Illusions of Grandeur

Chapter 1:

Trixie was powerful, she was awe-inspiring, she was an Alicorn. Her strong wings beat slowly, lowering her to the ground as intense magenta magic spread from her horn, taking the path of least resistance to the ground. Where the magic landed the dirt illuminated in her trademark magenta, creating a landing circle of sorts. She spoke out as she gracefully stepped onto the earth, addressing the ponies crowded in front of her.
“I am the Great and Powerful Trixie!” She began, her voice ringing out across the land, everypony hearing its call, “Behold my power!” She then-

The psychiatrist interrupted her there.
“Ok, I think I’ve heard enough of this particular dream.” Dr Ideate declared, scribbling down some more notes in his little black book.
“But Trixie was just about to get to the best bit! The ponies were going to bow down to her and-” Trixie began indignantly before being unceremoniously cut off once more by the psychiatrist holding up a
hoof.
“We’ve been meeting three days a week for what now? Seven weeks?” Dr Ideate asked rhetorically, “In all of that time I’ve come to one single conclusion from everything you tell me. You have severe delusions of grandeur.” The psychiatrist gave his diagnosis to the mare sitting in front of him who looked at him in disbelief.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie has no such ailments!” Trixie declared, jumping to her hooves for emphasis.
“You see what I mean? Right there, delusions of grandeur. You not only refer to yourself in the third person but you bestow upon yourself the title of ‘Great and Powerful’.” Dr Ideate reasoned, trying to get Trixie to see things from the point of view of some other pony, his attempts failed.
“Trixie has earned the title fair and square by being Great and Powerful.” The show mare harrumphed, sitting back down and angrily crossing her forelegs. The psychiatrist sighed and rolled his eyes.

Dr Ideate closed his notebook and pushed his glasses back up his muzzle so that they were resting afore his eyes before glancing at the clock and back to Trixie.
“Listen, our hour is over and out next meeting is next week Tuesday ok? We’ll talk some more about this and try to get you cured.” Dr Ideate said in a more friendly voice, even if he did make it seem like delusions of grandeur were a disease that could be treated with injections and pills. Trixie was not won over and stood, grabbing her cape and leaving the room before slamming the door behind her all in one fluid movement. Trixie had been forced to leave her hat at home after some clumsy colt had spilled his drink all over it, leaving it sticky and smelling of oranges, but she still wore the cape, the material billowing out from behind her as she trotted out of the hospital where Dr Ideate held their tri-weekly meetings and headed for her wagon.

Eight weeks ago Trixie had been performing for a crowd in Canterlot when an accident involving her performance placed a stallion in hospital with multiple injuries to his legs. Whilst she was being placed under arrest the arresting officer overheard one of the ponies in the crowd talking to his neighbour.
“Is she crazy or something? Why does she keep trying to do these stupid performances?” The officer had taken those words into consideration and told the police office where she had taken Trixie that there is the possibility that she was insane. One thing had led to another and Trixie had been released after only one night in prison, she was then sentenced to go to a psychiatrist three times a week until she was either issued a bill of clean health or sent away to a mental hospital, whichever one came first. However, they also didn’t want to spend too much money on this one pony and thus she was sent to the cheapest psychiatrist they could find, namely Dr Ideate of the Ponyville hospital.

Trixie arrived at her stage wagon which she had parked at the edge of the Everfree Forest, she had put it there with the knowledge that she had to lie low for a while after her last performance in Ponyville, also there was the fact she had been banned from performing until her psychiatrist sessions were complete. Trixie hung her cape up on a hook by the door and closed it behind her, lighting the candles dotted around her home by hoof, she still hadn’t gotten the hang of controlling fire spells. Trixie was sorely tempted to just ignore the psychiatrist’s diagnosis, but cheap as he was, he was a pretty good psychiatrist. Over the seven weeks she had been to see him he had developed a sense of trust about their meetings, making her think twice about his ideas instead of just dismissing them. Did she really have delusions of grandeur? Surely not, she was indeed Great and Powerful and should be addressed appropriately, even by herself. But as much as she hated to admit it, Dr Ideate’s words had an air of truth about them.

Trixie dispelled her unwanted thoughts and picked up the stack of books she had ‘borrowed’ from Canterlot library last time she was there, they were all on illusion magic. Trixie was a big fan of illusion magic, she liked the way she could make things seem so different from what they were, the way she could create projections of things that weren’t there. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much chance of displaying her illusion magic during her performances, illusions aren’t the most impressive magical feat and were unbefitting of one so Great and Powerful. The only part of her performance where she used illusion magic was the fireworks, projecting them coming up from the barrels she kept at the back of the stage and having them explode for emphasis. She chose the book she wanted to read and set the others down on the desk beside her bed. She flopped down on the small chair with a sigh and began to read.

She had been reading for around an hour when she decided she needed a drink. Once she had quenched her thirst she picked her book back up and thought to herself ‘This book is pretty good, I wonder who the author is?’ She looked at the plain cover, it read ‘On the concept of basic to intermediate illusionary magic’ and below that ‘A thesis by Twilight Sparkle’ Trixie visibly recoiled, the name of the pony that managed to disgrace her was enough to send her reeling from the tome. She promptly opened the window and threw the book out, hearing a satisfying splat as it landed in the mud. Trixie let out a sigh that she had once more been thwarted by Twilight Sparkle before retiring to her bed, she didn’t want to read any more tonight. Before she clambered into her bed though, she performed a quick check on the rest of the books to make sure none of the others were any of Twilight’s, luckily there were none. She allowed herself a small smile before slipping into sleep.

Once she had awoken and brushed her mane, she donned her cape and sat down at her desk to write a shopping list. Her pale magenta magical aura surrounded her horn as she telepathically picked up a quill, dipped it in ink and began to write. She had not quite yet mastered control over her telekinesis and her list looked almost illegible, like it had been written by a little filly. As soon as that thought passed through Trixie’s mind she screwed up the paper in disgust with her hooves and chucked it into the bin behind her. ‘This would be a lot easier if I just projected an illusion of the words onto the paper, it would take a lot less time and would require less precision.’ She mused, unfortunately, she didn’t have any idea where to start when it came to projecting illusions of words, it wasn’t the same as a regular object where you could just visualise the object and use your magic to project the visualisation, words weren’t objects and the technique would likely be different. ‘You know, I think there was a section on projecting words in that book I was reading yesterday...’ She stopped, remembering the author of the thesis.
“Horsefeathers.” Trixie muttered before opening the door to her wagon.

She quickly checked if there was anypony nearby, there wasn’t, and went to retrieve the book she had thrown out the night before. Hesitantly lifting it with her magic she spoke to nopony in particular,
“The Great and Powerful Trixie should not be messing around with this disgusting mud and stupid book.” But she knew that if she didn’t learn how to project words now then it would very likely come back to bite her in the flank later on, as things often did. She floated the tome in front of her and re-entered her home before pulling out some old papers and setting the book down on them. Doing a quick damage check she could see that about half the book was completely covered in mud along with several rips and tears through some pages. She turned back to the contents page, which luckily had stayed intact, and found the section on projecting text.
“Page Two-hundred-and-forty-seven” She read aloud before flicking through the decimated pages to page 247. When she reached it she once more threw the book out the window. The page was completely soaked in mud, the brown sludge obscuring all but two words in the top left corner ‘Projecting text’, the title of that section.

She stood, fuming, the thought of projecting text now obscuring her thoughts, she had to find out how to do it, she would not be bested by a muddy book, especially not one by Twilight Sparkle. She thought about where she might find another copy of ‘On the concept of basic to intermediate illusionary magic’. Canterlot Castle likely had only that one copy, and if they had others they most probably wouldn’t let Trixie anywhere near them. She thought of anyone that might have a copy but could come up with nothing. There was only one thing she could do, find the original. And where was the original? Ponyville Library of course, home to Twilight Sparkle.
“Horsefeathers.” Trixie muttered once more.