An Extended Performance

Chapters

Chapter 3: Mounting the Bank
Chapter 4: Treading the Boards
Chapter 5: The Longest Night Begins
Chapter 6: Trixie's Great and Magical Show
Chapter 7: The Grand Finale
Chapter 8: The Road Goes Ever On
Chapter 1: Bait and Switch
Chapter 2: Setting the Stage

Chapter 3: Mounting the Bank

One benefit of Trixie's timing was that she could afford to take a nice long nap before she was scheduled to go on. The Great and Always-Professional Trixie could, of course, have stayed up all day and all night and still been able to put on a stunning performance, but this would of course be physically-exhausting, and there was always the unpleasant possibility of embarrassing herself with some sort of error unworthy of her own tremendous talent. So she set her little windup alarm clock, lay down on the cot in her caravan, and snoozed away the afternoon.

She awoke in the early evening, her eyes tickled by the reddish rays of the dipping Sun. She looked at her clock. It was just after 8 -- she'd lain down on her cot at 3 in the afternoon, so she'd had five hours sleep. Adequate rest, for a professional such as the Young and Energetic Trixie. She yawned, stretched, drew herself some water from the barrel she kept in her wagon, and gave herself a quick pour-over bath in her portable tub. The night was warm, so she didn't waste any time heating it up first, enjoying the sensation of the cool water against her fur and skin. Afterward she emptied the tub outside and toweled off vigorously.

She was in the greatest city on Earth. She knew that she could have visited a bath house and gotten a nice warm bath for a few bits. But she did not trust this neighborhood, did not trust the ponies who dwelled there, and did not want to leave her caravan untended for too long. She had heard that this was in places a town of thieves, and her van contained everything of value she'd managed to accumulate in the course of her highly-nomadic life. She felt at peace in her wagon, her own little world full of her own familiar scent, her own familiar things, her own safe place that she took with her no matter what view greeted her outside.

The frustrations of mid-day were all but forgotten, though she still wrinkled her nose in disgust as a stray breeze from the East Harbor brought her the smells of Tompkins Town's signature industry. She supposed that the ponies who lived around here must have long ago gotten used to the stench, though she wondered how other ponies dealt with it when the residents traveled to more fortunate districts. After she moved out tomorrow morning, she knew she would want to clean her wagon, to rid it of any residual odor.

Nevertheless she was relaxed. She wound up her gramophone, inserted a record, and let it play a happy little song in the background as she combed and brushed her white mane, keeping time with the music. She was proud of that mane -- it was long and silky and an almost ethereal light bluish-white, like the sky with thin clouds. It was not puffy and garish like the hair of common ponies, but rather hinted at her high and unique destiny, a destiny she had always seen for herself, even when others persisted in regarding her as merely ordinary.

That was one of the many problems with other ponies. They wanted to reduce the Great and Powerful Trixie to their own level, to make her no better than the rest of them, just an anonymous member of a vast and mundane herd. Her own family back in Hoofington, had regarded her as nothing more than a new addition to their own act, part of their chorus, rather than the very special mare she knew she was. The Hoofington Academy had tried to fit her into their outdated categories. Even Princess Celestia's own School for Gifted Unicorns wanted to force her to conform to their own concept of a mage, deny her all the wonderful possibilities she knew were within her.

It was a good thing she'd met Master White-Beard the Grey, learned the prestige, the patter, the use of the props and other preparations that transformed her from just an ordinary pony to the Great and Powerful Trixie. With her innate and strong magical talent, one that no school or teacher had ever quite managed to classify, she seamlessly wove mundane with magical illusion, magical illusion with true power, modifying her performance on the spot and producing a whole that was so much greater and more beautiful than the sum of its parts, like the Great and Magnificent Trixie herself.

Master White-Beard had -- almost -- understood her. He had been very old, and very stern when it came to making sure that she lived up to her potential, and very kind to her in every other way, like a loving grand-uncle. He was perhaps the only pony she'd ever really cared for, and when he died, something went out of her world which she didn't think she'd ever see again. She'd been to his funeral, but she'd been unable to do more than step in, look at him lying dead, and then run away so that no one would see her tears. He had been the only pony she trusted enough to let him see her weakness. Never again, she thought, would she ever find anypony worthy of such trust..

Though ... sometimes ... when she was tempted to do something really bad, his image came before her, and she knew that she did not want even his theoretical disapproval. She supposed he had become the symbol of her conscience, though she wasn't sure that such a wonderful mare as herself actually needed one. Still, the thought oddly comforted her. It was almost like having him back for real.

So she lived on the road, by her wits, from hoof to mouth, from town to town? It meant that she was her own mistress, that no ignorant clod could tell her what to do, that she did what she wanted to when she wanted to do it, and for her own purposes. The only responsibilities were those she chose to assume, and those she assumed gladly. For instance, she never flaked on a show, never missed her time, never short-changed an audience. That was her code of honor, her integrity as a professional show-mare. "The show must go on," that was a good summary of her life and her credo.

Trixie had finished brushing her hair. She was hungry, and wondered if she should go out and sample Manehattan's world-famous restaurants. Two things decided her against doing so: the desire to avoid leaving her wagon untended, and the fear that if she ate from a restaurant in a neighborhood that literally stank of ... fertilizer ... she might wind up feeling too ill to take the stage. Time and money enough for experimentation when she had the bits from this gig in her purse, when she had a day or two to herself in some more salubrious quarter of this gigantic city.

Besides which, she had a show coming up, and she did not want to have her current calm state thrown off by any -- encounter -- with the locals. She knew she was beautiful, and unattached, and there were some stallions -- and even a few mares -- who might make the wrong assumption that she was looking for a mate. And then she would be forced to inform them otherwise, with varying degrees of asperity or worse, depending upon the crudity of the approach.

Trixie was not looking for a mate. She was never looking for a mate. To her, the whole messy and vulgar business of reproducing the Pony species was something she wished to leave to more common and ordinary Ponies, and thankfully. She found most stallions boring, and the notion of a romantic relationship with one laughable; other mares were not only boring but unattractive, and the concept of mating with one more than normally absurd.

She was not precisely a virgin. There had been that one regrettable episode with that theatrical promoter, a year ago in Baltimare.

Piercing Gaze had been a minor magician himself before moving into the field of promotion: nothing compared to herself, of course, but still a respectable talent. He had appreciated her own abilities, and promised her great things. He was smart and witty and kind, and in an obvious position to help her. She had worked with him, and they had been enjoying each other's company for a few weeks before things went so badly wrong. The Great and Emotionally Self-Sufficient Trixie rarely needed to employ such a concept, but he had been something of a -- friend. They had been shooting the breeze together one late night after a show, as they had done so several nights before, and things had just -- happened.

She wanted to blame him, as he had almost two decades advantage in age and certainly in experience, but a certain honesty within her that not even her own healthy self-esteem could completely suppress reminded her that it had been that time of the month, that she had quite forgotten to take the necessary medication, that they had both gotten a little drunk celebrating their recent combined success, that the advances involved had perhaps been somewhat mutual. She had certainly liked him very much, before that night. Perhaps she had imagined that it would be wonderful.

It was ... not. It had been clumsy and nasty, a shocking intrusion by another pony into her most intimate places, and the only reason why she completed the act was because everything she had been told and read and heard in songs had made her hope that it would somehow, in some way, get better. Afterward, he had tried to hold her, and she shrank away in revulsion, afraid that he contemplated repeating that humiliation upon her.

She had gazed then into his hurt eyes, and she realized that she had lost her friend.

There was nothing to be done. Apology was unthinkable, as it had not been the fault of the Correct and Rightly-Behaving Trixie, or at worst the Misguided and Carnally-Confused Trixie. Surely he must have noticed how she was feeling at the time? Surely he must have realized that her revulsion was not against himself in particular, but against a behavior that was beneath her dignity as a show-mare, as was obvious by the fact that she would never have been willing to do something like that on stage?

Or perhaps he couldn't have been expected to know. He hadn't understood her, of course. Nobody ever really understood the Great and Powerful Trixie. That was her fate, her doom, the price of her own high destiny.

Still she had cried when she pulled out of Baltimare the next morning, and not for her lost virginity. Rather, for her lost friendship.

That had been one of the incidents which had shown her that she could never really trust another Pony, that she could never have friends, let alone lovers, the way that ordinary ponies could. There had been many betrayals -- though not romantic ones, as she had never let another Pony touch her that way, emotionally or physically, ever again, and she was determined to never let this happen again in the future. Petty, stupid betrayals, friction that reminded her that she was the Great and Powerful Trixie, and they were but common ponies, rather than beings of the same order.

Co-operation was possible. And she was honorable, by her own code. She always started the show on time. She always gave the audience a good show. And no matter what happened, she knew, the show must go on.

This was the path she walked, and she walked it -- as always -- alone.

***

At the Palace of Canterlot the celebration was just getting under way. Princess Celestia presided. Her smile was easy and natural, and she was heard more than once to laugh. She ate much cake, drank plenty of tea and sometimes just a little of something a bit stronger. Once, she even joined in a dance. None observing her would have suspected her inner turmoil, or that as she passed her friendly gaze over her Court, she was devoutly hoping that -- if the Sun rose again -- it would rise on a world still containing all of them, intact and alive.

But then, she had never claimed to be Honesty.

She had waved goodbye to her kinsmare, Princess Cadance, escorted by Guard Captain Shining Armor, Twilight Sparkle's elder brother -- who was very obviously enamored of his charge. She wondered if it would have mattered to Shining if she had explained to him that she actually had known Cadance billions of years before the planet on which they were standing had coalesced from nebular dust, indeed billions of years before the supernovae that had formed the supernovae that created that primal dust cloud had shone with Celestia's own Fusion light. Probably not, she thought. True love knows no check of circumstance.

Though he might find the astrophysics involved too confusing. He wasn't as smart as was his sister. He was still one of the best of the Ponies, though, and one couldn't have everything in a stallion.

Shepard's flotilla is either leaving on a very long journey, or a very short one. I hope for all their sakes that it's the former.

In any case, on the Invincible she's as safe as any pony can be right now. The hell-storms won't start for a while after my sister snuffs out the Sun. Plenty of time for them to reach harbor.

She had already bid farewell to her distant nephew, Prince Blueblood, the 52nd of His Line, and the rightful ruler of the Unicorns should Equestria itself be shattered. He had launched in his air-yacht, the Wind Fish IV, his destination Stalliongrad. He was a bit of a nincompoop, but not really all that bad a pony -- she suspected that, should the worst happen, he might reveal unsuspected virtues. In any case, he would be the one behind which they might unite.

The rightful heiress to the Pegasus Mandate was with Twilight Sparkle, and would soon be traveling to the point of maximum danger. Her family hated her anyway, though Celestia would have rated her above the whole rest of her inbred clan. There was something different in her ... something new ... or perhaps, something very old. Celestia had read the oldest of the tomes salvaged from Paradise Estate, and she had her suspicions about the true heritage of the High Lady Fluttershy.

There was no rightful heir to the old tribe of the Earth Ponies, as they had always been more of a federation. But Celestia knew many of the leaders of their kind, and was confident that they would remain strong to the last. They would probably be the ones to find the deep caves, the geothermal vents, and begin farming mushrooms. Some were educated and inventive enough to develop advanced life support techniques, and survive even as the atmosphere began to precipitate in the Earth's last ghastly rain.

Let it not come to that, Celestia prayed to her Father. Let the Ponies not face the last possible extremity. She knew there was something behind Luna's persistent Nightmare, one which not all her pleading seemed to be able to shatter. She feared that something would come seeping down from the stars long before the Earth's ecosphere had died, something foul, and hungry.

But of course if all that happened, she reminded herself, she wouldn't be herself anymore.

She promised herself that she would remember, resolved to come back to defend her Ponies if there came that last cataclysm.

She couldn't be sure that her Cosmic self would care, but she nevertheless made the promise.

She couldn't do any more.

***

After eating her solitary meal from her wagon's cupboards, Trixie cleaned the plates, cleaned herself and made her final preparations. She took up her special harness, the saddlebags with the hidden compartments, then her favorite purple stage cloak with the blue and white stars, and perhaps more importantly with false linings and more hidden pockets. The matching hat, also with its secret places. She meticulously checked all her props, both the overt ones and the hidden supplies in all those pockets and compartments. This was a habit her Master had drilled into her from the beginning, and one for which she could plainly see the purpose.

Always check out your own props, she thought. Don't trust anypony else to do the job.

She could almost see White-Beard's nod at this, and she basked in the warmth of the old mage's imaginary approval. Is it really imaginary? she wondered. Sometimes it feels as if he's still out there somewhere, still cares about me, is still watching over me. She scoffed to herself. The Highly-Educated and Not-At-All Superstitious Trixie is above such sentimental speculations! she told herself firmly.

And yet ... still she had the sensation, now tinged with a certain odd laughter, exactly like his own dear dry chuckle, a thought which warmed her own soul.

Yet it worried her. Because, sometimes when she had the sensation that he was still watching over her, it was just before something extremely dangerous was going to happen.

But what could happen here, at a local festival in the greatest city in the world?

Author's Note

Originally, the title of this novella was supposed to be The Show Must Go On. Then I decided to do a search on that title, and found that several other writers had used it, and almost always in fanfic about Trixie. So I decided on a title a little less common, a little more worthy of the Great and Literary Jordan.

But the concept expressed by those words is very important to Trixie, and to this story, which is why that line in this chapter was practically a Title Drop. She's given up practically every aspect of a normal Pony life to pursue her art -- she has no friends, pretty much no relationship with her family, and explicitly renounces romantic love (in part because she's close to asexual in terms of her inclinations, even more so because of her intense narcissism).

She lives for the stage. Into her act she focuses all the love and passion that a normal mare would put into all her other relationships with other Ponies. It is less a career to her, than it is a way of life.

That's Trixie.

And yes, in the immortal words of the not-so-great Gaston, her sanity's only so-so.

There are numerous references in here to Alex Warlorn's Pony POV series, particularly in Celestia's dark musings as to the likely fate of the Earth should Nightmare Moon triumph. The most specific references are to "First Meeting", specifically with regard to Celestia's dispersal of some key royals. The character of Master White-Beard the Grey comes from that continuity as well, though I'm using him in some rather different ways.

The concept of Trixie as borderline-asexual comes from the Lunaverse. Here I hypothesize that it's a combination of a naturally low sex drive with some fairly severe trust issues.

Chapter 4: Treading the Boards

The Great and Powerful Trixie readied herself, body and mind, for what was about to occur.

As always, this was a numinous moment, when she was still within the dull world of mundane reality, though standing in the wondrous place where it would transform into her special magic. Possibilities glistened around her like a tracery of spiderwebs. Master White-Beard had once told her that there were many possible realities, many ways one's own personal world-line could go, and that one chose the one to make actuality by an exercise of one's own free will. She could almost feel this around her right now. When she was about to begin a performance, that was when she felt closest to the whole wide Universe.

She had a lot to co-ordinate. The Great and Multi-Talented Trixie did not use a whole stage crew. She did not need a whole stage crew. All that there was to see was herself, her skill, her props and her magic. This had awed Piercing Gaze when he had realized this -- he had tried to persuade her to work with a crew in his Hippodrome Theatre, and he'd almost convinced her. But that -- that was a chapter in her life necessarily and forever closed.

Still, he'd respected her art, and that was a happy thought, wasn't it? He was -- a professional like herself. His respect mattered to her. From a purely professional perspective, of course.

The clock ticked down. Her horn glowed softly, and she shifted its emanations into the infra-red. That was a trick Master White-Beard had taught her -- only when she was expending a lot of energy could anypony even see that she was using magic, if she didn't want that pony to know this. This could get a little warm under her hat, but better to do this now than to give the audience a tell while she was performing, later, when the hat might come off at some stage of the act.

Her aura reached out and touched the triggers for the first set of fireworks. Just touched ... wasn't time yet. With a cantrip so perfect that she scarcely needed to think the details, she ramped up the volume of her own voice -- a stagecraft version of a spell originally developed by royalty to address a crowd. As she was doing this, she ran over all her props one last time, made sure that everything she needed was positioned properly. Not one unicorn, not even one mage in a hundred could divide her magic as she was doing now. But then, this was part of the reason why she was the Great and Powerful Trixie, the most skilled show-mare of her generation.

Almost time now. Three ... two ... one ...now!

She began speaking before the curtain rose. This was important -- it gave the audience something impressive on which to focus before they even saw her. One never wanted to let them see her not performing, never wanted to let them focus on the merely mortal mare behind the show. One always wanted to give them her true self, her stage self, the Great and Powerful Trixie.

If she sometimes applied this principle a bit too much in her personal life, that was merely the price of fame.

The music swelled. The orchestra was the one part of her act she'd never figured out how to do completely by herself, not on a scale that would sound right in a setting this large. If she were in, say, a small town, she'd just slave her gramophone to the sound amplification spell, but this was Manehattan.

"Come one, come all ..." she cried, at close to maximum volume, the better to cover the entire square. Her voice was as dramatic, as insistent, as regal as she could make it be. "Come and witness the amazing magic of the Grreat and Powerful Trrrixie!

She created a glow as she started to say this, high over the stage and rising over the still-closed curtain. As she knew, the eyes of the audience followed that glow. She rolled out a very small ground-bomb, shielded by just the brief hint of a don't-look-at-me psychic invisibility ... no point overdoing this and attracting the attention of anyone in the audience with the actual ability to sense magic. Part of what made her performance so special was that she could fool other mages.

Pop! went her little ground-bomb, almost inaudible over her own voice and the sound from the orchestra, making a bright white flare and a cloud of temporarily-obscuring smoke. If anyone did hear this, they would assume it was the air being displaced by teleportation. Moving quickly, her eyes squinted almost shut to avoid dazzling herself, she simply stepped through the folds of the curtain where they parted -- anyone seeing this would assume that it was the curtain starting to twitch open. The smoke cleared, and there she was. There was an appreciative gasp from the audience at what looked like a smooth and perfect teleportation.

Trixie could teleport -- once or twice a day, at considerable effort. No way was she going to do something that difficult as the opening move of an hour-long act. But the illusion that she had so casually teleported established that she was an incredibly powerful mage, in the minds of her audience. Which was, of course, where the magic beyond mere mundane magic always took place. In the minds of the audience.

As she made her entrance, she triggered the first battery of fireworks. Master White-Beard had been an expert pyrotechnician -- he could do things with fireworks that should have been impossible, and he'd taught her a significant portion of his own pyrotechnical arts. There was nothing quite as effective or as cheap in terms of real magical effort. They had their own drawbacks -- they could only be used outdoors, she had to be very careful using them, and one could only preposition a limited number for any performance. But they were worth it, when employed correctly.

White-Beard would have used purely pyrokinetic fusing. Trixie was nowhere near as good at pyrokinesis as had been her mentor, so she instead used copper wire and tiny electrokinetic sparks. She found this both more reliable and much less likely to cause premature detonations. The first battery worked perfectly, two single-shot skyrockets with pale green peony heads and two vertical spinners mounted perpendicularly to the audience. She was rewarded by more gasps of appreciation.

"Watch in awe," she continued, "as the Grreat and Powerful Trrrixie performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by Pony eyes!"

Second battery, fire! The spinners from the first salvo were still going as several red and green skyrockets shot skyward, a ground bloom flowered to life on either side of her, and she posed dramatically as the peonies and dahlias burst overhead, sparks trailing down. The crowd gasped, cheered, and she smiled in satisfaction as she launched into the first part of her main act.

She had the audience, and she kept them. The magic part of her act was a fairly-standard mixture of illusions, productions, restorations, transformations and vanishments, notably primarily for the speed and precision with which she executed them: she almost never made a mistake, and when she did goof up, she made it part of the trick, as if it were some private joke she was sharing with her audience. What made the Great and Powerful Trixie's performance truly special was her patter.

It was deliberately outrageous, over-the-top. In her imagination, the Great and Powerful Trixie was the most fantastic mage who ever lived, and she told stories of vanquishing evil warlords, black magicians, dragons, hydras, star-bears and every other sort of foe with a variety of improbable thaumaturgical feats. She illustrated these victories by means of playlets, animated by minor illusions and employing all sorts of little magic tricks.

This was her world, the world of her own mind, and it was a beautiful one. Everything was clean and pure and lovely, and she the heroine of every story. It usually captivated her audiences, and this night was no exception. The crowd was in a mellow and magical mood, and there were no hecklers. She was almost sorry about that -- she liked taking down hecklers, and she had a whole sub-routine of her act planned for just that eventuality. Still, this was only an hour-long show, and she packed a lot into that hour.

And there was another principle White-Beard had taught her well.

Always leave them wanting more.

She did just that.

***

In Ponyville, many separate parties were breaking up as the participants wended their way to the Town Hall. This morning would come a very special show -- a personal appearance by Princess Celestia at the very moment she rose the Sun. The town was packed with celebrants from neighboring communities, and all the restaurants and food stands were doing the best business they expected to have all year. They had no way of knowing that things were about to get even more interesting.

Celestia stood in a back room which had been set aside as her dressing room. She touched up her appearance, straightened her regalia, and smiled at her attendants. Within, she was torn by guilt at what she was about to inflict on the town she had created largely for this purpose: an elaborate decoy, a hidden garrison with two thousand all-too-real and terribly-civilian inhabitants. There's no reason for her to destroy anything here, she told herself. She'll show up, rant a bit, then make for either the old Castle, or Canterlot. It would serve her no purpose to kill anypony.

Of course this assumed that Nightmare Moon would be executing anything like sane tactics. Princess Luna had been a master strategist, her own High Lady of War. Luna never would have destroyed just for the sake of destroying, especially a town for which she might have long-term use. But if someone attacked her? Even insulted her? Celestia knew only too well that Luna, even before the Nightmare had taken her, could have leveled the whole town in less than a minute, leaving crumpled ruins and mangled corpses where there had once been a pleasant little rural community. Her current level of power, her current level of sanity: both were unpredictable. The results of her sister's tantrum could be terrible ...

There! The imprisoning satellites were gone. Time to run like a coward, she thought, savagely lashing herself with her own scorn as she winked out, reappeared in her War Room at Canterlot. The fact that fighting Luna in downtown Ponyville would have almost assuredly killed every Pony in that town and left nothing of the place but a steaming crater under a rising mushroom cloud did not appease her shame at the utter failure this moment represented.

A moment later she felt the flare of power from Ponyville.

Nightmare Moon had returned.

***

"Thank you!" cried Trixie in honest gratitude. She loved when an audience appreciated her. She might have despised every mare Jill of them had she met them individually and in person, but as an audience, she loved them without reservation. "And now," she said, checking the clock, "the rising of the Sun!"

Silence. Some gasps which sounded less like appreciation than like fear. A big dark-brown Earth pony pointed at the sky.

"Look!" he shouted. Yes, that was definitely fear.

Trixie followed the line of his foreleg.

For a moment, she did not realize what she was seeing. It was simply the Moon, the full moon such as she had seen hundreds of times before. Bright, shining ...

Then she realized what was missing.

The Mare in the Moon was gone.

Author's Note

Trixie protests too much that her thoughts of Piercing Gaze are purely professional. Mostly-asexual is not the same as "heartless," and he was her good friend before anything else happened. Wonder what he thinks about her these days? Do you think he thinks of her at all?

I'm not a stage magician, though in my youth I dabbled in the art, as I suspect many clever boys do. I do know how a lot of magic tricks are performed, and the key element is "misdirection." Control the audience's attention, and you can do a surprising lot of things right in front of them without being noticed. Coupled with the right props, planning and a lot of practice, and you can do things seemingly impossible.

Real magic doesn't help that much, when you live in a world where there are a lot of at least minor mages, and most educated people have at least an idea of how it works. What it means is that Trixie can't just do something simple and astound her fellow ponies -- they are well aware of the fact that she's a unicorn and hence at least a telekinetic. Other mages could see exactly what she did, and it would be boring to them, if she didn't use a lot of well-planned misdirection.

Trixie is one of the greatest stage magicians in a world where real magic is common, and that means she's almost as Great and Powerful as she constantly claims to be. Beyond being arrogant, beyond being obnoxious, beyond even being a classic Jerkass Woobie, Trixie is a highly skilled, serious, highly-dedicated professional, and a show-mare with natural talents both for performance and for true illusion such as even Equestria has rarely seen. She should be rightfully proud of this -- though she takes it too far.

Nightmare Moon returns. And the madness begins.

Chapter 5: The Longest Night Begins

On the rooftop of an old warehouse, a circle of thirteen black-cloaked ponies broke out in wild cheers as they saw the disappearance of the Mare in the Moon, saw that the Sun remained unrisen. At this moment, the Heavens were literally overthrown. Equestria lay naked beneath the gaze of a power older and greater than that of any Sun-Princess.

"Now!" commanded their leader. "Call the Shadows to us!"

They raised their muzzles to the shockingly-featureless Moon, emitted barbaric cries, sounds which it did not seem possible could come from the throats of any Ponies. As if in answer to their shouts, other cries began to erupt throughout the great city of Manehattan, cries of fear, of panic, of terror as the throngs of celebrants in the streets realized that the Sun was not rising, began to dimly grasp the implications of such a cosmic anomaly.

The thirteen were not alone. In other cities, other places across the land of Equestria, other covens and other beings were celebrating what they imagined to be the beginning of their triumph. Many voices rang out, calling to the Shadows.

And the Shadows answered.

Scarce-seen against the black starry night, with that insanely-unblemished moon leering down, came thousands of little flashes as they teleported from a quarter-million miles away. Each a shapeless mass of ebon against the night, with some number of shifting yellow-green objects which served them as eyes, they drifted down in answer to a myriad calls across the Earth. The feasters from afar had arrived, to sate their singular hungers and even stranger thirsts.

And from the silver orb above, a dark and extremely alien intelligence gazed upon the Earth and found its confusion good.

It begins, would have been the best translation of the results of its mental processes into the thoughts of our kind of life. Now commences the conquest.

***

In the depths of the Palomino Desert, on a hill, in a circle of standing stones older than the current conformation of the Solar System, a group of what looked like Ponies wearing black cloaks looked up at the sky and buzzed their wings in welcome. Their leader, a tall mare with flowing phosphorescent green mane, raised her head and smiled in triumph, revealing teeth far too sharp for any pony. She wore no cloak, no more than did any of her followers.

At last, she thought. The power. The power I need to lead my Hive to victory over Equestria. The power I need for my kind to take our rightful place as the dominant species of this planet!

"Come to me, symbionts," she cried aloud. "Come to me, and serve Chrysalis!"

They came.

***

In the hills of the Whitetail Woods just above the town of Dunnich, there was another hill, another circle of standing stones. There stood an old mare, twelve of her followers, a host of very fluffy ponies, and one of her many grand-daughters. She was by far the largest of those grand-daughters, but also by far the least noticeable, save when one looked at her through certain lenses or said certain Words.

The followers chanted a song in a language long forgotten, the tongue of the ancient Age of Wonders, but peculiarly modified, as if affected by millennia of an utterly-alien history. The very fluffy ponies did not sing, but they looked up at the sky and blew raspberries with their long pink tongues.

"Pffftftpfpfffttff," they said. "Pfffthpffff!" The sounds began to join together into a great chorus, with a hint of some greater meaning, limned in the sentiments of madness.

The least noticeable of all the leader's grand-daughters decided to join in.

"PFFFTTHHFPFFFF!!!" she said in a deep basso from her dozens of invisible mouths, with her dozens of long invisible tongues. "PFFFTHPFFFFFT!!!!!"

The chorus synchronized their raspberries on her own.

A wave of unconditional love rippled up to the black night sky. It was so intensely concentrated that its mass-equivalent briefly rippled the fabric of the Universe. Overheard, Shadows screamed, flared and whiffed away into wisps of glowing vapor.

No Shadows would touch ground near Dunnich.

Granny and her followers smiled. So did her grand-daughter, though of course no one could see her, since her whole colossal fluffy form was invisible.

That least noticeable grand-daughter was one of twins, but she was the one who took more after her father.

***

In the old decaying port town of Hinnysmouth, the citizens, all clad in concealing cloaks and strangely-wide sabatons, looked up at the sky, at the abnormal Moon, for one last time as they stood by the edge of the quietly-lapping Stormy Sea. Their large, unblinking and curiously-protuberant whitish-yellow eyes shone strangely in that silvery radiance. They looked almost sad as they saw the Shadows begin to fall.

They did not worship the Great Dark. They had other gods.

Then they began to sing, in unison. Their individual voices had a peculiarly liquid, gargling quality to them, but their combined tone was oddly pure.

Something shimmered in the sky. They knew that their town would now be invisible from above, especially to the senses of the Shadows.

Still, they were taking no chances. One by one, they shed their cloaks, revealing forms that were clad not in hair and fur, but in scales like those of fish. Their hooves were more like broad fins than anything belonging on creatures of equine origin. Behind their jaws waved great piscine gills. They stepped toward the water, lurching in an ungainly fashion. They slipped into the sea, their motions becoming graceful as they entered their true environment. They swam strongly, out toward the reef that glistened a mile offshore in the moonlight.

Y'ha-Nthlei, they sang. Shooby-dooby-doo.

From below, their kin answered them.

***

In the Northern wastes, twisting masses of Shadows fell on a seemingly vacant ice plain, riven by crevasses. The Shadows fell, twisted, and oozed into the glacier, as if they were being absorbed by the ice itself. Or perhaps something under it.

Something stirred, not yet awake but awakening.

The ghost of a deep and malign voice mumbled, mushily and sleepily:

Crystalssss...

***

In the War Room beneath Canterlot Palace, Princess Celestia waited tensely, her senses extended to watch her sister. She had to be alert -- if Nightmare Moon teleported to Canterlot, Celestia would have to lead her away, and fast, before Luna could destroy the capital.

If that happened, her main plan would have been spoiled, her champions wrongly positioned to purge Luna of the Nightmare. Her role then wold be to fight Luna somewhere in the wastelands, buy time, and probably at her own life's cost. Afterward, perhaps the new Bearers would be able to use the Elements against Nightmare Moon. Celestia wouldn't know until her next incarnation here, certainly wouldn't be able to help the Ponies before much of the population had perished.

Her every thought was bent on Luna. She certainly had no attention to spare for the strangely-formed statue in the Palace Garden, nor to notice the hairline crack beginning to form on its outer shell.

***

In Tompkins Square Park, the Great and Powerful Trixie stood for a moment looking up at the Moon, her mouth gaping in utter astonishment. It's gone, she thought stupidly. The Mare in the Moon is gone. How is that even possible? I mean it's a whole world, right? How can it just look all different from one night to the next?

An instant later she registered the larger anomaly. The Sun, she realized. Where's the Sun?

For a horrible space of time -- objectively perhaps a few seconds -- Trixie's mind reeled at the implications. She dimly remembered an old tale -- but no, she thought. That's surely not true. That's just a myth, like Sea Ponies.

Murmurs were spreading through the crowd. Trixie could see the fear spreading, rising. She knew that it would not be much longer before it reached a sort of social phase transition point, turned her audience into a panic-stricken mob.

Wait a moment. Turned ... her ... audience.

Her audience. She had contracted to play until sunrise, and the Sun had manifestly not yet risen. It was still her audience!

How dare this ... astronomical phenomenon ... attempt to upstage the Great and Powerful Trixie! Yes, it's spectacular, Trixie must grant that, but it has no subtlety. No timing. No ... professionalism. And it wants to take Trixie's audience away from her?

Well, the Great and Charismatic Trixie will just have to see about that!

Trixie looked up at the sky, at the mad Moon, the Sunless morning, and made a silent vow.

Anything you can do, the Great and Spectacular Trixie can do better!

Trixie set her high-peaked starry hat firmly on her head. She turned the volume on her voice up all the way. She faced the crowd.

"Well," she drawled dramatically, "this is certainly an interesting turn of events on this fine Summer Sun Celebration morning! Perhaps it is the work of the legendary Fenris Wolf!"

The audience turned to her, eager to hear some explanation, any explanation for the impossibilities above.

Her tone grew confidential.

"Have you ever heard how the Grrreat and Powerful Trrrrixie once journeyed to the Northern Wastes, to save a town that was going to be devoured by Fenris?"

The Ponies gazed at her, mesmerized by her showmareship, as Trixie launched into yet another improbable tale. They relaxed. Everything they were seeing was clearly all part of the magic act.

The show must go on.

***

An emergency command center was being set up in the cellar of City Hall.

Mayor Orangetree received report after report of the unfolding events, minute by minute, hour by hour, as the Sun failed to rise, as a city began to lose its sanity. The reports were not reassuring.

"Rioting in Blueskin Heights," came the news from the City Watch. "Looting, arson -- fires springing up all through the neighborhood!"

"Large crowds gathering in Great Oval Park, according to Watch pegasi. No violence yet, but the situation is tense." Great Oval Park was the biggest stretch of greenery on the whole island, carefully preserved and landscaped to look like the presumed wild state of what was now a colossal city.

"Looting of the Check-Off Wing of the Museum of Equestrian Arts," said a third Watch officer. "Several important properties, including the Alicorn Amulet and the Codex of Shades, have been stolen by a pony or ponies unknown. Precinct is requesting backup!"

"Word from Canterlot! Mobilizing all Guard formations to deal with the crisis. Guard commanders are ordered to offer all due assistance to the municipal authorities. That's you, Mayor."

"I know," he said, running a hoof over his tired eyes. Orangetree was the first stallion ever to have won the office of Mayor of Manehattan. As such, he had always felt a responsibility to ambitious young colts everywhere, to show that a stallion was capable of the sort of leadership that one normally expected to see in a mare. He had never expected a test like this. Now it looked as if more than equal rights between the sexes was at stake in his Administration. If he failed now, thousands might perish.

He did not fully grasp the magnitude of the crisis. But then, nobody did, save perhaps Celestia.

And even Celestia did not know the key role that was being played by a certain little show-mare ...

***

Thirteen black-cloaked ponies galloped through Manehattan. They still wore the hats and cloaks, but they had discarded their yellow glasses. They no longer needed them, as now the lambent illumination from their slitted pupils was terrifying enough. Where they cast their gazes, the calm took fright, the frigtened panicked, and those who were panicking went mad.

They were of course weak hosts. None of them was an insane Alicorn, nor a Changeling Queen, nor a Prince of the Crystal Empire. Their leader, the strongest of them, had originally been a mage of only mediocre power and skill. The other twelve were wastrels, mostly overgrown rich colts and fillies who had never quite managed to deal with the responsibilities of adulthood, the sort who would try to find hidden messages in gramophone records cranked backwards.

Their Shadows were likewise weak riders. They had little force of will, and between the weak hosts and weak possessors, it was difficult to discern which was really in charge of each symbiosis. There would be no epic duels here between high honor and low hungers, as neither party had the strength of character to initiate such a struggle. They quarreled, of course, but that is always the nature of fools and Shadows, even the weakest.

Nor were the powers of these Shadow Ponies all that impressive. Really good mages, such as the teachers at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, could have easily handled any of them -- save perhaps their leader -- one-on-one. And that leader -- who styled himself the Nightstallion of Manehattan -- would have stood little chance against an Alicorn.

But there were thirteen of them, and they did not face alicorns, or even top unicorn mages. Instead, they faced outnumbered Watch officers, and terrified civilians. They galloped from place to place, galvanizing ponies to fear, crowds to riot, and then galloped away before the authorities could even notice their presence. The Nightstallion cast a web of illusion about them, so they seemed to appear and disappear without warning. It wasn't as smooth as one of Trixie's illusions, but it worked well enough in the confusion and darkness.

They started riots, set fires, spread chaos. In their wake the Watch fought with fear-maddened rioters. Windows were broken, shops looted of their wares. Fires wrapped buildings, and Manehattan's Bravest, the fireponies, struggled desperately to contain the blazes, keep them from spreading and destroying the whole city, Watch and Fireponies alike were being stretched increasingly thin.

Now the Guards were coming on the scene. Disciplined, hardened for battle, organized in formations, the Guards were not easy for rioters to overrun. The Guards held, but here the Shadow Ponies had new tricks to play. Guards confronted a crowd, the situation tense on both sides, an officer addressing the crowd urging calm, ordering them to disperse and go home.

A Shadow unicorn appeared in the midst of the crowd, took aim. The officer fell to a magic bolt. The Shadow Pony disappeared once more, as the angry and frightened Guards returned fire, spraying the civilians with hostile energies. There were screams as ponies fell, hysterical shrieks as mothers lost sight of their foals, groans of anguish as the terrified crowd trampled the fallen. Blood spread over the cobblestones, horror spread through the minds of the Guards as they realized what they had just done. The Shadow Ponies smiled, and galloped off to inflict more death and suffering.

They are so weak, thought the Night Stallion, so predictable. It is so easy to take advantage of their desire to help one another, to turn their own protectors against them. Their love is nothing compared to the power of our hate!

Which thought belonged to an evil pony, and which to the alien demon within him? It did not much matter. Of this opinion, they were of one accord. Hate was strength, love was weakness, and the weak deserved only to perish.

Nine hundred miles away, the soul of a very good pony struggled to restrain the murderous lusts of her own Night Shadow. But among the Manehattan Coven, Pony and Shadow were united in their evil.

Author's Note

So we see that the Longest Night affected far more than Ponyville, the Everfree and Manehattan. It's the reason why Equestria (and many places beyond) enjoy such interesting times in the show.

I direct you to two excellent Tumblr blogs, Ask Fluffle Puff and Ask Ipsy-Witch Pony, one my obvious inspirations for two of the scenes in this chapter. The other, of course, are two classic H. P. Lovecraft tales, "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

My versions of the Fluffle-Puffs and Ipsy-Witch's race are only my own, and not those of those characters' creators.

Chapter 6: Trixie's Great and Magical Show

Hours had passed, and the Great and Powerful Trixie was running out of tales.

She had always loved stories of the fantastic, the epic and the legendary. She had mined many of these for her own patter, including both versions of stories famous throughout Equestria and ones far more obscure. There were several she loved which White-Beard the Grey had told her, ones which she had never been able to find from any other sources, ones all the more effective for their obscurity. She was telling one right now, half-improvising both tricks and patter.

Right now she was doing one of White-Beard's best tales, the story of how the Nightingale, a noble unicorn mage, helped her beloved Brave-Heart the earth pony warrior, on the Quest of the Three Great Jewels of Harmony. Brave-Heart wanted to marry the Nightingale, but her proud father, the noble King Grey-Cloak (who himself had wed an Alicorn) demanded that he bring her a bridal gift, and said the only one that would do were the Three Jewels which their foe, the tyrannical Black Enemy, had stolen from the Unicorns long ago, and wore in his Iron Crown. Brave-Heart vowed to do so, though he knew that the quest was close to suicidal, because he loved Nightingale so dearly. But Nightingale, who was a very powerful mage, tricked her father by slipping away and joining him on this perilous journey, and using her powers against the Black Enemy and his many minions.

She had acted out most of the tale, with little figurines, bursts of illusion and misdirection, and the occasional firework. She had to be sparing with her fireworks now, because she had used up many of them in that first hour before she realized that the Sun wasn't going to rise on schedule. The story of Brave-Heart and Nightingale was a good choice, though, because it was a long yet exciting one: she easily could have written it out to book-length if her talents had lain in that direction. Plus, it had always appealed to her sense of romance, especially when she cast herself in the role of the Nightingale, as she always did in her little plays.

And ... when things were so terrifying beyond the stage, it was nice to think of White-Beard, and that maybe one or two brave ponies could stand against the worst kind of darkness. The Black Enemy was a fearsome Draconequus with a great fortress, many minions and mighty magics, but in the end he had not been able to stop two true lovers from winning a Jewel from his Crown. Trixie had never had a true lover; at most she had had a really good friend whom maybe she should have told "no" at a key point in her past, but she could understand how Nightingale might have felt about Brave-Heart. Beneath the bravado, and beneath the cynic under that, there was still a part of Trixie that was a little filly who wanted to believe in every sort of magic, even the sappy kinds. Perhaps especially the sappy kinds.

She had just reached the part where Nightingale had tricked her way past all of the Black Enemy's guards and stood before him in his throne room, while Brave-Heart watched hidden from his view.

"And the Black Enemy leered at the Little and Innocent Trixie, and was about to wreak some terrible harm upon her, when she opened her mouth, and began to sing. And her voice was clear and pure, as sweet as the song of the nightingale!" With that Trixie sang a few lines. She had a decent singing voice, though unlike Nightingale she couldn't actually do any magic that way. It sounded good enough for the crowd, though, especially when she put some tremulo into the amplification spell, and provided she stayed in her natural register and didn't try any difficult octave transitions. "And she danced gracefully for him ..."

Trixie performed a few steps of a mildly-erotic dance, knowing exactly at least in theory what the motions meant and why she was doing this... She wasn't about to do a whole hootchy-kootchy for this crowd -- that was beneath the Great and Powerful Trixie's high standards -- but the point that the Nightingale was being seductive was here important to the tale, "... and the Black Enemy watched and listened to her in fascination."

She'd actually rehearsed most this routine, though with a tamer dance, a couple of times with White-Beard. Her mentor had always chuckled at this point. He'd played the Black Enemy, and deliberately hammed up every part of his lines so that it played almost like farce. The exercise was for her to play her part straight without breaking down into uncontrollable giggling. They'd never been able to find a really good Brave-Heart, so they'd never gone as far as doing this play on stage.

It was coming up well considering the circumstances.

Orange flames were flickering to the south. Trixie had been seeing them for a while. They were burning buildings. Miles away, but not something on which she wanted her audience focusing. The wind shifted to that quarter, and instead of the stench of fertilizer and nitrates, she could smell smoke and burning wood and what she hoped was burning leather. Bad things were happening out there in the real world. Trixie shivered, almost considered ending her performance, then remembered that the show must go on.

"And as he watched the Sweet and Limber Trixie's beautiful dance, for a short while the evil lusts drained out of the Black Enemy's heart, and even he was charmed by her. And he forgot his plans to do harm, either to herself or to her people, and remembered fondly a time when he had once listened to an even greater and more beautiful Music, before he had tried to mar it." She wasn't sure what White-Beard had meant here, but he'd always told it this way, so she did too. Besides, the words made poetry in her mind. "And the cares slipped from his soul, and he and his court all fell into a deep sleep, and as his head nodded, the Iron Crown slipped from his head, and fell to the flagstones of his fortress, and for that moment he sat defenseless, his face almost innocent in slumber."

There was a flash of light from somewhere. Trixie wasn't sure where, but the fact that she hadn't yet heard the rumble made her think that it had been distant and powerful. She was too experienced a pyrotechnician to imagine that had been mere lightning. Her heart missed a beat, but her aura was steady, and she triggered a fusillade from her stage mortars.

"Behold!" she cried, as her shells detonated above and waterfalled behind her. "The Great and Powerful Trixie had put the Black Enemy to sleep!"

She heard the rumble now, deep and powerful, felt in her bones as much as heard in her eardrums. A warm wind ruffled her fine white mane. Something big had exploded. What in the name of all the gods great and small is happening to this city? she briefly wondered, but she had no time for such idle speculation.

The show must go on.

Like the Nightingale weaving words of magic with her song, Trixie wove her patter around her audience, and within her magic circle, sanity prevailed.

***

Eight hundred miles away, Celestia's champions were making their way into the Everfree Forest. They had survived the first two challenges of Nightmare Moon, and now were trudging through the dark and fetid swamp that a thousand years ago had been lovely little Greenvale. They knew nothing of what was going on in the wider world, and would scarcely have profited by the knowledge.

In the War Room under the Palace at Canterlot, Princess Celestia stood with her chiefs of staff and watched events unfold throughout Equestria. She had expected some general attack, but not on this scale! Reports were coming in from all across the land, reports of riots, fires, mass insanity, in city after city.

Something, she knew, was seeping down from space and driving mad her little Ponies. She suspected it was the same thing that had claimed her sister a thousand years ago, the Shadows whose power King Sombra had commanded, who had corrupted Luna, who were now slipping into the minds of even her loyal subjects. She was not sure what to do about it.

A single strong enemy she could have fought, but the only enemy answering that description was the one she must leave to her Champions, fight directly only should they fail. What could she accomplish against mobs of frightened Ponies, themselves perhaps innocent, stampeded by the dark Power that never fully showed itself?

She could reveal herself to rally them, but in doing so she would abandon the wards on this place, wards which she was now fairly sure were hiding her exact location from her mad sister. If she and Luna fought over a major city, the death toll would be terrible almost beyond imagination. Even if Luna didn't fly to the bait, there was a limit to what she could do without burning her own subjects to charred corpses.

For now all she could do was to wait in here, wait for Luna to either fall or triumph, and then respond appropriately to either eventuality. Everything was in the hands of her Champions now, and the full military might of the most powerful nation on the face of the planet could only hope to contain the disasters.

***

In the Command Center under City Hall, Mayor Orangetree was growing increasingly worried.

New riots were breaking out in every quarter. Fires were burning out of control. Water pressure was dropping -- the Guards had sent a company of pegasi out to round up some clouds, but it had been a dry spring over this part of Equestria.

Right now the forces of law and order, of safety and sanity, were holding the line -- but barely. There were almost no reserves left. Requests to Canterlot were met with the same information. On a national scale, everything had been mobilized, everything was committed, all that was left was a last reserve for a "final contingency," about whose nature Orangetree did not have the need to know.

He knew anyway. One of the many witnesses at Ponyville had talked, and the news had spread to the land at the speed of rumor, borne by unicorn message teleportation and pegasi wings.

Nightmare Moon had returned. The might of Equestria was massing to fight her. If they won, the crisis would end.

If they lost, the night might last forever.

He was the Mayor of the greatest city on Earth, yet he was as helpless before this cosmic disaster as the humblest street vendor in the worst slum of his city.

All he could do was pray.

So he did.

***

Many deeds were done on that longest night in Equestrian history. Most cowered, afraid of what might seep down from the star-haunted dark in which shone the impossibly-immobile full Moon, so terribly bereft of those markings to which a thousand years had made them accustomed. Some sought solace in the company of friends, family, lovers or spouses. Many marriages had their origins from that night, and a year later the obstetricians and midwives were kept extremely busy.

Some panicked, went out and rioted, though less than would have been the case for races less calm and cultures less kindly than were the Ponies of Equestria. There was looting, violence, arson, even the occasional intentional murder committed by the fear-maddened throngs. There was madness and suicide, and even among those among the maddened who survived, there were some who would never again look upon the world with entirely-sane eyes. Not all stories, even in Equestria, come to happy endings.

And some there were -- on the whole, more than those who went bad or mad -- who simply stuck to their stations, doing their jobs with quiet determination while the Heavens had gone insane above. Guards, Watch, Fireponies held their posts and did what they could to contain the riots, catch the criminals, fight the fires. Doctors and nurses tended to the injured, fought their good fight against death as if the world were not in the process of ending.

There was shame that night, but there was also glory in Equestria. Some Ponies worked together, and some fought alone, to stem the tide of madness.

Strangest of these lonely struggles was the one waged by one arrogant, obnoxious little unicorn on a rickety stage in a seedy little square on the Lower East Side of Manehattan, as she continued and continued and continued her act, long past her point of exhaustion. She filled the sky with fireworks, with lime lights, with bursts of coherent light from her horn, her illusions washing out the sinister light of the stationary Moon. She filled the ears of her audience with her skillful patter, weaving a web of imagination that let her audience forget the terrors beyond the charmed circle of her show. She filled their hearts with awe at her feats of dexterity, of misdirection, of carefully-timed and seamlessly-woven illusions both mundane and magical. And in doing so, she entertained them, fascinated them, distracted them from their fears.

In the process, she saved property, sanity and lives. Many a would-be rioter saw her act and stayed, comforted by an island of light and beauty and whimsy in a terrifyingly dark and empty Universe. That night, she was truly magnificent, a worthy heiress to her great ancestors -- even to the greatest of them.

She did this not out of love for her fellow Ponies, and still less for Equestria. She had little love for most other Ponies, and still less for any abstraction such as a nation-state. She was still, despite her high courage, a rather sour little creature, a potentially fine wine spoiled by a poorly chosen barrel. White-Beard the Grey had done his best to give her a moral compass, but it was a cheap one, and frequently led astray by various magnetic deviations.

Ironically, she did not even do it for the glory. Much as she craved glory, it did not enter her head that what she was doing could be seen as glorious.

Why did she do it, then?

Was it her own sense of duty, a sentiment that though she might have laughed at in the sober light of day welled up in her on this longest and darkest of nights, an instinct that she was part of a herd, that her own greatness and power made her a leader, and that as a leader it was her responsibility to keep her herd safe from the predators that prowled beyond their fringes? Was the one love she permitted herself for anyone still living and in her presence her love of her audience, of whoever had trusted their attention to her, cheered her, validated her own sense of worth?

Or was it a code she had learned from the one pony she had ever loved wholly and without reservation, a being who had been greater than she had known, and who had shaped this code for her because he knew that she really was great and powerful, and that with great power came the great responsiblity to use that power wisely? It was a code built around the stage, and her identity as a show-mare, and her belief in her own destiny.

It was a simple code. The most of it was about reliability, about professionalism. "Make the opening curtain. Give them a good show. Leave them wanting more. And remember, above all, that the show must go on."

So the Great and Powerful Trixie's show went on. Hour and hour, it went on, as madness stalked the streets of Manehattan beyond Tompkins Square. Mobs might riot, buildings might burn, the pillars of Heaven themselves might shake, but the show would go on. The world might be chaos, fury might reign outside her audience, but within Trixie's world was order, and the laws of Illusion. Her ego was vast, so vast that she flung her defiance at Reality, so vast that thousands of Ponies -- a far larger audience than that which she had begun the night entertaining -- now sheltered within its embracing wings.

The show went on, until Trixie had expended her last pyrotechnics, and the strength of her own unaided illusions must substitute. The show went on, until Trixie's prepared props were all used up, and she had to combine them in new tricks on the spot, using all the power of her great imagination. The show went on, until Trixie had channeled most of her magic, and worn out most of her voice, and the skin hung loose on her frail little frame as she used a dangerous technique she had learned from her Master, one he had warned her only to employ at the utmost need. She burned her own flesh to fuel her spells, and burned, and burned it.

And then, as she was at her weakest, when she scarcely had strength to continue another hour, another half-hour, when she was staggering on her hooves, her voice hoarse from her prolonged patter, things got worse.

They came.

***

In the Command Center under City Hall, a young Fire Captain was the first to realize the danger. He spoke to the Fire Chief, who gasped and sent him to speak immediately with the Mayor.

"What now?" asked Orangetree, wearily. The presence of the Fire Watch uniform couldn't be good. Nothing the Fire Watch had told him all morning had been at all good.

"Your Honor," the young Fire Captain said. "There is a danger."

"There are a lot of dangers this morning," the Mayor not unreasonably pointed out. "What is it this time?"

The Fire Watch pony pointed to the map. "District 13," he said. "Tompkins Town. So far, no riots, very few fires. We don't know why, but it's a very good thing."

The Mayor nodded. "Yeah. I don't see any danger in that."

"But we've been plotting the outbreaks of the fires. We're definitely dealing with an arson gang. Black-clad, a dozen or so, they come in and start fires, then they're out of there before anypony can stop them. They've done direct murders, too, when one or two ponies tried to get in their way."

"Terrorists, yes," said the Mayor. "I've heard about them. We'll get to the bottom of this when the crisis is over."

"We may not have time, said the Fire Captain. "See, we can track their movements by the fires. And look -- they're making for Tompkins Town."

The Mayor turned to the City Watch Chief. "Can't we send some officers in, stop them?"

"No, sir. We have only a couple of patrolponies in that area. The rest are all committed." She rubbed her eyes. "This has been a long night -- long morning. My ponies are near collapse."

"Same for the Guard," said the Colonel, examining his dispositions. "We're stretched too thin to stop these saboteurs."

"We have to stop them!" insisted the young Fire Captain. "If we don't, then it's all over!"

Orangetree frowned. "What do you mean, all over?"

"Look, Your Honor," the Fire Captain said, pointing again at the map. "Tompkins Town. The waterfront. The freighters. The factories. The stockpiles!" He was waving his hoof around, almost frantic now.

At first, Mayor Orangetree didn't get it. Then he remembered something that had happened at Gallopstown, a decade or so ago. On their waterfront. That had been a few thousand tons. Tompkins Town had tens of thousands of tons ...

His face blanched, his mouth gaped, as he suddenly realized how much larger was the industrial district at Tompkins Town.

"Oh, merciful sweet Celestia ..."

A moment later, the City Watch Chief and the Guards Colonel realized it too.

They gazed at each other in utter horror.

Unless they could get some of their forces moved quickly, the city was doomed.

***

Eight hundred miles away, Celestia's champions crossed the chasm and set their hooves inside the ancient Castle of the Two Royal Pony Sisters for the first time. Nightmare Moon prepared for the final showdown. The fate of the world rested on the outcome of this fight.

Under the Palace at Canterlot, Celestia stood tensely, her every sense outstretched. She could feel the power gathering at the old Castle, the world-lines, waiting to spread out into thousands of new timestreams based on every detail of what would happen there. She might have seen them had she gazed into her Pool of Truth, but she knew that at a moment like this, such a vision could bring only confusion, perhaps madness.

She had neither attention nor energy to spare right now for the reports of victories and defeats coming from a hundred communities across the land. Not even for the reports coming in from the greatest city in her Realm, the City of Manehattan.

Where all unknown to her, events were moving toward another sort of conclusion.

***

On the Lower East Side, thirteen black-clad figures gathered at an intersection. The streets were mostly empty here, the resident ponies either gathered in what they fondly imagined to be the safety of their own homes, or attending the festival which they could see plainly illuminated in Tompkins Square ahead of them. There, one lonely little figure stood on a stage, trying to entertain the throng she did not yet know were as good as dead ponies.

"Our operation is almost complete," the Night Stallion said to his disciples. "There is the mob we need to storm the factories. Ahead lie tens of thousands of tons of fertilizer products. Much of it already processed into ammonium nitrate, which is oh so dangerously explosive. They should be more careful with such toys, the good little Ponies of Equestria, so loyal to their Sun Princess and to their worthless, meaningless little lives." He chuckled, and his disciples laughed along with him, happily imagining what would happen next.

"Tonight, we shall level the waterfront, and light the fires that shall bring Equestria's foolish attempt at architectural splendor and hollow wealth down in rubble. Tonight, we shall strike a blow that neither this city nor this nation will ever forget. Tonight, we tear down the towers!

"There is nothing between us and victory. The minds of those ponies ahead are as weak as any others. They shall flee before us in fear and madness, they shall light the torches, they shall do what we suggest to their feeble wills. We shall gallop away victorious leaving chaos in our wake, and laugh as their whole neighborhood is flattened into flaming ruins.

"Tonight we triumph! Hail the Great Dark! Hail the Shadows!"

His disciples cheered, and they rode into the square, confident that there was nopony to oppose them.

Nopony, but one exhausted little show-mare ...

Author's Note

Most of you will probably have identified the source of Trixie's little story. It's a ponified variant of "The Tale of Beren and Luthien," by J. R. R. Tolkien, ouf the Silmarillion. Trixie, of course, casts herself as the heroine, Luthien. In Tolkien's constructed languages, "Beren" means "brave," and "Luthien" a complex kenning which works out to "nightingale."

White-Beard was greatly amused by her re-telling, as should be evident.

Here's what happened on our Earth near Galveston in 1947. Estimated yield around a kiloton. There were a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate in that industrial accident.

There are several tens of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate and other nitrate-based chemicals docked at and stored in Tompkins Town. The yield will approach that of a U-235 fission bomb, spray flaming debris over the southeast part of Manehattan Island, and release a choking cloud of chemical smoke from the various plants. That's not counting the likely effects when the flaming debris ignites other chemical plants along the waterfront.

Neither the Fire Captain nor the Night Stallion are exaggerating. If those chemicals cook off, it will be the end of Manehattan as a major city for a generation to come.

And only one tired little mare now stands between the city and the final disaster.

Pray for her.

Chapter 7: The Grand Finale

Thirteen black-cloaked figures stepped into the square.

In the extremity of her exhaustion, Trixie at first thought that she was in a waking dream, seeing something out of one of White-Beard's fantastic tales. There was something wrong about the way they walked, the way they stood, the way a night mist rolled off the harbor and around their feet, as if they had summoned it out of the darkness. Something emanated from them, something Trixie had neither seen nor smelled before.

Were they really ponies at all, or something far darker in Pony form? The question came to her out of nowhere, without reason other than their silent regard, their unnerving gazes. Were their eyes glowing? Trixie could make her own eyes appear to glow, but suddenly she felt very sure that what she was seeing was no illusion, mere or otherwise.

She remembered a tale White-Beard had told her once of Nine mortal Ponies, Kings of their kinds, who in pursuit of immortality and power had sold themselves to a dark master, and gained that immortality and power at a terrible price. Nine Ponies who had become wraiths, creatures of pure evil, spreading before them a Black Breath of sickness and fear. Nine who were servants of a great Enemy, and walked the Earth wreaking its will.

The Thirteen she saw before her seemed tangible, but there was still something unearthly about them, as if they were beyond the concerns of mere mortality, as if their whole existence was the spreading of a great wrongness upon the planet, as if they had somehow become not unlife, but some sort of anti-life, something inimical to any sane order. All these fantastical thoughts flickered through Trixie's tired mind, even as the detect magic she almost instinctively cast showed readings off the scale, especially from the tall unicorn stallion who was obviously their leader.

Suddenly, she was absolutely terrified.

Oh, crap, was her thought. I think I know what's been happening to this city. She did not refer to herself in the third person, nor with an honorific title. Please, no. Not yet. I don't want to die.

The hood of the tall stallion inclined toward her. She could just see his muzzle, and behind it his eyes, glowing with sickly-purple witchlights. He smiled, and in that smile was all the cruelty of the world Trixie had ever feared, everything she had ever fled by living in her world of illusion. In her whole young life, which she was now sure was almost over, she had never seen anything like the malice contained in that mere smile.

With a certain dazed detachment, she realized that part of the reason why his smile was so terrible was that his teeth were not broad and flat like those of a normal Pony, but cruelly jagged and sharp, like those of some impossible equine carnivore. His eyes were wrong too -- not merely glowing, but cat-slitted. She thought desperately of the Night Guard, but their Nightponies merely looked like creatures of terror. It was all show.

This was no show. These were real. These were what the Night Guard were trying to resemble, and miserably failing at the attempt. She had spoken to Night Guardsponies. They were ponies like any others.

These were not.

She could feel the waves of malice rolling off them, the scent of murders committed and more murders yet to come. To them, she knew, she was not a pony, but a sort of animate thing, to be used at need and crushed without remorse when her use was done. There was a foul smell of ancient malignity, of abyssmal depravity beyond anything she had ever conceived before this moment. She did not know how she knew this, but she knew it as surely as she knew that she had four hooves. The summer night was growing terribly cold.

She stood there, and the fear washed over her, and her whole frame, wasted by her prior exertions, shivered in abject terror. She could barely stand. Her every muscle felt weak, and a tiny part of her, that still wanted to make a good show, was absurdly glad that she had used her chamber pot and had nothing to eat or drink immediately before going on stage, for if she had, she knew that she would have done something immensely undignified.

The great stallion smirked contemptuously. She knew that he could sense her fear, that he had already dismissed her as unimportant, inconsequential, not even worth killing. At that thought, she felt more worthless and insignicant than she had ever felt in her whole existence. She was little and helpless before the gaze of true cosmic evil. She knew that even if she could sing or dance, acts impossible in her current mental state, there was nothing she could have possibly done to charm him. She was not the Nightingale, fighting for her true love.

She was alone. And she was no heroine. Just Trixie. Nopony special.

No, wait. Deep within Trixie, from the core of her soul, a steady voice began to speak. I am not little and helpless. I am not nopony special. I am ... I am ... The voice faltered.

Caught in the terror washing off him, she could not remember who she really was.

The black unicorn stallion jerked his head. Leave the stage, he clearly gestured. End your show.

End ... the show? she asked herself in confusion, the arctic chill blasting through her bones. But ... it's not sunrise ... I'm not finished ...

Suddenly she remembered White-Beard. No, felt him -- the scent of him, a mixture of old stallion and beard, of mane and the tobacco he would keep smoking, no matter what anypony said. A great warmth went through her, a great courage, and her limbs seemed to regain some of their strength. And the voice of her own soul rose up within her, and she remembered:

I am the Great and Powerful Trixie, and ... and the show must go on! And at that she realized what had happened, and she smoothly, automatically dispelled the fear they had settled around her.

She was still quite rationally afraid. They were enemies. They were evil. They might kill her. But she was no longer frozen by her fear. They were black magicians, obviously. However, magic was something she knew.

Tricks, she thought to herself, all just tricks, even if deadly ones. But mine are better.

"So," she said out loud, and her voice cracked once, but then grew in volume as she applied the amplifier spell. "It seems as if we have some neigh-sayers in the audience." Her gaze was steady, her tone loud and clear. "Are we to understand that you actually seek to challenge the Great and Powerful Trixie to a duel of magic?"

At her first words, the head of the big black unicorn jerked back, as if she had lashed him with a whip.

Hecklers, she thought. Braggarts and bullies. Trixie has met your kind before. A little extra might doesn't change what you are.

He quickly recovered his composure. But now Trixie had his measure. He sneered, and Trixie saw it as an expression of weakness, a sign that he was not quite as powerful as he pretended. If you were what you're trying to be, you would already have struck me down, she thought. You're uncertain of what the Mysterious and Amazing Trixie may not be capable. No tangible spell you can perform is as great as that fear you emanated. You could start killing now, but ... Suddenly she realized the truth. You don't want to kill my audience. You want to stampede them. As a mob.

"What do you propose?" the great black stallion asked mockingly. His voice was cruel, callous, but no audible voice could possibly be as evil as what his silence had suggested.

Now you're talking, Trixie thought to herself. And you've handed the Cunning and Wily Trixie the verbal initiative. Mistake. Never let a rival magician control the patter.

"You do your spell. Show your talent. And the Great and Versatile Trixie will astound all of you by surpassing it," she said, rolling her r's. "Anything you can do, the Great and Powerful Trixie can do better!"

She wasn't sure what would happen next. She knew they were killers. She half-expected him to kill her on the spot. But she also knew that they were going to kill her anyway, her and a lot more ponies, and she'd rather die on her hooves, facing him, fighting as his foe rather than simply being slaughtered as his helpless victim.

His expression changed, to one of elaborate contempt, and she knew that she'd won her first gamble. If he merely kills me now, she knew, he'll forever wonder if the Great and Powerful Trixie could have matched him. His own ego won't let him back down, and killing me without giving me a chance would be a form of backing down.

Now for the next throw of the dice. She extended her every magical sense, analysis and detection spells. She had no idea where she was finding the energy -- it was as if when her courage had returned to her so had some measure of her power, but she would have sworn she was exhausted a moment ago. She did not question the gift.

"I am the Night Stallion of Manehattan," the black unicorn said, "and behold my full power!"

He reached within him, and a darkness flared, and engulfed him, an aura of pure Shadow sparking from his eyes, his horn, his tail and mane. She felt the familiar wash of fear, but this time she was ready for it, and quickly countered with her own protection spell.

The audience recoiled from his presence.

"Let us see you," he smirked, "match that."

The Great and Powerful Trixie closed her eyes.

She'd seen the magic done. She had no idea what it was -- it didn't look like any illusion spell she'd ever seen -- but she'd seen the way that the energies of the black stallion's soul had somehow curled and twisted, reached out beyond himself to to touch -- something else? -- which transformed his appearance. She was certain she could do the same. She'd always been able to match everyone else's magic before.

Trixie thought hard. And at this moment she was just Trixie, with no need for any grandiose honorifics, for it was when she was doing some truly difficult magic, learning a new spell, that she felt no need to be anyone else but her true self. Her face was at first screwed up in concentration, then relaxed into an expression that those who had met Trixie in person rarely ever got to see, conveying an emotion that she almost never manifested in public, and then only on stage.

For that brief moment, as her mental model of the magic and the magic itself flowed together, as she made the necessary adjustments to harmonize it with her own self, Trixie was simply and purely happy.

She reached out with her mind, her soul, as she had seen the heckler do with his own. She did not, of course, touch any Shadow within her, for Trixie bore no such incubus. But there was something ... something she had always on a very deep level known about herself, something which she could only express in clumsy terms, in her favorite personal honorific. On the level on which she was now operating, well beyond conscious thought, Trixie reached out, totally unaware of what she was doing or why it might work ... she wasn't sure what to do, exactly .... Then it was as if an older, wiser hoof reached out to take her own hoof and help her, to guide her own efforts ... so she reached out in a direction she could not comprehend ...

... and touched her own symbiont.

Somewhere beyond the stage, beyond the city, beyond this Earth, a truly Great Power awoke.

And, though it was not the work of any conscious illusion on her part, Trixie's mane and tail began to shimmer, to glow with an inner light, to stream out under the kiss of a wind invisible ...

***

Eight hundred miles away, in the tumbledown castle at the heart of the Everfree, within the form of a dark alicorn mare, another great power had awoken, and remembered whom she truly was, and leapt upon the Shadow that had tormented her for a thousand years, to give a little lavender stargazer the time she needed to invoke the Elements of Harmony. Eight hundred miles away, the fate of the world was being decided by the struggle within Nightmare Moon.

In Manehattan, the struggle was smaller and more direct. Less was at stake.

But it was no less heroic. Even though the heroine had no idea what she was doing.

***

"Enough of this nonsense!" snarled the Nightstallion, his eyes blazing purple. "Time to die! His horn glowed a sickly purplish-black, the color of necrotic tissues, as he readied his death-bolt.

His followers gathered behind him, uncloaking, revealing themselves as the nightstallions and nightmares they were. Their own hooves, horns, or wings coruscated with their own signature auras. The crowd shrank back in terror. No one dared to interfere with what they were suddenly realizing might not be part of any stage magic show.

The Great and Powerful Trixie opened her eyes. The pupils were invisible, glowing as they were with the same delicate light-purplish glow that emnated from her horn, that crackled from her hooves, that streamed out, impossibly, from the great spectral wings she unfolded from beneath her cape. The audience gasped in astonishment at what they thought was illusion.

And they were right.

For Illusion had opened Her eyes, and gazed for the first time out upon the waking world.

The Nightstallion laughed at what he too assumed was mere semblance, and the death bolt leapt from his horn. Leapt across the intervening space -- and was deflected effortlessly by a sort of shimmer which appeared between them. The bolt did not spray off, as it would have from a normal magical barrier. Instead, it seemed as if the space around Illusion somehow misdirected the hostile energy, sending it harmlessly up into the black sky.

Illusion looked wonderingly at the Nightstallion, as if surprised by his malice. The glow in the alicorn's eyes was fading now, and pupils and irses were now approximations of Trixie's own violet-gray. The look in those eyes, though -- of newness and innocence -- was one that Trixie had not normally borne since she was a little filly, one which she only assumed sometimes in the repose of sleep.

But then, Illusion wasn't even really yet a foal, let alone a filly, though She had shaped Her physical form on that of an adult unicorn. Her development had not yet gotten that far.

It's real! thought the Nightstallion in dismay. Impossible, but real! That's an Alicorn! He considered bolting, but then noticed that the Alicorn seemed somehow uncertain. She wasn't fighting back. Weakness, his every instinct and that of the thing within told him, and suggested a course of action.

"Acolytes, aid me!" cried the Nightstallion. "Combine our forces, destroy this creature. Now!"

The horns of four more unicorns glowed. Beams, bolts and spirals of multi-chromatic energy shrieked toward Illusion. Four yellow-eyed pegasi took to the air, paramagnetic fields glowing visibly and turning into blades. Four black-coated earth ponies charged, their glowing hooves cracking the cobblestones with each step, the crowd parting before their onslaught.

Illusion beheld all this without knowing what to make of it. Her muzzle twisted in confusion. Automatically, in defensive reflex, Her shield continued to parry attack after attack. One grayish bolt struck an iron streetlamp, which immediately sloughed away into rust. A red beam nicked one of Illusion's wingtips. Fur and flesh crisped away, for an instant charred, before almost immediately regenerating.

Illusion gave a startled yip. Her ears pinned back. Then Her eyes narrowed, focused on her thirteen attackers with a new emotion.

Anger.

Inside Her, Trixie thought You can't trust other ponies, and the still-unborn Concept agreed with the advice of Her so far one and only Aspect.

The pegasi dived, daggers of light shooting from their wingtips. With an irritated shrug, Illusion curdled spacetime slightly, and what would have been deadly proton packets sprayed away in a shower of harmless fireworks. Her eyes glowed, and a prismatic spray of colors washed over them. Their kinesthetic senses hopelessly randomized, the pegasi spiraled away, screaming in sudden fright as they crashed into buildings, the ground, each other.

The earth ponies were almost upon her, and She stamped one lovely hoof. The street cracked, a pressure wave erupting right under her assailants' hooves, and they fell in a heap, looking back up at Her in terror. The crack suddenly vanished, as if it had never been there, for it had in truth been only Illusion, but the now-demoralized ponies bolted and ran in utter panic.

The eyes of the Nightstallion rolled wildly. Then, calming himself, he looked left and right at his unicorn followers. They were stepping back, reluctant to flee when actually standing right at his side, but not launching any more bolts at the beautiful apparition.

Illusion lowered Her horn, scraped the ground threateningly. Her wings flared, and a lambent pale purple light spread from them, began to fill the entire park.

"Group shield!" commanded the Nightstallion. His followers looked frightened, but were used to obeying his commands. Habit held, for now. Energy flowed from their auras to his, and their combined power spread to form a spherical dark-purple shield surrounding them, which flickered at the touch of the energies coming from the Alicorn.

Within them their Shadows writhed in terror. Each fought in its own cause, none knew love, either of their hosts or of their own kind, not even the love of show that animated the Great and Powerful Trixie. But, as the barrier only flickered, instead of failing, the Nightstallion gained confidence.

Why, she's just a baby! he thought contemptuously. Newborn, uncertain -- she has no idea how to fight! We can take her! Counterattack!

Yesss ... hissed his symbiont in agreement. A new Alicorn -- the ideal host for one of the Horde! The Nightstallion's Shadow began devising how it might make the transfer. A true Nightmare, not this weak fool it rode -- Nightmare Deception! It could become great in time, an equal to the one which rode Nightmare Moon.

Neither of them were knowledgeable in zoology. A certain canary-colored pegasus, were she not otherwise occupied eight hundred miles away, could have informed them that the venom of the newborn rattlesnake is at its most concentrated, the better for self-protection.

But they were about to find this out for themselves.

The Nightstallion had his four unicorn mages, one of his pegasi and one of his earth ponies still able and willing to fight. Three pegasi were crawling away: two of them with broken wings and the third with a broken spirit. The earth ponies had done better physically, but had gotten up only to bolt away in other directions. So seven Shadow Ponies remained to confront Illusion.

Again, bolts of hostile magic lanced out through the night at the Avatar of the unborn Concept. Again, and this time more adroitly (Illusion had learned from Her ouchie the first time this had happened) She misdirected them. Again, a pegasus took to the sky, sprayed death from above, death which She effortlessly dissipated. One brave but unwise earth pony charged the goddess standing before him.

Illusion snorted and stamped. She had just woken up from a nice long nap, and She was cranky.

She reared. Her hooves glowed with super-equine might ...

She readied to trample him.

***

The interior of a showstallion's study, five years ago.

Master White-Beard the Grey was not happy with his apprentice.

"But Master," the teenaged Trixie wailed, her eyes shining with tears, "they teased me! They said I was lazy, good-for-nothing, a disgrace to my family! They even insulted you -- they called you an old fraud! They said you didn't have any true magic, that all you could do was mundane. That I had no talent ... that you wanted me for ... other reasons." She couldn't bring herself to explain what they meant by that.

She didn't have to explain. White-Beard had lived for many centuries, and he knew the cruelties of which even Ponies were capable, especially to a young misfit such as Trixie. The drawback to a herd psychology, he reflected. Still, I can't let her fall into this pattern. Her power is growing. Next time, she might kill, rather than merely frighten with it.

What do I do? he asked himself, looking up at his ceiling as if he expected Heavenly inspiration. Even beings of his Order didn't get such inspiration very frequently, and usually not while still incarnate. I'll be discarnating soon, he thought. Too bad. Those like Trixie could use me. There's a reason new Concepts are born so rarely -- Celestia obviously didn't totally think this facet of her project completely through.

She's close to a sociopath, he admitted to himself. Brilliant, charismatic -- and with the potential to be so incredibly dangerous. Dare I release her on this unsuspecting planet, a world so soon to face so many other and greater dangers? Briefly, he thought the unthinkable ...

... then drew back from the precipice with revulsion, as he looked down at the fragile little face, framed as it was in its mane of almost ethereal bluish-white hair, looking questioningly up at him. No! Never that, though the pillars of the planet be shaken! He could not betray that innocent trust.

I must use the time I have left to make her safe for this world. To instill in her a moral code. He sighed. She's a bit old for this. Her parents really should have done it for me. Flighty pair. Still, we must work with the props at horn. Now, on what can I base it?

What does she love? he asked himself. Well, me, but I won't be here for her very much longer. What does she love that will be there for her?

He looked again at the beautiful filly, at her mane and coat whose silky fineness bespoke such careful personal attention, the arrogant filly who had recently admitted to him that she had absolutely no romantic interest in the members of either sex.

And the answer was obvious.

White-Beard smiled.

***

At that last moment, a vision floated before the inner eye of Illusion. It was a vision of Master White-Beard the Grey, as seen by a teenaged Trixie.

Trixie, the old stallion was saying, you are truly great and powerful, truly clever, truly special. Think twice, think thrice before using your great power to kill. Wanton murder is what ordinary, dull, mundane creatures do. You are better than that! Your magic is to delight, to dazzle -- not destroy!

You are smart enough to find a better way than killing.

Stay your power, as you love yourself.

At the last moment, Illusion diffused the energy field around Her hooves. She angled it carefully, so that when She stamped on the ground the only one affected was the charging Shadow pony. There was a loud clop, a ripple in the air, and he slowed to a stop as if colliding with some invisible feather mattress, rather than being crushed by the steel sabatons She had originally conceived.

She lowered her head so that she was muzzle-to-muzzle with his own now-terrified face. She glared at him from less than two feet of distance with Her huge eyes, in which danced strange energies.

She spoke Her first word on Earth. It was a soft word, but a powerful one.

"Go."

He went.

He may have left a deposit behind him, but this was a foul little neighborhood, and the smell would go unnoticed.

She looked up and fixed the Nightstallion in her gaze. Her wings spread.

"Anything you can do, I can do better," Illusion told him without moving her lips. Everyone in the square nevertheless heard her. "Wanna see?" She lowered her horn at him.

He and his remaining disciples bolted.

She looked about her. The crowd was gazing at her in mesmerized awe. They love me! Illusion thought happily to herself. They love the Great and Powerful Illusion! She yawned. I'm sleepy. That took a lot out of me. But there's something ... something more I have to do ...

Oh yes, she remembered. Delight them.

She spread Her spectral wings. Spread them wide, and wider, to impossibility. They glowed with every color of the rainbow, and many that were not part of any rainbow belonging to any mundane world. They were no longer two-dimensional, but three-dimensional, four-dimensional, filling the spacetime of Tompkins Square, permeating all reality, filling the minds of her audience.

She showed them all the beauty of Her imagination, all the wonders of Her fantasies, all the splendors of Her soul. The watching ponies gaped, gasped, sighed in amazement as their own minds responded, and each of them touched that in themselves which made him or her special. Within Her, the merely mortal mind of the Aspect of Her that was Beatrix Lulamoon briefly felt an ecstasy unlike anything she had ever known in her young life, briefly touched it and then slipped off with a cry of disappointment.

She was not yet ready to Ascend.

The Great and Powerful Illusion spread Her wings still wider. They stretched all over the island of Manehattan, greatly rarefied now, just a touch on each sapient soul that reminded them of who they really were, what they really wanted, and who they really wanted to be. Those cowering in their homes straightened, the fear of the terrible morning lifted, self-respect restored. The rioters in the streets paused, stopped, and shook their heads, the madness abruptly fading. Those who were about to set fires dropped their torches with astonishment, wondering why they had ever meant to do such an insane and destructive thing. The city, teetering as it had been on the edge of madness, stepped back from the abyss.

Manehattan would live.

And at that moment, the Sun shot up into the sky over the Barrier Islands.

***

In a ruined castle eight hundred miles away, the Sun Princess gazed for the first time in a thousand years on the small, weak but living and purified form of her little sister. The insanity of a millennium was gone. The Moon Princess opened her beautiful blue eyes and looked once again on a sane world.

***

In a cave-riddled mesa in the Palomino Desert, looking out at an ancient hill crowned by standing stones older by far than the Cataclysm, an ambitious Queen looked out and hissed at the dawn. Still, she was not that disappointed. My power has grown, she told herself. The Day will come. I shall rise to my rightful rule. But not today. Today still belonged to the Sun.

***

In the cold wastes of the North, something groaned in disappointment and went back to sleep. Now was not the time to emerge. Not yet. The Crystal City would remain hidden. For now.

***

Inshore from a reef in the Stormy Sea, vaguely equine heads popped up to see that the Sun was shining. They looked at each other, made strange croaking cries which held all the varieties of expression which their great staring eyes lacked. Their expression was happiness, that the danger was past, that they could return to their normal lives, complete the term they must spend on land before the final freedom of immortality beneath the waves.

The citizens of Hinnysmouth started to swim home.

***

On a hill in the Whitetail Woods, one crowned by a circle of standing stones, Granny smiled at the rising Sun. Her followers relaxed, knowing that the threat was ended -- for now. The fluffy ponies, both the little visible ones and her huge but Least Noticeable Grand-Daughter danced down the hill, celebrating the Sun and life and their own boundless love. They, the Daughters of Paradise, were just happy to see a new day dawn.

That biggest of the fluffy ponies broke off whole pine trees in her enthusiastic glee as she frolicked down the hill. Legs like barrels, which folded up with each step to absorb her great weight, left prints the size of pony heads, in the shape of more or less normal hooves, though of course she had far too many of them. In her multiple great invisible eyes, which saw the world in spectra unknown to normal Ponies, there shone nothing but innocent joy.

On the hill Granny smiled still more widely. Her senses reached out, amplified by the pre-equine artifact in which she stood, and embraced her whole family. All her grand-daughters were fine, including her smaller but Most Noticeable Grand-Daughter who right now stood crying with happiness in a ruined castle far to the east in the depths of the Everfree. She had survived, conquering the greatest challenge of her life so far. That Pink grand-daughter was not as big as her Twin, but she certainly knew how to make ponies smile.

Within her lived Paradise, waiting to be reborn.

***

The Great and Powerful Illusion folded Her lovely rainbow wings. The crowd around her breathed out, a breath they had not even been conscious of holding. The transcendent moment was past. Time for reality to resume.

She bowed to the audience, kissed Her forehooves, blew the kisses to them.

"Thank you," She said with a voice soft as rain, sweet as honey, brassy as a trumpet, all in one combined. "You've been a wonderful audience. Farewell, one and all! Be sure not to miss my next performance!"

She shimmered. There was a flash of light.

The Alicorn Illusion was gone, back to sleep in the dimensions folded up invisibly small, in directions of spacetime inaccessible to mere mortals. She -- and Her mortal Aspect Trixie Lulamoon -- had some more growing to do, before She would again be ready to greet the world.

The only living thing that remained on that stage was one very confused and tired little white-haired unicorn mare.

The audience enthusiastically cheered, clapped their hooves, whinnied in wild appreciation.

The Great and Powerful Trixie stared at them for a moment in utter, exhausted bewilderment. She could not clearly remember what had just happened. She must have been dreaming -- she had seen a vision out of White-Beard's darkest tales, been frozen by fear before it, and then somehow conjured the most intense illusion of her entire life, of a shining multi-colored alicorn. Reality had flickered on and off. For a moment, she'd imagined that she was her illusionary alicorn!

Then her professional instincts kicked in. "Thank you, thank you!" she said, bowing and waving to the crowd. "The Great and Powerful Trixie appreciates your enthusiasm. Those wishing to express special enthusiasm may leave their gifts in the box beside our caravan. Have a wonderful day, Trixie hopes that you enjoyed the Summer Sun Celebration, and do come to her shows in the future!"

She turned, whipping her cloak around her to make a dramatic exit, tossed her smoke bomb. Only one thing spoiled it. Over-channeling, lack of sleep, and transformation into and back from an impossible cosmic being had finally taken their toll on her.

The Great and Powerful Trixie fainted in a heap before she could take one step off the stage.

Nap-time now.

Chapter 8: The Road Goes Ever On

Celestia dreamed.

Her dreams were pleasant ones. They were young again at Paradise Estate, running and laughing and playing through the hills, her and Lulu and weird little Dissy, three innocent foals who knew they would forever be best friends. A part of Celestia dimly knew that, one day, the harmony would be irreparably broken, but most of her enjoyed remembering this good day in a summer over two thousand five hundred years ago, when they were young in this cycle of incarnation and knew naught of cosmic struggles or high destinies, only love and friendship.

She wanted the dream to last forever, but of course it couldn't, any more than had Paradise Estate.

As she cycled into brief semi-wakefulness, she remembered sadly that Dissy was lost to her forever, that he had awoken to and resumed his role as her enemy, that love and kindness had failed to conquer all. He waited out there in the gardens, frozen in stone, kept near her because ... the excuse she gave herself was that she could watch him better that way, but the truth was that some part of her still cared, still wished, still hoped against hope that there was some way to bring him back to her, once again at least some sort of friend. The thought that there probably wasn't, saddened her, but then she breathed in a scent that restored her spirits.

Luna, she thought happily. Little Lulu. My dear sister. Back again, after a thousand years.

She was still so weak, so small. It had only been a few days since her return and redemption, and she had only just begun to regain a fraction of her true power. Luna hadn't remembered much, but she did remember that at the last, when the Shadow commanded her to slay Twilight Sparkle, Luna had instead turned on her possessor. She had nearly died exhausting herself in that struggle, one no less titanic for being waged within.

Of course you fought, little sister, Celestia thought to herself. You never would have slain our friends, no matter what someone told you to do. But then, it was always you who were the heroine, I just the smiling schemer. She wondered if, at a similar pass, she would have had Luna's courage, her determination, her sheer unbreakable integrity. I wish I could explain this to you, and you believe it. But then, I never could. I could manipulate you into anything, sister, save truly appreciating your own worth.

One crisis averted, she thought. One battle won. Not by myself, but by the Element Bearers and your own great heart. One loved one restored to me.

What comes next? I know this is not the end. The Shadows descended across Equestria that night, and though many of them were too weak to find good hosts, they will be working their ill in many places over the coming months, the coming years. They tried to destroy Manehattan -- had they succeeded, the economy of the whole Realm would now be lurching toward collapse, weakening us in the many battles we will have to fight in the near future. Something stopped them there -- something of my own order, I sensed the power -- but I don't know what or whom. Do beings such as myself have guardian angels? She chuckled quietly at the thought.

I can snuff out this or that pocket of resurgent evil -- indeed the weaker Nightmares will just rampage, and be completely vulnerable to ordinary troops or mages. But the stronger ones will also be more cunning. They will hold back, work to loose the greater evils, the many foes of Ponykind who have waited for just such an opportunity. The Ponies are good, but they are far from the only sapients on Earth, and there are some Ponies who will ally with evil in the belief that it will grant them their wishes. The attack on Manehattan was carried out by Ponies, after all.

What will they throw against me next? she wondered. Her mind could summon up a terrifyingly long list of foes, forgotten by most but far from gone forever, waiting outside the bars of spacetime she and others had built to protect Ponykind. How will I repel it? How many of my little Ponies will die this time, pay the price for my new errors?

She felt a motion, heard a soft whimper. Luna's sleep was restless, all four legs twitching as if she were trying to outrun some terror.

The nightmares, Celestia thought, the reason she's in here with me. She should be able to control her dreams. She can't control these dreams. I've told her not to worry too much, but it worries me. A lot. Something's after her. Something dark. Something wants her ... again.

Celestia embraced her sleeping sister, folded her wings around them both, let her own paramagnetic field cloak them. It was one of the most intimate postures which could be assumed by an Alicorn, something one would do only for one's best beloved, whether child, sibling or lover. It placed her defenses around both Luna and herself, while leaving her own self completely vulnerable to Luna's. There were few on Earth she trusted so completely. Luna was one, and another slept this night in the library at Ponyville.

She could feel something trying to touch Luna, a stream of energy which Celestia knew without having to check was emanating from Earth's sister planet, a quarter-million miles away, her sister's own namesake. With a savage flex of her wings and the paramagnetic field emanating from them, she severed the connection. She could feel the far-off Shadows hissing angrily. She summoned her love for her sister, and had the satisfaction of hearing their shrill squeals of pain and fear as they scuttled back into their crevices.

Abominations! she thought angrily, looking up in that direction. You torment her because she's still weak! Wait until she's all the way back -- you'll be the ones tormented! There was something vile about them, something viler than any minds she had ever touched, as if their very structure was somehow opposed to everything wholesome, everything healthy and living. Simply sensing them made her angry, as if they were the essence of serpents which every primal instinct told her to trample.

She held Luna closely, let her own love wrap around her like her wings. Luna relaxed, settled into a calm sleep, comforted both by their psychic bond and by the simple warmth, the scent of her sister.

I wish I had more time for her, Celestia thought. But there's always so much to do. So much work, if the Realm is to survive the next few decades. All the routine business, and all the new business, and all the threats known and unknown. It'll be easier when I have more helpers closer to my own level. Soon ... She drifted back off to sleep on that thought, thinking of a certain lavender librarian ... and others.

Dreaming again. Back at Paradise Estate. She was a foal, now alone. She stepped over a log, into a glen, and suddenly she was adult again.

A pony awaited her there, sitting on a dry rock. A pony she'd seen many times before, both in waking and in dreaming..

"Wisedreamer?" she said in surprise, seeing the familiar long white beard, gray mane, sharp muzzle, keen blue-gray eyes twinkling at her under bushy eyebrows and the usual floppy high-peaked hat, elaborate pipe trailing smoke clouds.

"Well met, Celestia," he replied. "Pleasant to see you again. Haven't, lately."

"Well of course not," said Celestia logically. "Last I heard you'd discarnated again, from being White-Beard."

"Indeed I have," the wizard replied. "Needed, you see. Somewhere else," he added vaguely.

Celestia knew that it was very likely that the "somewhere else" of which he spoke was not even within her present spacetime. Wisedreamer was something of a troubleshooter. When he was needed somewhere, it was often because things had gotten very bad indeed.

"Are you planning on coming back?" she asked. "My sister and I could really use your help."

"You're handling it well," he pointed out. "Proof of which is that you are with your sister again. Congratulations, on that."

"Thank you," said Celestia. "Though my student Twilight Sparkle had more to do with bringing her back."

"Oh, good," he said. "She always seemed very ... promising. And I'm glad to see Luna free of her personal shadows. A good mare, if sometimes a bit ... headstrong."

"That's just it," explained Celestia. "I don't know how free she is, really. They still assail her. And they're beginning to attack all Equestria. We would really appreciate your help."

"Wish I could," said Wisedreamer. "But I'm really busy here. Dholes. Not the doggy kind. The mile-long planet-eating wormy kind. Unusually bad infestation." He did not elaborate on why an infestation by mile-long planet-eating worms was worse even than the norm for such a calamity.

"Oh, sorry about that." Celestia's ears dropped.

"You'll manage," he told her. "You and your sister are strong. She'll get better, you'll find more friends. It'll turn out right in the end.. I have a feeling that it's ... meant ... to get a bit darker first, though. So be wary."

"Is that why you've come?" asked Celestia. "To give me this warning."

"No, actually I came on ... another matter. My own former faithful student. Beatrix Lulamoon. The Great and Powerful Trixie, she's styling herself."

"The little show-mare? Is she in some kind of trouble?" Celestia asked. She vaguely remembered Trixie Lulamoon from her short time at her own school. Annoying, rebellious, but not really a bad pony.

"She's Manifested," Wisedreamer explained. "Long before she was really ready. There was something of a, hmm, emergency. I helped a little, but she needed to wake her Concept, to win through. It was her who saved Manehattan."

"Wait, another Magic?" Celestia asked. "Is that even possible?"

"Not Magic," the wizard explained. "Illusion. Not precisely the same thing."

"Is she able to ...?"

"No," said Wisedreamer. "Not at all. She barely understands being a unicorn, let alone anything else. She's a little, hmm, strange, you see."

"My student is a little strange," pointed out Celestia. "And you're stranger than either of us. What you really mean is ...?"

"Insane," Wisedreamer admitted. "Narcissistic. Almost a sociopath. I had to tell her to be worthy of her own gigantic ego, more or less, to make her even remotely safe around others. I wish I might have had more time with her, though. She liked me, listened to me. I don't know if she'll listen to anypony else."

"An insane Concept?" Celestia was alarmed. "The last thing we need is another one like --" She couldn't bear to finish that sentence with either of the two obvious choices. "She could fall into Nightmare!"

"Ah, hmm ... I think not," Wisedreamer said. "Not if there's somepony to ... look out for her."

"But you're saying she's --"

"They mostly are, dear filly," Wisedreamer said. His bushy eyebrows descended. "A librarian who is afraid that you'll clap her in a dungeon if she gives the wrong answer on a test. That little bouncy pink Chosen One of a whole lost timeline. A half-pegasus of the highest lineage and greatest power, who is afraid of her own shadow. Her best friend, another pegasus who imagines herself an entire army in one mare. Really, the only sane ones are the Apple clansmare and that dressmaker, and even they are a bit touched, sometimes."

"I know," admitted Celestia. "But they're who I have, now. They're the ones who attuned."

"You do know why this is happening?" said Wisedreamer.

"Yes," said Celestia. "You've told me many times before. I can't just ... how did you put it?"

"Grow Alicorns as if they were potatoes?" the bearded mage kindly suggested the missing words.

"That was, I believe, your phrase."

"And true," said Wisedreamer with some satisfaction. "You cannot force Concepts into being, and expect them to emerge wholly sane from the experience."

"I know," admitted Celestia. "But I had no choice. Nightmare Moon would have annihilated all the little Ponies."

"What was behind her still may," replied the mage. "Which is why you will need the help you have, perhaps foolishly, called up before it was wholly ready."

"What should I do?" asked Celestia.

"Watch over her," advised Wisedreamer. His face softened. "She is strange, but she is good. There is true nobility within her, under all the boasting. For all the anger within her, she's never really hurt anyone, and the closest she ever came to doing so was when someone made scurrilous accusations about myself. In her own way, she is honorable. She would prove a very loyal friend -- if she could ever keep one."

"Should I take her in, then?"

"No," the wizard said. "Hmm ... she's bad with authority, you see. The only reason I could control her was that she happened to like me personally. She won't listen to anyone she doesn't like."

"I'm likeable," pointed out Celestia.

"Yes," said Wisedreamer. "Unfortunately, in the wrong way. You're devastatingly charismatic. Everyone adores you. She hates that."

"You maker her sound impossible to manage," said Celestia, a little miffed at his analysis.

"You're too imposing," explained the wizard. "You don't cloak yourself as well as do I. Hmm, well, few do. She would feel threatened, challenged, see you as a rival."

"That's fairly arrogant of her," pointed out Celestia.

"Well, yes. 'Fairly arrogant' would be a good description of little Trixie. 'Incredibly arrogant' a better one." He smiled at a fond memory.

"You like that about her," Celestia accused.

"Hmm, well, yes. You might say she grew on me. Ridiculous little creature, thinks she's bigger than the whole wide world. I have a weakness for silly ponies like that."

She caught a motion behind him and saw a very small and stocky Pony peeping out at her from behind Wisedreamer. He was small, his head not even shoulder-height on the big stallion, but his breadth of barrel and muscular build indicated that he was no colt, but himself a stallion full-grown. "Who's that?" she asked.

"Oh ... hmm ... he's Delver," the wizard explained. "Old friend, came to help me with the worm problem. Good underground, natural sense of direction, you know." He turned to his smaller friend. "Delver, this is the Princess Celestia of Equestria."

Pale green eyes gazed shyly at Celestia.

"Delver is pleased to meet you, Your Highness," the diminuitive Pony said in a soft voice, almost a whisper, bowing to her.

Another one speaking about himself in the third person, Celestia thought, smiling to herself as she remembered Trixie. Something about Wisedreamer seems to attract them.

"And I am pleased to meet you too, good Delver," said Celestia kindly. "Should you ever come into my land, know that you are welcome at my Court."

"Thanks to you, Great Grand-Mother," said the very little Pony. "You are good to Delver, yes, Delver is your friend. Delver hopes to some day visit your noble Court!"

Very strange speech patterns, Celestia thought. I wonder what he really said, in his native language. Celestia was more than a little bit familiar with the principles of transformation and translation, and well-aware that Delver's native form might not be even remotely equine. Wisedreamer traveled to some very strange places.

Celestia nodded and smiled at Delver. "I look forward to your coming, good Delver. May you fare well with my old friend!"

Then she gazed at Wisedreamer.

"Very well, old friend," she said. "I shall watch over Beatrix Lulamoon, without making it obvious that I am doing so. If I can figure out how to do this, and if I can even find her."

"Oh, I imagine that you shall find her," said Wisedreamer, his eyes twinkling merrily. "She's not very good at keeping quiet." He got up off his rock. "Come, Delver, we have work to do!" He smiled at Celestia. "Fare thee well, Sun Maiden. And your sister as well."

"Fare thee well too, old wanderer," replied Celestia.

The two figures, the big old stallion and the little one, stepped through a gap in the trees. Light shone behind them. For a moment they were both impossible bipedal things, one tall and leaning on a staff, the other still short and stocky but also bipedal. Then they were something else, with far too many legs and what looked like insectile wings and some sort of tentacles. And then they were gone, into the wastes of the Cosmos, back to whatever worm-menaced world they had been saving.

Celestia made a note to her subconscious to remember the promise to watch over Trixie. Then she returned, happily, to the deeper Dreaming.

***

"Bridleway!"

The Great and Powerful Trixie practically bounced up and down in excitement, but of course did not, because such would have been undignified behavior for such an experienced and professional show-mare. The sound of hooves clopping repeatedly against Bottom Billing's wooden floor must have come from somewhere else in the office building.

"Yep. All the major theatres. They want to see your act." Bottom Billing looked smug, chomping down on an unlit cigar. "Told `ya that with the help of an experienced agent such as myself, you could get the best engagements."

"But I thought you said ... never mind. Which parts did they like in particular?" Trixie was already mentally flipping through her routines, trying to figure which supplies she would have to buy, which tricks to rehearse.

"Well, they liked all of it -- `cept of course the fireworks, can't do that kind of thing indoors," Bottom chuckled.

"Tell me about it," said Trixie. "Try even a simple illusion of that sort, and ..." The Judicious and Diplomatic Trixie did not finish the statement, considering it unwise to mention how close she had come to burning down that one theatre. That was the kind of talk that made promoters nervous about her, though she wasn't entirely sure why they lacked a sense of humor in this regard.

"There's just one thing they really wanted ta see, though," continued Bottom.

"Ooh! I bet I can guess. My little playlets! With the lights and the music and the narration and the sleight-of-hoof! The Clever and Dramatic Trixie is very good at that!"

"Well, Trixie," said Bottom, "I don't know how well that translates to a big house. Can the back rows even see your little figures?"

"The Crafty and Artistic Trixie can make bigger figurines," she pointed out. "As big as they need to be. Six foot tall plushies, even! Large-scale illusions are well within the Great and Powerful Trixie's capabilities!"

"Yeah," said Bottom, "that kind of gets to what the producers really want." His eyes grew shifty.

The Wise and Perceptive Trixie was alert to such significant changes in facial expression. And that phrase sounded sinister.

"And precisely what," she quietly asked, in her most refined and upper-class tone, "do the producers 'really want?'" She could think of a number of things they might 'really want' which she would never give them, not even for more bits than they were likely to be offering. She gave Bottom what she considered a very direct and honest gaze. Her eye was barely twitching, one hoof just starting to gently scrape the floorboards.

Bottom wilted before her regard.

"Nothing that ain't classy, Trixie, baby, you have my word on it!"

He seemed to say that confidently, which caused the Decent and Respectable Trixie to relax a bit along one line of worry, but left all the others open.

"Then what do they want?" she asked.

"They wanna see the Alicorn Illusion!"

"Ah ..." she said, caught for once in her life at a loss for words. "There is a slight problem with that ..."

"What kinda problem?" Bottom asked. "Is it a matter of supplies? Preparations? I can get ya anything ya want for this. Legal or illegal. There's a lotta bits riding on this, if ya need some kinda drugs ..."

"No!" squealed the Clean and Sober Trixie. "Nothing like that!" She rarely drank, especially since that incident in Baltimare, and avoided anything stronger than alcohol as the poison it was to any serious performer's career. Even in her relatively short time on the stage, she'd seen too many others collapse under the pressure and swirl down the drain of one or another sort of strong soporific or stimulant. This was not going to happen to Trixie!

"Well then, whattaya need?"

"It's nothing I need," replied Trixie. "It's just that -- I don't think I can do the Alicorn Illusion again. Not on purpose, anyway."

"Whattaya mean by that?" Bottom asked. "It's just a trick, right? One'a yer illusions?"

Normally, Trixie would have been furious to hear one of her routines described as "just a trick" by a talentless talent agent like Bottom. She was certainly annoyed. But there was something important she had to get across.

"I don't know," confessed Trixie. "I don't know how I did it in the first place. I needed something impressive -- there were these hecklers, you see. Or band of terrorists. I can't remember exactly what they were, but they were a very nasty gang. And I reached ... I reached in some direction I can't describe ... and She was there. She came out to face them, to save me. I think maybe She is part of me. And She is the one who did all the really impressive magic at the end. Something like that." She looked at him helplessly. There was no way she could explain this any better. She normally wouldn't have been so open with someone like Bottom, but the whole memory frightened her. She wrapped her forelegs around her chest, shivering.

"That's a nice bit 'a patter, Babe," Bottom told her. "But save it for the stage. Seriously -- how much money do ya need to do the trick? Cuz I think I can onager those cheapskates up a bit, if ya can give `em the goods. Know what I mean?"

The Great and Powerful Trixie did know what he meant. He meant that to himself, the most truly magical experience of her entire life was just some cheap act, something to be bought and sold like a bale of hay. To him, she was just something to be bought and sold in a like fashion. In every fashion that she let herself be bought and sold, which was why she could never trust other ponies, because they were always looking to take something from you at a bargain price.

She wished uselessly that she might have been able to discuss what had happened with Master White-Beard. He loved her, would have taken what happened seriously, might even have been able to explain it. She missed him so much sometimes. She'd never see him again, but he was her reminder that not all ponies were jerks, that every now and then one might find somepony who could be trusted.

Even Piercing Gaze -- there had been that one unfortunate night, but all the other times he had been a real friend. She had told him her hopes, her dreams, and he had listened, taken her seriously, offered her constructive advice. He would never have just thought she was asking for more money. Yes, he'd been a true friend, and she'd been a fool to let that one misunderstanding tear them apart.

She wished she could go to Baltimare, drop in on him, pick up their old friendship. But no -- it was too embarrassing. The way they'd parted, the things he'd seen, the things they'd done -- her face flushed with shame at the memory.

But maybe ...

Bottom mistook her expression for interest in his proposition.

"Yeah, now you see the light, Babe -- I can see you're gettin' excited by my offer. Ya got the hots for some more dough, and I --"

Trixie glared at Bottom. The crass way he intruded on my most intimate memories! she thought furiously. The disgusting, base, common little dog!

"What's wrong, ya want me to lower my share --?"

Trixie cast a very simple spell. It was just a matter of telekinesing the air out of a sphere and then letting it flow back within. It made an impressive sound, but was best performed outdoors, because ...

WHOOM!!!

Every window in Bottom's office, including the glass-frosted one on the door, blew out simultaneously. Every loose piece of paper in the office -- and he was a rather messy Pony -- blew all over the place, some of it out the windows. Bottom himself staggered backward, hooves clapped over his ringing ears. Trixie, who as the caster had of course expected the report and pinned her own ears back the instant before casting the spell, smirked with satisfaction.

"Ya crazy nag!" Bottom bellowed, his voice harsh because his hearing had been temporarily destroyed. "Do ya know what you just cost me! You can forget about me finding ya a gig in this town ever again! Ya can forget about ever workin' in this town again! When I get through with you yer name'll be mud in Manehattan!"

Smiling sweetly, Trixie stepped out the door, projecting a small shield over her own hooves as they crunched the broken glass from the frosted window. I'm through with Bottom, she thought, and everypony like Bottom. He's a fool, and he doesn't deserve his cut of my take. He has no class, no vision, no heart.

She walked down the hlll, Bottom's angry shouting fading away behind her, just as he was fading out of her life forever. She trotted to the main ramp, began walking down.

I am the Great and Powerful Trixie, she thought. That's not just my stage name, it's my self. I faced down a coven of black magicians who meant to kill me, and I defeated them. I summoned something -- I don't even know what yet, but it was something special, something maybe akin to the Princess herself, and it saved me in my hour of need. I really am better than any other living magician. Even in her moment of pride, she could not see herself as better than Master White-Beard, who -- if she was one in a million -- was one in a billion, for certain.

She stepped out the front door of the office building. The clatter and noise of the great city were all around her. It's been only a few days since that terrible long night, she thought to herself, and now it's like nothing bad ever happened. Business as usual. This city is amazing. I've got to come back here someday.

She hitched herself to her caravan, pulled it out into the street, turned onto Bridleway.

Someday, she thought, but not now. Bottom was not merely bluffing. He could make trouble for her in this town, especially since her last outburst had been literally criminal. Better to leave town before the law caught up with her for that one. And even if he didn't proscute, he certainly could get her blacklisted, the more so because she couldn't summon the Alicorn, Illusion. Not at will. Not yet.

There are other towns, Trixie told herself. Other places I can do my act, build my reputation, until I don't need an agent because their agents will be calling on me. I'm not just a normal show-mare, she thought. I'm the Great and Powerful Trixie, the One and Only Trixie, and this whole big world is mine.

She picked up speed as she cleared the downtown. The Blueskin Bridge lay before her, huge and gleaming, stretching out westward. I can go anywhere, she thought. Canterlot? Maybe when I've built up more of a reputation. Morgan? Eh, they're kind of stuffy up northeast. Baltimare?

Baltimare was tempting. She wanted to renew her friendship with Piercing. Sometimes -- not most of the time, but sometimes. when she was in a certain mood, she wondered if she wanted to renew something more. Maybe, if we hadn't been drunk ....

No, she firmly told herself. That's common, unthinkable. Disgusting! For mundane mares, not for the Great and Powerful Trixie!

But friendship -- that would be nice. It's been so long since I've been able to really relax and just talk to somepony ...

Not as a supplicant, though. She had to make her chops, build up her reputation. When she saw Piercing Gaze again, he too would marvel at the fame and fortune of the Great and Powerful Trixie. He would be the one to want to make up with her.

She felt confident now that she could succeed. She had faced the worst, and she was still alive, still trotting along, pulling her van.

West, she decided. I'll just go west. Then maybe south a bit. There's a whole wide world out there, and it's going to belong to me. To the Great and Powerful Trixie!

Singing a merry little song, she trotted across the bridge, toward her destiny.

END.

Author's Note

As can be seen, Celestia and Wisedreamer are very old friends. You might say that they once sang together in the choir.

Wisedreamer would be in Equestria right now, if it weren't for the fact that things are acually more desperate in his present location. It's fair to say that if you see Wisedreamer, you're in a lot of trouble, but it's not fair to presume a causal relationship -- and it's also fair to say that he's usually the one who gets you out of the trouble.

Delver is from a matriarchal culture, much like Equestria's in some ways, and "Great Grand-Mother" is a high honorific in his own original language. His speech patterns are purely his own -- but give the little guy a break -- he's been through the literal fires of Hell to get here. It takes time to recover from something like that.

Those Equestrian theatre owners just can't take a joke when it comes to panic-stricken stampedes through limited exits. Such grouches!

What Trixie considers a "direct and honest gaze" is what some insensitive ponies might term a "near-berserk glare." But then they're probably just grouches too.

Yes, Trixie is just one or two intact moral fibers away from being an actual sociopath. But ya gotta love her. She loves her, after all.

And maybe a couple of other ponies love her too.

I sure love the little psycho. :)

Chapter 1: Bait and Switch

Never trust other ponies.

For far from the first time in her life, Beatrix Lulamoon, better known across the entire land of Equestria as The Great and Powerful Trixie, reminded herself of this well-learned truth, as she confronted her Manehattan agent, Bottom Billing.

"What do you mean," she said in a slow, measured tone, only the very slightest flicker of pale purple radiance playing about her horn, "by 'not quite Bridleway?'"

She was not threatening Bottom. The Great and Powerful Trixie did not make idle threats, and the last time she had made a non-idle threat she had been forced to vacate a small desert town two steps ahead of an angry mob. She had learned from that. Grown. Matured, even. Besides, she wasn't entirely sure whether or not the sheriff had gotten a warrant out on her, so she considered it advisable to avoid any similar troubles in the future.

Though it had been an overreaction on their part. The glow had been purely illusory, it had not been directed at the audience, and who knew that the tired old cliche about not shouting 'fire' in a crowded ... well, anyway, nopony had really gotten hurt. Some ponies just couldn't deal with a truly spontaneous performance.

"Now, Trixie," Bottom said in a placatory tone, sidling around behind his large faux-oak desk (the stain was clearly off the plywood on the lower right front corner, oddly enough in the shape of a hoof-print), "ya gotta to understand that only the most popular acts are gonna play Bridleway in Manehattan during the Summer Sun Celebration ..."

Bottom seemed uncomfortable. A short, stocky light tan earth pony with a chestnut-streaked gray mane and tail (obviously a dye job, and none too skillfully done), his eyes were shifting nervously, refusing to meet her own. Indeed, he seemed to be ... trembling?

Trixie considered these to be bad signs. She had often noticed that ponies had an odd tendency to get nervous around her when they were were planning or had already committed some act of betrayal, which given pony nature was an all-too-frequent event. Few Ponies, of course, were blessed with her own intelligence, integrity and force of will. She supposed that perhaps this might be a little bit intimidating to some Ponies, who might feel guilty about disappointing her. As Ponies often did.

"Excuse me," Trixie said sweetly, taking advantage of the excellent diction she had learned at her school, "but the Great and Powerful Trixie does seem to recall you writing me to come to Manehattan to take advantage of, and she quotes, a 'once in a lifetime opportunity.' Now, being the Great and Powerful Trixie, and thus by definition one of 'the most popular acts,' a 'once in a lifetime opportunity' would logically mean a Bridleway venue. Am I not correct in this assumption?"

There, that was reasonable. Rational. She didn't think her eye was twitching too much when she said it. Yes, that stamping and scraping sound had been her hoof on the floor, but if her agent was too stingy to pay out for good carpeting -- weren't there tax deductions for wear and tear to plant?

"Well," admitted Bottom, "you certainly can draw `em in and fill the gate box, when you don't cause more trouble than --" He looked into Trixie's eyes and recoiled. "Eh, when everything goes well, I mean. You've got a lotta talent, and a great act," the agent continued. "But Trixie, baby, this is Manehattan. Yer up against a lotta competition here. Ya gotta make a name for yerself, here in the Big Orange. Know what I mean?"

The Great and Powerful Trixie did. Her ears drooped a bit as she assimilated the information.

"So it's kinda good that I gotcher a gig at all, this time 'a year," Bottom explained. "This can be yer opportunity! Do good on this gig and I can getcher gigs on better stages, better neighborhoods. Who knows? I think yer good enough to make it onta Bridleway!" He gestured broadly toward the sky, as if getting onto Bridleway would constitue apotheosis.

Since Trixie basically agreed with this estimate, she nodded.

"All right, Bottom," she said more calmly. "So you've made The Great and Powerful Trixie an engagement a bit off-Bridleway, is that what you're saying?"

Bottom beamed, clearly glad that Trixie had forgiven him. "In essentiality, yes," he replied.

"So --" asked Trixie, leaning forward. "Of just how far off Bridleway do we speak?"

***

The great Island of Manehattan stands like a fortress in the waters of the Stormy Sea. Essentially an immense single outcropping of quarter-billion year old schist interspersed with gneiss and marble, the waves have beaten upon its obdurate rocks for tens of millions of years, wearing deep channels which can take the largest practical ships, even in this modern age of steam navigation. Shielded from the eastern storms by extensive sandbar islands upon (and sometimes over) which the ocean swells break, it is thus an ideal harbor and the obvious location for a great city.

Over four thousand years ago, the Ponies of the pre-Tribal Era, which some daring archaeologists persist in regarding as an "Age of Wonders," may have thought so. Someone certainly raised titanic towers, thousands of feet high, footing them a hundred feet and more deep in the solid schist, rearing over an immense surrounding city which at its height must have had a population numbering in the tens of millions of souls.

Alas, it is impossible to date these accurately, and most historians assume that this was the work of some pre-Pony civilization, perhaps even that of the near-mythical Eldren. The nature of this previous city might be better understood, had not the Cataclysm that ended that earlier age resulted in tsunamis, which modern scientists estimate as having wave heights reaching up several hundred feet, sending the towers toppling in twisted ruins. Only debatable ruins and tunnels remain now, far below the modern ground level, of that legendary time.

The known history of the island starts less than three thousand years ago, when the Sea Pegasi wiped out the savage minotaurs and took control of the island, bringing in Earth Ponies to farm the land and Unicorns to work as craftsponies. For two thousand years the towns waxed and waned with the sea trade. With the unification of Equestria, the towns grew to cover the island, merging into the single city of Manehattan.

Land space was dear. The ponies of Manehattan built higher and higher. For centuries the strength of wood and stone limited them to several dozen yards. Within the last century, steam-powered steel mills made steel-frame construction possible. Now, for the first time in some four millennia, new structures rear hundreds of yards into the air. They are small and flimsy compared to the titan towers of the lost city of wonders, but they are a sign of the new Pony civilization, and their shining spires beacons to the ships coming with cargoes from a hundred nations to the greatest city on the eastern coast of Equestria.

There are dozens of neighborhoods in Manehattan, many of them named after the ancient ports founded by the Sea Pegasi. Some are business districts, through the canyoned streets of which ponies swarm to contract the commerce of an entire planet. Some are the site of smart brownstones on shaded lanes, where the wealthy city-dwellers enjoy lives of luxury and sophistication.

Some, such as Tompkins Town, located just inland and west from the wharves at which dock the freighters in the trans-Stormy and coastal fertilizer trades, and enriched by the scents emanating from that agriculturally-vital yet oddly-unpopular industry, are rather less prestigious localities. Tompkins Town, proper, is a collection of tenement houses, factories and warehouses, huddling around a rather pathetic space of open greenery, distinguished by the name of Tompkins Square Park.

In that park, for the Summer Sun Celebration, had been erected an open-air bandstand and stage, for the enjoyment of the good citizens of the neighborhood, bought and paid for by the local party machine's district boss to help secure the votes of his constituents. This technique was safer and more fun than, while still not precluding, ballot box stuffing.

Entertainment would be provided.

***

I'm going to kill my agent, reflected the Great and Powerful Trixie, as she pulled her caravan-wagon up to a series of large tents hastily pitched by the outdoor stage, obviously for the benefit of the performers. I'm really going to kill him. She had been repeating this for the last five blocks as a mantra, as she had pulled east from Bridleway into increasingly nasty, smelly and rundown streets, teeming with increasingly nasty, smelly and rundown ponies.

When she had caught the first whiffs of the main local industry, this at first merely-whimsical mental mantra had been upgraded to a continuously running fantasy of murder by every means conceivable to normal sane ponies, and several conceivable only to very clever or very insane ones. Such as Trixie.

Direct telekinesis offered so many gruesome methods, ranging from simply lifting and dropping great weights on Bottom, to clubbing, slicing or stabbing him with all manner of implements, some of them even intended for use as weapons. There were also rumors of secret and very disgusting techniques of internal organ manipulation, rumored to be practiced by the decadent unicorn mages of the Dragon Empire far to the southwest of Neighpon.

Then there were poisons. Trixie was no alchemist, but she had studied some basic alchemy at her private school, and she knew how to make some nasty compounds out of commonly-available items. Some of them were even riding in her caravan right now, though she hadn't actually purchased them with murder in mind.

But what Trixie really liked, since it would involve the practice of her own magical specialty, was killing by means of illusion. One could do this brute-force, by convincing the body that it had been mortally-wounded, but that required a really-skilled mage and a really-stupid victim. Hmm, actually that might work on Bottom. He's clearly an idiot to be wasting the time of the Great and Powerful Trixie by having her play such a repulsive slum such as this vile little park!

However, that was not the elegant way to do it. Besides, it left easily-discernable magical traces, which any competent City Guard detectives might readily trace.

Far better to use illusion to kill through misdirection. Make someone think that there was planking over a hole bridging a hundred-foot drop, for instance. Or an elevator in an empty shaft. Or switching the labels so that someone drank weed killer instead of whiskey. Trixie grinned evilly as she imagined a hundred ways to kill Bottom.

She didn't really mean to kill him, of course. But thinking about it made her feel better.

Still, it was probably a good thing that he had given her directions instead of showing her to this place himself. Trixie frowned then. Could it be that he had anticipated her reaction?

More betrayal. When will the Great and Powerful Trixie ever learn not to trust anyone?, she inwardly wailed.

Clearly the Great and Sorely Abused Trixie is too nice. Too ... naive? She reflected on that. No, the Great and Sophisticated Trixie can never be accused of naivete. It is not part of her image. Too good for this sinful Earth? She thought about that, then smiled. Yes. The Great and Saintly Trixie is clearly that. How she suffers for her art!

Her good mood in part restored, the Great and Powerful Trixie unhitched her caravan and stepped up to the desk to register. She was, after all, the Great and Powerful Trixie, and this was a show. One in a literally-stinking slum, but a show nevertheless. And the Great and Powerful Trixie was nothing if not the ultimate show-mare.

How bad could things possibly get?

***

They met in the old warehouse. There were thirteen of them, the traditional number, and they were all wearing loose black cloaks and yellow-tinted glasses, the better to simulate the appearance of the beings they worshiped.

After the usual ritual, including the traditional messy and painful demise of a chicken, the leader addressed his followers.

"After a thousand years of waiting, the stars have at last come right. Soon comes the hour of prophecy. Soon comes the hour of our vengeance. Soon the hour of our delivery from the weakness that they call "civilization." He paused to cheers.

"Soon comes the hour of our greatness!"

More cheering.

"Soon comes the Nightmare!"

His twelve disciples cheered wildly. Each of them had their own dissatisfactions with the world, their own delusions that everything would be somehow better if law and order and sanity were swept away.

They are fools, the leader thought, but they are useful fools. They shall play their part in sowing disorder, in weakening this sick society so that it will be ripe for its fall. And then, I shall reap the rich fruits of the New Cataclysm.

Within him, his symbiont hissed in agreement.

"All hail the Shadows! All hail the Great Dark!"

"All hail the Shadows!" cried his coven. "All hail the Great Dark!"

Within mere hours, the leader thought triumphantly, this city shall perish in flames!

Author's Note

This version of the Great and Powerful Trixie is about equally inspired by the one from Alex Warlorn's PonyPOVerse and (as modified by differing circumstances) RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse. Which is to say, I'm taking her psychological problems from both (minus those which came from being Discorded) as fanon.

She's a bit darker than RainbowDoubleDash's version because she doesn't have the patronage of a powerful Alicorn who obviously does really like her (proof being that RDD's Luna didn't stop trying to help her long long ago), so she has to collide with the realities of the world unprotected. Being Trixie, this makes her more arrogant and obnoxious, because arrogance and obnoxiousness is Trixie's way of dealing with the rejection she so frequently invites upon herself through her actions. This is, of course, a vicious circle, though Trixie has not yet figured this out.

The "titan towers" were of course built by the Pony civilization of the Age of Wonders, some four thousand years before the present date. Millennia of barbarism and chaos have caused their great legacy to become mere myth. Manehattan is a good place to find the ruins, right under the present city. They are often misinterpreted. The Ponies don't know it, but they're within a century of exceeding the accomplishments of their ancestors.

The "Sea Pegasi" are not a new kind of pony. They are Pegasi with sailing ships. Pegasi make perfect seafarers, as they can control the weather. This is especially advantageous before the invention of the steam engine, which is to say any time from within a century after the Cataclysm to before the 10th century AB.

Chapter 2: Setting the Stage

The business of registering, surveying the venue, and making preparations calmed the Great and Powerful Trixie down sufficiently that there were relatively few murderous fantasies whirling about in her mind by the time she had completed the process. Oh, she was still unhappy with the gig. The stage was hastily put together, and while a few experimental stamps on its surface gave her confidence that she wasn't about to actually fall through the planking, she felt a little nervous about doing some of the more acrobatic parts of her act. She'd found out through harsh experience that one could never count on an unknown theatre -- she'd been lucky that time to only gash, rather than break, her right hind leg.

Backstage was a horror -- some dirty and indifferently-maintained caravans had been drawn up behind the stage, for any performers poor and desperate enough not to have better facilities to use. Trixie's wagon was much cleaner and contained everything she needed for her act, and she was careful to chain it to a post and padlock the door once she fully realized the poor quality of the neighborhood. Not wishing to make any closer acquaintance than necessary with any small multi-legged creatures that might wish in their own turn to make a closer acquaintance with her own coat and mane, Trixie decided to leave everything in her van until just before she was to come on, and handle the initial costuming and make-up from her own wagon's facilities.

She had been assigned an hour-long slot from 4:30 to just before 5:30 in the morning, right before the rising of the Sun and thus the climax of the Summer Sun Celebration. Normally, four-thirty in the morning would have been the graveyard in a club, since few clubgoers would have the stamina to literally party the night away. But for the Summer Sun Celebration, this wasn't too bad -- the whole point was to stay up the whole night and greet the rising Sun, and those ponies whose work schedules did not permit this would wake up early to be at one of the festivals. So she'd probably be drawing a decent audience.

Thus it was with a sense of getting a good deal, of taking a step forward in her career, that the Great and Powerful Trixie signed the registration and affirmed her contract to perform for the stated fee. She insisted on one modification: she wanted to perform "from an hour before dawn until dawn". She felt this to be a much more beautiful and classic way of describing her role in the festival than some somber recitation of clock times, so she insisted on this.

Later, she would come to regret this decision. But at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

***

Eight hundred miles away, a brilliant but eccentric young mage had reached Ponyville and was meeting five other mares of their own varying degrees of strangeness. Throughout the land of Equestria, ponies were preparing for the Summer Sun Celebration. Some of these preparations involved laying down stocks of food and drink and party favors. Some of these preparations were not so innocuous. Manehattan was not the only city in which a coven massed, expecting a dark morning and hoping to profit from unleashed anarchy.

Some dozens of miles to the north of Ponyville, in her capital city of Canterlot, Princess Celestia had quietly summoned her chiefs of staff to the new War Room she had constructed deep under the palace, a strong subterranean bunker built of concrete and structural steel. There, under the excuse of an exercise, she mobilized certain Guards units to prepare for crowd control at key points throughout the Realm. She had long been watching the cult of the Great Dark, and the cities of Equestria would not be as naked to the covens on the Longest Night as they so fondly imagined.

Celestia had specifically constructed this chamber to withstand the effects of the impact of gravitational singularities against the Palace proper. She dearly hoped that it would prove unnecessary, that the Champions she had assembled would be able to save her sister from her Nightmare. But if the worst came, she was as ready for it as was possible in her merely-material form. Should her sister come out of the Everfree still in Nightmare, should she attack Canterlot, Celestia herself would emerge to do battle.

The War Room could take a near-miss by a singularity, but no merely material object could withstand Nightmare Moon's full focused power. If necessary, Luna could have brought down the mountain itself in crashing ruin. Celestia did not intend to give her that temptation. Her plan -- if her Champions failed, and it came to a direct battle between the two of them -- was to move the fight as quickly as possible far to the north of Canterlot, into the cold wastes where they could both unleash their full powers as Avatars -- her own fusion beams and fireballs, and her sister's graviton beams and point singularities --- without annihilating any cities beneath them.

She was not sure if she would survive such an encounter. The last time, she had done so only because she had been able to wield all six Elements, alone, against her crazed sister. In that wielding she had broken the Harmony, broken the Elements themselves until they could be attuned to new Bearers. If her faithful student could not perform the task into which Celestia had manipulated her, if Luna herself would not check her full might when she realized just whose soul animated the little lavender mage, then this might be Celestia's last fight in this incarnation, and the night might last a very long time.

She had died many times before, and did not particularly fear her own death. What she feared was failure, and the resultant annihilation of her little Ponies.

She issued her commands. Formations of Guards to be posted at various locations. Food stockpiles, amassed over the last decade, for as long as it could be safely stored, under their control, to be distributed under escort to the populace in the event of an interruption in normal supplies. Sealed envelopes, with the exterior salutations reading "In the event of Our disappearance or demise," had already been sent to Princess Cadance and her Guard Captain, Shining Armor, confirming Cadance to the immediate succession and instructing her and Shining to lead the resistance against "any who might usurp the Throne." Secret orders in sealed envelopes within the sealed envelopes were marked "In the event that the appearent usurper is My immediate relation and appears to have regained her sanity," contradicted the first set of orders, instructing them to in that event throw their support behind Princess Luna.

She'd thought of everything -- if, after killing her, Luna regained her sanity, she wanted to avoid an unnecessary civil war. This was a slim hope, but a hope nevertheless, if all other hopes failed.

Celestia had considered canceling the Summer Sun Celebration, but there seemed little point in doing so. Should her Champions succeed, there would be only some extra hours of darkness -- why spoil the parties her Ponies were looking forward to across a nation? And should they fail -- why not let the Ponies have one last night of revelry, of innocent enjoyment before the onset of true darkness? They would be mourning soon enough, in that eventuality, and more than just the loss of a Ruling Princess.

She nodded to her general officers, left the War Room, walked down the long, curving and heavily-armored corridor leading to the exterior blast doors, to the ramp which spiraled upward. Her face was serene, her gait assured, as she went up the ramp, through the corridors of the aboveground Canterlot Castle, to her own private chambers.

When her doors were closed, when she was alone, that was when she nearly broke down.

Why, after a thousand years of preparation, had it come to such a desperate pass? I knew this was coming, I arranged its coming, I should have been more ready for it! Not for the first time, she briefly reviewed her mistakes -- talents encouraged too much or too little, students whom she had failed and who had thus predictably betrayed her. They worship me as a goddess, no matter what I tell them -- do they not know how deeply flawed, how utterly fallible I really am? For a single horrid moment, she felt utterly overwhelmed. I was never supposed to be doing this alone, she thought in anguish. Sister, you were supposed to be my dearest friend, not my deadly foe!

She wanted to weep.

Then she mastered her emotions. Too long spent in flesh, she thought, too long prey to the tides of body chemistry, the limitations of neural architecture. I must conquer them, I must be strong now. A whole nation, a whole planet, are depending on me.

She could not be truly Cosmic, not in this form, but she had modeled this form on the best traits of a species with an extraordinary talent for surviving against long odds: surviving and yet still retaining their kind and happy spirits, their deep decency. So she could be strong. The Ponies needed her strength now, more than ever.

She would be strong.

For them.

So she shifted her own shape slightly to appear even more impressively regal than was her normal wont. She summoned her servants. They styled her hair, applied cosmetics, dressed her in her full royal regalia. She smiled and joked with her hoofmaidens, even as on the inside she felt the full surreal absurdity of her situation.

So close we came, she thought. We founded the Realm fifteen hundred years ago, fought the grasping noble houses to unify it so that the ordinary ponies could live free and without fear. Even when you went mad, I was able to keep Equestria safe from enemies within and without for a thousand years. Peace, prosperity, commerce, industry, energy from wind and water and steam, we've taken the first steps on the road back to what the Age of Wonders had known. In a century we would have had computers, orbital flight, nuclear missiles. In a century, we could have defended ourselves against you, my poor little Lulu, in anything but your full Cosmic form.

Now it's all coming down to my slightly-confused Faithful Student and whichever she can gather of the numerous candidate Element Bearers with whom I populated Ponyville. The magic should make her pick at least one of each of the five others, but ... I should have dispatched mechanized divisions, bomber wings, whole regiments of sunfire missile launchers. But I don't have any of those things. So I sent a librarian.

She chuckled to herself, momentarily surprising her hairdressers.

But she's a very good librarian, Celestia reminded herself, attempted to convince herself that her plan was rational. And she's warm and fuzzy. And she's the reincarnation of Dusk Skyshine -- that has to count for something, Luna, even in your madness you won't miss that, will you? And she's the strongest mage of her generation. And the other candidates are very strong. And ... and I really hope this works. It's out of my aura, now.

May the Allfather protect and guide you, Twilight Sparkle.

So she smiled, and went to preside at the formal and boring event with which the elite of Canterlot signfied their enjoyment of the Summer Sun Celebration.

Though she had heard, in general, of the Cult of the Great Dark, and prepared her various forces against them, she knew nothing in particular of the plans of those thirteen black-cloaked figures in Manehattan. Nor, even had she known their planned primary target, would she have necessarily grasped its significance. She was highly intelligent, but she also really was, as she kept trying to make her subjects believe, sadly fallible. And, of their earlier Aspects, it had been Moondreamer, rather than her elder sister Sundreamer, who had been the engineer.

In some corner of her mind she did remember a certain misfit mare who had for less than a year attended her School for Gifted Unicorns, but had proven too arrogant and rebellious to submit herself to even a modicum of academic discipline. This had been a sad waste, because her raw magical potential had been truly impressive. But raw potential is more threat than opportunity, when not linked to a friendly spirit, and the spirit of Beatrix Lulamoon had been anything but friendly.

If someone had told her that it was that very spirit that might soon be the only thing standing between the greatest city in the Realm and a terrible disaster, Princess Celestia would have been very astonished.

So, of course, would have been the Great and Powerful Trixie.

So the board awaited its first moves in the great game of war, Black planning a multi-pronged attack almost certain to generate some gains against White's position, while White had planned an ambush of the Black Queen. And neither side was aware of the presence of one small and overlooked pawn.