Chapter 1: The Fall Of The Great And Powerful Trixie
"Hah! You may have vanquished an Ursa Minor, but you will never have the amazing showstopping ability of The Great And Powerful Trixie!"
Trixie exclaimed as she cast a smoke spell allowing her to escape Ponyville. For a moment, she worried the ponies wouldn't let her escape, she looked back in fear. It seemed like the pegasus with the rainbow colored mane had thought to do so but stopped mid-air for some reason. Regardless, she kept galloping until her hooves couldn't take her any further. Once she stopped what felt like miles away from Ponyville, she shut her eyes trying to catch her breath.
How had a regular old unicorn been able to defeat an Ursa-Minor? And more importantly, how was that unicorn better at magic than The Great And Powerful Trixie? These thoughts bounced around in Trixie's head as she listened to her heartbeat slowly regulate to it's normal pace. She began to shiver as she realized that she'd left her hat and cape back in her cart along with all her other possessions. But there was no way she was going back to get it. Despite the fact that she had nothing to do with the Ursa-Minor attacking Ponyville, she was still sure she'd be less than welcome there again.
"Ugh, what did The Great And Powerful Trixie do to deserve this!" She cried out in anger. Her voice was lost amongst the trees that surrounded her. "Where am I exactly?" She muttered to herself as she analyzed her surroundings. It seemed to be a forest, she'd gotten herself lost in a forest of all places! She let out another cry of anger as she sent a spell at a nearby pile of rubbish, she merely knocking a bit of bark off of a discarded branch. The force of the spell sent the a piece of the debris flying at her forehead. Trixie let out a yelp as the small piece of wood flew across her face leaving behind a large gash that bled profusely. "Things couldn't get any worse!" She yelled in pain.
Almost as if to disprove her exclamation low growls began to emanate from the wilderness around her. Trixie's eyes widened as she slowly turned around to see multiple sets of green eyes enveloped in darkness staring at her. Not only that but the pile of rubbish she had shot at began to move and change shape, from a pile of sticks and leaves into the menacing form of a wolf. She tried to force her body to run away but her hooves could barely hold her up at that point. Timber wolves, she'd only ever heard of them but she'd never seen any in person, despite their constant appearance and defeat in her made-up stories. She recalled how her stories went. In those she'd show up just in time to save some helpless village and blast the timber wolves with some miscellaneous spell that would either destroy or ridicule them, whichever Trixie felt would impress the crowd more.
"Stay back lest you wish to feel the wrath of The Great And Powerful Trixie!" She cried out standing on her hind legs to emphasize her greatness and power like she'd done countless times before. The timber wolves weren't impressed, especially since standing on her hind legs turned out to be too much for Trixie's tired body to handle. She hit the ground with a dull thud as they began to creep closer to her, moving in smooth circular motions as they prepared to pounce on their prey. She produced another shot of magic, the blue bolt simply bounced off the wolf's massive frame, not even chipping the creature like she had before.
"The Great And Powerful Trixie is showing mercy by not destroying you all in a single blow! Leave now or you will have to face my full magical might!" This time her voice began to crack with an uncertainty that she didn't realize she was feeling. Trixie spun her head around in despair looking for a way out, anything at all! She shot another bolt, this time it didn't even reach it's target, fizzing out a few feet from one of the wolve's faces. She wished she could run away but it was far too late for that.
The blood from the gash on Trixie's head began to seep into her eyes, tinting her vision red. She desperately wiped her hoof across her face, only making her completely blind to her attackers. "Trixie has destroyed hundreds of timber wolves you are nothing to the likes of The Great And Powerful Trixie!" Trixie jumped as she heard a twig snap right next to her ear. "This is your final warning!" Trixie curled herself into a ball, she could feel the breath of one of the creatures on her body and it's hot saliva dripping onto her face. "I warned you! Now prepare to feel the wrath of The Great And Powerful Trixie!"
A loud crack broke the wolve's growls. She could feel the wolves divert their attention away from her. She tried to spin her head around to see why but it was impossible, her body was paralyzed The timber wolves resumed their growling this time in a different direction. Trixie tried to at least open her eyes to cracking sound but her head fell to the floor leaving her dizzy and beginning to fall unconscious.
"Do you need help?" A bored monotone sounding voice came through over the growls of the monsters who'd found new prey. Trixie however only barely heard, it felt as though she was perceiving the world from within an aquarium where sounds and feelings had to force their way through the glass and water to have any hope of being perceived.
"The Great And Powerful Trixie needs help from nopony!" Trixie yelled as she began to slip into an all too familiar and recurring dream.
It was the first day at magic kindergarden. Trixie trotted alongside her mother and father. They dressed in the same style they always did, expensive and over the top. They made Trixie do the same but it didn't really matter to her, she was far too excited to notice details like those.
"Now Trixie I hope you know how important it is that you pass the entry exam with flying colors." Her father said in the snooty Canterlot voice that most ponies in the city had. In the dream her father's face was blurred, the same as her mother's. "Yes, especially considering-"Her mother's voice always became garbled in this part of the dream "-it's a wonder they let her in at all let alone having her be-" Her speech went back to garbled gibberish. Trixie's father told her to stop talking as he pushed open the door leading to the exam room.
There was a huge hole in the ceiling that was still in the process of being repaired along with many broken windows very recently replaced it seemed. Four unicorn ponies all in formal attire sat at the back of the room, in the front of the class was a cart with a light blue egg polka-dotted with slightly darker blue spots. On the side there was a small picture of the egg breaking and a dragon emerging. Trixie's parents stood right behind her as she stared at the egg. In the dream, it always felt like she'd done this hundreds of times before, even though she'd only done it once in real life.
But no matter how hard she tried to change the outcome of the exam, it never did. Her horn would let out blue sparks, like it always did. The egg would begin to glow and levitate, like it always did. Trixie would feel a rush of joy, like she always did. In that moment her cutie mark would always appear as she began to believe that all of the stories they'd told her of who she was and what she could do were true. And right when it seemed she had found her calling and would pass the entrance exam, the egg would explode, covering the room in the slimy remains of the fetus, like it always did.
Trixie always wished the dream would end here, earlier if possible, but it never did. The ponies would tell Trixie and her parents how she hadn't passed the test, doing so in disgust trying to wipe the slime off of their clothing. And then her parents would start yelling at the ponies all in garbled speech until the very end when they said the five words that have never left her since "Don't you know who she is?!" She's not even sure her parents even said those five words, the words that haunted her so, they could have been some part of the garbled speech that she mistook for words. At this point the scattered contents of the egg would begin to gather around Trixie. Every time she had the dream what appeared from the viscera would be different. This time it formed the residents of Ponyville. "Don't you know that she is-" The sentence was concluded not in the voices of her parents but in a garbled and monstrous version of her own voice resonating from the remains of that poor dragon. Trixie tried to cover her ears but it was as if the words came from her own head her own mouth, those five words. "-The Great And Powerful Trixie!"
She awoke screaming as a large beam of energy painfully blew out of her horn obliterating the wall beside her. She could hear some large building being blown apart outside even over her own maddened screams. She continued screaming at some internal threat, with a fear that suggested some unbridled terror. Like that of a victim about to be devoured by a horrid monster. Her screams are cut short as she is hit in the back of the head by some hard object sending her into a more blissful dreamless sleep.
Chapter 2: Between A Rock And A Hard Place
Trixie awoke to foreign surroundings. A rough, untreated wooden ceiling loomed over her. Trixie ached all over and she could feel the tight embrace of bandages on various parts of her body. She seemed to be lying in someone's bed, but that's all she could make out from her position, well that and the gaping hole almost as big as the wall itself right next to the bed. The hole revealed a strange and barren landscape littered with rocks of varying shapes, colors and sizes.
"What the hay is going on here?! Trixie demands to know!" Trixie yelled out to whoever might be in earshot. No response, although it did sound like there were hoofsteps approaching from somewhere inside the house, but they were way too slow. Nopony walks that slow! She tried to lift herself up with the help of her magic but nothing happened. Nothing, not even sparks from a failed spell. Her horn just stood there on the top of her head, inert to her efforts. "And what happened The Great And Powerful Trixie's horn?!" Trixie added to her previous exclamations.
Trixie attempted to shift herself into a position more befitting of someone so Great and Powerful as herself. She tried to at least sit up but when she lifted her head it fell back down into the pillow. The moment her head hit the pillow she grunted in pain. The pillow was so hard it's almost like it was stuffed with rocks or something! She tried to at least roll over, but when she did she went tumbling onto the floor her horn entombing itself into the wooden surface leaving her in a sorry position.
Trixie squealed and flailed her legs around while trying to pull her horn out before who ever was coming arrived. It was no use it was stuck really stuck in there.
"Do you need help?" The same voice from that night asked, in exactly the same tone as well.
"The Great And Powerful Trixie needs help from nopony!" Trixie exclaimed, still trying to yank her horn out of the floor. Admittedly starting to tear up a bit.
"Okay." The pony said indifferently. "You owe us a few thousand bits." She added.
Trixie froze "Trixie owes you nothing!"
"You broke our mill." She said taking a few steps forward.
"Trixie did nothing of the sort!" She exclaimed resuming her efforts to free her horn.
"Yes you did." The pony responded as she grabbed Trixie's torso in her hooves and pulled her up separating the plank from the floor but not the unicorn's horn from the plank.
"Trixie said she didn't need your help!" Trixie declared as she shrugged off the pony's hooves.
"mmhm." The pony mumbled. Now she could get a good look at the pony. She was a gray pony with a straight mane and tail, both a dark violet. She was wearing a bland greyish blue outfit with a black belt. Her cutie mark was a rock. Trixie pitied ponies with cutie marks as insignificant as that one, her's was very important.
"Now if you'll excuse me, The Great And Powerful Trixie has places to be!" She took a few shaky steps forward almost falling back down, the gray pony caught her just in time though.
"You lost a lot of blood." Said the pony in a deadpan voice, a tone of voice you wouldn't want to hear when somebody's talking about your blood.
"Unhand me!" Trixie blurted out again knocking away the pony's hooves. She was able to walk, with some uncertainty but at least she could make her way to the door. Right as she was about to pass through the door frame, Trixie was knocked backwards by some force hitting her horn. It sent a shock down her spine and reminded her that the plank of wood was still attached to her head.
"You have to pay us the bits before you leave." Said the pony as she pointed a hoof at both the hole in the wall and what lay before it. At first it was hard to tell since it just seemed like a rock pile like many others out in the field but the blue flames and more assorted debris distinguished it amongst the others. It was the remains of some large building that was now nothing more than a smoldering heap of stones and wood. Trixie expecting nothing less from her amazing magic.
"Oh you see, I don't exactly have that kind of money." Trixie said trying to retain some of her confidence in her voice.
"That's okay."
"What?! Really?!" Trixie asked incredulously.
"Yeah, I'll just contact the guards to take you away then." Her voice couldn't have been any more apathetic when she said this.
"Oh buck!" Trixie thought to herself. All her possessions were in her cart in ponyville, that included all her bits. But she didn't even half the bits she needed to pay off this peculiar earth pony. Not only that but going back to Ponyville was the last thing she wanted to do in her life, well not until she thought of someway to get back at Twilight Sparkle. But this pony didn't know any of that! Trixie could easily fool her. It only took her a second to think of a way out of this mess. "Yes I am quite clever" Trixie thought to herself.
"What I meant to say was I don't have that kind of money with me!" Trixie said quickly. "So if you'll let me, I'll be on my way to go get my bits and have your lovely little mill rebuilt, as a matter of fact I'll do it myself!"
"Okay that sounds good." The pony said letting out a slight smile.
Trixie felt like laughing. This had been too easy! Nopony could stop Trixie!
"Very well then! The Great And Powerful Trixie will return in a few days, don't wait up!" Trixie said as she began to trot towards the exit. That is until she heard hoofsteps trotting right beside her.
"Trixie can find her own way out just fine." Trixie told the gray pony who was standing close behind her.
"Yeah probably." The earth pony said as she stared at Trixie's confused expression.
"Then why are you following me? Oh, you must've become a fan in the few moments you spoke to me! I don't blame you!" Trixie put her hoof up to her chest, happy to see ponies still recognized her superiority.
"No." Trixie turned around to face the mare. Her lack of expression was starting to frustrate Trixie.
"I'm going to go with you to make sure you don't run away before you pay us." Said the pony as she grabbed hold of the plank on Trixie's horn and freed it in one brisk movement lifting Trixie of the ground for a moment.
How could that pony see through Trixie's ingenious plan?! Well no matter, there's always plan B.
"Ha! There is no way a lowly pony like you could hold back the likes of The Great And Powerful Trixie!"
Trixie exclaimed as she attempted to cast a smoke spell, no result. She at least tried to run away but tripped on some loose bandages on her legs. As she hit the floor her horn pierced the wooden floor, it was stuck, again.
"We should get going." Said the pony as she carefully walked around Trixie.
