Ponyville. That is where my fall from grace began. Twilight Sparkle and her insurmountable talent exposed me for the charlatan I was. After that inauspicious day, my shows were no longer a thunderous triumph of magic and trickery. They were a blighted sideshow—a mockery of the splendor they had once been.

In my desperation to retain the life I once held, I stooped lower and lower. I finally hit rock bottom on a remote rock farm. There, I assumed the life of some ordinary, mundane pony, hammering away at boulders until nothing but pebbles remained. It was beneath me, humiliating and degrading. The days dragged on, but my dignity fell no further. It was the bottom, the very bottom, where nothing could fall any lower.

If I had it to do over again, I would have clung to that humble bottom. I would have held on and never let go.

I made the worst mistake imaginable. In my desperate bid to claw my way back up to the graces I once knew, I put my faith in dark magic. While I may have found the bottom on that rock farm, that accursed amulet drug me even deeper, pulling me into the abyss of hell.

Thanks to RaylanKrios for pre-reading.

Submitted to Nonpareil Fiction's Early Autumn Contest.