks giggled, but her breezy demeanor waned as she spoke and her words brought back memories, "I met a traveling magician in Fillydelphia by the name of Trixie. We decided to perform together, but the Tartaric Prince of Pacts whisked her away in the middle of our act for breaching some sort of contract. Now I'm on a mission to save her and buck his fangs out if I find that he's lain a cloven hoof on her."

Having recovered from her initial shock, Applejack said, "I see."

Realizing no further response was forthcoming, Fiddlesticks reiterated, "I remembered your story about how Twilight had lured Cerberus back to Tartarus, so I was hoping you could give me directions."

Applejack searched Fiddlesticks's eyes. Finding the unshakable determination that's passed on with the mother's milk to all members of the Apple Family, she smiled and said, "I'd try to talk you out of this, but I know for a fact you wouldn't listen. Trixie must mean somethin' special to you if you're willin' to put your neck on the line for her like this, so I won't waste your time askin' for details, but promise me if you two come out of there alive, you'll come back here first thing to tell me all about it."

Fiddlesticks walked over and pulled her into a hug. If Fiddlesticks didn't make it back, she'd regret having spent so much time away from her family, but she had to do what she had to do, and Applejack understood that better than anypony. Fiddlesticks wanted to cry, but she couldn't afford to show weakness. Not when she was so close to her goal. Letting go, she said, "Pinkie asked me to pay her a visit with Trixie next time we're in town, so if I'm still alive in a few days, maybe we can all meet at Sugar Cube Corner."

"How do you know Pinkie?"

"She moonlights as a medium in Hollow Shades."

After a moment's pause, Applejack said, "Right. You'll want to head east across town 'til you come to a bridge at the base of Saddle Lake then keep headin' east through the woods 'til you run into a long diagonal plain of bedrock with cliffs on either side. That's Ramblin' Rock Ridge, and the entrance to Tartarus should be at the far end of the northern cliff. Twilight could give you better directions, but from what I hear, you can probably just follow the smell."

"Thanks, Applejack," Fiddlesticks said, hugging her once more before galloping off.

"Break a leg!" Applejack called, realizing she probably couldn't have chosen poorer words as the image of Cerberus adopting Fiddlesticks as his new chew toy wormed its way into her head.

***

Fiddlesticks stood on her hind legs and pressed her back against the boulder. Even from this distance, the toasty warmth wafting up from within the cavern made her sweat. She inhaled a sharp, shallow breath, the sulfurous fumes burning her nostrils, and poked her head around the corner.

A pitch-black bulldog stood watch, his three heads and towering stature giving him a panoramic view of the barren expanse of fissured bedrock that stretched to the western horizon on his right and gradually blended into the distant tree line on his left. Behind him, the stalactite-lined cavern cut into the sandy cliff face like a gaping maw ready to devour anypony crafty enough to elude its guard and foolish enough to try.

Fiddlesticks once read a historical account of a pony getting past unscathed by putting him to sleep with a lyre. She'd considered trying her luck with her fiddle but reasoned that it would probably just betray her position. That left plan B. She cast a weary glance at the piece of driftwood she'd dragged with her from the shore of Saddle Lake. She really didn't want to use plan B.

She surveyed the cavern entrance again. She had been lucky to get this far undetected, but the scattering of rocky debris was too thin for her to move any closer without first staging a diversion. She breathed a raspy sigh, "Well, here goes nothing."

She poked her head out once more, put her hoof to her teeth, let out a long, piercing whistle, ducked back behind the boulder before Cerberus saw her, kicked the driftwood up into the air, twirled around on her front hooves, and bucked it off to the side. It clattered to the ground a fair distance away considering she hadn't had to buck apples—or anything else, for that matter—in years. She heard barking and claws clicking against stone followed by teeth grating into wood. Her heart trying to clamber out her throat, presumably to run for the hills, she took another cautious glance.

Cerberus was sitting on his haunches and facing away from her. His central head gnawed on the driftwood while his left and right tried to jerk it away in an astoundingly pointless game of tug of war.

"I can't believe that actually worked," Fiddlesticks said with a hint of disappointment and a touch louder than she'd intended.

Cerberus stopped chewing, dropped the driftwood, and swiveled his heads around, all six of his ears perking up.

Fiddlesticks flattened her back against her cover and cursed under her breath. Her legs tingled with adrenaline, and her peripheral vision blurred, preventing her from seeing anything that wasn't straight ahead. Her other senses, especially her hearing, peaked.

Cerberus sniffed audibly at the air once, twice, and growled a warning growl.

Swallowing hard to force her heart back into her chest, Fiddlesticks dropped to her hooves and barreled toward the cavern at a full gallop. The clopping of her hooves against the stone assaulted her sensitive ears like cracking coconuts. She heard him lunging after her and barking hysterically. Despite his height advantage, she managed to maintain a steadily growing distance between them but groaned between panting breaths when she saw the ominous orange glow emanating from within the cavern and dashing any hope of losing him inside.

By the time she reached the entrance, her leg muscles were burning. She didn't notice the steep incline until she was already teetering over it. Adjusting her course just in time, she narrowly escaped tumbling head over hooves, touched down on the cavern floor, and spared a glance back over her shoulder.

Cerberus leaped into the air from the mouth of the cavern, nearly skinned his back on the ceiling, and landed in front of her with a deafening crash that made dust and bits of rock shower from the ceiling. He stood, shook his heads, and whirled around to face her, blocking the main path into the depths of Tartarus. Snarling, he advanced.

Fiddlesticks stared defiantly into his red-and-yellow eyes while slowly backtracking toward the entrance. Spotting a crack in the wall too narrow for him to enter and praying to Celestia it wasn't a dead end, Fiddlesticks dove in, scrambled to her hooves, and cantered down the winding pitch-black corridor as fast as she dared. Before the scratching of his nails against the stone wall faded into the distance, Fiddlesticks thought she heard him whimper.

She emerged on the other side to find herself on the bank of a flowing, gurgling river of magma. The searing heat, her exhaustion, and a nauseous feeling percolating in her stomach finally drew her hooves out from under her. Her chest heaving as she gasped for air, she tore off her bandanna, pulled her shirt over her head, and tossed both to the floor before picking up her hat and putting it back on. The strap pressed against her bare fur and the hat her family had given her before she left Manehattan being her only insulation, she found minor respite, but her coat still gleamed with sweat. She could scarcely imagine what Trixie had been going through for the past few days.

With that in mind, Fiddlesticks stuffed her clothes in her case, forced herself up onto her protesting legs, and hugged the wall as she trotted down the bank. Fully aware that she had no idea where she was going and might die of heat stroke before ever seeing another soul, Fiddlesticks thanked whoever was watching over her that the demons were too preoccupied to give her a proper welcome.

By the time the path opened into a chamber with enough height and width to comfortably accommodate a slumbering dragon, the heat had dried the sweat from her coat and her vision had gotten hazy. The river spilled into a lake that filled two thirds of the floor and branched down another tunnel to the right. The path veered off to the left and rose into a ramp that circled around the lake, leveling into an overhanging cliff halfway up the wall on the far side.

Fiddlesticks trudged up the ramp and saw another tunnel rise into view opposite the one from which she'd entered. When she finally reached the plateau, her legs were ready to give out again, but a pony-shaped smudge of azure painted against the opposite wall caught her attention. She couldn't make out any other identifying features through the haze, but her heart filled with hope that gushed into her voice as she called, "Is that you, Trixie?"

The azure pony raised her head, brushed her silver mane out of her eyes, and looked around. In a voice that was unmistakably Trixie's, she called back, "Who goes there, Fiddlesticks?" After a moment, she slumped back to the floor, turned to face the wall, and heaved a weary sigh. "No, that can't be. The monster's just playing with my head."

Making no effort to stem the joyful tears welling in her eyes, Fiddlesticks found her second wind and raced to close the distance, calling, "Trixie! It's me, Fiddlesticks! I came to rescue you!"

Trixie rolled to her belly, brought her forelegs under herself, and cast a bleary-eyed look in the pony's direction in time to get tackled onto her back. "Ah, Fiddlesticks!" She gazed down at the messy cobalt mane of the pony wrapped snugly around her as if afraid she'd disappear. "It's really you, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's me," Fiddlesticks said. Her hat had fallen off and landed nearby, and her mane tickled Trixie's neck as she pulled herself up to affectionately nuzzle Trixie's cheek, feeling the warmth of Trixie's blush against her snout.

Most ponies only wore clothes on special occasions. That she only took off her green v-neck shirt to sleep made her especially sensitive, and every follicle of her bare coat resonated with the touch of the mare with whom she was entangled. Being an earth pony, she'd spent most of her life with a very grounded world view, but she got the unshakable sense that the effect the intimate contact had on her went far deeper than the physical.

Here, in the fiery outskirts of the spirit world, their souls had mingled, awakening something that had been securely locked away in her unconscious since she met Trixie in that tavern, at which point it'd started rattling its shackles by rolling around in its sleep. She still didn't know what it was, but that didn't bother her, for on an intuitive level, she knew what it meant. She'd be at a loss if somepony asked her to put it into words, but she finally knew why she'd felt so compelled to come looking for Trixie. She finally understood that she'd been looking for Trixie all her life. Smiling her adorable smile, she made no effort to hide her blush; she didn't need to, for the look in Trixie's eyes told her that whether she knew it or not, Trixie felt the same. "I'd thought I'd lost you, but when I went to Madame Pinkie Pie and she told me you were here—"

"You came looking for me, you followed me into the depths of Tartarus, and you found me. Fiddlesticks, I..." Trixie wanted to say so many things, and that the words completely eluded her now of all times hurt. "I don't know what to say."

"Then don't say anything. The demons are gone, so we can worry about getting out of here later." Fiddlesticks laid her head over Trixie's shoulder and tucked her forelegs around Trixie's sides. "Right now, just let me hold you... You can call me Fiddles if you like."

Trixie wrapped her forelegs around Fiddlestick's back and gazed at the ceiling high above. The last time she'd held somepony was when she said goodbye to her parents and left home to start her life on the road, but that had been nothing like this. Nopony had ever held her like this. Wondering if the same could be said for Fiddlesticks, Trixie held her tighter.

Fiddlesticks broke the embrace first. She brought her forelegs under herself, slid down between Trixie's thighs, and pressed her ear against Trixie's chest.

Her blush returning, Trixie propped herself up on her forelegs to look at her and asked in a rare moment of nervousness, "Ah, Fiddlesticks, do you really think now is the best time?"

Fiddlesticks gave her a puzzled look before realization dawned on her. Her blush at the insinuation deepened at the implication that Trixie would be open to the idea if not for their present circumstances. "I was just checking your pulse. You know, making sure you're really alive. Nothing else."

Noting that Fiddlesticks had made no effort to move out from between her hind legs, Trixie draped her forelegs around Fiddlesticks's neck and whispered, "Believe me, Fiddles. If my heart wasn't beating before, it is now."

Fiddlesticks leaned in to kiss her, part of her mind protesting that their circumstances hadn't changed, that they were still lying on a ledge over a lake of magma in the depths of Tartarus, but not until the frantic clicking of claws against stone became audible over her pounding heart did she consider it a valid argument. Groaning, she rose to her hooves just before their lips met, positioned herself between her and the tunnel, and warned, "Stay behind me."

Trixie rolled over and asked with a hint of disappointment, "What's wrong?"

Cerberus bounded into the chamber and turned to continue down the ramp. His left head spotting Fiddlesticks, he dug his claws into the floor, skidded to a stop, turned, and advanced on her.

"Take one more step," Fiddlesticks growled, dropping into a defensive stance, realizing how slim her chances of survival were, and neglecting to care in the slightest. She hadn't come this far to turn tail and run from an overgrown bulldog of all things. "I dare you."

Cerberus took another step, bared his three sets of teeth, and snarled. Saliva dripped from his jaws and sizzled on the stone.

Fiddlesticks stomped forward to close the distance, craned her neck to meet his eyes, and jabbed his chest with her hoof. "I'm not afraid of you, mutt, and I'm not leaving without Trixie, so unless you want things to get uglier than your mugs, you'll back the buck off!"

Cerberus looked taken aback, flopped back on his haunches, and stared at her with a furrowed brow on each of his naturally furrowed, saggy faces. He looked to Trixie, who tried to shrink deeper into the floor despite already lying flat on her belly, and turned around to talk amongst himself, occasionally glancing back at them over his shoulders. Finally, he turned toward the tunnel, laid flat against the floor, looked expectantly at Fiddlesticks with his right head, and woofed.

Fiddlesticks stared for a moment before shooting Trixie a questioning look.

"I think... he's offering us a ride," Trixie said.

Fiddlesticks looked back at Cerberus, whose heads bobbed in confirmation. "All right, then," she said uneasily, climbed onto his back, unslung her case, tied the strap around the spikes on his central head's collar, and held on. Awkwardly, she added, "Uh, thanks."

Trixie climbed on behind her, pressed her chest against Fiddlesticks's back, and wrapped her forelegs around Fiddlesticks's belly.

Cerberus stood and set off toward the tunnel.

Fiddlesticks lifted a hoof from her makeshift reigns to brush her bangs aside. Her eyes widened. She cried in panic, "I forgot my hat!"

Cerberus ignored her and kept walking.

Biting her lip, Fiddlesticks turned to where her hat had fallen earlier, but it was gone. Seeing its white brim appearing in her peripheral vision, Trixie's head resting against her shoulder, the smile on Trixie's face, and the pink aura fading from Trixie's horn, she smiled back, touched her nose to Trixie's, and said tenderly, "Thanks, Trixie."

***

Cerberus stepped forth from the cavern into the refreshingly cool, crisp air, knelt so Trixie and Fiddlesticks could climb off his back, and gave them a gentle nudge that seemed to say, "Leave this place, and please never come back."

Trixie and Fiddlesticks thanked him and turned, wanting nothing more than to do exactly that, but froze at what they saw.

Cerberus looked up, pawed at his ears, and groaned before bounding off to apprehend the cloven-hoofed earth pony demons frolicking through the plain of bleached bedrock and playing hide and seek under the afternoon sun.

The demons varied in tone, build, hairstyle, and the inky black arcane glyphs where their cutie marks should have been, but aside from their lack of horns, they all resembled the unicorn Fiddlesticks had spoken with in Madame Pinkie Pie's tent—the one who was now approaching her and Trixie.

Suddenly feeling very vulnerable in the open air without her hat and cloak, Trixie took an instinctive step closer to Fiddlesticks and leaned in to whisper in Fiddlesticks's ear, "That's Clovecus, the Tartaric Prince of Pacts."

"We've met," Fiddlesticks grumbled, imperceptibly bracing her front hooves should the need to twirl around and make good on her promise arise.

"Ah, Fiddlesticks!" Clovecus said, stopping just beyond her range and grinning in apparent disregard for the game of three-headed cat and mouse playing out behind him. "I'm so glad you could make it. You'll be happy to know that I've reconsidered your proposal and come to a solution on which I think we can both agree. Since the only way for me not to have been in Tartarus when you arrived was for me to leave, my commitment to this new deal trumped the one that bound me here in the first place, and since you've already rescued Trixie, thus upholding your end, we can go our separate ways and never speak of this again." He turned, began walking away, and called back, "Have a nice life, you two. I know I will."

"I never agreed to those terms," Fiddlesticks called after him. Turning to see Trixie's questioning look, she pointed an accusatory hoof at him and explained, "If we let him go, he'll be free to wreak havoc across Equestria, and who's to say he'll stop there."

Clovecus turned, his grin sagging. "Perhaps I was unclear. If you refuse, I'll return to Tartarus, but I have the right to take Trixie with me, and if you try to rescue her again, neither I nor Cerberus will give you a snowball's chance in, well, Tartarus."

Wondering when the last time he'd actually seen snow was and hoping he ever saw it again, Fiddlesticks amended, "I said I disagreed with your terms. I never said the deal was off."

Clovecus twisted his head around to an angle that turned his frown into a horribly unsettling smile—a feat that would have snapped any normal pony's neck and probably did the same to his if the accompanying crackles were any indication. He asked, "What do you propose, then?"

Fiddlesticks fought her stomach's attempts to find new residence outside her body and grasped for some semblance of a plan. Remembering Pinkie's gift of fiddle strings, realizing she still hadn't had a use for it, and trusting Pinkie wouldn't have given it to her for no reason, Fiddlesticks asked, "Do you play the fiddle?"

Clovecus reoriented his head with the crinkle of newly mended bones breaking, lifted his cloven hoof, and clacked his toes together like pincers. "Frankly, I could never figure out how normal earth ponies manage to hold the bow, but since demons don't have that problem, we've all taken up fiddling to pass the eternity."

"How about a contest, then?" Fiddlesticks asked, her confidence in her abilities bordering on the sort of bravado she presumed no demon could resist. "If I lose, I forfeit my soul and grant your freedom, but—"

"Fiddles," Trixie began, "don't—"

"If you lose," Fiddlesticks continued unabated, "you forfeit Trixie's soul and return to Tartarus under the same terms that put you there."

"You're a high-stakes player, I see," Clovecus said jovially before growing serious. "Very well. I accept your offer, but before you sign the dotted line, so to speak, wouldn't you like to know what terms put Trixie here in the first place?"

Fiddlesticks sighed. A swift conclusion was probably too much to ask from an immortal megalomaniac, but she thought she'd try anyway, "I really couldn't care—"

"Trixie was the last filly in her class to get her cutie mark, and the teasing she endured from her peers, who found her being the last blank flank in her class positively hilarious, nearly drove her to the brink, but instead of ending her miserable existence, as others in her position have, she summoned my avatar and begged me to force her cutie mark to appear."

Trixie cringed and cast a wary glance at Fiddlesticks, whose glare dropped the ambient temperature around Clovecus by several degrees.

Clovecus paused to contemplate the thermodynamic anomaly with mild interest before shrugging and continuing, "In exchange for a life of solitude, I granted her wish. I thought the whole affair was rather insignificant, considering how I couldn't tell her what her cutie mark actually represented, and from the looks of things, how she would likely spend her life alone anyway, so you can imagine my surprise when I found out that she'd actually found somepony who could tolerate her. Alas, a deal was a deal, and I had no choice but to punish her for breach of contract. That you would put your soul on the line to save hers touches my black, putrid heart, but I have to wonder if she would do the same for you."

"You fail to realize that I'm not doing this for Trixie," Fiddlesticks said and stomped her hoof. "I'm doing this because you took her away from me. Celestia may frown on vengeful ponies, but I won't be satisfied unless you never see the sun again. Now shut up and play!"

"Suit yourself," Clovecus sighed. His horn glowed ultraviolet, and a perfectly ordinary fiddle and bow materialized within his magical field, but as he began playing, the difference became apparent. Unlike the hauntingly beautiful melodies she had played for Trixie that night in the tavern, his was more akin to an irate poltergeist—an infernal din that forced them to their knees with their hooves pressed over their ears.

In contrast, the demons forgot their mortal peril and ceased their fleeing to sing and dance in sanguine joy, allowing the unaffected Cerberus the opportunity to clamp his jaws around several, who yelped in surprise and disappeared in puffs of sparkling crimson dust instead of screaming in pain as blood poured forth from their mangled bodies as they might have were there two less foals in the audience.

When the song ended, if it could be referred to as such without incurring a stern talking to from orchestra conductors the world over, Clovecus turned to Trixie and Fiddlesticks with a knowing smirk and said, "Your turn, Fiddlesticks."

Fiddlesticks nodded, unslung her case, took out her bow and fiddle, and staggered to her hooves. Her mentor had taught her to play better than most ponies with only three strings. That her fiddle was currently equipped with four promised to make things interesting.

Rising to her hind legs, she narrowly avoided falling over backwards, for she hadn't fully recovered from the auditory assault. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath to steady herself, and began playing. What happened next was anypony's guess, for Trixie lacked the vocabulary to do it justice, and Fiddlesticks's attempt was met with blank stares from five of the six other ponies sitting at their table, unspoken considerations that she was more closely related to Pinkie than Applejack, and further considerations of those implications.

However, both Trixie and Fiddlesticks agreed on what happened after. Despite Fiddlesticks's performance having been so angelic by pony standards as to leave the demons catatonic long enough for the apparently tone-deaf Cerberus to capture them and probably bring Celestia to tears were she present to hear it, Clovecus declared himself the winner by popular vote.

"Your demons can't be the judges," Trixie protested. "Their stake in the competition makes them a biased party."

"By that logic, neither you, I, nor Fiddlesticks can either," Clovecus countered, "so whom do you propose?"

Trixie glanced up at something behind him and smirked as only a practiced showmare with a history of antagonizing her fellow performers could. "Well, when you put it that way, there seems to be only one possibility."

Clovecus arched an eyebrow and turned around to see that his demons were nowhere to be found and Cerberus was standing behind him and grinning three big, toothy grins. His ears drooping, Clovecus muttered, "Oh."

Cerberus's central head sunk it's teeth into him and picked him up, but he neither bled nor disappeared like the others. Instead, he just hung in defeat as Cerberus physically carried him back into the cavern.

"You win this round, mongrel," Clovecus groused, clacking his cloven hoof.

"He might just escape again via the same loophole, you know," Trixie said.

"We'll just have to tell everypony we meet how we saved Equestria from Tartarus's wrath by sheer luck and hope nopony follows in our hoofsteps," Fiddlesticks mused, watching Cerberus disappear into Tartarus. She went to put her fiddle away, saw Trixie's hat and cloak, and pulled them out from beneath her shirt and bandanna. "Hey Trixie, I have something of—ah!"

Trixie leaped on her and threw her forelegs around Fiddlesticks's neck, toppling her to ground. The garments landed on the dusty ground nearby.

Fiddlesticks giggled and reached up with her hoof to brush Trixie's silver mane. "I'll take that as a 'thank you for bringing my clothes.'"

Trixie lifted her head to lock eyes with her and noticed that their lips were mere inches apart.

Fiddlesticks must have noticed too, because a soft smile had spread across her lemon-yellow face.

Trixie felt the steadily quickening beat of Fiddlesticks's heart.

Fiddlesticks lost herself in Trixie's violet eyes. The last time she'd seen them so wide was when Trixie had been sprawled helplessly on the stage in Fillydelphia, but the emotion in Trixie's eyes wasn't fear this time. Excitement, anticipation, and perhaps even longing, but not fear.

Trixie closed her eyes and brushed her lips against Fiddlesticks's. The feeling was so electrifying she imagined her mane must be standing on end, and only a fraction of the light-headed warmth that flushed her mind and body came from the magma running through the ground beneath them.

Fiddlesticks had longed for this moment since she first saw her perform in that Fillydelphia tavern, and now it was finally happening. Trixie looked as absolutely beautiful now as she had then—as if she considered their kiss the only thing in the world that mattered. Her heart pounding against Trixie's chest, Fiddlesticks closed her eyes, wrapped her hind legs around Trixie's haunches, parted her lips, and met Trixie's tongue with hers. She couldn't agree more.

Trixie broke the kiss first, propping her forelegs up on either side of Fiddlesticks but letting her lower body stay wrapped between Fiddlesticks's thighs. Trixie gazed into Fiddlesticks's sapphire eyes and asked, "What if you lost?"

Fiddlesticks smiled, hooked her forelegs around Trixie's neck to pull her into a hug, and whispered into Trixie's ear, "At least we'd be together."

***

Fiddlesticks latches the door to her and Trixie's room at Ponyville's only tavern as Trixie concentrates on casting a basic fire spell from a grimoire Twilight lent her. Turning to see the bedside oil lamp's wick flare up seemingly of its own accord and chase the evening shadows away, Fiddlesticks smiles. On her way to the nightstand, she hangs her hat on the rack next to Trixie's.

Untying her bandanna, she watches through the mirror as Trixie lifts the bedspread, tucks herself in up to her neck, and rolls aside to make a space for her. Fiddlesticks pulls her shirt over her head, folds it, and sets it on the nightstand. Brushing her ruffled coat and mane back into place, she asks, "Do you think anypony believed us?"

Trixie rolls onto her back, props herself up on her forelegs, exposing her azure chest and shoulders to the chilly night air, and meets Fiddlesticks's radiant sapphire eyes through the mirror. She can't help smiling as she reflects on how lucky she is to have Fiddlesticks for a marefriend and answers, "Nopony ever does, but so long as we have each other, I couldn't care less what anypony else thinks."

Fiddlesticks walks over beside the bed, slides between the sheets, and snuggles up against her. She reaches down to pull the upper sheet back over their shoulders, brings her foreleg to a rest across Trixie's chest, and shivers in pleasure as Trixie rolls to face her. From the brushing of their coats to the intertwining of their legs and tails, Trixie's touch never fails to have that effect on her. Fiddlesticks kisses her, tasting the strawberry tart they shared at Sugar Cube Corner on Trixie's lips, and says in her Marish lilt, "From now until forever, we'll always be together."