Snippet from "The Last Draconequus" · 4:15pm Jan 8th, 2014
"You don't know for a fact that they're dead," Celestia said. "Maybe they did complete their ritual. Maybe they became pure magic, as they planned."
"Oh, yes. Perhaps they all became immortal, godlike beings of pure and infinite magic, and chose to never come back for me," Discord said bitterly. "I know my mother didn't intend to leave me there, Celestia. If she'd lived, she would have come for me."
"What if she can't? If they ascended to a higher plane, they may not be able to reach this plane. For all you know, your mother has been watching over you your whole life."
"Watching me starve, burn down an entire forest with magic I couldn't control, survive by stealing food from ponies, and end up enslaved in a circus by ponies who think I'm a mindless animal. Yes. I am entirely certain that my mother would watch and do nothing with her godlike powers and infinite supply of magic while I nearly froze to death that first winter."
"Most legends say the gods have very little direct power on this plane," Celestia said. "And... how do you know she didn't send you to me?" She placed her hoof on his shoulder. "The moment I saw you in that cage, I knew you were a child like me, not a creature. How did I know? If I could see it, why couldn't any other pony?"
"I prefer to think this is because you are the only pony of high intelligence and discerning taste in all Equestria. Or possibly the only one with the power to say 'Daddy, buy that critter for me, I think he's really a weird looking pony!' and have it actually happen."
Celestia laughed. "My ego's large enough, Discord, you hardly need to inflate it for me."
"Trust me, I've got a few needles on hand to pop it with if it gets out of control." He grinned toothily, then lost it. "I don't believe in destiny, Tia. I don't believe you found me because forces beyond our knowledge arranged for us to meet, whether those forces be fate or my mother. And I don't believe in happy goodness fairy wonderland where everything is hearts and flowers. My mother's dead. She didn't become a god. She failed, they all failed. And they probably failed because of me."
"You can't think that way."
"Well, obviously I can, since I do. They didn't want me as part of the ritual anyway. They were afraid I was going to disrupt it. Then my mom tries to pull me in at the last second, and what do I do? Disrupt it, obviously. Since I didn't join them, and they all vanished, and I got this lovely souvenir of a body I doubt my mother would even recognize—"
"You told me you liked looking the way you do."
"Well, yes, I do, because what would be the point to not liking it? Am I supposed to stagger through the world whining, 'Woe, woe is me, I look like a zoo in a blender, oh why can't I look like a pony like every other important sentient being in the universe because I'm completely pony-centric and also I hate myself?' I don't hate myself. I like screwing around with the way things are supposed to be, and bodies are supposed to be symmetrical and chimeras are supposed to be two species, three tops, not... what did we count me up to, nine?"
"That depended on whether Eastern dragons and Western dragons count as two different species and whether we consider you to be part gryphon or part lion and eagle." She nuzzled his shoulder. "I don't like to hear you say things that sound like you don't like the way you look. That was something I've always admired about you, that you're proud of what you are even though so many ponies treat you like you shouldn't be. And anyway, I think you're beautiful."
"I don't see why I should care what ponies think. Maybe if I found a lost colony of draconequui and they had an opinion I might care, but ponies didn't like my kind in our natural forms, why would I expect them to like me now? But that isn't the point." He leaned his head back against her, onto her back. "I'm as abnormal as it's possible to get without dying of it. And I do like it that way. But... complex magical rituals require order and harmony. I know this, that's why I can't stand being involved in them. And their lives depended on that ritual working properly. And it obviously didn't or I wouldn't have ended up looking like this. So... I don't have much choice, Tia. Every way I look at it... I feel like it's obvious that I killed them all. I messed up their ritual and it didn't work and they died."
"I don't think so. I think there's a very real chance they did ascend."
"Without me. And never came back for me? Tia... I know you're trying to comfort me, but it isn't working. Either I killed them all, or they abandoned me. Call me a terrible, awful, evil pony if you must, but... I would rather believe that my mother died than that she left me there alone on purpose."
Celestia took a deep breath, trying to control her frustration. He was so dark sometimes. It seemed to Celestia sometimes as if Discord's constant jokes and silliness were like the desperate wingbeats of an injured pegasus flying over an abyss, and the moment he became serious he started to fall down into the darkness within him. "What if she ascended but didn't have the power to return to this plane? That's what I keep saying."
"She loved me, Tia. She'd have found a way. Or at least to let me know. If I knew she was alive but couldn't come for me, if I knew there was a way I could join them..." He sighed. "Of course if I'm right there is a way I could join them, but I'm not so pathetic as to kill myself because I'm a sad wittle baby who's an orphan. Everypony dies eventually, so if she's dead, I'll join her someday. And if she's not... then I hate her. Because she broke her promise. She said she wouldn't leave me and she did. I can only forgive that if she died."
Celestia was not completely sure he could forgive that even if she was dead. He sounded so childish and illogical about this. Sometimes the ones you loved just couldn't keep their promises because they weren't omniscient and the situation changed. Father had promised Celestia that Mother would come back from taming that hurricane, and she hadn't. She couldn't blame either of them for that. Father had hoped Mother would return, he'd wanted her to, and he'd been trying to comfort a little filly. Mother hadn't wanted to die fighting that hurricane, but she was Queen and the safety of all Equestrians had been in her hooves. What if Discord's mother had ascended to a new plane of existence, and as a result, simply could not return? Discord was a teenager. What if time passed differently there, and it had only been moments for his mother? Celestia could think of a dozen reasons why a mother who loved her son still would be unable to return to him if the ritual the draconequui had been trying to fulfill had completed.
But he wouldn't believe any of them. Because he was the Principle of Chaos and Disharmony. He listened to his own emotions over logic, the majority of the time, and if there was an explanation for a phenomenon that involved believing that life was cruel and unfair or that ponies were rotten and mean, he'd take that explanation over any other. Maybe it was actually a positive thing that he clung to the belief that his mother was dead rather than jumping to the conclusion that she had deliberately abandoned him. At least it allowed him to believe that love was real and would not always betray him. It hurt him to believe his mother was dead, especially since he obviously blamed himself for it – and that was illogical too, he'd been practically a baby at the time, but Discord was a master of rationalizing his emotional reactions and pretending that his entirely irrational conclusions were pure logic, despite the fact that he knew perfectly well that logic and chaos were opposites – but it would hurt him much more to believe she willingly left him behind.
So she dropped the subject. "Maybe you're right," she said. "But this is a morbid thing to be talking about. Want to do something fun?"
He perked up instantly. "Oh, you've said the magic words."
Hmmmm.... interesting.... interesting....