The Madness of Twilight Sparkle
“All is ready,” she cackled, “the stage is set! My greatest triumph is at hoof!!!” the mad laughter rang off the crystal walls of the Castle of Friendship, rattling the chandeliers and shaking the very roots of the castle itself. It echoed through the halls and flew up to the rafters.
The Madness of Princess Twilight was all-consuming. Even now, the soon-to-be-coronated Ruler of Equestria flew through the middle of her library, the very heart of her power, laughing uncontrollably as her magic blazed about her.
“Soon,” she laughed again, “Starswirl himself will be here. And then… and then…!”
“… Aaaaand then you’re gonna tone it down a skosh, right?”
The Princess stopped in mid-flight, and lightly came down onto one of the plush chairs she’d had put in for the occasion. Instantly, her laughter faded and a face of calm beneficence returned to Twilight Sparkle.
She smiled as Starlight Glimmer, her first pupil and soon-to-be official replacement as Headmare and Caretaker for the Castle of Friendship, entered the room, “Oh, was I doing it again?”
Starlight just nodded as she trotted over to the ring of cushioned chairs and small desks Twilight had added to the room. She couldn’t wait to sink down into those soft, cloud-filled cushions and throw herself into a real academic evening of research and magic.
Twilight rubbed the back of her head, and at least tried to look a touch shameful, “Sorry… I just get carried away whenever Starswirl the Bearded says he’s coming by.”
“We’ve been friends with him for a couple years now, Twilight,” Starlight chuckled, “I don’t think you have to use his full title every time you bring him up.”
“But that’s disrespectful!” Twilight’s hooves came down onto the reading desk next to her chair, nearly cracking it in half. Her brief moment of manic-panic passed quickly, however, and she managed to retain her newly-acquired royal bearing.
“Breathe, Twilight,” Starlight came over and laid a comforting hoof onto her friend’s shoulder. “Starswirl considers you a good friend, even an authority figure he can go to at times. I think you’re long, long past the point where you need to worry about impressing him.”
Twilight sighed, calmly this time, “I know. I just… I respect him so much. I want this friendly get-together to be… special? You know?”
“I know,” said Starlight, walking back towards the kitchens, “But you’ve moved in these… amazing-looking chairs, you’ve organized all the spell-books, and Spike’s whipping up some…” here she took a deep breath, taking in the sweet, sweet smells wafting from the other end of the castle, “… heavenly Griffonstone scones. You’ve got this, Your Majesty.”
“I know, I know… it’s just that I can’t help but think that something’s going to happen, like it always does…”
Which was the precise moment that the sound of a hoofbeat on the Castle’s grand double-doors sounded throughout the halls.
Starlight’s ears perked up. “Huh. He’s a bit early…”
A purple blur blew past the unicorn, leaving behind in its wake a vibrating trail of purple and pink light not unlike whenever Rainbow Dash would zoom through the skies. As she spun in place, Starlight could only wonder how she hadn’t seen that coming.
Before Starlight would have had time to fall over, Twilight had already reached the doors. She skidded to a halt, paused to pat down her mane and double check her teeth in a little mirror she teleported down from her room, before she magically sent the mirror back and gripped the door in her lavender magical aura.
“Welcome Starswirl the Bearded! It’s so good to…” she saw her visitor, “Oh… it’s you.”
Trixie Lulamoon raised one eyebrow, an annoyed look overcoming her features, “And a pleasure to see you as well, Sparkle.”
Twilight shook her head, and tried to bring back up some cheer.
She failed. “Trixie… what do you want?”
“Trixie has come to see Starlight,” she said in her usual, peculiar way, “I have to show her this new spell I’ve been practicing.”
Twilight sighed, “Trixie, I’m sorry. This isn’t a good day. I’ve got Starswirl coming over for tea any minute, and I just don’t have time for you today.”
Trixie huffed, and then pushed straight through into the Castle, “Don’t worry, Trixie shall be brief. Then you can get back to your teatime with Starspur or whoever it is you’re talking about. Mmmm,” she smiled, sniffing the air, “something smells wonderful!”
Twilight glowered after the showpony, then made to follow her. The two trotted into the Castle depths.
“Um, Trixie?” Twilight said after a few stress-reducing breaths, “It’s Starswirl the Bearded. He’s kind of a big deal, so I need you out of here pronto, as AJ says…”
“Can’t be that big of a deal,” Trixie said, scanning the halls for signs of Starlight, “I’ve never heard of him.”
Trixie continued on her merry way, leaving Twilight… to smolder. The purple alicorn stood still as a statue, face slowly shifting and twisting.
“She’s just trying to get under your skin,” she told herself. Then, faster, “She’s just trying to get under your skin, just trying to get under your skin, just trying to get under your skin, just trying to get under your skin, AND IT’S WORKING!!!!”
Trixie had almost reached the library when Twilight literally popped out in front of her.
“How can you NOT know who Starswirl the Bearded is!?”
The showpony almost looked like she hadn’t heard. She just gave Twilight a dead-eyed look, and kept walking past her, saying, “Not everpony could go to a fancy magic school, Twilight. Trixie learned all she needed from the road!”
Starlight chose that exact moment to get over her nausea from being spun around before, and poked her head out of the library door, “Um, and me?”
“Of course,” Trixie beamed a smile at her bestest friend, “I’d never take credit away from my Great and Powerful magic teacher!”
“TRIXIE!” apparently, Twilight wasn’t done yet, “I’m serious! You’ve been in the same room as him before!”
Trixie turned back around to look at her once-rival, and soon-Sovereign, “What? That Crystal Empire fiasco? We didn’t share a single word the entire time, and I mostly spent that day either playing with Flurry Heart, running for my life, or flirting with Flash Sentry.”
“How could you not at least try to talk to the greatest magical mind in the entire history of…” Twilight’s brain shut down. “F-flash Sentry?”
Trixie, upon seeing the Princess’s mind go into meltdown, smiled to herself, and returned her attention entirely to Starlight Glimmer.
“Alright, Bestie!” she grinned and began trotting towards the Map Room, “Let’s get this show on the road!”
Starlight swiveled her head back and forth between her mentor… and her best friend. And then decided to follow the latter, in case the former started eating through the walls, as the crazed look on the Princess’s face seemed to indicate.
“Wait, was that ‘Spell Performance’ scheduled for today?” Starlight asked as the two unicorns walked together, “I’m so sorry Trixie! I completely forgot! This Starswirl luncheon was such a big deal, and Twilight’s been stressing for weeks, and there were all sorts of magical theories I was going to test out with them…”
Trixie just laughed, and it was certainly her stage-laugh, “Oh, fear not! This demonstration shall be swift, but effective! I need only the Cutie Map, and even this Starsmeggle shall be blown away by the sheer magical might of… The Great and POWERFUL Trixie!”
Oh, it was going to be one of those days, wasn’t it? Starlight just shook her head.
And then, she had to start thinking very hard about something the irascible showmare had said.
“Um, Trixie? Why do you need the Map?” she asked as they reached the arcane artifact of strange and alien might. “Twilight will be furious… more furious, if you do something to that table…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Trixie leapt up onto her ‘stage’, “I just need it as a spell focus.”
Starlight cocked her head to one side, skeptically watching her stagepony friend set up, “You… you actually created a spell that uses the Map Table?”
Trixie, even without her trademark hat and cape, struck a (in her mind) fantastically poised stance, “Well, I admit, I did crib some of the spell’s structural elements off another spell.”
As pink magic began to pool around Trixie’s horn, Starlight’s mind raced. What spell could she…?
“TRIXIE!” Twilight’s voice echoed down the hall, halting that thought in its tracks.
Trixie, ever the professional, ever the showmare, held her ground. Even as sweat broke out on her forehead and her voice began to crack.
“Um… N-now for my great and P-powerful Trick!”
Something felt very familiar about all this, Starlight thought as an angry alicorn Princess stomped into the room. Very familiar, and in the worst… possible…
“Now you see me…!” An eldritch wind began to pick up in the Castle halls.
Twilight was unamused, “Oh, you bet I do! When I get my hooves on you…!”
Very… familiar…
“Now you…”
Starlight’s eyes snapped open wide. Her mouth gaped, and unknown to her, her hair began to stand straight up on her head.
The only spell she knew that actually used the Cutie Map as a focus was…
“No!” Starlight screamed, “Trixie…!”
The showmare cast her spell directly into the table’s face. “… DON’T!”
A wave of pink light rolled over the Cutie Map, and barreled into Starlight and the Princess, throwing them both back into the crystal walls behind them. For a moment, they were dazed. Then, shaking their heads, the two ponies could only look up in horror at what they saw.
Trixie Lulamoon was floating up and into the air, buoyed by an aura of her own, pink magic. And she was swiftly falling upward into what appeared to be a white-and-green vortex they both had once become intimately familiar with.
Trixie, for her part, tried to keep the show going, even in the face of her own overwhelming panic. “Ta-da?”
And then she and the portal were gone.
And then the remaining two ponies started screaming.
In the deep, black woods of the Everfree Forest, danger lurked behind every tree. Every bush could hold darkness and monstrosities beyond the ken of ponykind. Such has it always been. The young colt knew this. He had been warned by his mother and father not to leave the relative safety of the village, for ever risk the dangers of the Everfree.
But mother and father were gone. The village was gone. All was ash and fire behind the colt as the Servants of Grogar destroyed all that he’d known. So, where else but the forest?
Now, all he had to do was get there!
“Get back here!” the lead centaur in the hurried chase cried out, swords flashing as he roared.
“Yeah!” laughed the Manticore besides him, “You’ll love working in a mine!”
The colt, grey-coated and black-maned, raced away from his pursuers. Such monsters had left his home in ruins, and the sheer terror they caused gave him more than enough strength to continue his flight.
Unfortunately, terror did nothing to make his legs longer, nor more agile than they were before. He had never been as athletic as his brothers…
He felt the hard forest floor crack… or perhaps that was his jaw? In either case, the young unicorn found himself sprawled out at the base of a tree, his soon-to-be captors approaching with all the patience of hunters having caught their prey.
The third of his pursuers, a satyr colored red and black… well, painted red and black, laughed and brought a large axe to bear. “So, we takin ‘im alive?”
The monsters surrounded the dazed little pony. He tried to force any amount of magic to his horn, to defend himself. But he was too little, too tired, and slightly too concussed. He began to whimper, and to cry. His cries were drowned out by the sounds of monstrous laughter.
And… another laugh? Another laugh, somewhere high in the tree canopy seemed to drown out that of the three monsters.
“You shall not take him at all!” a heavenly voice cried out, the owner of that commanding laugh!
The centaur glared upwards, his eyes trying to find the source of this interloper in their hunt, “Yeah? And who are you supposed to be!?”
That voice echoed all around them, “Who am I? Such a foolish question!”
Smoke exploded out from the treetops, creating a fog that began to fall down around the colt and the monsters.
“I am the terror that canters in the night!”
Another cloud of smoke erupted from the ground just behind the monstrous trio. The Manticore instantly leapt through the bank of smoke, claws and teeth bared. There was the sound of gnashing, and splintering wood… and then silence.
But as the smoke cleared, the Manticore’s compatriots saw only him, half-crushed beneath an enormous log.
“I am the sticky floor of justice, that makes you self-conscious about being noisy in a theater!”
A third blast of smoke hit between the centaur and the satyr, completely enveloping them. The young colt, though finally coming to his senses, could not help but stare into the cloud and listen to the sounds of hoof-on-monster violence.
After the night he’d had, it was pure catharsis.
In the jumble of crashing, thrashing, and bashing noises, he could finally see the smoke begin to clear. All three monsters lay unconscious on the ground, tied up in rope and strange white coats with metal chains and locks adorning them. And atop these monsters stood a mare, silhouetted by the beautiful moon.
“I am,” she cried, standing on her hind legs, hoof-stitched purple cape dancing in the wind, “The Great and POWERFUL…!”
“What!? What just… why!? AAAHHHHH!” Twilight Sparkle had been saying for almost a minute as she raced around and around the map table, desperately looking for a hidden compartment or a trapdoor or something to explain Trixie’s disappearance that didn’t involve Time Travel.
Starlight, by contrast, merely sat on her haunches and stared into the space above the table. She occasionally batted the air with one hoof, just incase Trixie had finally perfected an invisibility spell.
No dice, it would seem.
“Starlight, what do we do!?” Twilight finally snapped her friend and former-student out of her fugue. “Trixie is loose in the timestream!!!”
The purple unicorn squinted her eyes at her surroundings. “Well… there’s nothing we can do.”
Twilight’s horror-stricken face almost booped right into Starlight’s.
“But last time…!”
“Last time, I deliberately wrote the spell to work a certain way!” Starlight booped back, “Trixie modified the spell! But that’s not what I’m talking about!”
She hung her head low, “Technically, as soon as she entered the portal, everything changed. Or, should have changed.”
“Wait,” Twilight sat down, “So… even if we wanted to fix things…”
“We wouldn’t know what changed,” Starlight finished.
Twilight shook her head, “But, the Map is still here! The Castle is still here! We even remember what Trixie did, so she can’t have changed anything!”
“Oh,” Starlight stared at the table, a mixture of curiosity and relief washing over her, “I… I suppose you’re right. That would make the most amount of sense.”
Tears sprang fresh from her eyes, “But Trixie is still gone…”
A third voice, gruffer and older than the others, suddenly asked, “Am I interrupting something?”
Both mares swung their heads towards the door, where a tall, aged stallion stood framed by the crystalline archway he’d entered through. His peaked hat and bells announced his name as loudly as his long, swirling beard did.
“Starswirl!?” Twilight squeaked, panic returning to her voice, “You’re here!?”
Starswirl the Bearded raised a single eyebrow at the Princess, “Indeed. You invited me. Hello again, Starlight,” he smiled at the room’s other inhabitant.
“Uh, hey,” she said, emotions draining entirely from her soul.
They all stood in the following, awkward silence. Princess Twilight’s wings fretted. Starlight’s fake smiled gleamed. And Starswirl’s unamused expression loomed.
“So,” Starswirl clicked his tongue, “Anypony want to explain…?”
Starlight sighed, and proceeded to say, “My friend Trixie wanted to show us a magic trick she claimed to have created for her show…”
“Trixie?” Starswirl asked, cocking his head at an angle. “Do I know her?”
“The annoying showmare in the pink wizard hat and cape,” Twilight placed one hoof at the bridge of her nose, “You’ve been in the same room as her. Remember that fiasco in the Crystal Empire?”
Starswirl’s eyes started roaming the ceiling. One hoof came up and began stroking his beard, and his mouth started to hang open. “I… can’t recall… wait,” he refocused on Starlight, “the blue unicorn that was helping keep Flurry Heart distracted from my experiments?”
“That’s the one!” Starlight pointed with her hoof for emphasis, “She just cast the spell… and I only noticed at the last second that she clearly was cribbing her ‘Disappear-Reappear’ spell off the Time Travel spell I cooked up…”
“Good heavens!” Starswirl did not even attempt to hide his shock and panic, “Time itself is at stake! We must pursue her at once!”
“But where!?” Starlight waved one hoof at the table, “Or, when!? We have no way to track her!”
Twilight added, “She might not even be in our timeline at this point!”
A gentle wind began to blow through the castle, whipping at the three pony’s manes.
“Um, Starswirl?” Twilight looked over towards her idol, “Did you close the castle doors behind you when you came in?”
“I wasn’t raised in a barn, Your Highness,” he grunted, one hoof holding down his hat as the wind picked up its vigor.
Starlight stared back up into the space above the table. “I… don’t think Starswirl had anything to do with this…”
All three gaped as, high above the Map, a green vortex tore open the very air itself. Wind rushed from the sudden tear in the fabric of reality, and a terrible howl could be heard across the centuries.
That howl swiftly became a cry as an azure unicorn mare dropped out of the vortex, and slammed directly into the Map table. The portal closed and the wind died as she planted herself muzzle-first into the table face, a hoof-stitched purple robe falling all about her.
Shocked silence reigned as Twilight, Starlight, and Starswirl stared at the mare. Nopony even breathed… at least until the fourth pony did first.
“Eugh,” Trixie groaned, “Did anypony get the number of that yak…?”
“Trixie!”
“TRIXIE!!!”
Usually, hearing her name chanted like that would make Trixie very happy. But the way this crowd was saying it…
She hardly had time to contemplate this, as a purple and aquamarine aura of magic gripped her whole body and yanked her off the crystalline table atop which she found herself. It set her onto her four hooves… which failed to hold her up after that last drop kicked her brain around in her skull.
“Trixie?” an incredibly familiar voice sounded just above her, “Are you alright?”
No… it couldn’t be?
Trixie tipped back her hat, and looked up into the eyes of…
“Starlight!” she cried, and threw her forelegs around her best friend’s neck, “I can’t believe it’s you!”
Starlight returned the hug, patting her best friend’s back as she said, “Whoa! I’m just glad you’re back, Trixie. We had no idea where or when you…”
Trixie broke the hug, and threw herself over to the purple alicorn princess in the room, leaving Starlight standing on her own.
“Trixie, I can’t believe you…” Twilight began, but was suddenly enveloped in her own hug with the showpony.
“Twilight!” Trixie nearly sobbed, “Trixie promises she’ll never use your stuff without permission again!”
She brought their noses right up against each other, and screamed, “They didn’t have toilet paper, Twilight! I had to invent the outhouse!!!”
Starlight’s light-blue magical aura again gripped Trixie and pulled her aside.
“Well,” Starlight sighed, “I can only guess she was sent back into the past.”
“Or the future takes a heavy toll on indoor plumbing,” Twilight chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck where Trixie’s tight hug had started to do some damage. She turned back towards Starswirl, and added, “But I suppose this is as good a time as any to introduce you. Starswirl! Meet our resident headache, the…”
“… the Great and Powerful Trixie…” Starswirl’s eyes were mere dots on his face, his mouth hung agape, and his voice barely a hoarse whisper.
Twilight blinked, “Um, yeah. This is her, the one we told you about…”
“I…” he slowly walked towards the showmare, “I never thought…”
As Starlight and Twilight looked on, confusion on their faces, Trixie merely tilted her head from side to side as she got back up on her own four hooves.
“Look,” she said, dusting herself off, “I know I’m the Great and Powerful Trixie, but I also just got back from a year-long camping trip to Celestia-knows-when, so I’d appreciate if we could keep the autograph requests to… an appropriate… minimum…”
Her voice trailed off as she looked up at the strange grey stallion before her. She squinted at him, not quite sure where she’d seen him before. It was a perplexing thing, since Trixie made it a point to never forget a fan.
Starswirl, eyes misting as he approached, held out one hoof. “We’re Great…” he began.
Realization dawned for Trixie.
“We’re Powerful!” she met his hoof with her own.
And then, as one, “We got the Magic that makes you Mar-a-Vel!” and both Trixie and Starswirl spun in place, smiles beaming out for all to see.
Their hooves clapped together as both came back around, sending up a flare of silver and blue sparks.
“Trrrrixie!”
“Swirrrrly!”
As the two unicorns hugged and laughed like old friends, Starlight Glimmer just… stared.
“Twilight?” she said, a hair above a whisper, “What are we looking at?”
“I don’t know…” The Princess’s grimace conveyed her feelings precisely, “… but I hate it.”
Starswirl finally broke off the embrace, “But… how are you here!? We all thought Grogar destroyed you in that final battle!”
“What?” Trixie frowned, “All he did was break the spell holding me back in your time period. Wait, lemme get a look at you, Swirly.”
She took a step back, and roamed Starswirl’s whole form with her bright eyes, “Wow! I can’t believe how tall you got! And the beard…?”
“Yes,” Starswirl laughed and brushed his namesake, “I told you I’d grow one eventually!”
“Well, it looks good on you. Oh!” Trixie’s eyes held a hint of worry, “Did we win?”
Starswirl nodded, “We did. Grogar was banished to the Shadowrealm without his Bell, and peace was restored to the land. Gusty wrote a song to commemorate you… but truth be told, she wasn’t very good at songwriting…”
“Eh,” Trixie brushed that off, “She had other talents. Besides, I wouldn’t want to come back and find out that my past-self is more famous and beloved than my current self. It wouldn’t do for my showmare-career.
“Say,” she poked mischievously at her friend’s cape, “Whatever happened to your cape and hat?”
“Um, what… what do you mean?” Starswirl blushed.
“Well, it used to be all red, with black stars and…”
The legendary wizard-pony coughed loudly into his hoof, “Ahem, I never… uh, that is… say Trixie? Since it’s been so long, would you like to grab some lunch with me?”
Her eyes flashed, “Oh? Is my favorite apprentice asking the Great and Powerful Trixie out on a date?”
Starswirl leaned down, so that his face and Trixie’s were even closer, “Well… I think you were always aware I might have… had a bit of a crush on my first magic mentor?”
It was surprising how Starlight could still hear them over the wailing of Twilight’ soul just to her side.
“Well then,” Trixie took Starswirl’s hoof in hers, “I think it’s long overdue that I introduce you to hayburgers, like I promised.”
And just like that, foreleg in leg, the two cantered out of the castle doors, neither sparing a second glance to the other two ponies, nor anypony else until they reached their destination.
“Well,” Starlight finally shook her head, “Um… that was unexpected. But at least we learned something about ancient Equestrian history, right Twilight? Twilight?”
The Princess moved, zombie-like, towards the Map Table. She stood next to it, watching its surface, breathing as evenly as though she were asleep.
And then, “Why?”
“Uh, excuse me…?”
“Why would you do this to me,” Twilight whispered, clearly at the table.
Starlight began to slowly back out of the room.
“First, you don’t send me on any friendship missions… and now this!?” she screamed, and then slammed her hooves into the side of the arcane object. “WHY!? Do you like to torment me!? What did I ever do to you!? Do you want my blood next!?”
She began shaking the table from side to side, her cries shaking the very foundation of the castle as Starlight raced away from the carnage about to unfold, Spike and a tray of griffon-scones held aloft in her magical aura.
“TAKE IT! You’ve already taken everything else!!!!!”
Luster Dawn stared up with sparkling eyes. “Woah!” she said in her squeaky little filly voice.
The grey-coated teenage mare who sat with her this night, her favoritest foalsitter, laughed along with the adorable filly’s sounds of wonder.
“And…” Luster hugged her stuffed dragon close, “that was how Auntie Trixie met Uncle Swirly?”
Celeste Lulamoon smiled and nodded, her swirly silver mane falling down around her face, “Yeah, Mom and Dad were inseparable from that day onward.”
Luster frowned, “Did the Princess ever forgive the Map?”
“Never. But she did get over her idol and her rival getting together… eventually,” she brushed one hoof down the length of her green wizard-cape, “Otherwise I don’t think she’d have made me one of her pupils…”
“Can I be a pupil too!?”
“If,” Celeste held her nose up, “You study magic very closely, and you go to bed…” she paused for dramatic effect, “… right now!”
Luster dove beneath her bedsheets, and soon the sound of filly snores could be heard softly echoing in the crystalline room. Celeste put out the little candlelight, and allowed only the light of Luna’s moon to drift through the nearby window.
She closed the door quietly behind her, and began walking down the halls of the Castle of Friendship. She was soon joined by Starlight, who had clearly been waiting for her.
“Thanks again for watching Luster for me,” the Headmare smiled, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“Oh, it’s no problem!” Celeste whispered back, “I love little Luster so much!”
“Thank you, Celeste. That means a lot to hear. Princess Twilight is waiting downstairs to take you back to Canterlot.”
Celeste flashed a worried glance over to her Aunt, “Um… you locked the Map room, right?”
A distant, wracking sigh answered for her.
“Whyyyyyyyy…?”
Author's Note
Crack-shipping can be so fun. So therapeutic!
