She ran and ran and ran. It was all she could do. After all, that THING was still chasing her.
Thing. That was all she could call it. That wasn't a pony. It couldn't be.
No. It was a demon in pony's clothes. There was no way that was a pony.
Not after what it did.
She tripped. Of all the times to be clumsy, now was the least ideal. Looking up, however, she suddenly got a horrid idea of how little progress she made.
There was a familiar amulet before her. Shattered, but still identifiable as the Alicorn Amulet.
She purchased it from a trader under the promise she would have limitless power. She would be able to have revenge against Sparkle with it. She could even feel how strong it made her. She knew she was unstoppable with it.
Or thought.
One meeting with that... that... THING! And the amulet was destroyed. Practically useless.
"Trixie."
Shit. Now was not the time to be thinking about that! She got up and ran.
Four hours of nothing but running later, and she finally made it out of the forest, and into Ghastly Gorge. After a few more minutes of running, she looked over her shoulder to check where that THING was.
Three paces back. Shit.
Moments after she turned back forward, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. Another path! She continued running for long enough to make it hard for that demon to get back there in a timely manner, and teleported back to it.
As she ran, she looked over her shoulder again. This time, there was nothing. Turning back, however, there was something. A wall.
Her "escape route" was a dead end.
She skidded to a stop and was about to run back down the path back to the main part of the gorge, only to find the demon RIGHT THERE!
That brown coated, red maned pegasus demon.
"Hello, Trixie."
"S-stay back! I-I'm s-still p-p-powerful! I-I-I c-can-"
"No you're not. If you were, you wouldn't have needed that silly little toy to beat my friend. I'll have you know, I don't take kindly to my friends getting hurt. Especially Twilight."
"W-w-w-wait! Y-y-y-you c-care ab-b-bout th-the r-r-r-rules, r-right? I-I-I m-mean, y-y-you're Sp-Sp-Spark-k-kle's f-friend, a-a-and y-y-you w-wouldn't w-w-want her up-s-s-set, r-right?"
The demon tilted her head. "Aren't you aware? Do you think she's aware that I have these powers in the first place?"
It stepped towards Trixie, causing Trixie to back up against the wall, whimpering.
"These powers, though I don't know how I got them, aren't exactly "allowed" to ponies like me. The punishment from having these powers will be worse than any punishment from murder. Or torture."
"Hehehe. Y-y-you mean, th-the t-torture that th-th-they w-would d-d-do to y-you wouldn't-"
"No. I mean the punishment for torturing a pony." It stepped closer to her, but she couldn't get any closer to the wall. "A pony like, say..."
It put its muzzle up against her ear.
"You."
Twilight trotted up to the ledge of Ghastly Gorge. There was a report of a murder here, and a proper investigator would take about three days to arrive. Looking down, she saw a few armor-clad ponies within the gorge. Guards.
She warped in near some of the investigating guards. She took a quick look around. Several were scanning for anything that might help find the culprit, a few checking the charred corpse.
The one that caught her attention, however, was the one interrogating the one that found the body. She made her way towards them.
"Rainbow Dash."
Both the guard and her friend turned toward her.
Dash smirked. "Hey, Twi!"
Twilight held up her hoof. "I'm not speaking to you as a friend right now. I'm speaking to you as an investigator. What did you see?"
Dash's smile faded. "I was just flying around lazily, as I usually do, when I drifted over Ghastly Gorge. All of a sudden, I heard screaming. When I looked down, there was a brown coated, red maned pony standing next to a massive fire. I flew down and shouted to them, but the pony I saw vanished. There was still screaming, so I created a tornado to put out the fire."
"I have my doubts," The guard interrupted. "No pony would reasonably drift this far, and I doubt a single pegasus would be able to-"
"It's Rainbow Dash," Twilight interrupted the guard in turn. "I don't doubt her flying skills in the least. Or where she is when she's slacking off," She turned back to Dash. "Continue."
"Right. Anyway, I put out the fire, but it was too late. The pony in the fire was just like that. She told me she didn't want to die, but by the time I got the guards here, it was too late. Everything since" —Dash used her wing to motion to the guards at work— "is just as you see here. The guards went right to work after determining she was dead."
"Any idea who the victim was?"
"I want to say I've heard her voice before somewhere, but I can't quite place it."
"And what about the other pony you saw?"
"Had to be the one that did this. They wouldn't have just watched and then run off when someone else arrived otherwise."
"What kind of pony was it?"
"I couldn't see, but judging by the vanishing act they performed and the fact they clearly didn't have a saddle bag but still did all of this, I would say unicorn."
"Vanishing act, you say?" Another guard walked over, carrying an ash covered cape of some kind. "Magician's cape. It's made of fireproof material, as to avoid damage by fireworks or certain acts."
Twilight took the cape in her magic, pulled it closer, and wiped some of the ash off with her hoof. Below the ash was a familiar pattern.
"Trixie!" Dash hit her hoof to her head. "That's where I heard her voice before!"
"Get an ATL out on a mare called Trixie Lulamoon! Unless we find her, we have to assume this is her!"
"Miss Twilight!" Another guard ran up to Twilight, carrying a bag. "I found these in the forest."
He opened the bag, and pulled out a hat. A very familiar magician's hat.
The guard that brought her the cape asked Twilight a question. "Why the ATL?"
Dash also had a question. "What is an ATL?"
"Attempt To Locate. And these aren't definite proof our victim is Trixie Lulamoon. For all we know, it was somepony pretending to be her."
"So this hat is..."
Dash nodded. "Definitely her's."
Twilight nodded as well. "No doubt. Was that it?"
"No. There was also this."
The guard emptied the contents of the bag onto the ground. All that was there were the shattered remains of some kind of silver amulet with a red jewel.
"What is this?" Twilight was hesitant to approach it.
Dash had to say it. "It's an amulet."
Twilight glared at Dash for a moment. "I know that! But I'm detecting some kind of magic coming off of it."
One of the guards distractedly thought aloud. "That can't be..."
Everypony stared at him. It took him a second to register this in his mind.
"Um, it resembles an amulet I heard about called the Alicorn Amulet. A cursed amulet that supposedly granted its wearer immense power at the cost of their self-control or something. But since this is broken-"
"Actually," Twilight looked at the pieces of the amulet in concern, "that may be what it is. In order for an amulet to hold this much power when broken, it had to have been destructively powerful while in one piece. That begs the question; who could have broken something with that much power?"
The pegasus stood in the shower, washing out the black dye from her mane and coat. She didn't put in enough to completely obscure her colors, just enough to make them look different. The water from her eyes ran down with the water from the shower.
"It was the right thing. It was the right thing. It was the right thing."
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hoof.
"She would have hurt them. She would have hurt them. She would have hurt them. She would have hurt them!"
She knew that a pony going for the Alicorn Amulet, for any reason, was automatically a huge hazard. But she had trouble convincing herself that she did the right thing morally. Without the amulet, would she have really hurt anyone? COULD she?
Well, at least she can't now. Why was it so hard to convince herself it was the right thing to do?
Because it wasn't.
"NO! NO! I WOULD NEVER! I WOULD NEVER! I would... I..."
She had no idea how long she sat in the shower, but one thing was certain.
Soon enough, the word "murderer" would be tied to the name "Fluttershy."
