Chapter 27: Magic Show
I woke up to the blaring of my alarm. I looked over at it and saw that it was seven in the morning already. Hadn't it been like, four AM just ten minutes ago?
I wanted to sleep some more but today was friday, meaning that I had to suffer the consequences of me not sleeping properly last night. Or the night before. Or the one before that. I don't think I've had proper sleep the entire week.
I got out of my blanket cocoon and onto the floor and stretched a bit before I went onto go through my morning routine. Unfortunately, I was sluggish while I did so and as a result, I didn't have the time to eat breakfast or anything and had to leave for work with an empty stomach.
The walk to work was uneventful and I wished that the entire rest of the day would be like that since I was too tired to deal with anything.
Twilight wasn't there in the library when I came in but I didn't care much. I just went over to my desk and sat down in my chair and turned on the computer. There were still ten or so minutes till the library opened and unfortunately, I couldn't take a nap till then.
It was almost five when Twilight had come in to the library sweating like she had run a marathon. Behind her was Spike, who had a fake looking moustache on his face for some reason.
"But Twi, you gotta admit that some of the stuff you can do is impressive!" Spike said to Twilight as he stopped by my desk. "Hey, Anya, does my moustache look cool? I want an honest answer."
"It looks kinda fake," I answered honestly, much to Spike's disappointment.
"See, I told you that my magic isn't that impressive," Twilight said to Spike as she came up behind him. "Now hold still."
She zapped him in the face with her magic and the moustache was gone. Spike looked somewhat sad at that but good sadness didn't last long. He looked up at me and said, "Hey, Anya, don't you think that Twilight is great at magic? Because she thinks she isn't."
"Twilight's the student of princess Celestia, so, she's probably good at it," I replied, stating the obvious.
Twilight, of course, just rubbed the back of her head and said while blushing a bit, "Oh, that's... something, yes, but it doesn't equate to the ability to do magic good; it shows that I am very good at studies."
"Okay," I replied, not disagreeing with Twilight since I didn't want to start an argument. I continued then, switching the subject, "By the way, where were you?"
"What are you talking about? Today's saturday; I don't have to work today," Twilight said, her eyebrows furrowed as she was clearly confused at my question.
"Today's friday," I said simply. For a moment, I had thought that I had messed up the days somehow but it was more likely that Twilight messed up the days.
"It is?" Spike said with surprise before his demeanor changed to that of someone who was annoyed at some discovery. "I knew that something was wrong this morning! I bet it was Pinkie, or maybe Rainbow, who pranked us by changing the calendars in here!"
Twilight looked horrified at the revelation that today was actually friday. Her ears were pinned down and she froze up and she looked a bit sick. "I- I missed work?"
"Yeah but not a big deal though," I said casually, which stopped Twilight from being as horrified. "There wasn't much done today."
"B- but I missed a day! Do you know how terrible that looks!" she almost shouted, as if it were the most important thing in the entire world.
"Twiggles, no one will care that you missed one day at work," I said, giving her much needed common sense. Twilight was not convinced, however, and so, I figured some evidence would be nice. "Like, some guy I had to work with didn't come into work for like, an entire week once and guess what? No one cared ever. If someone does care then it'll be a good thing since you know to avoid them."
"Yeah, Twi, you gotta chill," Spike added, "It's not like princess Celestia is going to banish you for that."
The very next moment, princess Celestia didn't burst into the library and yell that Twilight was getting banished for missing a day of work but it would have been pretty funny if that happened.
"Y'know, why don't we go check out that magic show? It'll be great!" Spike suggested to Twilight. "Might help you relax a bit as well."
I didn't really care much about their conversation and looked over at the clock. It was 5:01 PM, meaning that I shoud start closing the library. I got out of my chair and pushed the power button on the computer before putting on my saddlebags.
"Oh, Anya, you're coming with us?" Spike asked as I finished doing all that.
"I'll be for real with you, I have not eaten anything since dinner yesterday and I feel like I'm gonna take a bite out of someone, probably Twilight since I don't like her very much," I answered with a glance to Twilight towards the end, before suppressing a yawn. "If I don't drop and fall asleep first."
"Hey!" Twilight said, not understanding that I had made a joke. I could probably start a moon base with how all my jokes just went over her head.
"Soooo, are you coming?" Spike asked, ignoring Twilight.
"K, sure, I'll get something to eat as well," I answered. I didn't have much going on and I didn't feel like doing anything today, so, I might as well just see what this 'magic show' thing is because I was curious about how'd you have a magic show in a world where magic was real.
Spike led me and Twilight through the streets of Ponyville to the park, all while making plenty of conversation with Twilight. It was mostly Spike saying that Twilight was good at magic and Twilight disagreeing. I didn't speak much and just walked behind them with the sandwich I got on the way. Once we reached the park, we saw a small crowd gathered up in front of a fancy carriage. We stopped somewhere at the back of the crowd.
"Do you think that the showpony will ask someone to challenge them?" Spike asked to no one in particular. "Or maybe volunteer for a trick. Ooh, I'd love to volunteer!"
"I think that they might challenge someone since it is customary for them to do so," Twilight answered with a hoof under her chin. "You remember when we saw that one showpony in Canterlot? The one who could escape any lock?"
"The Great Hoofdini? Yeah, he was great!" Spike replied excitedly as he remembered something. He then added, "But not as great as you."
"Oh, come on, Spike!" Twilight replied with a slight blush, "I'm not that great."
"Show's starting," I said, interrupting yet another conversation about Twilight being good at magic or not.
The carriage had started shaking a bit as a loud voice announced, "Come all! Come all! Come and witness the magic of the Great and Powerful Trixie!"
As the announcement came, a stage unfolded out of the carriage with a lot of cool looking fireworks going off. It was looking pretty impressive already. A puff of pink smoke appeared on the stage and quickly dissipated to reveal a blue coated unicorn, Trixie, who wore a starry cape and wizard hat.
While the crowd applauded her spectacular entrance, I stared at her with my mouth slightly agape. Something had awoken in me at the sight of the pretty mare- no, wait, this wasn't the place for being a weirdo. I shook my head clear of the thoughts and made myself look normal so that no-one knew I was smitten by the showpony. I think Twilight might have seen me staring though but it was nothing a bit of gaslighting couldn't fix.
"Man, she's flashy," Spike noted as a second round of fireworks went off.
"My, how boastful!" I heard Rarity say from behind us. I turned my head and saw Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack coming over to us. All of them seemed to be in agreement with Rarity.
"Nothing wrong with showing off your talent," Twilight said to them without turning to face them as they stopped to stand to her right.
"Hey Twi," Rainbow replied to her. She then saw me standing to Twilight's left and her face scrunched up in disdain. "Oh, you're here."
"Hey hey Rainbow," I said, not really giving a shit about her tone since I was still looking at Trixie, and still somewhat mesmerised by her.
"Y'know, I haven't forgotten what you called Twi," she continued with an angry tone.
"Uh huh," I replied as I started staring once again at the showpony on stage as she did her tricks oh so gracefully.
"And honestly, I think you should keep your distance from us."
"Mhm."
"...Are you ignoring me?"
"Uh huh."
"Rainbow, there's no need to be upset about something that's in the past now," Twilight interrupted, pulling me out of my thoughtless staring and mumbling. It took me a few moments to realise that I had lost focus on whatever Rainbow was saying earlier and now that I processed it, I was irritated. I considered calling Rainbow some sort of slur but decided against it since I didn't need more enemies. Twilight continued, "Additionally, I thought about it and realised that I might have been a little bit of a... the thing Anya called me. It was mean, yes, but we're alright now. Isn't that right, Anya?"
"Yeah yeah," I said, not paying much attention since I was busy simping over Trixie and how gracefully she did her magic, even if it was somewhat simple stuff and at times, overly flashy...
Why am I simping over someone I have literally no chance with? Or even any relation with? She is a travelling magician and I'm some random loser with no life beyond work or serving my eldritch master. Any interest I had in the showpony died instantly as I snapped back to reality and realised how weird I was acting along with the unintended side effect of feeling bad.
"She's too busy ogling that boastful loser on stage to answer your question," Rainbow said loudly in frustration, attracting some attention from the crowd towards us. I didn't express my anger and just quietly started putting some distance between me and the group.
"What's there to even see? It's just some cheap parlor tricks performed by someone with a matching cheap wardrobe," Rarity said as she looked at Trixie, particularly her outfit, with thinly veiled disgust. I disagreed with Rarity since I thought robes and big wizard hats were rad as fuck in my humble yet objectively right opinion.
"An' she's mighty loud about it," Applejack added her own criticism.
"Girls, why don't we just enjoy the sho-" Twilight tried suggesting but was cut off by none other than Trixie.
"Well, well, well, it seems that there are some naysayers in the audience," the showpony said with a hint of mirth and some annoyance as she pointed a hoof in the direction of Twilight and her friends. The crowd parted like the sea did for that one dude, and I was quick to join them since I didn't want to be in the negative spotlight. Trixie continued speaking, her tone shifting to one of someone who wanted a challenge, "Who dares to question my magical abilities? Do you think that you can challenge me?"
"Yeah, sure do," Rainbow said loudly. She flew upto Trixie and hovered in front of her and asked, "What even makes you so 'great' and 'powerful' anyway, huh?"
"Heh, clearly, you do not know that I, the great and powerful Trixie, have magic strong enough to vanquish an Ursa Minor!" Trixie answered proudly with her head held high. Her horn glew and there were blue outlines of images floating above her depicting a bear and Trixie. The images were made in the same way I made runes in the air by concentrating magic and honestly, her use of magic was pretty interesting. The images started moving and she narrated, "The ponies of Hoofington had been harrassed by an Ursa Minor for many weeks before I came and when I did, I used my awesome magics and drove it back to its cave in the Everfree forest!"
The images had moved accordingly, showing Trixie cast a spell on the starry bear many times larger than her followed by the bear turning and running away. The crowd cheered as Trixie finished her story, some kids started cheering for her extra loudly, and more importantly, Rainbow looked a lot less confident than she did earlier.
Rainbow backed off and regrouped with her friends, who all seemed to have a noticeable dislike of Trixie now.
"that story's gotta be fake.Twilight, you gotta go up there and show her who's b-" Spike said to Twilight only to be cut off as Twilight picked him up and took him a bit away from the crowd to tell him something that I didn't hear.
"Well, citizens of Ponyville, I hereby challenge you to try and outperform me! Any takers? Anyone who wishes to challenge me?" Trixie announced meanwhile. She pointed a hoof at Rainbow, making her shrink a little, and said, "How about you? You were itching to disprove my powers!"
"Ye know what? I'm taking up tha' challenge!" Applejack shouted, looking really annoyed. She whispered something to Rainbow and stepped forward to go to the stage. Rainbow flew off and returned in the time it took Applejack to get on to the stage. She handed a rope to Applejack and rejoined the audience.
"I'll let you start," Trixie said to Applejack, starting the challenge.
Applejack held the rope in her mouth and started spinning it around, revealing it to be a lasso. She proceeded to jump through the spinning loop, as if it were a mere jump rope, a couple of time before she somehow put the end of the lasso on her tail. More astonishingly, she was able to continue using the lasso like that. She did a couple more tricks which were much like her first ones before she ended her performance. The crowd, which had been watching quietly, erupted into cheers for Applejack.
"Very impressive, I must admit," Trixie acknowledged before she shot the lasso on the stage with a spell. "But not as impressive as this!"
The lasso started moving on its own, much like a snake, and I could see where this was going to go. Applejack would be tied up by her own lasso. The rope slowly coiled around Applejack, making sure to distract her with its weird snake-like movements as it did and as I expected, the rope coiled up around Applejack's legs and tied itself. Predictably, she fell down since her center of mass had a hard time staying on top of her base.
The crowd which had cheered for Applejack now laughed at her but such was the nature of people; they liked a good show.
Trixie untied Applejack, letting her return to Rainbow's side with her pride seriously damaged. Watching her friend come back crestfallen had made Rainbow angry and she was clearly ready to challenge Trixie next.
"Yo, Rainbow, don't try it," I warned her but she just snorted and ignored me and took flight, landing on the stage.
"Hmm, it seems that the naysayer is back. Are you ready to be beaten?" Trixie said out loud, making the pegasus even angrier. She said something that wasn't audible to me and took off into the sky. She rapidly gained altitude and punched through a bunch of clouds before coming back down the way she went up. When she landed, a bunch of rain fell on her, making a temporary rainbow on top of her as the sunlight was refracted through the drops.
The crowd once again cheered, and more importantly, Trixie seemed somewhat troubled, as though she didn't know how to top Rainbow's trick.
Then, the clouds that Rainbow had punched through were covered in the unicorn's pink magical aura. The clouds came together to form an almost black cloud that looked like it was ready to just burst like a water balloon. Trixie levitated the cloud do that it was above Rainbow and the next moment, the pegasus was given an unplanned shower. It was a bit ironic since Rainbow had done something similar to me.
Anyway, the crowd laughed once again, this time on Rainbow who had been thoroughly humiliated. Said humiliated pony flew back to her friends and just grumbled under her breath.
"Anya," I heard Spike call out. I turned around and saw that Spike was on his knees as if he were begging. Behind him was an embarrassed looking Twilight. Spike continued, "You've gotta do something! We can't let Trixie get away with humiliating Rainbow Dash or Applejack just like that."
I just looked at him with surprise and asked, "Why not Twilight? Or Rarity? Or anyone else?"
"I have no interest in being humiliated in front of a crowd, or to be humiliated at all," Rarity objected to her participation quickly.
"And I'll feel like I'm a showoff," Twilight added, explaining why she didn't want to challenge Trixie.
"Bruh, I don't want to go on stage," I protested as all of them just suddenly wanted me to go and try beat Trixie without even considering my opinion. I didn't want to go up there and be made a fool of. I didn't even want to go there anyway!
"You there with the glasses," I heard Trixie say, making me turn around. Trixie had singled me out, which sucked real hard since I was the center of attention of the entire crowd. "Do you dare to challenge me?"
There were numerous eyes looking at me, and quite a few of them silently told me that I should go up there.
"Please Anya, you gotta show her!" Spike pleaded from behind me.
"Ah hate ta say this but good luck for when you go up there," Applejack quietly said to me without looking at me.
"Well, are you?" Trixie asked impatiently.
I made a decision under all the pressure. A dumb one.
"O- okay, I'm coming," I said accepting the challenge. There were a few cheers around me but I was panicking internally too much to care. One question was on my mind and it was How do I beat Trixie?
I slowly made my way to the stage, thinking about what I could do. The air runes? No, Trixie could beat those easily. Shadowmancy? No, I'd scare everyone and the sun is not in a good position. Biomancy? Maybe, but would it be impressive if I made a plant grow really fast?
Yeah, no, fuck this shit, I'm gonna cheat get help.
'Voth! I need help, I shouted in mind. Voth was there in a moment, letting me continue, 'Do you know any spells that would look really impressive to a crowd AND not be one upped by Trixie?
"I DO," Voth said, giving me some hope but all that hope died when Voth continued, "HOWEVER YOU CANNOT USE MOST OF THEM YET FOR YOU ARE TOO WEAK."
'What about the ones I can do? I asked frantically as I stepped up onto the stage.
"I AM INPUTTING THEM INTO YOUR MIND RIGHT NOW," Voth answered. My head hurt a little after he said that but the sudden input of knowledge was more relieving than painful.
"Same as before, you start first," Trixie said as I stopped in front of her.
"Okay then," I replied, a lot more confident than I was earlier.
My horn lit up and I help my hoof up. A glowing disc of green magic appeared on it and it formed into a rune. Trixie raised an eyebrow at the simple looking thing but I continued by 'throwing' the rune into the air. Of course, it was all my magic that did the work but I had to look cool while doing it. The rune went up into the air, glowing brighter as it gained altitude and when it was about ten meters above us, it 'broke' apart into a bunch of little flames and bits of green magic and they looked quite similar to fireflies as they came back to the ground.
I had cleverly made it look like the rune (which actually did nothing) made all the flashy stuff appear when it was actually me conjuring tiny fireballs and balls of magical light. It wasn't magically intensive but it was demanding with how many things I had to keep track of. Most of the tiny magical ball lights ended up dissipating as they got close to the ground since I couldn't track them against the mostly green ground and since most of the stuff as already gone, I stopped the tiny fireballs as well.
Of course, the crowd was mesmerised by the display and when it ended, they cheered for me. I was a bit taken aback by the cheering but I kept myself steady.
Trixie looked on, only mildly impressed by my trick. "It's rather impressive how you could keep track of those many lights but it's nothing against what I can do!"
She reared up on her and her horn glowed brightly for a second before it shot a spell towards the sky. The spell was much like a rocket, making a whistling sound as it gained altitude before it exploded, leaving a blue pattern in the shape of Trixie's talent mark. Her trick was clearly a lot more impressive than mine, as evident by the crowd's 'ooohs' and 'ahhhs'. The jump in expected quality and subsequently, the difficulty, was discouraging but I didn't give up just yet.
Now, it was my turn again and I figured that I should try something with biomancy and my new ability to conjure balls of magical light. It took me a moment to plan out what I wanted to do and that was enough for Trixie to say, "What is it, are you afraid that you're too weak to beat Trixie's magic?"
"Nuh uh," came my reply as my horn lit up. I focused on the magic of a random weed that was underneath the stage and I willed it to grow. It took a few seconds for the weed to start growing but when it did start, it grew fast. It might have looked like I was doing nothing until the weed grew tall enough to peek through the small gaps in the floor of the stage. Trixie looked alarmed as the plant started growing outwards instead of upwards and stepped back a bit, giving me space to continue rapidly growing the plant. There was so much magic put into the plant that it actually started giving off some firefly-like lights as piece of it started breaking off and burning up, but that worked to my advantage as it gave me free light effects.
The thing was starting to slow down its growth as it assumed the shape of a long candle holder with three legs. Once it took that shape, it rapidly turned from green to brown as it died because of me reducing the amount of my magic flowing into it. Making the thing was exhausting but I still had something to do. In the final moments of the plant's life, I made it mold a rune onto its top and once it was done, a ball of white magic appeared on top of it. In the end, there was a really cool and organic looking candle holder holding a ball of white magical light on stage. I was pretty exhausted as well.
"Pretty cool, right?" I said with a coug, noting that I probably shouldn't do this much magic yet. Trixie looked at the decoration with a slacked jaw, clearly impressed by my plant-o-mancy. In the crowd, I could hear plenty of whispers that seemed vaguely positive and questioning as well. Trixie face shifted as she probably started thinking real hard about how she could one-up my best. The whispers in the crowd grew the longer she remained silent.
Finally, she tipped her hat and spoke, "Well, it seems I've been bested. There's not many people who can claim to have done that."
The crowd broke into cheers as Trixie admitted defeat. I was thankful that she didn't do another trick because I didn't have the strength to do another trick. It was great as well, having all these people cheer for me (even though I might have had some help but that wasn't something they needed to know).
"Say, what's your name?" Trixie asked over the cheering of the crowd as she came up to me.
"Anya," I answered.
"Well, Anya, I hope that you stay for a bit. The show will be ending in a few minutes and I'd like to talk to you after that," she continued, making me a bit worried. What did she want to talk about? "And what of the light you made?" She asked, pointing to the ball-of-magical-light-holder.
"I dunno, you can keep it if you want but its probably very flammable," I replied, pulling the light-holder from its place and making it break off from the dead plant under the stage. I stepped off the stage, leaving the light-holder next to it, and went back to the back of the crowd, letting Trixie continue her show.
"Woah, what was that?" Spike asked me as I came back to the spot where I was standing.
"Basic biomancy along with some runes and fireballs and light spells," I answered. "Still pretty tiring though. I'd probably have been laughed off the stage if Trixie didn't admit defeat."
"She just went easy on you," Rainbow said, probably salty about how I beat Trixie, who had beat her.
"Now, Rainbow, you and I both saw that Trixie did not go easy on Anya, so don't say that," Twilight said to Rainbow before she turned to me. "That was impressive, Anya."
"The light holder could use some work on its looks though," Rarity said before quickly adding, "Not that it wasn't impressive."
"Yep, Ah'd buy that thing if it were fer sale," Applejack added.
"Thanks guys," I said. "By the way, does anyone have something to eat? Doing those tricks made me hungry."
The show went for a bit longer than I expected but I was not the one running it, so, whatever. I was busy eating a second sandwich through most of it anyway. When it ended, I stayed back like Trixie asked me to but so did some random kids. I had to wait some more as the kids had gotten to Trixie first and were asking her all sorts of questions about her exploits and whatnot.
Once they were done with their questions, Trixie called me over.
"Now, Anya, I've got to ask you this," she began as she adjusted her hat. "What was the magic you used when you did your second trick?"
"Oh, that was some basic biomancy along with runes and some light spells mixed in to make whatever I thought looked cool at the time," I answered non-chalantly. "It was rather exhausting to perform though."
"Biomancy? You have a book on that subject?" she continued, looking somewhat surprised at the mention of said magic.
"Yeah, why?" I asked, a bit confused.
"Well, it is hard to find books that instruct on the... less light-sided parts of magic. Would it be appropriate if I borrow that book? It would help me get some new tricks for my show," she said, shedding some light on some knowledge that I felt like I should have known.
"It's library property, you'll have to go borrow it from there and then return it," I answered, making Trixie a bit discouraged. I continued though, "However, there are no rules against copying it all in a notebook if you want to do that. I'll get you the book and you can get it back to me at the library when you're done with it."
"Thank you, Anya," she said with a smile. "I suppose I could give you something in return, especially with that decoration you gave me for free."
My curiosity was piqued at the mention of something I could get. "What is it?"
"It's a book on magical constructs that I haven't been able to find use for. Let me go get it," Trixie answered as she went into her carriage. There were some sounds of rummaging and Trixie was out with a old looking book in her magic. She presented it to me, letting me see that it had no title or anything. "I got it from an old pony on one of my previous shows. If you couldn't use it then maybe it'll find a place in the town library. Whatever the case, it'll certainly be better than just collecting dust in my wagon."
She let me take the book. I opened it to a random page and saw that it was something about magically charged gems. I closed the book and said, "This looks interesting. Thanks for this, I'll get you your book in a few minutes."
"Okay then, I'll be waiting," Trixie said as she moved onto folding up the stage with her magic.
Now, I just had to go and get the book from my home, which is what I went on to do. As I walked, I noticed that I was feeling pretty nice. Guess the day had gone pretty good for a friday.
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Cute couple or one night stand… maybe a roommate then lover if her wagon gets crushed and she needs a bed?
11892731
probably not gonna happen since anya lost interest like, halfway through (after realising she was simping)
Cute simple slice of life. Also can't they ask Voth for a sleep ade spell?
Ah, finally free from the Orb of Detainment (in which I was detained for quite a while by a rival wizard). And what do I see after my escape? 4 new chapters!
Eh, anyways. I'm interested to see how Anon/Nemo's story plays out. It seems like both her and Anya are from Earths different from ours with the mention of WW3. Also a fan of how magic has been developed through the last few chapters, though I only realized now how little Anya has actually interacted with any of the Mane 6 besides Twinkles.
Wow, who knew there's a fanfic where Trixie admits defeat, darn.
11894487
:3
what did u like about the magic?
11889675
actually, anya does in fact, use a very shitty analogy, making twiggles a bit scared, in chapter 26
Yes,yes it would have
Ahh yes, Anya specialty of gaslighting. Now all she needs to do is girlboss and gatekeep and she'll be a "boss bitch" queen that can "slay" in no time.
Dude over here trying to be the tier 3 sub that pays for her onlypone.
11892740
A simp isn't suppose to realize they are simping.