The Illusory Hero

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the day that Equestria began to fall.

To be fair to the princess, nopony saw it coming. Who would have been able to anticipate that a previously unknown race of insect ponies that can magically disguise themselves as absolutely anypony would decide to invade Equestria? And, to top it all off, it happening not a year after the princess was forced to strike down her own sister, leaving her an emotional wreck.

They say the changeling queen had an entire army with her during the attack at the wedding, but honestly, I don’t think she needed it. The princess was so distraught for months after the Summer Sun Celebration that she could have been deposed by a foal. It was only the respect and admiration that everypony had for her that kept her in the position of Equestria’s princess.

I was on my way out of a little town called Ponyville when it happened. I’d stayed a lot longer than I had anticipated, thanks to the fact that the townsponies absolutely loved me. After just one of my performances, they insisted that I stay for a few days. Of course, a few days ended up being a few weeks, but I wasn’t overly bothered. They were constantly bathing me in their adulation, and I’m never one to turn down a compliment, let alone a constant flow of them. Still, I wasn’t planning on settling down permanently, so I ended up leaving after about a month. I only had so much variety, after all, and it’s a lot easier to reuse routines and illusions when you don’t have the same ponies watching every time. Sure, the townsponies were sad to see me go, especially some of the foals, but I’m certainly not going to stay in one place forever.

As I was walking away from the town, perhaps a kilometre away, the city of Canterlot caught my eye. Most days, it’s nothing particularly special to look at. After all, there’re only so many times you can look at one thing before it becomes boring, and even a city sticking out of the side of a mountain is no different. This time, however, there was something different about it. Instead of the same mundane city I was used to seeing, there was a gigantic pink bubble surrounding the entire city.

My jaw went slack for a couple of seconds, before I snapped back to my senses and lit up my horn. Unfortunately, the bubble was far too distant for me to be able to tell exactly what it was, though the energy pouring off of it let me know that it was, in fact, magical in nature. If it was pouring off energy at a level that I could detect from this distance, whoever created it must have been phenomenally powerful.

I pondered over these facts for a few seconds, before realizing that the bubble wasn’t the only thing different about the view of the city. Squinting and casting a magnification spell on the air in front of my eyes, I was just barely able to make out black specks above the pink bubble. They looked almost like a swarm of insects, though in the back of my mind I registered that they must have been much larger than common insects if I was able to see them at all from this distance. Some of them were so densely packed in the air that they looked like a writhing black mass.

As I watched, some of the specks detached from the larger group and dove straight at the bubble, only to bounce right back off. A shield! That’s what that bubble must be! But… that would make those specks enemies of Equestria, assuming that the shield was being created by somepony who themself was loyal to Equestria. I didn’t even know that Equestria had enemies! Even the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, that of Nightmare Moon, was one that came from within. We’re a peaceful nation, who would ever attack us?

I didn’t have long to think over these questions, as, with a noise I could hear even from where I was, the shield around Canterlot suddenly collapsed, and the insect-like swarm dove straight into the city. I stared, wide-eyed, falling back to a sitting position. The… the city’s actually under attack!

I stood up again and smacked myself in the face. “No,” I said out loud. The royal guard won’t have any problems with those things. They’ve been keeping Equestria safe for centuries, and even in the past few months they’ve been doing it without the princess’ help. This’ll be a cakewalk for them!

Confident in my assessment of the situation, I turned around and continued on my way. No point getting worked up over that, after all. They pay the guards to worry about this sort of stuff, and it’s not like there’s anything I can do about from here even if I wanted to.

***

A few hours later, I came to a stop. The sun hadn’t budged an inch in the sky since I had set out from Ponyville at noon, and it was starting to get on my nerves. It wouldn’t have been the first time in the past year that the princess forgot about moving the sun, and I doubted it would be the last. Sometimes the princess’ state made me feel sorry for her, but at times like these it just made me irritated. How hard is it to do one thing! Move the sun! It only goes in one direction!

“Argh!” I stomped the ground, hot, tired and frustrated. There wasn’t even any shade around, for Celestia’s sake! It’s like the weather today is just out to spite me. I cast my gaze around me, looking for somewhere to take shelter from the relentless heat. There were few trees around, but the position of the sun meant they cast heardly any shade at all, and certainly not enough for me to cool down in. Growing increasingly frustrated, I cast a magnification spell just in front of my eyes once more, quickly scanning the area to see if there was anywhere at all where I could stop and rest.

Aha! A cave! From where I was, it looked just like a smudge in the distance, but with the magnification spell I was able to see enough to make it out as a somewhat sizeable cave that should have more than enough room to keep me in the shade. If I’m lucky, I might even find a cold water spring!

Letting out a tiny “Eeee!” of happiness, I dispelled the magnification and began cantering over to the cave. It only took a few minutes, and before long I stood at the mouth of the cave. It was even bigger than I had anticipated it being, and the interior was nearly pitch black. of course, that wasn’t an issue for me at all. I cast a simple light spell and sent the magic into the cave, illuminating it in its entirety. It was about the size of a dozen houses put together, and it looked rather cozy, despite the unfortunate lack of a water spring.

However, there was more than just rock inside the cave. As the light spell reached the centre of the cavern, I heard a quiet “Eeep!” from the far wall. Instinctively hopping backwards, I echoed the noise before strengthening the light spell to see just what had made the noise. Peering deeper into the cave, I could just barely make out the image of a gray unicorn mare with a simple black mane huddled up against the wall, shying away from the light and flinching as I approached.

“Who are you?” I asked, perhaps a bit more sharply than was necessary. The unicorn flinched once more, before shakily sitting up and looking at me.

“I-I’m Tene- I mean, u-um, my name’s, um…”

I waved a hoof at her. “Fine, fine, if you don’t want to tell me. I couldn’t care less, anyway. What it Celestia’s name are you doing in here?”

The mare looked more than a little nervous. “I’m just, um, just resting in here.”

“Great,” I grumbled to myself. “I find a nice cave and it’s already taken. This day has been just fantastic.”

The gray mare overheard me, though I hadn’t meant for her to. “Oh! Um, you can stay in here, I need to move anyway.” She looked like she was getting more nervous by the second. “Listen, um, this might sound like a weird question, but, um, has anything… unusual been happening in Canterlot recently?”

I scoffed at that. “What, besides the royal wedding everypony’s tripping over themselves to go see? Princess Moray, or something like that? Well, there was one weird thing today, but it hardly matters.”

The unicorn looked like she was barely paying attention to what I was saying, staring at the floor muttering to herself. “... Moray? Oh, Mi Amore Cadenza. But… hmm…” She suddenly snapped her gaze back to me. “What do you mean, one weird thing?”

I raised one eyebrow, both confused and curious about her strong reaction. “Well, there was a big shield over the city-”

I was interrupted by the gray unicorn as she breathed a sigh of relief and slumped back, a smile making its way onto her muzzle. “Oh, thank goodness. They listened after all.” She suddenly looked back at me as I coughed and gave her my best deadpan look. “O-oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

“Right…” I stretched out the word in as sarcastic a manner as I could, before continuing to speak. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, there was a big pink shield over the entire city for a little while, and it was being attacked by these weird black bug pony things.” The gray mare’s eyes widened at this, though she kept her relaxed posture and seemed less worried than she had been when I first walked into the cave. “After a little while,” I continued, “the shield just collapsed all on its own and-” I stopped the story once again as the unicorn stiffened up, paling rapidly. She stayed silent for a few seconds, so I decided to keep telling the story. “Anyway, the shield collapsed, and the bug things dove straight into the city. The Guard’ll probably take care of them. In fact, they’ve probably already…” I trailed off as the mare began to hyperventilate.

“Oh no. No, no, no, no NO!” She suddenly leapt to her hooves and started pacing around the cave. “Equestria’s in great danger, I have to warn them!” She ran up to me and stared straight into my eyes. “Where’s the nearest town? Please, you have to tell me!”

I shuffled backwards a pace, unnerved by the crazy pony now staring deep into my eyes. I walked over to the mouth of the cave. “It’s… Ponyville, right that wa- -”

As soon as I raised my hoof and pointed in the direction of Ponyville, the mare darted out of the cave and towards the town. I sighed and walked back into the cave, grumbling to myself. “Of course I have to run into the craziest pony in Equestria. A bunch of black bugs, and she thinks the Guard can’t handle them.

“Besides, it’s not like Equestria’s actually in any danger. Not with I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, here to protect it!”

Thus began the end of the world.