Chapter 20: The House of Mirrors

Chapter 20: The House of Mirrors

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"Well," said Twilight Sparkle, "this isn't what I expected."

Of all the corporeal forms for Trixie's mind to take, a rundown circus was not what Twilight had expected. But ahead of them, under a cloudy, stormy sky, lay the tattered remains of what had once evidently been a big and bustling circus. The tents stood in dilapidated rows, riddled with holes, their colors faded and streaked. Rusted cages, broken ropes, and rotting wood lay everywhere. The spirit of decay hung over everything like a fog.

Twilight glanced over at Trixie. "So, uh, explanation?"

Trixie blanched. "You think I know what this is all about?"

"Well, it's your mind."

"That doesn't mean I get it." She frowned. "The princesses did say it was going to be crazy in here. Which is all the more reason to kick this blasted Nightmare out."

Twilight looked ahead to the rotting circus. "That's true. So, uh," she looked around and her eyes fell on a fading, crumbling construct surrounded by disintegrating hearts, "where to first?"

Trixie followed Twilight's gaze and shivered. "We are not going in there."

"The law of cosmic irony says that's probably where she's hiding," Twilight warned.

"Then we'll burn the thing down and flush her out, but we are not going into a rotting tunnel of love to search for an evil spirit of darkness. There is absolutely no way that can end well." She looked around and settled on a row of rusting cages. "Let's start there."

Twilight cringed. "At the freak show?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"...well, no."

Together they picked their way through tarnished metal cages, some of them hanging open, all of them strewn with bones. With a tendril of magic, Twilight lifted up the skull of something that looked like a cross between a walrus and a manticore. "Um...well, this is nice."

"Ugh. Where on earth did my subconscious get such a macabre taste for décor?"

Twilight set the skull back down and turned back towards Trixie. "The princesses did say that these are all symbols," she said. "That we shouldn't take any of this stuff at face value. It represents things." Trixie looked away awkwardly. "But that means we're going to have to be honest with each other." She waved a hoof at the rest of the tattered circus. "We're going to have to be if we want to get through this and find that stupid Nightmare."

Trixie closed her eyes. "I...don't know. Honestly. I, um..." She looked around again and shuddered at the sight of the abandoned cages and the white bones inside. "I got my start in my performing career at a circus. But I have no idea what 'dead freak show exhibits' are supposed to mean."

Twilight levitated another skull. "Probably not something flattering, I'd wager."

"Even my own subconscious is out to get me."

They picked over another cage, this one containing the sprawling skeleton of something reptilian. "It's like whoever was in charge of this place just left one day..." Twilight started. Trixie blinked in surprise; Twilight glanced back at her questioningly. "What is it?"

"Like...they were abandoned..."

"Yeah, like— " Twilight stopped as the gears clicked into place in her mind, and she turned around to give Trixie a hug. "Like that..."

"I-It's okay— "

"No it's not."

"Well, it makes sense," Trixie said with a sad sigh. "An abandoned circus. Something that somepony decided they didn't want anymore— "

"Don't talk like that," Twilight interrupted.

"Well, it's true, isn't it?" Trixie retorted. "Wasn't I abandoned, by the very same ponies who were supposed to take care of me, just like these things?" She glared down at the bones. "I thought we had to be honest."

They both jumped as something behind them came down with a crash— and a board fell down from a faded sign hanging over another torn tent. Twilight and Trixie peered down at it.

"The house of mirrors," read Twilight.

They shared a look. "Maybe the tunnel of love would've been safer after all," Trixie grumbled.

"We have to go into one of these tents. Nightmare Storm isn't going to just come to us," Twilight glanced around, "and if this place really is supposed to symbolize you and we're supposed to confront your deepest issues, then we're going to have to actually go confront stuff."

Trixie pouted. "How come the issues can't come to us and be confronted here?"

"Well, I'll be with you," Twilight said with a smile. "Does that help?"

"One can hope."

They peered ahead into the darkness— and Twilight immediately wrapped her tail up together with Trixie's. "What are you doing?" the blue unicorn asked.

"I just know the instant we go in there, Nightmare Storm will try to separate us. And I'm not wandering around inside a house of mirrors in your mind by myself."

Trixie scowled back. "If you bolt and take my tail with you, I'll never forgive you."

Together they advanced into the shadowy hall. The mirrors were all smudged, cracked, broken, riddled with fractures everywhere; cobwebs hung from the ceiling and dust coated everything. The mirrors reflected nothing, which made the maze easy to navigate— but only after they'd lost sight of the entrance did the reflections start to clear up and the blurred, smudged forms of the two ponies start to become visible.

"If I recall correctly," Twilight said, "the house of mirrors is supposed to show you weird, distorted, funny versions of yourself. And it's supposed to be disorienting and confusing to navigate. So if this is a symbol..."

"...we'll be in here forever," groaned Trixie.

The mirrors began to clear up and show warped and distorted reflections of Twilight and Trixie as they made their way through the maze. Twilight glanced off to her left and arched an eyebrow at the sight of herself stretched out into an oblong shape, with her head and her tail pinched into tiny little vestigial growths on either end of her body.

"If there's supposed to be symbolism in all this, you'll have to explain to me why I look like a whale in most of these mirrors."

Trixie blinked. "Oh, wow, you do." She frowned. "And here I thought Pinkie Pie would've been the whale-like one."

"Pinkie Pie's metabolism is not of this world, so I gave up trying to figure out where all those cupcakes and candies went a long time ago."

They moved on and the mirrors got clearer— but the reflections stayed as indistinct as ever. Twilight and Trixie rounded a corner— and then the mirrors shifted again.

"What's going on now...?" Trixie started.

Twilight blinked in surprise as one of the mirrors next to her flickered— and then Fluttershy appeared, cowering and trembling. "F-Fluttershy?" The apparition looked up in surprise, seized up in terror, and then vanished. "What...?"

"She ain't one of us!" cried Applejack's voice; Twilight and Trixie spun around to find themselves staring down a hulking image of an angry Applejack.

"Should've just fried her right off the bat," added a wiry, menacing Rainbow Dash.

"Completely undignified," sniffed a sneering Rarity.

Twilight looked back at Trixie disbelievingly. "Is this...what you think of my friends, Trixie?"

The blue unicorn shuffled her hooves. "They didn't exactly make the best first impression, y'know."

"Well, no, but..." Twilight looked back up at the mirrors, where Pinkie Pie bounced off the walls, where Spike whined and clung, where her friends were twisted into unrecognizable caricatures— literally, even, as their features warped and bent, ballooned and shrank. "This isn't them. This isn't them at all!" She waved at the image of a pusillanimous Fluttershy, slinking around in the background. "That's not the pony who cared for all your injuries all this time." She turned towards the intimidating version of Rainbow Dash. "And that's not the pony who told you to stay away from Inferno so you wouldn't get hurt. These aren't my friends!"

Trixie looked away. "We are being honest here," she said, "so, can you blame me? The first thing I knew of them was that they challenged me, publicly. And the next thing I knew of them was that most of them would rather you hadn't saved me. Can you really tell me that they accept me? That they'll forget about what happened at my show? That they're any different?"

As soon as she finished speaking, the caricatures of Twilight's friends shifted again. Twilight looked back at the images— but she blinked as something caught her eye, and she stepped up closer to the nearest mirror for a closer look. Up close, it wasn't just a scowling image of Rainbow Dash in the mirror; the image itself was composed of so many smaller ponies, with that same look of distrust and menace on their face. The mosaic shifted as Rainbow Dash shifted. Twilight looked over at the next image, of a demented Pinkie Pie, and found the same thing: a multitude of nosy ponies. They were everywhere; every image of her friends composed of so many tiny images of ponies with those same angry or cowering or distrustful expressions. And she recognized all too many of those expressions: the snooty uplifted nose of the Canterlot elite, the distrustful gaze of tight-knit friends regarding a standoffish stranger, the grins of thoughtless ponies reveling in someone else's misfortune.

"Your friends are hardly the first ponies I've met who didn't like me," Trixie said, her eyes fixed on the unchanging floor, "and what was I supposed to think when I met them? That they were different from all the rest?"

Twilight looked back at Trixie. "But my friends didn't like you at first because you were so...well, arrogant."

Trixie arched an eyebrow. "Arrogant?"

"Yes. Like you felt like the first thing you had to do was prove that you're better than everypony else."

"Well don't I?" Trixie waved a hoof testily at the shifting images around them. "If I don't, then no one will accept me!" Tears welled up at the corner of her eyes. "Just like my parents didn't accept me when I wasn't better than everyone else!"

"But I accept you."

Trixie looked back down on the ground. "I know," she mumbled. "That's what makes you different."

Twilight looked back up sadly at the swirling, deformed mosaics of her friends. "But those things still aren't my friends," she said. "I know that. And...well, I hope I can show you that too." She shook her head. "I guess Pinkie was right. You really didn't have any friends."

Trixie glared. "I have plenty of friends!" Twilight stared skeptically at her and her glare began to wither. "...well, fine, so I didn't. So what?"

"Well," Twilight said, and put her arm around Trixie's shoulders, "you have friends now. And they won't judge you for your magic skills or your past or anything. I will make sure of it." She smiled. "I know what it's like to think you don't need friends. And then you get some friends and look back and wonder how you could have ever been so silly." Her smile fell. "You just need to, y'know, be nicer to them."

"Wonderful, we go into my mind and you lecture at me," Trixie grumbled.

The mirrors shifted again, and a pathway forward opened itself up as one of them vanished in a cloud of dust. Twilight and Trixie shared a skeptical glance, but continued on. The mirrors moved; between them, the two unicorns could see flashes of the ruined circus around them: the sagging high-wire, the broken trapeze, the bones of an elephant slumped on a pedestal, the empty, rotting bleachers. Twilight shivered at the sight. If this was supposed to be some kind of physical manifestation of how Trixie felt, abandoned by her own parents and left to decay, then she felt her heart break at the thought— and she felt her spine stiffen with resolve to show her that she was not like this circus.

The mirrors settled down again, completely silent, and the reflections began to materialize once more. Twilight and Trixie shared a nervous glance— and Twilight noticed her own reflection beginning to fade from view completely, leaving only Trixie, in all the weird shapes the mirrors had to offer.

"I guess this is where we find out how you see yourself," Twilight said, "seeing as how I'm disappearing."

Trixie grimaced. "Great."

Around them, the mirrors slowly came into focus as the two unicorns made their way through. Every bizarre angle and distortion flickered through the glass— but as they moved forward, Twilight began to notice the reflections slowly work their way back towards something resembling the truth. And then they warped again.

Twilight and Trixie stopped inside an open space, surrounded on all sides by smudged, cracked glass— with flickering images of the blue unicorn in every pane. The Great and Powerful Trixie stood on a stage, humiliating a row of other ponies with dazzling mastery of the arcane arts. Twilight frowned— because her show had never been that spectacular. And she had never been this cruel to its hecklers, either. The ponies on stage were pelted with garbage from the crowd; Trixie laughed in their faces and gloried in their humiliation.

At Twilight's side, Trixie cringed. "What? Don't tell me you've never had mean, vengeful fantasies."

"No, but I didn't actually act them out either."

Another mirror rippled as its image came to life, and Twilight arched an eyebrow at the sight of the Great and Powerful Trixie, cape billowing heroically in the wind, as she fended off not just an Ursa Major but a manticore, a hydra, a dragon, and a pack of timber wolves, all at the same time. And then it changed again, to show the Great and Powerful Trixie gallantly deflecting a landslide with her magic alone. And another image, of the Great and Powerful Trixie striding down the streets of Canterlot and disdainfully accepting the bows of its citizens, as though she were Princess Celestia herself.

But among the shifting images, one of them, wedged way in the back, caught Twilight's eye. And this Trixie was not great and powerful. This one was a scared little filly in the middle of a big city, looking up fearfully at the soaring buildings and the older, taller, disinterested ponies around her. She was alone— quivering with fright.

Twilight looked over at Trixie, to find her looking down at the floor with shame. "Yes, I know, you think that one is the real me."

"I-Is it?"

"What do you think?"

Twilight looked back at the frightened filly in the mirror. "Well, you had a pretty good reason to be scared," she said.

The filly in front of them moved on, to a room filled with other foals— and overseen by one exhausted-looking older mare. At least the blue filly had an ability to use magic, but no one paid attention to it— at least until she put on a show, with a hat and a cape made of paper.

"That's actually incredibly adorable," Twilight said with a smile.

Trixie's face flashed red. "Glad you're taking this so seriously."

"No really, that is pretty much the cutest thing I have ever seen."

"Well keep watching, bookworm, it gets cuter."

None of the other ponies paid attention to the show— until the little blue filly started to get more flamboyant, more showy, and more arrogant. And even then it sometimes depended on embarrassing one of her peers. Twilight cringed as the little filly grew, and so did her magical abilities— and her capacity for embarrassing the other foals.

But now they were paying attention to her. Trixie snorted in annoyance. "Makes sense, doesn't it."

"I guess..."

"I know," Trixie growled, "all you can see is that scared little filly we saw first." She closed her eyes. "Can you blame me?"

Twilight pulled her closer for a hug. "I guess not."

"I thought if I was a star, ponies would like me. And then they didn't. And since they didn't like me, they would want to hurt me, and I would have to keep them at arm's length. And," she waved a hoof disgustedly at the flickering Trixies around them, "well, you can see how that turned out." She glanced over bitterly at Twilight. "So here I am, the Great and Powerful Trixie, deep down a neurotic, lonely wreck. As long as we're being honest."

Twilight kissed her. "And as long as we are being honest," she said, "all I see under this big tough exterior is a pony who just wants to be loved."

"Oh, wonderful, my clever deceptions don't work on you anymore."

"If they did, I'd think you're as much of a jerk as Rainbow Dash does."

Trixie looked back bleakly at the little filly putting on magic shows in her orphanage and demanding attention with her showiness— and winning attention, but never any friends. "Well, I'm glad we can take this wonderfully informative trip through my psyche, but I must point out that we aren't actually finding the Nightmare."

"Well, we'll have to get out of here first," Twilight said, looking around, "and I'm not sure I want to go breaking all these mirrors and sending broken glass flying all over the place."

The images kept on changing. Trixie looked up with resignation towards the shifting visions of herself in all their forms. "Well, no matter what," she said, "that's not what I want to be."

At that, the mirrors shifted and darkened again, and another pathway opened up. Both ponies blinked in surprise.

"Did you do that?" Twilight asked.

"Wait, do self-affirmative declarative sentences make this thing go faster?" Trixie added. "Hey Nightmare, I'm awesome! And amazing! And completely one hundred percent satisfied with the direction of my life!"

Nothing happened. Trixie scowled and Twilight smiled nervously. "It was worth a shot."

"It's only worth a shot if it works," grumbled Trixie.

They trooped on through the open spaces between the mirrors— but as they moved forward, Twilight noticed the mirrors getting more densely-packed, and even more confusing. The shapes of herself and Trixie blurred together in some places, stretched far apart in others, and never seemed to make sense— but the solid, unchanging ground beneath their hooves led them on, deeper into the maze...and closer, she hoped, to the Nightmare. How they were going to get rid of the bloody thing was not yet clear, but Twilight would not rest until it was gone.

Trixie glanced over at Twilight and twitched in evident discomfort. "This is humiliating."

"Is it that bad that I get to know you?"

"It is like this," she waved a hoof contemptuously at the foggy mirrors, "when I have absolutely no control over what you see."

Twilight looked away with a frown. "So...you don't trust me?"

Trixie rolled her eyes. "If I didn't trust you, Twilight, we wouldn't even be here. I'm letting you see all my deepest, darkest fears," she glared over at the purple unicorn, "and I expect you to keep them that way."

Twilight smiled back. "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."

"...what?"

"Oh, um," Twilight blushed, "it's the, uh, Pinkie Pie Promise."

"The what?"

"It's the highest level of confidence you could possibly attain," Twilight explained with a grin. "When a Pinkie Pie Promise is made, it will be done, no matter what. If she pledges to keep a secret, nothing will ever draw it out of her. And woe betide you if you ever break one. Just making that promise right now means she'll somehow know I made it, through whatever mystical forces govern her crazy existence, and she'll hold me to it forever."

Trixie stared. "You ponies are all crazy."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it." She smiled back at Trixie. "But I promise, your secrets are safe with me, Trixie. I won't tell a soul." She looked up at the mirrors, still reflecting indistinct purple and blue shapes. "I know where I am and what I'm seeing, and I know how much it would hurt you if I ever broke your confidence, and," her smile faded and her gaze shifted towards the ground, "and I can't do anything to hurt you."

Trixie grimaced. "We're not having that 'are you leaving' conversation again, are we?"

"No," Twilight said with a shake of her head, "at this point it would probably be meaningless."

They walked on in silence for a moment, and Trixie looked forward into the darkness. "You really are too nice to deserve all this."

"Wha— ?"

Trixie nodded up ahead; Twilight followed her gaze and blinked in surprise as the mirrors began to shift again. But this time it was Trixie that faded away with every step in their reflections— leaving only the shifting, distorting images of Twilight.

"This must be the part where you get to see how I look at you," Trixie said, with an awkward gaze at the floor.

They both came to a stop and Twilight tilted Trixie's chin up to look into her eyes. "Trixie, whatever is in there, I promise, I'm not going to hold it against you."

"Promise, huh?"

"I do." Twilight smiled. "The princess did say not to take everything here at face value, after all."

"Yes, well, we'll see, won't we?"

They continued on together and Twilight steeled herself for the visions ahead. Promise or not, her heart began to beat faster at the thought of finally figuring out just what it was Trixie felt about her— and the fear of what the answer might be began to crawl up her spine.

The images of her were everywhere— and she could hardly recognize herself in any of them. She saw herself immersed in books, but ignoring everything around her— even her friends, even Spike, even Trixie. She saw herself treating Trixie the way she had treated Pinkie while trying to figure out those blasted "Pinkie senses." She saw herself as a bully, wielding the Elements of Harmony over Trixie's head.

"This...this isn't me," she whispered.

Trixie looked at her sadly. "You promised."

"I-I know, but..."

One of the mirrors showed her on the road, as the Great and Powerful Trixie's bumbling, hopeless assistant, the butt of Trixie's jokes, the laughingstock of her comedy act. She flinched at the thought of being Trixie's sidekick.

Trixie noticed her expression and heaved a sigh. "I know."

Twilight smiled back sadly. "I guess you aren't the kind of pony who would look at anyone as an equal."

She frowned as Trixie squeezed her eyes shut. "No," the blue unicorn growled, "I'm not. And...the worst part..."

"What is it?"
Trixie looked away with tears trickling down her face. "You're the kind of unicorn my parents would have wanted to have." She looked back at Twilight with bleary eyes. "You really are more powerful than me, and that's the worst part. Because you're what they would have wanted. You're what I wanted to be. To be good enough for them." She shook her head. "And I ran around Equestria putting on magic shows and bragging and telling embellished, made-up stories so that I could be what they wanted. And then I came to Ponyville and I met you, and you were everything that I wanted to be, and then you took me in and showed me so much compassion and fell in love with me, and you were the only one who stood up for me against your friends, and..." She waved a hoof despairingly. "And yet you're still better than me."

Twilight looked back up towards the mirrors, where she saw a thousand images of herself— but none that was truly her. "Then...did you not fall in love with me?"

Trixie groaned and put her head in her hooves. "I don't know."

Twilight pulled Trixie back to her feet and they locked gazes. "Well, however you feel about me," she said, as tears brimmed in her eyes, "don't ever forget that I mean it when I say I love you. I don't care if your parents didn't want you. I do. And I don't care if underneath all the bravado you're a fragile pony who just wants to be loved. Because so am I. And I want you to be happy," she swallowed the lump in her throat and hugged Trixie, "no matter what it takes."

Trixie sighed. "And that's why I said that you're too nice to deserve all this."

"I don't care. We're going to get your magic back so you can be you again— whether it's with me," Twilight sniffled, "or not."

"How adorable."

Twilight and Trixie both jumped at the sound of this new voice— a voice they knew all too well. The mirrors splintered and the images within them vanished in an instant— and then, without a single noise, the glass began to disappear. Twilight and Trixie pressed against each other as the house of mirrors came down around them— and behind the mirrors, they found themselves under the crumbling big top, in the center ring, surrounded by decaying bleachers. And in the center of it all, sporting a wicked grin, stood Nightmare Storm.

"So," Twilight said with a glare, "finally came out of hiding, did you?"

"One way or another, Twilight Sparkle, you are going to die," Nightmare Storm said with a grin. "After all, you came here to seek Trixie's demons."

The world shook at the sound of rumbling, crashing footsteps. Twilight and Trixie shared a nervous glance.

"And does Trixie ever have demons..."

The air trembled, the shadows parted, and the ring lit up at the dreaded footfalls of an Ursa Minor.

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