Trixie stood at the forefront of her little trio, face-to-face with a freshly opened door. They’d come here straight after Pinkie’s speech, and in that time had not shared a single word. That is to say, they had not spoken to Trixie, and Trixie had not spoken back. These two back-country ponies had been some of the magician’s… how could she put it? Her ‘disillusioned fans’ from Ponyville. They talked to each other almost constantly, whispering about how scared they were, and how they’d protect each other. The magician wasn’t paying attention to the particulars. She was with them for the safety in numbers, not for all the juicy details in their personal lives.
Of course, this assignment came with its own challenges. Pinkie Pie’s words of encouragement rang in the illusionist’s mind as she stared down that dark, foreboding staircase, but it provided very little comfort. This madpony she’d been hired by made his entire living off of writing, most of which was downright horrifying. Who knew what a horror writer would think his basement should look like? Let alone the fact that a killer might be down there. Any attempts at stalling seemed to be nigh-genius.
“…Well?” asked the cream-colored mare behind her. What was her name? Bon-Bon, maybe? Well, this “Bon-Bon” was already getting on Trixie’s nerves. The magician hadn’t bothered to figure the dynamic of this little couple, but if there was one she guessed that this mare was the one with a stick up her plot. That would make—
“Yeah, hurry up!” insisted the teal-colored mare, Lyra. “I wanna get a load of this basement!”
--ah, yes. That would make Lyra the free spirit. Sighing at both their predictability and her own predicament, Trixie twisted her neck to look back at them. “If you two are so impatient, then perhaps you should be the ones leading?”
“Oh, nonsense.” insisted Bon-Bon, making a casually dismissive wave with her hoof. “We’re just a couple of backwater fillies. What would we hope to do to rival the ‘great and powerful’ Trixie? After you, O magical wonder-pony.”
Lyra tried her best to hold back a fit of giggles, while Trixie opted just to sigh quite dramatically. It was now or never, she supposed. Then again, never wasn’t so bad an option…
“HURRY UP!” shouted Bon-Bon. That did the ticket, as the sheer shock from volume seemed to remove all friction from Trixie’s hooves; the unicorn went careening down the staircase, leaving the giggling couple to follow her down.
The lighting and mood seemed to shift for the worse as Trixie descended into the basement. Where once warm and rosy colors reminded her of Hearth’s Warming Even, now a sickly, cold green permeated all around. The walls were assorted, gray stones, and the stairs creaked with every step. She swore she could smell sulfur burning. The thought entered her mind: maybe the basement wasn’t always here, and it was just made to conceal the fact that the old stallion had accidentally built Brindlehoof on top of Tartarus?
She could hear somepony sniffing loudly behind her. “What smells like licorice burning in a pot of leeks?”
Trixie looked back as she reached the halfway point of the stairs—which she could finally see were mud brown and rather rickety—to see that it was Bon-Bon asking. She raised an eyebrow and asked “What in Equestria are you babbling about? It’s very clearly sulfur…” she paused to take another whiff. “and maybe some garlic?”
Lyra cocked an eyebrow, and smelled for herself. “Well, that’s weird. I smell licorice and poppy seeds. OH, WAIT! I know!”
Both other ponies stopped in their descent on a platform, where the stairs’ path rotated 90 degrees, and gave a curious stare to the teal unicorn, who simply looked at them like they’d forgotten how to perform basic math equations.
“What?” she asked, curiously. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s a Camouflage spell. One of the things it does is mask your scent!”
That only confounded the other two further, who were now staring, hopelessly confused, at Lyra. The other mare was lost to her own thoughts, though, and tuned the others out entirely as she mused. “Of course, if we’re smelling such strong stuff, it’s probably not complete… a few ingredients must still be missing. Or else, it’s been stewing for at least 6 hours.”
Finally, her sight drifted back to reality, and she saw her baffled companions. All Lyra did in response was shrug. “What? I took a few classes back in Canterlot. I didn’t ALWAYS know I’d be a musician.”
Once Bon-Bon finished picking her jaw up off the floor, she was the next to speak, albeit with some hesitation. “…All right, then. Shall we investigate?”
“Uh, what?” Trixie asked, glaring at the earth pony. “I think it’s very clear that we will NOT be investigating down here. Don’t you get what that smell means? It means that, we probably haven’t seen this killer because he’s invisible! And if he’s invisible, that means he might be down there right now and we won’t see him until it’s too late!”
Bon-Bon took a deep breath, and made an exaggerated face as she used her hooves to indicate a small margin of space. “Yeah, just a teensy little problem with your plan, missy. If he were down here, then you just talked more than loudly enough for him to hear you.”
Trixie clamped her mouth shut with both hooves as the cream-colored mare confirmed what she was already thinking. “He already knows we’re here. So, we might as well head down and get this over with.”
At first, no clear reaction was visible. Trixie stood exactly as she was the moment before. Then a few seconds passed. A few more still. A few more yet. The illusionist had yet to move an inch. She was stuck in place like a statue, mouth clamped in forced silence. The earth pony had to stop herself from breaking into laughter right there, while Lyra inched closer and poked the magician with a hoof. No registry of the touch, whatsoever.
Bon-Bon finally broke her silence and let out a wheezing laugh as she wrapped a hoof around Lyra’s shoulders, directing the pair down the stairs together. As they walked, the unicorn observed the serene expression on her partner’s face.
“Uh, Bon-Bon? Isn’t this a little dangerous, heading straight down to the villain’s lair, when you were saying he was there?”
Bon-Bon giggled and bopped Lyra on the nose. “Silly filly. I was just saying that to screw with Trixie; there’s no way the killer would hide down here with a smell like that to give a big warning to everypony.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the musical pony, satisfied with this explanation. But a moment later, another thought struck her. “Well, what about Trixie?”
“Oh, she’ll catch up. Just give her a minute.”
The pair of ponies descended, leaving Trixie frozen and alone on the staircase. In this solitude, her mind began to process, with the sober realization that she was all alone. With a killer on the loose.
In the dark.
In the basement.
If Rainbow Dash had been present, she would have been forced to admit that she could never hope to match the speed that Trixie demonstrated in charging down those stairs. The magician constricted every muscle in her upper body to keep from giving a girlish shriek of terror as she scurried down into the basement.
There weren’t many more stairs to go, when she finally came to the end of her mad dash. She hit the bottom of the stairs, landing on a cobblestone floor, panting furiously as her senses slowly returned.
That smell was still present, and stronger than ever. But her eyes were the organs that truly feasted down there. The sickly green glow was stronger than ever, and was practically its own light source by now. She was in a small-ish room, all things considered. A few barrels, cracked open by time or something Trixie didn’t want to think about rested under the staircase. Cobwebs filled every corner, and directly opposing the bottom of the staircase were two doors. The one on the left had a label on the center, at some point, but it was gone now. Trixie could still see the faded section where it had once been. The thought interested her, as to why it would ever be taken away, but she was more distracted by the other door.
It, like its counterpart, was simple lacquered wood, with no real pattern to speak of. The decadence and style of the upper floors was lost here. It was cracked open; apparently this was where Lyra and Bon-Bon had gone while she was having her little… ‘episode’. The highlight of the door, however, was its own very much present label.
MAD SCIENCE ROOM
“Well, that’s… blatant.”
Stepping forward, she nudged the door open to look inside. What she found was, well, mad science.
The room was decorated in a combination of simplicity, elegance, and malevolence. In the center of the room, raised on a stone pedestal, was a bubbling black cauldron, with a green smoke slowly rising from the center. At the moment, Bon-Bon was standing next to it and staring inside, perplexed. Lyra was off on the opposite side of the room from Trixie, examining a large brown desk stacked high with dozens of pieces of parchment. They all seemed to be research notes, some of which were compiled in simply-binded books and shoved into an adjacent bookcase. Trixie stepped in, attracting the other mares’ attention. Bon-Bon smirked.
“Well, looks like our little magician decided to join us.”
Lyra seemed significantly less hostile. “Oh, finally! I could really use your help going through these Trixie!” She waved around a few pieces of parchment to illustrate. “Come check this out!”
Not feeling much else was around to do, she trotted over to see what the other unicorn was chattering about. She looked over Lyra’s shoulder at the mess of papers.
“Check this out!” Lyra insisted. “There’s a ton of stuff here, by Nicodemus. Research, and stuff, and it’s recent too! Just this last week, he was doing all of this stuff!”
“Really?” asked the blue unicorn, eyeing a randomly selected piece. “How could anypony churn out this much work in a week?”
“Dunno!” replied Lyra. “But, check it, in this entry, just three days ago.” She pointed out one in particular that Trixie leaned in to read with her.
Not much time left. Big day’s coming, and I’m not prepared. Camouflage spell’s a dud, smell’s too strong, not going to keep me safe. Not even time to dump the cauldron out back. If only I had time to call in my expert. Too late now. All I can do is hope for the best, I suppose. Pinkie, bless her heart, she’s going to be devastated. And I imagine Octavia will have some choice words as well, if I ever get to speak to her again.
One last trial. I have confidence in this one, just finished collecting the bag of stallion hair this morning. If it doesn’t work… I don’t know what I’m going to do.
“It doesn’t say what, but he was preparing all these spells for something specific! Something really, super-important!”
“Preparing…” muttered the magician, lost in thought. This certainly wasn’t good. She had a very strong feeling that they needed to get out of this basement. With a strong hoof, she shoved Lyra aside and dug into the parchment. The teal unicorn was bowled over and sputtered out a confused response.
“What the hay was that for?!”
“I’M the master magician here.” replied Trixie, with a particularly haughty expression shimmering in the green light. “You and Bon-Bon investigate something else, I’m going to get to the bottom of these so-called ‘preparations’.”
Feeling more than a little dejected, Lyra walked over to another corner of the room, where Bon-Bon was taking a look at another platform like the cauldron’s. This one had nothing on top of it, only a violet chalk outline of some strange circular pattern.
“Oh, Lyra, thank goodness.” said the other mare. “You’re the magic expert between us, any idea what this is?”
The mare leaned down to get a better look at the pattern, but was already looking displeased as she did. “Er, no. Sorry, but this looks like pretty advanced stuff. Might be rune magic, but that's really advanced stuff. I don’t know a thing about it.”
“Horseapples.” muttered Bon-Bon, stamping on the center of the platform with her hoof. It seemed perfectly sized for an average pony to stand on. “Think there’s any way to activate it? I wanna know what it does.”
“That… doesn’t seem like such a good idea.” said Lyra.
Meanwhile, Trixie had relocated herself from the desk to the bookcase. It was at least five ponies wide, and stacked with years and years of research. Her face was scrunched up in careful thought, magically hefting Nicodemus’ lastest—and last—research book. She scanned the shelves, looking for the empty spot it had come from. It was quite clear that the old pony didn’t organize his work chronologically, from the dates scrawled on the bindings. Some of them stretched back over thirty years.
“I wonder how far back these preparations of his went?” she questioned. Finally, her wandering eyes found their prize: a small indent between the stuffed lines of books. Third shelf up, about halfway across the right side. She brought the book up and attempted to shove it into the blank spot. Sadly, it seemed a bit difficult to fit. “Bucking book… go!” she hissed. She pushed harder and harder, until at last the book slipped in, and she heard a click.
Wait.
Click?
With a rusty groaning, the entire bookshelf swung on a pivot in its center. The place she’d shoved the book through gave out under her push, and she tumbled into a… something beyond it. A small cavern, or room, or crawlspace. Whatever it was, all she knew was that she tripped over something as soon as she went in, a raise platform, and bowled herself right on top of it.
The pain that naturally tried to rise subsided as she saw something. A pattern of some sort on the platform was beginning to glow with light. “What in the—“
ZAP
She was gone.
Back in the main room, Lyra and Bon-Bon were silent, both mares transfixed by the rotating bookcase that had swallowed up Trixie. Neither of them noticed the platform Bon-Bon was on had begun to glow as well.
ZAP
Lyra’s eyes darted to her right, to see that her best friend had disappeared.
At once feeling a cold chill, Lyra began to back towards the center of the room. The air was growing colder; she could see her own breath. Taps echoed around the room, as if someone was making very careful, deliberate hoofsteps.
“H-hello?” the teal pony asked. She couldn’t begin to fathom why she had, her trembling heart begged her not to say anything, and to just run upstairs and escape this whole mess. But she had spoken.
And she received her answer.
“Mmm-hmm-hmm. Huhuhuh..heheheheheehhhAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA—“
ZZAP
With a thud, Trixie landed. Her stomach felt like it had been turned upside down, and inside of her a desperate need to hurl her guts out was swelling up alongside her lunch. She had absolutely no clue where she was. It was dark enough that she couldn’t see a foot in front of her. But she could still hear, and below, she heard a muffled voice. Very quiet, very serene.
“What… did you do… to my rabbit?”
“Huh?!” squealed the blue unicorn, scrambling to her feet. This was a vital misstep, as she had yet to realize how precariously she was balanced. As soon as she tried to move, the entire platform swiveled, dropping the floor out from underneath her and sending her plopping down into the center of an ornate, circular room.
Her haunches stung, and the whole room was spinning, but no amount of dulled senses could mitigate the dread she felt coming from the butter-colored pegasus staring at her.