The Trixie Zone

by Commissar Rarity

#234: Lost in Canterlot [Adventure-ish]

A/N: This ties into my entry for prompt #225, “Pitfall”. Reading it isn’t necessary, as all pertinent background information is reiterated here.

She was alone.

Trixie’s head spun for a moment, and she felt like vomiting. Taking a stumbling step forward, she did so, the gunk spattering over the rubble that lined the streets. Spitting out the last few bits of vomit, Trixie got up.

Her teleportation spell had gone awry. She and Cloudkicker had been in the Crystal Sanctuary only moments before. Cloud had wanted to go back to Canterlot to look for treasures in the ruins. Trixie hadn’t particularly wanted to. She ended up going, seeing as she was the only magic user in the Sanctuary. Well, the only magic user who wasn’t wrapped up in pointless experiments, like the Archmage, Starburst.

“Cloud?” she asked, voice cracked and low. Louder, she repeated herself. There was no reply, only the whistling of wind through the ruins of Canterlot.

Canterlot had fallen to the demons long ago. Trixie couldn’t remember how long. An age? Years? Only months? Her sense of time had slipped past her grasp long ago.

Now, Canterlot was a skeleton of a city, burned to ashes. And where it wasn’t burnt, it was obliterated. All around her were fallen buildings, scattered statues… Relics of a time long past.

It occurred to her after a moment that she knew where she was: the town square. A long time ago, when she was a filly, she had been here. Her mother was putting on a magic show, and Trixie was her helper.

She wasn’t actually much help, more a hindrance. She fumbled the hat with the fake bunny inside. She broke the pretend saw. But still her mother just smiled and rolled with it.

Ghosts of the past, she thought.

Taking a step forward, Trixie sniffed the air. It was stagnant and dead, like the city. Cloud had said she’d seen demons prowling about, but so far it seemed empty.

There was only one exit out of the square, so Trixie headed for it. A pile of rubble soon blocked her way, and she was forced to climb it. The climb was easy, for the most part. She still ended up with skinned knees and bruises.

Once over to the other side, Trixie called out Cloudkicker’s name again. This time, she heard a response, faintly. She jogged over to where it sounded, and found Cloudkicker trapped inside a building.

“What are you doing in there?” Trixie asked with a wry smile.

“Fell in, hurt my wing,” Cloud responded, rubbing her injured wing. It didn’t look too bad from Trixie’s perspective, but she didn’t know much about wing injuries.

The only windows in the building were small, hardly big enough for a filly to slip through, much less a full-grown mare wearing armour. The single door had been blocked by rubble. The only exit Trixie could see was on the broken second floor, out of Cloud’s hobbled reach.

There was only one thing Trixie could do. She’d flubbed it the last time, but maybe this time…

She lowered her head, drawing power to her horn. It sparked a few times, but soon a light magenta aura came to life around her horn. She focused on the mental image of Cloudkicker standing next to her. She imagined a hand plucking Cloudkicker from the ruined hut and placing her beside her.

“Trixie?” came Cloud’s voice, fear and doubt obvious in it.

Trixie didn’t reply. She simply concentrated on those images: Cloud, safe and sound next to her. The aura around her horn glowed at its brightest and a loud pop! echoed through the streets.

Opening her eyes gingerly, Trixie looked around. Cloudkicker wasn’t inside the building anymore, but she dind’t appear to be anywhere close by. Panicking, Trixie started forward at a quick pace. She tripped, falling flat on her face.

Standing up with a grunt, she looked back at what she had tripped over. It was Cloudkicker, upside down on the ground. She was looking at Trixie with an angry expression. Burdened by her armour, the pegasus was unable to right herself.

Trixie couldn’t help herself. She started laughing until she shook. Cloud started to laugh too, after a while.

It was the first time in a long while Trixie could remember laughing.