The sun slowly dropped below the mountains and cast its rays through the library windows.  Spike was soundly napping in his bed, lounging on his back and snoring as loud as ever.  Twilight had found her way back into the library and hid her new (possibly offensive) cloak in the closet.  She stood over the sleeping little dragon and smiled, immediately being reminded of a time where she could appreciate the simple cuteness of her assistant snoozing in his bed.  This memory, like Spike's nap, ended when Twilight upturned the dragon-hide bag and dropped a sphere about the size of her head just in front of him.  The thing had been a little more dense than Twilight had expected, splitting and crushing the floorboards until jagged wood jutted out below the massive gemstone.

"Wha!?  Huh?  Twilight?"  Spike was yanked out of his sleep almost as violently as his elder was just killed.  He flailed his head around, looking for the source of the noise and eventually dropping eyes on the large sphere in front of him.  "What the hay is that?"

"That, Spike, is Equestria's first and only gemstone jawbreaker.  It's got a diamond core, surrounded by rubies, sapphires and emeralds, then any other stones that I could find.  There are a grand total of eight-hundred-forty-seven individual layers, with every single gem known to pony or dragon kind... and it's all for you."  During the course of her description of the sphere, Spike's eyes dilated and his mouth started to water: he was hypnotized by the thing and couldn't help himself from drooling.

"W-wh-what's the occasion?"  The little dragon reached up his forearm and wiped his mouth, reaching out his free claw to feel the fantastic treat.

"Well...  On my last little expedition outside I found myself amidst hundreds of gems andI realized how little I've been appreciating you lately.  We both remember what happened last time I stopped giving you the attention you deserved.  I figured I'd just get you something nice while I had the chance...  I want you to know that you're the best assistant I've ever had, you know that right?"  Twilight fluttered her eyelids and quickly hid the bag.  She was lucky that Spike was so focused on the ball of delicious gemstones that he didn't even notice where it came from.

"Of course I know that!  I'm the best best, ain't I?"

"That's for sure.  Now can you make me a promise?"

"Sure, Twilight.  Anything."

"I'm going to need your help on some things coming up, and I need you to kinda... keep quiet about them.  Can you do that?"  Twilight rested her hoof on the ball as she spoke, lightly rolling it away from the greedy, sparkly-eyed dragon as she asked her question.

"You don't have to worry about it at all, Twi.  My lips are sealed."

"Good."  Twilight rolled the sphere toward her assistant and flashed a big smile, letting him latch onto the sphere and immediately take a massive bite out of it.  The chomp left a jagged crater in the ball, reaching only about halfway to the core but filling Spike's mouth entirely.  As he chewed and crunched the hundreds of gemstones Twilight grinned and turned to walk away, stopping by to grab her new cloak and bury her bag in the closet, stepping out for one last errand in the forest.

Twilight stood briefly in the shadow of her library and let it pour over her path.  The sun was setting on another day before the deadly forest, and someone was about to have their night ruined.  The unicorn set off forward, letting the dragonhide cloak lightly flap at her heels as she stepped toward the darkness.  She pulled her hood up over her head, draping it so that it dangled just a little in front of her eyes and clasped it around her neck so that it stayed very well put.  She simply trotted along into the woods, knowing indirectly where to go by following a well-traveled path.

The journey started off fairly quietly, giving Twilight some time to think in her partial blindness from the low hood.  Iago had been silent the whole trip, so she had given her thought process into her own personal feelings for the first time in weeks.  This, coupled with the reminiscing that she'd been doing on her target prompted her mind to delve into the old Twilight's pattern of constant thought.  The purple unicorn focused in on her new target, thinking about all the different ways that she wanted to do this.  She didn't, however, think too hard on anything vengeful.  Twilight was so much further inclined to the process that she simply let any kind of past anger slip her mind, though it was still certainly there.

She was yanked out of her deep thought by a snapping twig off to her left, which prompted her to flick her hood off and methodically scan the forest around her.  The snap fell into a dead silence as she immediately stopped her trot, but was gradually replaced by a low growl.  A pair of yellow eyes, followed by several others, slowly emerged from the woods and revealed the creatures behind them.  A half dozen bizarre animals pulled away from the brush, seeming canine in appearance but completely made up of driftwood and fallen sticks.  Twilight recognized these as the aptly named 'Timber Wolves'.

"Huh, is it zap apple season already?"  Twilight gazed around, picking out the location of all six of the creatures as they crept toward her.  As soon as the obvious leader of the pack lunged for her, she caught all of them in a telekinetic field.  Their legs flailed as they floated lazily off the ground, centering their focus on the calmly smiling unicorn standing in the middle of the circle.  With a single thought, each one of them burst into flame, pulling a half dozen howls of agony from each of their bizarre muzzles.  After a few seconds of letting them squirm, Twilight slammed them against their leader, crushing their wooden bodies into a twitching mass of smoldering twigs.  

Satisfied with her new torch, Twilight set off down an overgrown path that seemed just wide enough for a wagon to fit through.  The forest was far from quiet, but it seemed to create a moving pocket of stillness as Twilight stepped through it.  Crickets and night birds quit their chirping as the unicorn approached, and she even noticed a few other pairs of eyes recede into the woods as she carried the mass of burning wood ahead of her.  The further she got the more the forest started to thin out, so she began to hear noises from further away; one specifically was the gentle babbling of a small stream.  

Twilight was simply letting her instincts drive her: she knew that a clearing would be an ideal place for a camp, that being next to flowing water would also be ideal, and that staying away from the beaten path at least a little way was an intelligent idea for someone trying not to be found.  The target, if still in the forest at all, would be most likely near where Twilight was walking.  Bingo.

For all the rumors of her exile from civilization and eventual identity change just to live a peaceful life in a traveling carnival, one explanation seemed far more likely: "The Great and Powerful Trixie" had simply retreated into the woods, setting up a semi-permanent home in a diligently repaired wagon on the bank of the only known clean river in the Everfree Forest.  

As the heavily-weathered and sun bleached colors of Trixie's old wagon came into view, Twilight tossed her torch into the river.  She lifted her hood and let it rest against her shoulders as she approached, noticing the familiar flicker of candle light through a small window in the wagon.  The forest peeled itself away and left nothing but soft blue-green grass for the clearing, though many of the colors merged together in the pale light of the late night.  The wagon was parked just a short distance from the river, clearly having been moved a few times to avoid the volatile water level.  Tall grass was enveloping the wheels and the hitch seemed to have been unmoved for months; things couldn't have gone more smoothly.

Trixie's wagon kept the small step ladder up to the door attached, but Twilight just levitated herself up along it and kept her approach silent.  As she brought herself close to the makeshift doorway, Twilight could hear a soft tune being hummed from inside.  This was followed by a quiet but still clear set of objections and propositions, leaving the impression that Trixie was either vain enough or desperate enough for contact to warrant talking to herself.  

"Oh, Trixie.  You do look wonderful today..."  The muffled voice seemed to speak with enough soft discomfort to indicate that she had been caught before, but was getting used to the solitary woodland lifestyle.  Twilight decided to interrupt the conversation by lightly knocking with the back of her hoof.  Tap, tap, tap.

As soon as Twilight knocked, Trixie stopped talking to herself and paused completely.  She didn't, however, get up to answer the door; after waiting for a confirmation (and never receiving one) she just went back to her business.  This set Twilight back a little, but she simply knocked again.  This time, however, Trixie was sure that she had heard something and went to investigate.  

"Hello?  Is somepony th--"  Trixie's upper door swung open softly, revealing the visiting party to simply be Twilight Sparkle.  Trixie halted her speech and let her face sink into a scowl, not even bothering to say a word but just slamming the door shut again.

"Oh come on, Trixie.  Do you treat all of your guests like that?"  Twilight stayed right next to the door, calling softly into the lightly open crack by the hinge."

"How dare you come and find me!"  Trixie yelled out from inside the wagon.  Judging from the banging, Twilight assumed that she had simply gone back to her previous activity with a new anger-fueled energy.  "First you ridicule Trixie in front of that whole... town, if you can even call it that, now you've come back to mock her?  It's been nearly two years!  Let it go!"

This reaction honestly left Twilight speechless.  That delicious instance of hypocrisy wasn't what Twilight had come out there for, however.  "What if I told you I came out here to apologize?"

The banging stopped and Twilight could hear the cautious clopping of hooves stepping back toward the door; it stayed shut, however.  "Trixie is listening."

"I mean... I didn't come here to apologize.  I was just curious what you'd do if I told you I did."  Twilight couldn't help but snicker at the resounding grunt of disapproval from the other side of the door.  She stepped back down onto the ground, taking a few paces away from the wagon and raising her voice a little bit.  "I'd like you to come out here and talk with me, Trixie.  I'll only ask nicely once."

Trixie didn't respond.  As a matter of fact, the light that penetrated the seams along her door had gone out and the entire wagon had grown completely silent.  Twilight just shrugged and examined it briefly, easily picking out all the points where nails had been placed to hold the thing together.  "Last chance, Trixie.  Get out here."  Still no response.  With a single thought and a brief period of focus, Twilight ripped every single nail out of the wagon, listening to the lazy groan of wood right before it fell to pieces.  The light blue unicorn sat dumbfounded in the center of her destroyed home, looking straight ahead with wide eyes and not even turning to meet Twilight's gaze.

"You should have listened.  This could have been a whole lot nicer if you just came out to talk to me when I asked."  Twilight casually stepped toward the wreckage, bringing all of the nails in toward her and heating them up.  As the iron grew red-hot, she pressed it into something about the size of a cannon ball, buffering it with other small metal objects from in and around the rubble.

Trixie didn't say a thing, she only turned her head with a look of pure fear and anxiety at her assailant.  The bloody red light cast away from the ball of molten metal set an eery glow over Twilight's oddly calm face.  The blue unicorn tried to shrink away, clambering back over her destroyed wagon but never breaking eye contact.  She started to hyperventilate, her stomach sank, and the entire world seemed to narrow until the only thing around her was the bright red ball and the terrifying sight of the murderous pony above.  

Twilight drew all of the energy out of the ball, forcing it to fall ice-cold in seconds as she closed the final few feet between herself and the terrified pony.  Trixie found herself backed up against a rock and immediately curled into the fetal position, not knowing anything else to do.  "I have to admit, Trixie, I'm a little glad you didn't just come out like I asked."  Twilight planted her leg immediately to the right of her victim, holding her other foreleg up and dropping the ball onto her hoof.  She casually examined the thing before turning her gaze back down to the tear-streaked face of the once-cocky pony below.  "I've really always wanted to do this."

With that, Twilight brought the iron ball down and bashed it into the side of Trixie's head.  Her mane was thrown from the inertia, and Trixie instinctively curled into a ball and let herself crumple onto the ground.  Her face was covered by her messy hair, though, so Twilight couldn't quite tell if she was still conscious at first glance.  The tell of a moving hoof to clutch her wounded head, however, told her that Trixie was still barely awake.  Twilight dropped the iron ball and focused her hearing onto the snap and crunch of a wooden board being pulverized by the object.  She dropped onto her knees and used her hoof to lightly pull Trixie's hair away from her face and hook it behind her ear.  This 'loving' gesture was misunderstood by the dazed unicorn, however, and she turned to look up at Twilight's new form.  

Twilight was far prettier than Trixie had remembered, but that only left more to resent.  Her memory had been thrown off completely by the attack, and Trixie couldn't quite recall the situation that she was in; at least not immediately.  Twilight looked down to the bloodied and battered unicorn below her: it was certainly a good look for Trixie.  Twilight pushed on her victim's shoulder and rolled her fully onto her back, bringing both of her front hooves down and pressing them against her neck.  Trixie's hind legs flailed, but Twilight sat down on the unicorn's lap to keep her still.  She couldn't get away from this death grip, and ended up staring into Twilight's eyes as a wicked smile emerged across her face.

Twilight was more than happy to bask in Trixie's pain, drinking it in slowly and enjoying the velvety feel of Trixie's neck beneath her hooves.  She leaned forward and pressed more weight down, almost giddy from the excitement as her victim's mouth dropped open and twitched to gasp for air.  Even without the intense power that Iago had gifted to her, Twilight felt like she could still manage to take Trixie down.  Every single twitch and struggle from Trixie's body traveled into Twilight, and she started to let her anger take over.  Vengeance snuck its tendrils into Twilight's motivation, making every single second that she watched Trixie's face hover on the crevasse between fear, pain, and unfathomable sadness feel like the length of a spectacular live show.  She only pulled herself away after Trixie went completely limp.  

Twilight looked over her shoulder and watched as Trixie's hind leg twitched, though her face had gone completely relaxed.  As soon as Twilight's hooves left her neck, Trixie took a deep breath, though it was clearly involuntary.  Satisfied, Twilight hiked the unicorn up via telekinesis, wrapping her in the brand new cloak and draping the package over her back.  

As she turned to leave, Twilight noticed several of the softer materials from the inside of Trixie's wagon (curtains, pillows, blankets and other such things) had spontaneously caught fire.  The unicorn looked around but saw no candles, finally coming to the conclusion that she had simply gotten carried away again.  During the search, however, Twilight found a broken picture frame sitting amongst some of the rubble.  She lifted it to take a look and saw a simple photograph of Trixie in a line in front of the Colt Theater in midtown Manehattan.  She was holding a script, and Twilight assumed that this was some kind of audition.  The unicorn glanced around but couldn't find any of the glass nearby that should have come from the picture frame, so she figured that Trixie had broken the picture some time ago.  

"Just a shattered dream, eh?  The Great and Powerful Trixie reduced to a traveling show because the bigwigs wouldn't take her?"  Twilight spoke to the unconscious and bound pony on her back as if she were truly expecting a response, but after a few seconds of silence she simply crushed the flimsy picture frame until the low-quality tin it was made of fractured and stepped away, bringing her quarry with her and taking back toward the road.  

The trip home went off more or less without a hitch, though Twilight thought she heard Trixie start to come to about halfway home.  The problem was remedied quickly by swinging her at a nearby tree and knocking her out again.  Once complete, Trixie showed very few signs of life.  Her body hung limp and she bled from her nose and mouth, though she was indeed still breathing.  Twilight quietly opened her door and made a bee line for her basement, dragging the pony behind her still wrapped in the dragonhide.  

She quietly stepped down the stairs into her basement, lighting several candles with just a thought and hovering Trixie beside her.  She grabbed only the end of her cloak and let the rest of the weight drop, spinning Trixie's body and dropping it brutally on the concrete floor.  She didn't seem to come fully back to consciousness from this, but she did curl up again and clutch her body in pain.  Twilight looked around for a suitable place to hold her, but realized that she was completely unprepared for any prisoners.  

Thinking quickly, Twilight targeted a bookshelf on the edge of the circular wall by her lab equipment.  She telekinetically gave the top of the bookcase a tug, prying it away and dumping the literature out onto the floor.  She pulled away the debris and exposed the dirt from outside into the basement, immediately laying the bookshelf on its back and dropping every single lost journal and book back inside of it.  

Twilight returned her focus to the bare soil wall, calling on her attunement to the earth to push it in and shape it into a small cave, condensing the soil along the new walls to make it as hard as granite and leaving only the floor somewhat soft.  Satisfied, she tossed the limp and nearly lifeless unicorn into the homemade cave, briefly watching her ragdoll of a body roll to a stop and then replacing the bookshelf in front of her.  She made sure that the edges were sealed off, but kept air flowing by cutting several holes in the back of the shelf.  These were hidden by many of the books, allowing Trixie air and the occasional beam of light: a luxury as far as Twilight was concerned..  At that point, all Twilight had to do was wait for Trixie to wake up, and what better way to pass the time than to prepare?  She sat back and picked up the nearest bladed object to her and positioned it onto the beautiful wood surface of her workspace.  It occurred to Twilight (and to her glee) that she had inadvertently picked up the very same scalpel that she used to cut her wrists only a few short weeks ago.

So, Iago...  help me get started here.  I want everything I'll need to know in order to raise the dead.