Disclaimer: Verily, they are not mine.
A/N: Written for the Nightmare Night 2012 October Fanfic Contest on Equestria Daily. Given that I discovered the contest only a few hours before it ended and wrote this to beat the deadline, and that since I’m in the UK that puts it at 3am for me, I apologise for any spelling of grammatical errors, as they are entirely my fault. I also attribute this to Chad Rocco on thatguywiththeglasses.com and his review of Luna Eclipsed, in which he wondered how Luna managed to age so rapidly in such a short time between appearances just in time for my Halloween-infested brain to fasten upon this as a story idea.
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Aging Process
© Scribbler, October 2012.
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The Great and Powerful Trixie was, to put it bluntly, down on her luck. It wasn’t bad enough that she had spent an awful week traipsing through bogs, bushes and endless, endless woodland before finally doubling back on herself and escaping the Everfree freaking Forest. It wasn’t bad enough that she had escaped only to find somepony had dragged her caravan to the outskirts of Ponyville and left it there with the skylight still open so her things were waterlogged from rain. It wasn’t even bad enough that she hadn’t actually been paid for her work, outcome notwithstanding. She may not have actually defeated the Ursa Minor but she had at least tried. That had to count for something, didn’t it? And she had put on a darn fine show for those ill-mannered idiots, but did she get any credit? No! Humiliation with a side-order of degradation; that was all she got.
No, besides all that, she also had to deal with the fact that while she was fighting for her life against rampant vegetation and the occasional far-too-toothy creature, her critics had set to work on her good name. The reputation she had spent years crafting was mud after the Ponyville fiasco and no amount of protesting her innocence had put the shine back on. Those hateful bumpkins had obviously spread vicious rumours while she was indisposed, all of which had preceded her arrival in neighbouring towns and villages. Considering how beloved she had been before, it stood to reason that all the closed shutters, twitching curtains and suspicious looks were their doing.
It wasn’t fair! So she had exaggerated a little; who didn’t big themselves now and then? Show her a pony who didn’t toot their own horn even a smidge and she’d show you a … really boring pony. A pony like Twilight Sparkle.
Rage coalesced inside Trixie whenever that name came to mind. Her current circumstances were all Twilight Sparkle’s fault. She had deliberately shown Trixie up in front of everyone and then not even tried to warn her not to run into the Everfree Forest during her dramatic exit. If anyone should be punished for showing off and being a bad sport, it was that unbearable unicorn with the silly name. Honestly, ‘Sparkle’? And it wasn’t even a stage name. Talk about a poser.
None of which helped her to salvage her career. After a particularly awful stint in Trottingham, Trixie dragged her sorry story back on the road. She trudged from place to place, but everywhere she went, ponies turned up their noses and closed their purses. It wasn’t fair! Maybe she wasn’t quite as all-powerful and all-knowing as she had boasted, but she was still more powerful than the average unicorn. All you had to do was look at her cutie mark to know that: magic was her talent. How dare they treat her like she was some common trickster or charlatan? It was insulting!
Pulling the water-stained map from the cubby by her bed, she cast her eyes over the tiny topography of Equestria. She mentally checked off where she had been, tracing a sad and wobbly line back to Ponyville. She had come full circle and was nearly back at Ponyville now. Part of her wanted to march into town, burst into Twilight Sparkle’s house, pull out clumps of her mane and tail and make her eat them. A larger part, however, wanted to steer clear of the place.
“I’m quite close to Canterlot,” she murmured, pressing a hoof to her chin in thought. Travelling alone could be awfully lonely; even more so when nobody wanted to speak to you at your destinations. Sometimes, when she wasn’t feeling so Great and Powerful, she talked to herself just to hear a friendly voice. How pathetic was that? Damn that Twilight Sparkle. Damn her and all her stupid little friends – and her pet dragon too!
Trixie had always avoided Canterlot as a rule. Performances there ran the risk of comparison with Princess Celestia. No unicorn, no matter how magically talented, could compete with an alicorn in terms of sheer power. Since they saw her all the time and felt her protective enchantments surrounding them on a daily basis, ponies in Canterlot were more blasé about magic than rural or small town ponies. They were pickier about their entertainment too; more likely to scoff at her act and make her feel small on her own stage. Until she went to Ponyville, that kind of high-class heckling had been Trixie’s worst fear. No performer likes to be mocked when they’re doing their best.
Now, however, times were different. She had very few options left. Maybe, she reasoned, she could go and drum up a new reputation for herself in Canterlot; switch career paths, since this one was in tatters. Maybe it was time to do away with the whole one-mare show idea and finally settle down. Maybe she could run an apothecary shop in one of the shopping districts, or set up a small business selling potions, glamours and minor enchantments. Even Canterlot ponies would fall prey to love charms, magical zit-creams and hoof-readings; at heart all ponies wanted a bit of romanticised magic in their lives.
It took several days to walk to Canterlot. By the time she arrived, the Great and Powerful Trixie had become the Hoofsore and Weary Trixie, closely followed by the Just Want Some Food and Sleep Trixie. Night was drawing in as she fetched up at the bottom of the mountain to which the wondrous city was attached. As per her luck lately, she had missed the last transport up and would have to wait until morning for the next.
“Great,” she muttered with an angry sigh. “Then Trixie will simply camp right here.” A note of defiance crept into her tone, though there was no-one around to hear it. “Tomorrow Trixie will begin her fresh start, and ponyfeathers to all who tried to bring her down. Nopony can truly conquer the Great and Powerful Trixie, mightiest magical mare in all of Equestria!” Her ears flicked forward out of habit, straining to hear the thunder of applause, but the only hoof-beats she heard were her own as she entered her caravan.
She was deciding between a can of beans and a can of creamed corn when a thump rattled the windows. It sounded like something heavy had hit the ground outside.
Jumping up, Trixie planted her hooves far apart and aimed her horn at the door. When the sound didn’t come again she backed up a step, wondering whether she would have been better off not moving at all. Silence and stillness might have made the caravan look deserted. Wait, no, that wouldn’t have worked; the light from her candle was visible around the ill-fitting edges of her shutters. She stayed where she was, summoning a spell from the well of magic deep within her. She balanced it at the tip of her horn, ready to fire at any intruder who tried to get in.
Something in the back of her mind twanged in disgust. It was like a rubber band across her synapses. Was this really what she had been reduced to; quivering in fear at random noises and hoping things that went bump in the night got bored and wandered away on their own? Where was the ambitious powerhouse who had struck out on her own all those years ago? Where was the unicorn who had cast aside the shackles of family in favour of her career? Where was the self-proclaimed greatest prestidigitator in all of Equestria?
Answer: her self-assurance had been destroyed by her time in Ponyville, her nerve shredded by the Everfree Forest and her resilience tested to its limit by the constant rejections that followed. Nopony could endure all that without a few twitches to show for it.
Nonetheless, like a boxer gasping and climbing up the ropes for one last fight, her pride forced her legs to walk stiffly to the door and, after only a moment’s hesitation, throw open the top half.
“Who goes there?” she demanded in an admirably forceful voice, she thought. “Be warned; if you’re a thief or a pony up to no good, you shall face the wrath of the Great and Terrible Trixie!” She pulled on the last vowel, stretching it like taffy to stick to the night. Anyone out there couldn’t fail to hear her and think twice about doing anything.
A shape moved in the gloom.
Trixie narrowed her eyes. “Trixie is warning you; leave now or state your business here. If she deems you worthy of her mercy, the Great and Powerful Trixie will consider your request for an audience. However, try her patience and her magical ire will be terrible!”
The shape seemed to blend into the shadows like it was one of them. Trixie squinted, but she couldn’t make out enough detail to tell if the creature was pony, donkey, goat, griffin or something else. After some of the things she had seen in the Everfree Forest, she didn’t want to know what kind of ‘something else’ it might be. She murmured a brief incantation and switched the spell in her horn to a light-ball, which lit the area outside her caravan better than any torch. The shape retreated from the light, so she leaned further over the lower half of her door, calling up more power to bathe everything with even more light.
“Halt! Whoever or whatever that is, you –” She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Before the words could leave her mouth, two shapes dived out of the shadows above that her light-ball had made even darker.
She started to cry out, but something grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up and out of the open top half of her door. Her stomach lurched, partly from terror, partly from the sudden change in her centre of gravity. She was lifted up and up, above her caravan and further still. She had never been fond of anti-gravity spells and never befriended any pegasi, so she had little experience of flying. Trixie liked her hooves firmly on the ground. Now, however, she was treated to a swift vertical climb that left her dizzy and gasping for oxygen in the suddenly thin air.
“Can’t … breathe …” she gulped.
“Slow down!” said a voice she didn’t recognise. “She’s not a pegasus. The change in altitude is going to make her pass out.”
Too late …
Blackness swallowed her like a giant mouth.
....
Trixie came to an undefined amount of time later. Her mind activated first, brain-cells flickering to life one by one, and then passing on the message to her nerve endings: It’s time to wake up now. Thus, when she groaned and tried to put a hoof to her forehead, she was lucid enough to both register and panic that there was a shackle around it, and that a heavy chain ran from it to the wall to her left. A similar chain ran from each of her other legs to the other three walls around her. A restraint around her middle, chained to the ceiling, had been keeping her upright while she was unconscious.
“What–?” She struggled, looking around while she swayed. She was indoors in an absolutely tiny room, but the lighting was so poor she couldn’t even begin to guess where she could be. There were no windows, so she couldn’t even tell if it was day or night outside. Although, upon reflection, maybe it wasn’t the lighting preventing her from seeing properly; her head thrummed with residual pain and her lungs still hurt. She felt like someone had used a knockout spell on her. “What’s going on here? Who dares to do this to the Great and Powerful Trixie? I’ll barbeque your behind with a fireball for this! I’ll cast a spell to make you turn inside out! I’ll take away all five of your senses! I’ll –”
“We beseech thee, do not fashion threats thou cannot enact,” said a tremulous voice.
Trixie squinted. “Who’s there?”
“We apologise that the guards treated thee so poorly. We have reprimanded them for not taking more care in their ministrations. We wished for thee to know this.”
“Who is that? Show yourself!” Trixie took a groggy step forward and nearly fell over. The metal restraint bit into her belly as her weight briefly rested entirely in it. “Who are you?”
One dark hoof edged out of the shadows. “The guards were not attempting to frighten thee. We had a, uh, we believe the term is ‘dizzy spell’ while flying down the mountain to find thee and fell. They were of the notion thou were about to injure us with thy magic. They are not unicorns and so did not recognise a mere light-cast spell. They were merely carrying out their duty in protecting us.”
Duty? Guards? What was with all the ‘thee’, ‘thy’ and ‘thou-ing’? And ‘us’? How many ponies were in here, or had been outside her caravan? What was going on here?
Trixie watched with mounting confusion as a small filly stepped into the light cast by sconces on the walls. She was a sickly looking thing, her deep purple coat dull. Somepony had run a currycomb over it recently, but instead of making it shine the comb had left runnels like a ploughed field along her side. Her hooves were cracked at the edges, as if she hadn’t been getting enough minerals and vitamins from her food. Her lank mane was teased into plumes, but it was obviously in bad condition. Despite her unkempt appearance, however, the cutie mark on her flank identified her immediately. Trixie had never met or seen her since her release, but everypony in Equestria now knew who a moon on dark clouds belonged to.
“Princess Luna!”
The filly nodded.
Trixie was more confused than ever. “What in Equestria is going on here?” Had she been kidnapped by the princess’s guards? Why? Whatever could the little princess want with her? Unless … “Do you require the assistance of the Great and Powerful Trixie?”
“We do,” Princess Luna said softly.
Trixie’s first gut response was elation. This was quickly squashed by the feel of the shackles and the clink of the chains. She knew very little about Princess Luna other than what everypony knew: that she had been cured of her Nightmare Moon affliction by the Elements of Harmony, whatever they were, but had been rarely seen outside the palace ever since. Some ponies in outlying provinces speculated that the princess was actually an imposter who had conned her way into Princess Celestia’s heart and home just because she looked like Celestia’s lost sister. Trixie had taken those rumours with a grain of salt. Royal blood ran only in alicorn veins and the filly standing unsteadily before her had both pegasus wings and a unicorn horn. Whatever else she had heard on her travels, Trixie had never heard of this Princess Luna randomly kidnapping ponies and spiriting them away. If anything, those who claimed to have seen her on her brief visits outside Canterlot said she was as hard and ruthless as a rose petal – nothing whatsoever like the Nightmare Moon of legend.
“Why have you –” Trixie started to ask.
The princess cut her off. “We wished for thee to know that we would not do this if it was not of utmost necessity. We are not … as we used to be. We do not take pleasure in causing pain unnecessarily.”
“What?”
“Thou art a powerful unicorn. Thy reputation precedes thee. Thy talent is raw magical power. We are in need of that power. Becoming … normal once more after our return from the moon robbed us of much of our strength. We are not as we once were. Instead, we are translated into this feeble form. Thou wilt agree, this is not suitable for a pony in our position. We must become strong again if we are to rule beside our sister as was always intended.” Though her voice quavered and speaking seemed to take a lot out of her, steel laced the princess’s words. It sent a chill through Trixie. Princess Luna looked like a filly, but she sounded like someone far older and more severe; someone who had seen and done things that had aged her inside.
Trixie’s eyes widened. She liked this less and less. Flattering as it was to think either of the royal alicorns would know of her, this was not how she had envisioned her triumphant entrance into Canterlot society. She tried to take a step back, but the chains prevented her from doing more than shuffling a few inches.
“Trixie doesn’t understand,” she said. “If the princesses want her to work for them, all they had to do was ask.”
“Our sister does not require thy service and neither do we,” said Princess Luna. “Only thy power.”
“But –”
“We would ask thee be silent. It is easier that way. We would have allowed thee to remain insensate, but alas, magical talent slumbers with its possessor; therefore we require thee to be awake if we are to take it.” She took a shaky step towards Trixie. “Please do not fight us. This is for the greater good. We shall rule Equestria well once we are apprised of how the world has changed in our absence, but we cannot venture forth to learn of such things until this body is strong enough to withstand it. Thou art serving a higher purpose than thy life alone, full-lived, could ever achieve.”
Trixie’s hackles rose. Every muscle in her body wanted to flee. Her legs trembled and her haunches bunched involuntarily, just as they had when she had to force herself to hide in a ditch to escape a manticore in the Everfree Forest. She couldn’t look away from the princess’s eyes. Their unwavering stare held her until the much smaller pony was practically nose-to-nose. Trixie could smell her breath: minty, as if she had recently brushed her teeth. It was a pleasant scent, at odds with her steely tone and mesmerising eyes.
No, this was wrong. This was wrong. She should be fighting. It didn’t matter if this was the princess, she should be fighting for her life! Instead, all she could do was watch, her mind screaming but her body immobile as if held in a binding spell she hadn’t even sensed being cast. A greasy wave of dread slid through her.
Princess Luna raised her muzzle to Trixie’s horn and bit it off.
It didn’t come off cleanly. The princess’s teeth were unnaturally sharp, but she still had to tug the last part free. Trixie reeled. She was so stunned that she was sure she was going to fall over, even though her restraints made that impossible. She couldn’t process what had just happened: pain blasted from her horn into her forehead and reverberated through her entire skull. She wanted to scream. She wanted to shriek in agony and panic. She wanted to kick up her hooves and run until she hit an exit or a wall; she didn’t even care which. After the pain, however, came revulsion, as Princess Luna tipped back her pretty head and swallowed the horn.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no …
This wasn’t happening. This was not happening. Cataclysmic destruction had hit and the Great and Powerful Trixie hadn’t seen it coming. Every cell in her was alive with pain and an unrelenting certainty that this could not be happening. It was a dream. It was a hallucination. No, it was a nightmare.
Nightmare … Moon?
No, it was Princess Luna who raised her face again and fastened her mouth over the bleeding stump. It was ruthless-as-a-rose-petal Luna who sucked at the wound. Trixie shook as she recalled that before there ever was a Nightmare Moon, Princess Luna had chosen the path of darkness and turned her back on the ways of the light. It was not a simple case of ‘Nightmare Moon is bad’ and ‘Princess Luna is good’, and that was a far more terrifying thought.
Something was drawn out of Trixie. She felt it snap and slither from deep inside her; a shining coil of power that unclenched after a brief struggle and slipped to the tip of her horn. This time, however, it kept on going, out through her ruined horn, into the princess’s mouth and down her throat. She sucked and drank down Trixie’s magic like it was the elixir of life. Maybe to her it was. Despair pierced Trixie like sharpened claws as she felt her magic leave her, followed by the raw energy all living creatures possessed. She could do nothing at all as the life drained out of her except witness it and wish it would stop.
Finally Princess Luna released her. Trixie slumped into her restraints, utterly spent. Something wet and warm slid down her face from her forehead. She was too weak to even form the thought of what it was. Her eyes flickered closed. Breathing hurt. Everything hurt; and inside was a profound emptiness that hurt most of all.
“We thank thee,” Princess Luna said as if Trixie had just lent her a hankie or passed a dish at dinner.
Trixie opened her eyes to see her turning away to speak to two pegasus ponies in uniform who had come up behind her. They each wore the royal insignia on their chests, with a tiny extra attachment: a small silver moon that swung beneath Celestia’s crest.
“Hast thou dealt with the mare’s trappings?” Princess Luna asked the pegasi.
“We dragged the caravan to a secluded spot and burned it, your majesty,” said one.
“By all accounts she has no-one who’ll miss her enough to report her absence,” added the other. “Our research indicates she’s a nomad with no family. A perfect candidate, as we said earlier.”
No, Trixie thought dully. Someone will notice. Someone will realise the Great and Powerful Trixie is missing.
“We’ll dispose of the body while you make your way back to the palace, majesty.”
“We thank thee,” Princess Luna said in the exact same tone she had used on Trixie. She breathed in deeply, standing taller than before – literally. Her frame seemed to have grown, so she looked less like a sickly filly and more like a mare with a lustrous coat. Even her mane and tail seemed to have grown. “We appreciate thy silence on these incidents, and thy efforts to locate unicorns whose talent is magic for us to consume. We believe we shall need several more before we are returned to a suitable strength.”
Both pegasi knelt and bowed their heads. “We live to serve you, Princess.”
Something else warm and wet slid down Trixie’s face. At first she thought it was more blood. It oozed from her horn, making her feel dizzy and sick. She remembered something about unicorn horns sitting over an artery, the better to keep them conscious while they used their magic. She realised as she faded away that she was crying, which prompted her to do something she hadn’t done since the day she adopted her bombastic stage persona and all its mannerisms.
I’m … scared …
The dark mouth of unconsciousness swallowed her up again, but this time the teeth snapped shut behind her.
….
Celestia looked up from her reading as the door opened and Luna crept to stand in the gap. Her little sister kept her head down, eyes fixed on the floor, as if afraid to meet her eye.
“Luna,” Celestia greeted warmly. “Come in. It’s cold in that draughty hallway. Come and warm yourself by the fire.” She nodded at the hearth of crackling logs a few feet from the pile of cushions where she always nested to read. A fireguard kept any sparks from setting light to anything and the flickering glow made the room seem cosier.
Luna tiptoed inside like she was afraid she might be told at any moment to leave again. It broke Celestia’s heart every time she saw her sister act that way. Yet another example of how she had changed since they were last together; Luna used to be so confident and dedicated to her task of raising and lowering the moon. She hadn’t had the strength yet to try that, which meant Celestia was still taking care of both sunrise and sunset alone.
They had both changed, she amended, thinking of all the history she had witnessed while Luna was trapped on the moon. Luna was so reluctant to go out into the world and see for herself how it had changed in her absence. She claimed she wanted to recover from the physical ills of her ordeal before she did. Celestia couldn’t disagree, but she was heartened to see that Luna seemed to be getting stronger all the time. Soon she would be able to explore more freely.
“Come and lay beside me,” she suggested, shifting her body to make room among the cushions she had already warmed with her body heat.
“Art thou certain?” Luna asked.
Celestia smiled, wondering how long it would take the modern world to affect that old-world manner of speaking. “I’m sure.” She waited until Luna had settled herself before using her magic to retrieve the paper she had set aside. “I was just reading Twilight Sparkle’s latest letter.”
“Twilight Sparkle?” Luna peered at it. “Is she well? Dost the unicorn maintain her health?”
Celestia chuckled, touched that Luna seemed to care so much about her star pupil. “She’s fine. Enjoying herself immensely and learning all she can about the magic of friendship in Ponyville.”
“We are glad,” said Luna with genuine feeling. “Her wellbeing concerns us greatly.”
“I, Luna,” Celestia gently corrected her. “‘I am glad’ and ‘concerns me greatly’. We don’t tend to use the royal ‘we’ much these days.”
“Thou hast told us this before, but we … I am apt to forget.” Luna frowned a little. “This new world is much altered from the one we left behind.”
“Yes, but changed for the better.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she scanned Twilight’s letter with interest. Celestia let her read, taking comfort in the warmth of her little sister’s body. Luna smelled minty, as if she had just brushed her teeth. Apparently toothpaste was a modern convenience she had already mastered and seemed to like quite a lot, judging by how often she used it. Celestia smiled, thinking of all the things Luna would be able to learn when she finally rejoined the world beyond the palace walls.
“Twilight Sparkle is a special pony,” Luna said suddenly.
“Yes, she is,” Celestia agreed.
“Her special talent is a rare one indeed.”
“Yes, not many unicorns are born with that amount of magic or the desire to use it the way she does.”
Luna nodded, her gaze fixed on the signature at the end of the letter. “We … I look forward to seeing her again someday.”
Celestia was glad that Luna had apparently bonded with the pony who had released her from her torment. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you too, little sister. Just you wait; you’ll be together again soon.”
“I hope so,” said Luna with a small smile. “Verily I do.”
….
Fin.
….
