Ch. 01; All in All, I Would Have Preferred a Boot to the Head
“So, how do you know Erudite Bookworm?” Trixie asked, glancing at the purple unicorn seated beside her on the showmares’s new wagon, “Did it involve books? Trixie bets it was something involving books.”
“Actually,’ Twilight said sheepishly, “While I own several of Bookworm’s books, I’ve never actually met the stallion.”
“You’ve never …,” Trixie took her eyes off the road to stare at her companion, “Then why in the divines’ names did Erudite Bookworm, one of the greatest scholars of the past century, send you an invitation to the reading of his will?!”
“It’s a mystery!” Twilight replied, bouncing happily on the bench, incidentally keeping Trixie’s eyes off the road, “Who invites a complete stranger to the reading of their will? What kind of pony includes a ‘plus one’ in that invitation?”
“Trixie is very happy to be your ‘plus one,’ Twilight Sparkle” Trixie murmured, finally dragging her eyes back to the road.
The academic leaned over to give Trixie a friendly nuzzle, “Aww, I’m glad you’re here too,” she said, not noticing the illusionist’s blush, “So, how long until we reach Grassmere?”
Trixie gave an embarrassed cough, “We should see the village after we top the next hill.”
“Good. I hope they have a decent inn,” Twilight sighed, “Not that your wagon isn’t nice, Trixie!” she hastened to add.
“Trixie understands,” Trixie reassured her friend, “After a few days on the road, even Trixie begins to long for a larger bed and a hot bath.”
Shortly thereafter, they crested the hill and, as Trixie had promised, Grassmere lay spread out before them. As the pair rode into town, exchanging the occasional nod or greeting with passing ponies, Twilight pointed, “I see the inn … the Teeny Timberwolf Tavern, oh, look at the sign! Isn’t it adorable?”
“Trixie has seen Timberwolves before, many times, … they should not be that cute.”
The next morning, the two unicorns went out to join the gathering crowd in the village square where Bookworm’s will was to be read. Trixie smirked as she listened to the rampant speculations of the crowd, as each pony seemed to be trying to beat their neighbor with ever more far-fetched rumors.
Finally, a frail, elderly, unicorn climbed up to the platform that workponies had erected the previous evening. “Good morning, all, I am Brass Rivet, the executor of Mr. Bookworm’s estate,” he unfurled an impressive looking scroll, “The first bequest is a flawless ruby, valued at two thousand bits. This wonderous gem is to be granted to Baroness Twilight Sparkle and her ‘plus one’ for services … yet to be rendered.”
The crowd murmured in surprise, and Twilight and Trixie looked at each other in bewilderment, as Rivet continued, “The next item is this small box, which contains –”
Rivet’s speech was cut off as the stage exploded into an inferno! A massive equine skull leered down at the stunned onlookers from within the conflagration, while screams drew the two unicorns’ attention to several burning corpses crawling through a sewer grate and lurching towards the now panicking crowd.
“Trixie! The undead!” Twilight shouted, pointing at the flaming zombies, “I’ll hold off the demon!”
Fighting her way through the herd, Trixie saw two of the zombies fall upon a mare, their clubbed fists beating her to the ground, before tearing the screaming earth pony apart in a shower of gore.
“Vilzriquathir Drevab,” the showmare incanted, chocking down her rising gorge, as she hurled a blast of frigid winds and razor-edged ice shards into the undead. Even as her spell tore at the murderous corpses, Trixie desperately looked for a way to keep the remaining two fire zombies away from the crowd, 'How does Trixie end up in these situations?' she thought, her horn flaring as the earth shook and split, leaving a chasm between the fleeing ponies and their unliving pursuers.
The undead shuffled aimlessly at the edge of the rift, prompting a triumphant cry from Trixie, 'Yes! Trixie’s mastery of illusions saves the day again!' only for her victory to be dashed as the four zombies all turned to advance on the illusionist, “Oh, horse apples!”
Across the square, the demon unleashed a conflagration, only for Twilight to block most of it with a quickly conjured shield, preventing any injury to the fleeing ponies, but leaving several fires scattered about the plaza. The unicorn glared at the demon, her aura surging as she readied a spell to wipe the arrogant sneer from its face, when skeletal arms burst from the blazes around the square and began dragging ponies into the flames!
Snarling out one of Rainbow Dash’s favorite obscenities, Twilight redirected her half-formed spell at the village’s water tower. The resulting deluge turned the square, and several adjoining streets, into mud flats, knocked a number of ponies from their hooves, drowned all the secondary fires, and caused the demon on the stage to wail in agony.
The crystal atop her staff glowed as Twilight threw a second spell without pause, sending a blast of frigid air, glittering with ice crystals, at the demon. The fiend’s angry shriek stopped abruptly as, with a faint chiming sound, the entire stand – fire included – flash froze.
The librarian nodded happily to herself, she had been working on that spell since the Wedding Invasion, and it was always gratifying to see one of her theories bear fruit. Twilight turned away to go help Trixie, only to stop as the shriek of breaking ice filled the air.
Mirages dashed among the zombies as Trixie’s horn shone with magenta light -- driven to a frenzy by the darting images the undead lashed out with reckless abandon, frequently hitting each other as they flailed at the harassing phantoms. Pulling a wand from her belt, she fired an orb of magical force at the zombies, striking one in the chest, before it detonated, reducing two of the undead to smoldering chunks.
The remaining zombies lunged at the illusionist, one even impaling itself upon her rapier and driving itself up the blade in an attempt to grab Trixie, who dropped her weapon with a squeak and stumbled back from the grasping claws, a barrage of arcane bolts spewing from her hands as she blasted the animated corpse in a desperate, instinctive, attempt to destroy the zombie before it could seize her.
Recovering her composure, Trixie pointed her wand at the undead, the explosion shredding the corpse that had stolen her blade and damaging the last zombie even further. Ducking under a clumsy swipe, the showmare snatched up her rapier as she gave a brief incantation and blasted the monster with a bolt of golden energy.
Skipping back from the shambling, flame-shrouded zombie, Trixie repeated her invocation twice more, finally sending the last of the murderous corpses tumbling into the dust.
Turning triumphantly to aid Twilight, Trixie was rocked back on her heels as the demon’s icy prison exploded. Rearing up in a pillar of flame, “Vevoiiiigh stuiwa dhii, voetzhzhvoii dhuiwazhkhavosh,” it sneered as a wave of ghostly flames raced across the square, passing through Twilight’s shielding spell as if it wasn’t even there, washing over Twilight, Trixie, and those fleeing townsponies who had not escaped the square, but instead, of burning, the spectral fire caused those it touched to erupt in dozens of bleeding, agonizing, wounds.
Twilight’s aura flared, interrupting the demon’s laughter as it was transfixed by a bolt of lightning called down from a cloudless sky, while Trixie raised her wand and shot the fiend in its skeletal face. Even as the demon reeled under their assault, the crystal capping Twilight’s staff flared again as the unicorn hurled a lance of magical energy into the Tartarean horror. With a shriek, the blaze upon the stage exploded, scorching the two mares, and reducing the stage, its contents, and a pair of nearby shacks, to ruins.
“Trixie is glad that that is over,” Trixie grumbled as she dragged herself out of the mud.
“Up here, yes,” Twilight replied, wincing in pain as she tried to wipe the muck from her robes, “But we still need to see what is in the sewers.”
Trixie looked up from digging out her supply of healing potions, “Trixie is sorry, did you just say we were going into the sewers?”
“Um, yes?” the academic mare answered uncertainly, “I mean, those fire zombies had to come from somewhere … I don’t think I’ve ever read about anything like that before,” she added, “Have you, Trixie? Oh, maybe this is a new development in necromantic applications! Wouldn’t that be fascinating?”
Trixie glowered at her friend, “You want Trixie to go into a sewer to chase possible demons and a possible new form of undead, and you think it will be fascinating, hmmm?”
“… Yes?”
“You’re lucky you’re cute, Twilight Sparkle.”
Ch. 02; Something Stinks Down Here, and it’s Not Just the Sewage
Trixie’s muzzle wrinkled in disgust at the horrible stench that wafted up from the tunnels as she descended the ladder into Grassmere’s sewers. The ladder ended at a stone walkway edging a collection pit, while a wide tunnel, also bordered by walkways and its center filled with several inches of noxious sewage, stretched away into the darkness, barely broken by the light filtering down through the town’s sewer grates.
Twilight brought a warning finger to her lips as growls echoed from the gloom beyond the two unicorns’ auras. Trixie nodded, drawing her rapier as her aura flared, and the two mares' outlines began to shift and waver.
The pair started down the tunnel, the slime coating the stonework muffling their hoofsteps, slowing as their auras revealed a rickety-looking bridge across the channel, while a side tunnel connected to their passageway just beyond from the left. The growls were louder now, and twisted sounding words neither mare could understand came from the side path.
“Wevkhazh etsh zhkhaicetniji zheviidh shui vouiniji?”
“Bakhanizh zhui jiui icetvovo dhuiwazhkhavosh!”
Taking firmer grips on their weapons, Twilight and Trixie approached the corner, only for the showmare to give a strangled shriek as four creatures seemed to just appear out of the gloom around them.
Standing nearly eight hooves at the shoulder and covered in a chitinous carapace, the beasts were vaguely canine in appearance. The brutes turned blunt-muzzled, eyeless heads towards the surprised unicorns, as long, barbed tongues shot from lamprey-like mouths to lash at the mares.
Twilight managed to evade the attack, although one tongue rasped painfully along her arm, but Trixie was not so lucky. With thorny tongues wrapped around one arm and a leg, she was yanked from the walkway and dragged into the water.
“Trixie!” a wave of flames poured from Twilight’s staff, consuming the two abominations that held the illusionist and adding the reek of burning sewage to the foulness that pervaded the sewer.
As Trixie clambered back to her feet, the pounding of hooves heralded the arrival of a trio of fiendish-looking ponies, with coal-black scaled skins and horned skulls for heads, from the side tunnel, while a fog of nauseating, oily, unspeakably cold darkness enveloped the mares as the demons closed in.
Her eyes watering with pain as she felt a spiny tongue wrap around her leg, Twilight slammed the butt of her staff into the ground, sending out a shockwave that sent the bipedal demons stumbling back while the bestial ones smashed into the tunnel walls where they collapsed in broken heaps before fading away, while Trixie, still standing in the channel, raised her wand and fired a force orb at the demons, the blast echoing through the tunnels.
The three demons lunged forward again, ignoring the ichor that seeped from their wounds. One missed the two mares entirely, thanks to the illusions Trixie had cast earlier, while another clawed ineffectually at Twilight’s hurriedly conjured shield, and the third’s talons dug bloody furrows across Trixie’s torso.
Trixie screamed as her aura flared, summoning phantasmal angels that battered, harried, and distracted the fiends as she grabbed Twilight’s shoulder and drug the librarian out from among the demons.
Stumbling along under Trixie’s grip, Twilight hurled a lightning strike at the skull-headed demons, arching bolts linking the three together for a moment, before the charred forms toppled and faded.
“Is that all of them? Is it over?” Trixie asked as she hurriedly scrapped the sewage from her clothes and skin, “Can we go back outside, now?”
“There is more down here,” Twilight replied as she treated her own abrasions, “It’s gotten lighter since we came down, and I don’t think it’s just our eyes adjusting … plus I can still hear growling up ahead,” she added, turning to rub medicinal salve onto the blushing showmare’s chest.
“Trixie doesn’t suppose we will be able to sneak up on whatever is growling?”
Twilight gave a small giggle, “After the way you squealed? And all of the fighting and spellcasting? I think it’s safe to say we won’t be getting any surprise actions.”
“‘Surprise actions’? Trixie thinks that all the time you spent reading your brother’s Ogres & Oubliettes books is showing. And Trixie did not squeal,” Trixie added, her fur darkening with another blush, “Not that Trixie doesn’t squeal, but only in very special circumstances … which this is not … with special ponies … which you are … why are we still talking about this?! Come, Twilight Sparkle, we have more “fascinating” monsters to defeat!”
The light continued to grow – taking on a reddish tinge – as the mares proceeded down the sewer tunnel, while the foul water filling the channel began to look unwholesome even for sewage. After several minutes (but far too long for Trixie’s liking), the sewer channels converged on a central chamber of foul, tainted muck.
In a corner, an eerily silent, roiling mass of scarlet energy swirled in an alcove, runes etched into its walls dimly visible in the light. Close to the alcove a massive serpentine creature, its four heads swaying hypnotically, glared at the ponies with glowing eyes as viscous fluid oozed from its fangs.
“S-s-snake!” Twilight’s panicked shriek echoed though the chamber as her aura flared and magic bolts flew wildly, spraying foul water and stone shards everywhere.
“Sparkle! Get ahold of yourself!” Trixie shouted, as several copies of herself scattered about the chamber, drawing the irritated serpent’s attention from the panicking academic. Her cries became more urgent as the tartarean snake spat out globs of acid, destroying four of Trixie’s figments almost as soon as she conjured them, “Twilight!”
The illusionist’s cries snapped Twilight from her terror, a ball of fire briefly engulfing the beast as Trixie hurriedly invoked more copies to ward the two mares as another spell caused their bodies to seem to flicker and fade at random.
Even as Trixie finished her spells, the serpent came rushing out of the flames, one head dispersing a replica with a snap of fanged jaws that sent Trixie stumbling away, while the other three heads focused on Twilight, costing the librarian two of her own protective illusions, while the fourth head rebounded from a shield spell.
Her hooves slipping on the wet stones, Trixie hurled an icy blast at the beast, drawing an angry hiss from one of its heads, while Twilight raised a wall of ice to force the serpent back.
Temporarily barred from Twilight, the demon-snake turned its full attention on Trixie, “Eeep!” she squeaked, barely twisting aside as her four illusionary duplicates vanished under the serpent’s assault, leaving Trixie alone. Drawing herself up, she glared at the beast, “Trixie has more tricks up her sleeve!” she declared, as she was shrouded in a cloud of smoke. Unimpressed, the creature merely struck again, its fangs shredding the smoke, but catching nothing within.
As the monster cast about for the vanished illusionist, Trixie reappeared, standing on the snake’s broad back, “Vis Nar,” she shouted, her invocation guiding her hand as her rapier thrust down, her aura flickering around the blade, to plunge through the back of one of the serpent’s heads.
Even as the beast’s tree trunk-sized body thrashed, one of its other heads darted back at Trixie, but the strike was not true, being only a glancing blow to the shoulder, although it still ripped deep and flung the showmare across the chamber.
As Trixie splashed into the sewage, Twilight turned her shelter into a weapon, as a telekinetic blast shattered the ice and pelted the tratarean snake with a rain of jagged shards. Even as the monster writhed under her assault, the crystal on Twilight’s staff flared as she blasted the serpent with lightning, “Are you okay?” she called over the echoing thunder.
“Trixie … will survive,” Trixie replied as she staggered to her hooves, one arm hanging limp, “Trixie always survives. Valignat,” she invoked, her hand glowing a dull red as she pressed it to the bloody hole in her shoulder, causing a faint sizzling sound and adding the reek of scorched meat to the other odors that filled the chamber.
For the rest of her life, Trixie would maintain that her silence as the spell seared her wound closed and burned out the caustic venom that coated the serpent’s fangs was just more proof of her Greatness and Powerfulness … the truth was the pain stole away even her ability to whimper.
As the unicorns turned their attention back to the beast laying limply on the floor, it reared up, spewing a misty blast of venom from each mouth! Trixie, near then edge of the cloud, was able to dive away, but Twilight, caught in the center, could only scream as her skin blistered all over her body – it was only by sheerest chance that her raised arm saved her eyes.
Her body howling in agony, Twilight invoked a beam of pure, focused magical energy that slammed into the demonic snake’s trunk, just below where it split into the four necks, and burst out the other side, while Trixie threw a barrage of magic bolts at the beast.
Finally defeated, the demonic serpent collapsed and faded away.
Hurrying over to Twilight, Trixie began scraping away the residue from the serpent’s caustic breath and treating both their wounds, while shooting frequent glances over her shoulder at the energy field – and the shapes that could be dimly seen beyond it.
“Trixie, enough,” the librarian finally said, “We still have matters to deal with,” wincing with every movement, Twilight headed over to examine the energy field.
“Well?” Trixie, who knew little about summoning magic, finally asked after some time had passed, “Can you close it?”
“Actually, it’s closing on its own,” Twilight replied, “See, the field has already shrunk by a tenth of an inch. Still … it would be better to make sure rather than leave things to chance.” Her aura flared and pulsed for several minutes as Twilight manipulated the energies of the portal, the illusionist watching impatiently all the while, her rapier and wand at the ready just in case one of the vague figures the mares could see through the field tried to come through.
Eventually, the scarlet field flickered, seemed to twist upon itself, and vanished. “It’s done,” Twilight sighed, her shoulders slumping wearily for a moment, “We can head back up, but I want to contact the Magus corps as soon as we can and get a specialist here to make sure the portal is closed.”
“Have them send two magi,” Trixie advised, “Bookworm was expecting something to happen, and dumped it on you and Trixie to fix, who knows what else might have been triggered by his death or linked to the reading of his Will,” she snorted in exasperation, “We don’t even know why the demons attacked, or how Bookworm knew something would happen!”
“We might find something among whatever bequests survived,” suggested the librarian, “Or maybe in Bookworm’s house, if we can get in. But first we need to see if there is anything we can do to help out the village.”
“And Trixie must wait even longer for her bath,” she sighed, “Does this sort of thing happen often?” Trixie asked, her ears perking in curiosity.
“Demon attacks? No … well … they have become more frequent ever since HellCaller showed up, but they are still fairly rare. Hmm … I wonder if ‘Caller’s continued presence has any bearing on the increase in demon sightings ….”
“It’s possible, Trixie supposes, you should talk to Trixie’s teacher about it,” Trixie shrugged, mounting the first rung of the ladder out of the sewers, “But that’s not what Trixie meant. These random … adventures, do they happen often?”
“Oh! Yes, oh my, yes,” Twilight broke out in a giggle, “You should hear about the trouble Fluttershy and Rainbow got into when they went to view the butterfly migration.”
The showmare stopped half-way up the ladder to stare down at her fellow unicorn, “Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy … got into an adventure … watching a butterfly migration?”
Twilight nodded happily “Uh-huh.”
Trixie closed her eyes as she dropped her forehead against the ladder, “Trixie does not want to know.”
