ONE WEEK BEFORE THE CAPTURE OF SHIZUKH

Trixie trotted through the gates of Canterlot as they swung open for her, guards standing at attention as she walked along the great hallway leading to the throne room. She pulled her cloak tight around herself, trying to disguise her nervousness. She reviewed a few tricks to keep her mind occupied, going over the Aces hidden behind her fetlocks and the ball buried in the pocket in the tip of her hat. Sure, she had done private shows before, mostly for kids’ birthday parties, but this was about as far from a child’s birthday party one could get without walking in on the graduation ceremony at a law school. This was the royal court. She was going to perform in front of the Princesses of Night and Day! The ponies who were responsible for maintaining harmony and balance in all the land, and who’s hoof clippings possessed a thousand times more magical power than she had in her entire little pony body! This was quite a few worlds removed from a bunch of snot-nosed foals.

Foals, yes, that was it, she just had to distract herself with something else! Now, Sethy had started talking about foals, and oh Celestia, was that ever a talk! For Heaven’s sake, she was a show pony, not a…a…a wet nurse! She could…hardly even…imagine…

The doors to the throne room towered high over her head, blasting all other thoughts clean from her mind. She gulped, her knees quivering. This…this could be the greatest show of her life. Or the show that led to her banishment to the moon. She figured the odds were probably 50-50. If only Sethy was here… she thought. She was always so much braver when he was nearby.

“Hey, kid,” a gruff voice called off to her side. She turned, still shivering, to one of the aging guards standing at attention right beside the door. He was an older pony, but not too old. She’d say he might be nearing retirement within a few years, with a touch of gray entering his brown mane and an ancient scar tracing down the side of his face.

“Y-yes?” She stammered, and immediately scolded herself for it.

“Relax,” he said with a smile, the scar twisting naturally with his cheeks. “The Princesses ain’t gonna bite, not even Luna. They’re probably the nicest ponies you’ll ever meet. They’re not gonna eject ya from the kingdom, unless you’re here to try an’ overthrow ‘em.”

“Ha ha, yeah,” she laughed nervously. He nodded to her and resumed his stance, staring straight-ahead with the same frozen look of a statue. Trixie inhaled, exhaled, and threw the doors open, striding in with her head held high.

“Behold, the Great and Powerful Trixie has arrived!” She announced, fireworks materializing around her body as her hooves made contact with the plush red carpet leading to the royal thrones. Then the doors slammed shut behind her, the wind from the force of their closing nearly ripping her hat off her head, and for a second the Great and Powerful Trixie became the small and frightened Trixie.

“I-uh…” she stammered, standing before the princesses as they sat upon their equally-imposing thrones. The royal pair stared down at her, perched on their thrones, their gorgeous manes drifting in some unseen wind as they regarded her with eyes that had absorbed a millennium of wisdom, pain, sorrow, and euphoria. Celestia and Luna, the two most powerful beings in Equestria, a single word from whom could rewrite history, forge legends, and bring down tyrants. They were gods for all ponykind, the model around which everypony was supposed to form their lives.

And she was supposed to perform magic tricks for them.

“I…uh…” she inhaled, exhaled, and straightened her hat, determination growing in her eyes. The Great and Powerful Trixie didn’t need long to recover at all. “I have arrived to…”

“Miss Trixie,” Celestia said, her face unreadable. “I am afraid I must apologize for a bit of deception on our part.”

“I’m sorry, what was that, your majesty?” The magician asked, an icy knot of fear beginning to form in her stomach.

“Though we are sure your magic is really quite impressive,” Luna said, stepping down from her throne. “We did not summon thee here for a show.”

“Oh, really?” Trixie laughed nervously. Oh dear sweet Celestia, what’s this about then? Is this about the riots I caused in Trottingham!? I refunded everypony their bits! Or, or is this…

Trixie gasped. She knew what this was about. Ponyville! Twilight might have forgiven her for that little ‘incident’ with the Alicorn Amulet, but had Celestia? Of course not, how could she!? She had assaulted Celestia’s own protégé and enslaved the Elements of Harmony, who had defended Equestria on behalf of the Canterlot Courts not once, but three times she could think of just off-hoof! This must have all been a ruse to get her to show up without bothering local authorities!

Immediately, Trixie collapsed to her knees in full begging position, tears streaming down her little blue cheeks. “Pluh-hease, Princesses! I had no idea Twilight was THE Twilight Sparkle! I was just so jealous and so angry, and…and the Amulet’s power had overcome me! I didn’t mean to eject Twilight from Ponyville, or take over the entire town! I just…I just wanted…oh please, don’t…”

Celestia descended from her throne and trotted up to Trixie, glaring down at her. “You made that all up just now, didn’t you?”

“I…I…” Trixie sniffled, her heart racing in fear. But at the end of the day, she knew she couldn’t lie to the Princess. Not now, with her literally towering over her, like a mountain made out of horse. The best the magician could hope for now was that telling the truth would ease Celestia’s fury, perhaps convince her to reduce her sentence from execution to life imprisonment. Trixie sighed and kept her eyes locked on the ground. She didn’t think about Sethisto, though right then saving her own skin seemed to be the most pressing matter. “Yes, I did. Though the Amulet amplified all that jealousy and rage, in the end, I still made the conscious decision to act upon it.”

Celestia’s face almost instantly broke into a smile. “Impressive. That wasn’t a bad lie, all things considered.”

“Huh?”

“We knew you were the right choice for this job when our sister first told us about your skills as an actress,” Luna said, stepping closer to stand side-by-side with Celestia. “And your recent charity works have given us cause to believe you might just be the pony we need.”

“Um-oh!” Trixie immediately stood and bowed, barely disguising the relief washing through her body. “I-it would be an honor to serve you, my Princesses! Of course! I take it you wish for me to perform in some sort of play? Perhaps for some fellow statesmen or…”

“I am afraid not,” Celestia sighed as she quickly sealed the room, placing a magical shield over the door while Luna shuttered the windows.

“It is of the utmost importance that thou not disclose what we are about to reveal to thee,” the Princess of Night continued. “The enemy’s spies could, quite literally, be right under our hooves.”

“Spies?” Trixie asked as she realized just what the Princesses could be asking for. “Oh…oh my gosh. You want me to pull off some sort of mission, don’t you? Act as some kind of spy?”

“You’re far more intelligent than your first impression led us to believe, Miss Lulamoon,” Celestia said.

Trixie wasn’t sure whether to feel complimented or insulted, but she still made it a point to bow. “Thank you, your excellency.”

“And you are right, we do wish for you to act as a spy of sorts,” Luna added.

“But by the time we tell you all you need to know, I hope you understand the risks you’ll be taking. So before you say yes to what we need from you, I will ask you a question, and I expect you to answer it honestly,” Celestia said, looking Trixie right in the eye. Her voice reeked of the gravity of situation. Trixie gulped. Whatever this was, it had to be a matter of life and death. “Understand?”

“Y-yes, your highness.”

“Good,” Celestia said, her horn sparkling as it drew the form of a Diamond Dog in the air. The drawing had fists that looked more like giant legs of ham attached to the end of its arms, and it possessed a massive body hardened and toned by a life in the mines. His beady eyes glimmered with the shimmer of Celestia’s magic, as if they gleamed with their own, malevolent light, his mouth drawn back in a permanent sneer that revealed a snaggle-toothed row of razor-sharp fangs. Trixie shivered despite herself. If he looked this scary as a drawing, she didn’t even want to know what this dog might look like in real life.

“This is Wardog Shizukh,” the Princess of Day continued. “He rules a decently-sized den about fifty kilometers north of here. We assumed, like most den leaders, that he was content with his lot in life and in maintaining the peace that has existed between our races for decades, delicate as it is.”

“This all changed a month ago,” Luna said. “We now have reason to believe he has decided to rebel against the Canterlot monarchy, stopping at nothing short of our downfall and the usurpation of our government.”

Trixie’s jaw dropped. “My goodness! How many dogs does he have at his command!?”

“Currently, we believe his army numbers in the 150 to 200 range.”

“Oh, is that all?” Trixie smiled. For a second there, the Princesses had been making this out to be a real crisis. “Well then, why don’t you just send the Royal Guard after him? Surely, they could handle anything such a low-level den leader could pull.”

“It’s not that simple,” Celestia continued, swiping away the drawing with her hoof. “As I’ve said, the peace between Equestria and the Diamond Dog dens within our borders has always been tenuous at best. If we attack him outright, the other dens could use it as an excuse to completely rebel.”

“Though we are certain such a rebellion would fail,” Luna added quickly. “We are not so certain about the loss of life on both sides. It could be…appalling. Thousands of ponies and dogs, just throwing themselves at one another on the battlefield, it could be an absolute monstrosity!”

“And there is one more factor to consider,” Celestia said. “We believe Shizukh has acquired a weapon of sorts.”

“A weapon? What kind of weapon?” Trixie asked.

“We can’t be sure yet, but we do know it has great power. We believe it to be an artifact left over from the ancient times of war, before the establishment of Equestria as a nation. And though we are uncertain if it is still dangerous,” Celestia sighed. “We cannot take the risk of it being used against our subjects if it is.”

“Okay, so let me guess,” Trixie said, smiling with the thought of herself frozen in an action-movie pose, propelled in the air by an explosion with a dagger clenched between her teeth and a rebel dog spinning away beneath her flailing hooves. “You want me to rush in there, take out all the guards with my magic, grab Shizukh, and force him to tell me where the artifact is before rushing back here with him and the object in tow, right?”

“I’m afraid nothing so action-packed, my little pony,” Celestia giggled. Trixie deflated slightly as the image of the Great and Vengeful Trixie disappeared from her mind. “We have arranged for you to have a meeting with him under the guise of a diplomatic mission.”

“In reality, you will be there to bait the trap,” Luna said. “You will show up and invite Shizukh and his army to the village of Ponyville. You do know the way, correct?”

“Oh,” Trixie said awkwardly. “I might have come across it once or twice.”

“Good. Now, Shizukh shall walk into this meeting thinking you are there to help resolve his current disputes with Canterlot. Once there, you shall reveal to him that you wish to propose an alliance and aid him in his quest to destroy Equestria.”

“Of course, this will be part of the ruse to lure him in,” Celestia said. “Once you have secured Shizukh’s confidence, you will journey to Ponyville and lay the trap we have planned.”

Suddenly, Luna’s horn sparked with energy until a small, fishbowl-like structure shimmered into existence on the royal floor. “What the…” Trixie said, resting a hoof on its surface.

“This is a simple manifestation spell, known as the Aguamentis Existantulum, taught to fillies in their first year at the Canterlot Royal College of Magic,” Luna explained. “They usually only use it to play pranks on each other, or to hold a few household pets, but we have something a bit more grand in mind.”

Her horn sparked once more, and suddenly the bowl expanded until it reached to the ceiling, dominating the throne room. Trixie took a few steps back and gaped: the thing had gone from something the size of a fishbowl to scraping the high-vaulted ceilings of the throne room in less than a minute!

“This bowl is now nearly indestructible,” Luna said with pride in her voice. “A few simple augmentations make it so that the glass could withstand a dozen blasts from the best unicorns in Equestria for weeks on end without even cracking!”

“Wow,” Trixie gasped. “But…what does it have to do with your plans for Shizukh?”

“Quite a lot, actually. You see, its size means the entire populace of Ponyville could reside within with no problem at all, and its indestructible properties mean it could be the perfect bunker, ensuring nopony is carried off by Shizukh’s goons should something happen.”

“So they shall be taking cover once you have built this,” Celestia said, pulling out a small piece of parchment and hoofing it to the unicorn. Trixie unrolled it to reveal a huge diagram filled with drawings and symbols she could never hope to understand, with squiggles and markings about soil composition and reinforcement beams that might as well have been written in Latin for all she knew. Seeing the confusion on her face, Celestia smiled and explained: “That is a system of tunnels the citizens of Ponyville will be helping you dig, running under every street. We’ll send a construction crew in ahead of you under the pretense of surveying the town’s hall, so you’ll have professional help in constructing this network. Once it has been formed, a simple transfiguration spell should cause the tunnels to collapse, trapping Shizukh’s army once they arrive in the streets of Ponyville.”

“Although…” Luna said. “Another spell could trap them in something else…”

“No Luna. We are not having Trixie drop the dogs into a pile of oatmeal,” Celestia said, rolling her eyes in exasperation at her younger sister.

“But think of the terror when the ground beneath them turns into disgusting breakfast food, sister!” Luna gasped, hopping from one hoof to the other in her excitement. “Think of the bran-filled terror!”

“Simply collapsing the tunnels should be more than enough to inspire fear in Shizukh’s heart, fear which will allow us to wean the location of the artifact out of him,” Celestia replied sternly. “I highly doubt he is going to be very afraid of something he eats every morning.”

“Evening, sister. Diamond Dog leaders are more nocturnal than not.” Luna corrected with a smart little tone in her voice.

“Whatever,” Celestia said, smiling despite herself. “The point is that this plan is supposed to inspire fear in Shizukh’s heart so that he simply spits out the location of the artifact, not make him laugh until he wets himself.”

“I still say it should be part of the plan,” Luna said stubbornly.

“So that’s it, then? Just meet with Shizukh, show up in Ponyville, have everypony help dig some tunnels, then blast the tunnels right out from under his feet when he shows up?” Trixie smiled brightly. “Piece of cake!”

“I’m glad you like our plan so far,” Celestia said, smiling brightly.

“But of course,” Trixie said, making sure not to miss the opportunity for a little tail-kissing. “A few little details I’m still missing, though: what do I have to sweeten the deal and make sure Shizukh doesn’t just say no when I meet with him? My own contingent of royal guards, disguised as bandits? Or, ooh! How about a few jewels from the treasury? I’m sure the Dogs would love that!”

Celestia and Luna eyed one another warily. “Actually, yes and no to that last part,” Celestia said as her sister turned to retrieve a box from a darkened corner. “It is a jewel, but it’s most definitely not part of the treasury.”

“Why wouldn’t it…” Trixie started, but immediately stopped the instant Luna opened the box, revealing the Alicorn Amulet.

Author's Notes:

Yep, we're back here again! I have a BUNCH of crap that could practically be it's own story set in this storyline, but I'll just post it here, mmkay? Mmkay.