Back in the present
“Guard Captain!” called Tirek. There was a clatter of hooves outside the throne room, and a couple of sudden thumps, as if of bodies hitting the ground.
Tirek turned away from Discord, still using his magic to hold the dragonequus in the air as he glanced at the door. There was the sound of hooves sliding across marble, and a blank-flanked pegasus screeched to a halt outside the throne room. Before Tirek could do more than blink, the pegasus' foreleg turned to point at his head, and he recognised the crossbow she held in her hoof. She pulled the trigger, and Tirek saw a bolt of light travel directly towards his head.
There was no time to dodge aside, so Tirek did the next-best thing; he used Discord's magic to split his head down the middle, allowing the shot to pass harmlessly between the two halves.
“DARING!” yelled the blue pegasus. “RUN!”
Tirek slammed the two halves of his head back together again, and grabbed the attacking pegasus in his telekinesis before she could get away.
“'Daring', is it?” he asked, carefully pulling the crossbow from her hoof. “Well, miss... 'Daring'. What exactly did you intend to achieve here today?” He waved a hand, tossing silence spells over all his other prisoners.
“Isn't it obvious?” snarled Daring Do. She reached up one hoof to push back her pith helmet and get a better view of the giant centaur. “Kill you, restore the magic you stole. Save the lives of thousands of ponies.”
“Is this about the weather again?” asked Tirek, inspecting the crossbow. “Honestly, you'd think that the fact that I keep the day-night cycle going would be enough for you ponies.”
“Yeah, the weather's part of it.” said Daring. “Without proper control, half of Equestria's going to be a desert in two years, and the other half's going to be flooded. You'll have less ponies to rule then, won't you?”
“You think I care about ruling weaklings?” asked Tirek. “Any pony who can't survive a bit of climate change isn't worth the bother. But give me a generation or two, and I'll have an Equestria that's really tough – an Equestria where the surviving ponies are truly strong. Where weak 'friends' die and only those tough enough to serve me survive. And then... when I have an army worthy of the name... then I shall rule the world!” He crushed Daring's crossbow in one hand.
Daring winced. “That was a priceless historical treasure!” she said.
“This?” Tirek held out the remains of the crossbow. “Nothing but a toy. I should know, I made it.”
Daring gasped. “The... the origins of the Canterlot Crossbow were lost to history!”
“Well, now you know.” said Tirek. “It was supposed to be able to kill Celestia. It couldn't.” He held out his hand, and let the bits drop to the ground with a clatter. Then he moved one hoof forward, and stomped on them, flattening the pieces further.
Daring winced, again.
“And as for you,” continued Tirek, stepping forward to look Daring in the eye, “you are going to do a little job for me.”
“Why would I do anything for you, you overgrown freak?” asked Daring.
Tirek grinned, and his eyes suddenly flashed with multicoloured light. “I never said anything about you wanting to.” he said. He reached up, and poked Daring's head with a finger; the colours drained from her body and mane leaving her a monotonous grey.
Daring struggled for only a moment before the mental domination took hold.
“Go to Manehatten.” Tirek ordered. “Track down a group who call themselves the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Find their headquarters, and kill them all. Bring me their heads as proof.”
“Yes, sir.” said Daring Do.
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That being said, what's more likely? That a resistance is being led by three or four teenage fillies, or that there really is a secret elite unit of Celestia's leading the resistance and the kid being interrogated is lying or has been lied to?
This story needs more crusaders. You should add Babs and her 2-4 crusaders she said she found in Manehatten at the Apple Family Reunion
Wow. He has Discord's powers and this is what he's doing with them. No imagination. No panache. No sense of showcentaurship. Pathetic.
And yeah, see how well that lackadaisical attitude towards climate shift works when they all starve to death, moron.
Mind you all of this scorn is directed towards Tirek himself, not you. I love your characterization of him. His mindset is so fundamentally alien to that of the ponies that he cannot even being to conceive of what is needed to rule them. To rule any beings, really. No wonder his homeland was a wasteland.
Hmm. Speaking of which, I wonder how Scorpan's doing...
In any case, looking forward to more.
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Indeed. The very best lies are more believable than the truth, after all.
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One has to wonder about that, really...
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Tirek grossly misunderstands resource management and the true nature of power. And a lot of other things. He's a thug with delusions of adequacy.
hmm... I wonder if Poison Joke cancels out being discorded...
Tirek slammed the two halves of his head back together again, and grabbed the attacking pegasus in his telekinesis before she could get away.
-I see he has gotten the hang or it... then again he would pretty much have to or the sun, moon, weather, etc would be causing big problems right now. Actually, now that I think about it he wasn't as clumsy with his magic as some people seem to think. He was knocking pillars up out of the ground by hitting it (Maud's sort of magic I suspect?) and summoned his prisoners with a snap of his fingers, plus the force bubbles themselves.
“Isn't it obvious?” snarled Daring Do.
-Really her, or is that what Dash is calling Scootaloo these days? Probably really her. I don't think the CMC are quite practiced enough to get into the castle yet*. They barely managed to evade one guard plus Rarity in "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils". I wonder if that bolt and/or crossbow were relics? As in the equivalent of the arrow in the BOOK that killed Smaug... I always liked the lines that he said before he fired it "Arrow, black arrow, never have you failed me, and always I have recovered you! If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the mountain, go now and speed well!"... I think I've got that right, but it might be a bit off. Of course, she COULD just be the distraction.
*Although that is only if they try SNEAKING in. Tirac is probably over-confident enough to not have ordered a change to the policies of allowing "foals looking for their mothers who work here" or whatever into the castle.
-Has Tirac used a shrinking spell on himself, or did he knock the roof off the throne-room, or what? I would think that the size he hit after absorbing four alicorns worth of magic in the episode wouldn't fit even with the roof being high enough for Celestia and Luna to put on a decent display of aerial acrobatics if they so chose.
“Yeah, the weather's part of it.” said Daring. “Without proper control, half of Equestria's going to be a desert in two years, and the other half's going to be flooded. You'll have less ponies to rule then, won't you?”
-Ah, so he's being a bit lazy, or at least deprioritizing it compared to "doing fun stuff" and "perfecting my combat magic to defend against a team-up of every other arch-villain" or whatever.
“You think I care about ruling weaklings?” asked Tirek. “Any pony who can't survive a bit of climate change isn't worth the bother. But give me a generation or two, and I'll have an Equestria that's really tough – an Equestria where the surviving ponies are truly strong. Where weak 'friends' die and only those tough enough to serve me survive. And then... when I have an army worthy of the name... then I shall rule the world!” He crushed Daring's crossbow in one hand.
-That works too I guess? Goes along with him actually ruling the country instead of just being content to be a juggernaut. Also, I wonder if he has to drain the magic from newborn foals (Moses-like scenario could be a mild threat at that time-scale), or if magic has to be inherited from the mother (and perhaps father)? A spark to start the flame? Except without even having the firewood without the "spark"... Zecora's plan Z (heh...) might be based around such a plan. Shoot, the resistance may have already started funneling potion to select formula/baby-food manufacturers/hospital nurseries... or at least searching out such ponies they could trust? Probably not, since I doubt most authors think the way I do, and even the ones that do would probably think of a different equally sneaky and "back-up plans on the back-up plans" type of idea.
Daring winced. “That was a priceless historical treasure!” she said.
-Called it! Not that it was the sort of thing that was hard to guess...
“Well, now you know.” said Tirek. “It was supposed to be able to kill Celestia. It couldn't.”
-The usual handwave I use for why villains don't kill the Bearers is that "The Elements would find new bearers and then the villain wouldn't know who they were.". Since this doesn't have the Dark tag, I assume that the Diarchs, Cadence, Discord, and maybe even Twilight have true immortality even without their magic, he is saving the other three alicorns as hostages, or he really is over-confident enough to keep them around for gloating/enjoying their suffering purposes.
-Don't know when you wrote this, but at the very end of this chapter it did occur to me that canonically it at least seems Zecora can make a potion that can counter Discord's mind-control tricks. Of course you could say that was a placebo from Zecora to avoid a Lesson Zero level incident, or that it wouldn't work since Tirac has so much more magic than Discord did. Still this whole thing COULD have been in the way of a scouting mission.
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Yeah, he doesn't have anywhere near the finesse of Discord or Twilight, but he has plenty of blunt-force power and it does what he wants it to do.
Really her.
Um... yeah... something.
Oooooh, that makes a great Plan Z!
...you'd need to keep a lot of foals undrained, though. Tirek's packing some serious magic there.
He really is that overconfident. Besides, they're locked in Tartarus without magic, it'll take them hundreds of years to even try anything!
In the hiatus after Tirek's appearance.
When was this? I don't remember Zecora ever going up against Discord directly...
Insofar as this story goes, though, at this point Daring has not yet met the CMC, or Zecora.
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Regarding the potion that can undo Discord's mind control: It was in a much later episode. S5E22 "What About Discord?" Zecora gives the bottle to Twilight. But, again, that it could have been a placebo because Discord wasn't actually using magic in that case, just mundane mildly trollish behavior.
Also: it wasn't like Twilight was using more than a few spells in that fight herself... Teleportation might be finesse-y, but I think they were both using shields and lazors(sic).
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Oh, right. This story was written well before that episode.
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...I can't remember offhand whether Tirek was using shields, or if he was just taking Twilight's lasers to the chest and shrugging off the damage.