The Illusory Hero

I looked around outside the cave. After my dramatic proclamation, just walking back inside to take shelter from the relentless heat felt somewhat anticlimactic. Ah, well. It couldn’t be helped. The Great and Powerful Trixie is not one to let the elements get the better of her.

Turning around and walking back inside the cave, I felt a twinge of unease. Just who was that pony, and why did she freak out over some little spat in Canterlot?

Just then, my ears twitched as I heard a very faint noise from outside, so faint that I couldn’t quite tell what it was. Racking my memory for any relevant spells, I recalled a weak sound augmentation spell from my days in Celestia’s school. It was unforgivably simple, being little more than a magical cone of sorts to cause sounds to echo and, as such, be louder, but it was enough to serve my purposes. Taking a second to cast the spell, I stood still and perked my ears to listen.

It was a noise I hadn’t really heard before, so it took me a moment or two to properly identify it. What was it they called it… chattering? Chittering? Perking up both my ears, my curiosity now piqued, I leaned a little closer towards the mouth of the cave. At the urge of my instinct, with a healthy amount of caution, I cast a quick spell to deflect attention away from me. It was similar in its simplicity to the sound augmentation spell, made more complex only by the fact that it was effectively an inversion of a spell designed to draw attention to the caster, which I occasionally used while rounding up ponies for my shows. It was certainly a spell I had little occasion to use in this manner, but not one I was entirely unfamiliar with. Crowds of rabid fans did get old, sometimes.

My instinct proved to be rather valuable as a strange, chitinous black creature walked into the cave. It seemed mostly equine in nature, save for insectile wings and distinct holes in its legs, and I surmised that it was one of the bug things I had seen earlier, only much closer up. As I watched the creature, it was engulfed by green fire, only to emerge with a different appearance entirely. My mouth dropped open just a bit, and I noticed in the back of my mind that I had unconsciously taken a step back from the creature.

It now appeared to be a completely normal pony: a blue-coated earth pony mare with a gray mane. I slowly began to take a few more steps backwards, out of the cave and away from the shapeshifter, as it called out into the cave. “Hello? Is anypony in here?”

It was completely silent inside the cave, even the sounds of nature from outside seemingly muted in the presence of this creature. Unthinking, I took another step back, only to cringe at the loud clop of my hoof on the stone. Instantly the mare spun around, looking directly at me, the weak attention-diverting spell no longer effective against the intense focus of this creature. I turned away and bolted at full speed towards the mouth of the cave, my eyes wide in something approaching panic, and charged up a new spell.

As I ran, another of the creatures burst into the cave, this one undisguised, baring its teeth to reveal sharp fangs that glinted in the sunlight. Startled by the new arrival, I released my spell early. The unfinished spell smashed straight into the creature’s face, generating a sharp bang and a puff of gray smoke. Dang. I’d meant for that one to be a fireball.

As my focus shifted to the undisguised creature, the other one tackled me from behind, grabbing my hind legs and driving me to the ground. I landed shoulder-first onto the cold stone, with a grunt of pain. I turned to face the disguised creature as best I could.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie demands that you release her, filthy bug-creature!”

The creature simply gave me a vicious smile as it dropped its disguise, horn lighting up in a green aura as it prepared a spell I didn’t recognize. With an incoherent cry of anger and frustration, I telekinetically shoved the creature off of me. It proved surprisingly resistant to my magic, only sending it staggering a few steps off and away from me, rather than sending it flying as I had expected it to. Still, it gave me the chance to stumble to my feet and continue my flight from the cave. As I passed the second creature, the smoke dissipated from in front of its face, and it turned with a snarl to continue the chase.

Bursting out of the cave into the sunlight, I felt my face twist into an expression somewhere in between shock and frustration as I saw even more of the creatures were waiting for me. Five of them were arranged in a semicircle near the cave to intercept me, and another dozen stood behind them. Thinking quickly, I cast a rapid sequence of firework spells directly in front of me. The five closest creatures hissed at the bright flashes and loud noises, some of them raising their hole-speckled hooves to cover their eyes as best they were able. Taking advantage of the distraction, I telekinetically shoved the creature furthest to my left as I barreled towards it, bracing for an impact.

Just as I had anticipated, the creature was just as resistant to my telekinesis as the other one, but the projected force was enough to put it off-balance as I rammed straight into it, sending it falling to the side, the impact barely slowing me down as I sprinted towards the treeline, where I hoped I’d be able to find some way to hide or escape from the creatures pursuing me. Unfortunately for me, the fireworks hadn’t distracted the creatures behind the initial five, and they all dove at me at the same time. In a flash of inspiration, I hopped as far as I could to the right while creating an illusory copy of myself that moved to the left.

The creatures seemed to be confused by my gambit for just a few seconds, but rapidly recovered their wits and split into two groups to chase the two versions of myself. Horn still alight with the effort of maintaining the double, I made the illusion duck under the creatures that attempted to tackle it as they caught up with it. However, with my focus so divided, I failed to realize that two more of the creatures had caught up with me, and the illusion dissipated as I was grabbed from behind by the shapeshifters, and my vision faded into darkness as my head slammed into the ground.

* * *

My senses returned to me very slowly. My eyes opened gradually to reveal… something. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, especially when it seemed to me that my vision was not clearing properly. The only thing I could see was a sickly green blur, with a few indistinct sources of light behind it. My hearing also seemed to be off, as I could hear what sounded like regular activity of any pony town, but very quiet, with a muted quality similar to the blur of my vision. My limbs felt heavy and stiff, and I couldn’t move them at all. Even my eyes felt heavy and weighed down by something, only able to be opened about halfway, and I felt a wave of lethargy sweep over me as I drifted back into unconsciousness.

* * *

When I next woke up, I did so with the feeling that there was something very, very wrong. I felt the same heavy feeling in my limbs at eyelids, but this time I wasn’t going to let it get the better of me. Someone had done something to me, I knew, and the Great and Powerful Trixie wasn’t one to let it get the better of her. I quickly readied a telekinetic push spell, only to realize that my magic was just as muted as the rest of my senses. A small ripple seemed to travel through what I had thought was just empty air in front of me, which I now realized was some sort of gooey green substance, presumably the cause of my impaired senses and magic. My frustration growing, I readied the spell again, with several times more power than I had before. This time, it actually caused the entirety of the goo encasing me to wobble, moving my whole body and giving me no small amount of nausea.

Taking a moment to recover from the unexpected movement, I noticed a few blurry, black forms moving around just outside of whatever I was in. Some of them had stopped, and were presumably looking at me to see what I was doing. Oh, you just wait. I’ll give you something to watch. With that thought, I charged up the spell for the third time, this time with every last scrap of magical energy I could muster. With a scream muffled by the goo, I released the spell.

With a bang I could actually hear this time, my vision, hearing and magic suddenly felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted, and I could finally see clearly what was going on in front of me. The spell had freed me completely from the green goo, and had sent it flying in all directions. Directly in front of me were two of the black bug creatures, mouths hanging open in clear disbelief, one of them with the goop splattered across its face. With a quick glance around the room, I noticed that it wasn’t the only creature to have been splashed with the goo, as several more around the room were covered with it as well, as were the stone walls all around us.

I was standing on something of a stone platform, with similar platforms in a line all the way across what I assumed was a tunnel underground. The other platforms had fairly large blocks off the same goo I had been trapped in on top of them, each with its own trapped pony. I realized that this must have been some sort of holding area for the prisoners of these shapeshifters.

I felt a smirk make its way onto my muzzle, as a feeling of triumph filled me. I had escaped from these creatures with ease, and if their expressions, which I assumed were similar to the expressions of normal ponies, were anything to go by, it was something either very rare or completely unprecedented.

This was my element.

I struck a proud pose. “Take note, filthy bug creatures! No prison can hold the awe-inspiring might of the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

With that, I cast the biggest smokebomb spell I could manage from my newly reenergized horn, and created another illusion of myself. This was amazing! Now that I was out of the goop that had suppressed my magic, I felt like I had more magical energy than I had ever felt before in my life. Leaving the illusion in the centre of the smoke, I cast two new spells on myself. The first was the same spell to deflect attention that I had used in the cave prior to being caught, and the second was a spell designed to camouflage my coat, turning it the same colour as anything that it came into physical contact with. The three spells were tough to maintain simultaneously, certainly, but it was no big issue for the likes of the Great and Powerful Trixie. I allowed a smirk to cross my face, and gave the same expression to the illusion of myself.

Creeping outside of the smoke just as it dissipated, I clung to the nearest wall of the tunnel and watched as the creatures encircled my grinning double and attempted to tackle it. Moving along the wall away from the group, I made the illusion jump impossibly high, trailing false smoke for added flair, and dive-bombed past the creatures, rolling as it hit the ground at springing back to its feet. Grinning all the while, it took off in the opposite direction from where I was moving, quickly pursued by a growing crowd of the creatures.

Releasing my focus from the illusion, leaving it with a small shred of my will to flee from the creatures, I continued to move as quickly as I dared along the wall of the tunnel. There was a light just at the end of the tunnel. Though dim and green, it was brighter than the area I currently occupied, and I moved with haste towards the new area of the underground lair of the shapeshifters.