//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: The Heart Never Seems To Learn // by BronyBraeburn //------------------------------// I did everything I could, I’m no use to the girls, I can only treat the symptoms, not the cause, and he could undo everything I’ve done in a finger snap. I just have to put my faith in Twilight; she would never let me down. Celestia assured herself as she paced worriedly in her bedroom. Only ten minutes before, she addressed the residents of Canterlot about Discord’s escape and told them the best ponies in all of Equestria were working as she spoke to return him to his stone prison. Quickly her worried subjects calmed themselves, taking strength from their stoic leader, but it was just a poker face mastered centuries before. She was ignorant to how the fight was going, needing to keep her subjects calm and informed, and to prevent Luna from seeking her revenge as the draconequus played a large part in her transformation to Nightmare Moon. “Why aren’t you fighting him?” echoed a pony’s honest question from earlier in her mind. If only I could, I could keep Twilight out of danger. To her subjects, she was an invincible god who neutralized Equestria’s enemies at a moment’s notice, but this was only a half-truth. Threats against the kingdom were so infrequent over the centuries that everypony developed an image of her smiting every foe that came to the borders, but alicorns were not as great as many believed. They were simply one of many species with incredible magic capability that not even the strongest unicorns could hope to come close to. Discord was sadly one creature whose magic trumped her own. As far as she knew, only the Elements of Harmony could bring him down, and she would be more of a burden rather than help if she joined the bearers. Discord would no doubt feel encouraged to threaten her, and Twilight would leap to her defense, no matter how ill-advised. The princess went to her balcony, staring at the silhouette of Ponyville in the distance. Rather than the traditional darkened shade of grey, it had a slight twinge of pink and floating chunks of land and buildings hovered above the town. Sometimes the town would disappear into darkness before magically reappearing a few moments later, making Celestia lay back her ears in anger. “Once again you mock me and my power to intimidate my innocent subjects,” she said aloud. He was fond of the color pink because of her fillyhood mane before she reached her full maturity, and the sun had become intertwined with her authority, a symbol of all of Equestria. Worse, although she and Luna promoted an equal authority when they became monarchs, many ponies held her in higher regard then her little sister. Not because of age, but the sun punished anyone who stared directly at it, who dared assumed to be an equal to her might, and the moon never did. Luna was in power for less than a century before her transformation and banishment, and now it wasn’t even a year since her return. They would never be true equals, history and tradition dictated that Celestia was the true monarch, the heart and soul of Equestria. What better way to break her subjects’ faith in her then to harm the symbols of her reign? She took a deep breath and slowly released it, letting her anger subside along with it. She had to remain calm; she couldn’t let her emotions get the better of her. “Please be safe, my faithful student. Remember I have complete confidence in you.” A familiar, dark, amused chuckle filled her ears, and the alicorn gritted her teeth, her eyes searching the room as she turned around, looking for the source. “Show yourself, you coward,” she demanded with a growl. “I’m the coward?” Discord inquired as he appeared before her in a flash of light. “I’m not an alicorn, a monarch of a kingdom, who sits here in the comfort of her room after sending six little ponies to defeat a mighty foe.” “You know perfectly well my magic alone is useless against you. I needed the Elements of Harmony, and the gems chose their new masters well.” “Chose well?” The chimera let out a hearty laugh. “Your ‘complete confidence’ was greatly misplaced, but then again, this isn’t the first time you foolishly believed in someone, and once again, such faith will be your downfall. So predictable even after a thousand years, I thought you would have learned your lesson.” “I know Twilight will win against you. In time, she will surpass all as the greatest unicorn who ever lived.” “She was certainly hard to crack, I’ll give her that much, but like everypony else, she eventually lost the battle.” Rage and fury filled the princess like never before, and she dove at the intruder, violently slamming him against the wall with the tip of her horn jabbing at his throat. “What did you do to her?” She growled, sounding more like a manticore then a refined monarch. “What did you do? I will make you share in her suffering, but your pain will be a hundred times more severe.” Discord stared at her, unaffected by her threat, and casually flicked away her horn. “Losing your memory in your old age, or am I not worthy of being remembered? You wound me, princess; you know I have never once physically hurt anyone.” “You love leaving mental and emotional scars, what’s stopping you from leaving physical ones as well?” She reminded him, fire coursing through her veins as she glared dangerously at him. “A sense of honor, something that you are severely lacking in,” he retorted. “I have done a lot of things in my time, but I have never once turned someone into stone. Then you display it in a statue garden like I am some trophy, ‘oh look at the big bad beastie I defeated to keep you all safe from having a little fun in your lives. Worship me, for I am Celestia,’” he said in his best falsetto. “You and your sister took over this country, outsiders claiming it for yourselves simply because you happen to be superior beings with no prior connection to the entire continent, when the Great Council was doing a fine job on their own.” He returned her deadly glare. “You make me sick.” The princess’s body shook with rage, and she could barely restrain herself from attacking him with her horn and magic. “Hypocrite! You abused your superior power by contorting the land to your own selfish wishes, knowing that even the combined forces of the unicorns could do nothing to stop you!” “I never called myself their king! I never gave myself a ruler’s title! I simply found a place that needed my personal touch! I never once interfered with the Great Council, I only contorted the land to suit my wishes, but you changed their whole government! Rather than equal numbers of earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns acting as a secondary body of government, you eventually assumed total power and control, and many earth pony and pegasi descendents ultimately moved out of Canterlot, founding their own towns and cities across the nation. “Prince Blueblood, titled because he is barely related to Luna, a descendent with such diluted blood, what official duties does he have in government? None! He’s not even a part of the military or the Royal Guard. He retains his title from tradition alone and abuses it; he’s not even competent enough to run the family estate, just preens and claims he is entitled because he is a prince. You need to be in power, you have to be superior to all rather than be just another alicorn. You ruined these ponies with your selfishness!” He announced with an accusing pointing finger. Celestia’s brave facade faltered for a moment, wounded by his words. Everything he said was technically true, though Prince Blueblood’s faults were the result of his family and nothing she actively encouraged or discouraged. She never asked anything of Luna’s descendents and allowed them their title so she wouldn’t dishonor her dear sister. Don’t let him see you as weak, she chided herself. Stand your ground. “Even after Equestria was founded and the Great Council ruled, equality was not yet fully realized,” the princess argued back. “The three tribes got along, but there was still a social stigma about mixing, in marriage and even in friendship. Luna and I did not force ourselves upon them, they welcomed us, begged us to be their leaders. They had never heard of alicorns before and saw our height, horns, and wings as a combination of earth pony, unicorn, and pegasi, and took it as a sign from on high that they should end their prejudices and see each other as plain ponies. When Luna married a common earth pony, it broke the barrier, and in less than a century, no one judged or even cared about what tribe everyone was from and true equality was obtained. We saved this land from bigotry, and we saved them from the eternal misery that you so happily forced upon them.” “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he replied nonchalantly, waving off her bravado. With an over exaggerated stretching motion, he laid himself upon her bed, rolling around on the thick mattress before settling on his right side, facing her. “Of course I imagine sleep certainly comes easy on such a wondrous thing. Is this what your beloved subjects are paying for with their taxes?” Her eyes narrowed darkly, oblivious of his words. Images of their sordid past came at her in rapid-fire, complete with the emotions attached to such memories. “You would go there, wouldn’t you?” “Huh?” Her response caught him completely off-guard. “What are you—oh!” He quickly leapt to his feet and stepped away from the bed as he figured out her meaning. “As enjoyable as our previous times have been, my dear, I must admit I’ve had much better. You were easily the worst of the lot.” He gave her a diabolical smile. “I wonder how your beloved subjects would feel about that: their precious princess is a pretty poor lover.” Hardly, she snorted, hearing the ghostly echoes of his pleasureful cries in her ears. “I could say the same about you,” she replied haughtily, trying to hurt his masculine pride, but he simply responded with a seductive smile as he approached her, wrapping his snake-like body around her torso and curling his bat wing around her neck for support while he traced the outline of her face with his talon. “That’s a lie and you know it.” She felt her will weaken, her loins crying out for his wonderful mastery of love-making, and her heart longing for the romance that no other pony could ever give her. Damn him for forever having this power over her! Why couldn’t she forget, why couldn’t she hate him, why did she forever yearn for her teenage years where they defied reality just to be together? “Why did I ever get involved with you?” She demanded coldly. Why couldn’t I listen to everyone’s warnings that he was no good for me? “Because you and I are one and the same, we are chimeras, only your appendages are naturally blended to your body, where I might as well been born on Frankenstein’s table. You are naturally beautiful where I am naturally horrific.” She couldn’t agree nor disagree on his ugliness. After growing up with snobbish alicorns who were obsessed with physical beauty, Discord’s random design and indifferent attitude was a much welcome change, and a childhood friendship quickly blossomed into a fiery romance that burned them both in the end. To her, he was a rare, stunning beauty, and she had to escape his devilish clutches. “I am not a chimera!” She argued, bucking him off of her. “The Great Creator was an alicorn, and you know it!” “But she didn’t come first,” the draconequus reminded her, unaffected by her violent reaction as he flew away from her wild kicks. “The Great Creator brought life to this planet, but earth ponies were the first ponies that ever existed in the universe, followed by unicorns and pegasi, and only afterward were alicorns born, a combination of the three. You are a chimera of order, I am a chimera of chaos, one is the absence of the other. Is it any wonder why you fell under my seductive spell?” “Are you certain it wasn’t the other way around?” She retorted, trying to regain the upper hoof. “Free for the first time in a thousand years, but you restrict your magic to Ponyville, a brand-new settlement, and not Canterlot, my home ever since I came here. You never lifted a finger to hurt me; you targeted the bearers of the Elements of Harmony instead. You gloat about your victory, but my city is free of your magic, and you don’t even bring your chaos to the perimeter of my chambers.” Discord repeatedly opened his mouth, trying to produce a comeback, but ultimately failing. Desperately he resorted to body language to convey his disagreement, but this only resulting in mindless flailing. Celestia smiled, she had him on the ropes. “I think you still love me,” she said, seductively walking toward him and sashaying her hips. He nervously backed away from her, desperate to avoid her seductive spell. “You’ll gladly hurt Twilight and her friends, but you won’t do anything against me, why? I’m the one who imprisoned you, I’m the one who drove you to come to Equestria in the first place, but you’ve done nothing against me. You were never good at hurting the ones you love, that’s why you attacked Luna instead, planting the seeds that would drive her to become Nightmare Moon, and why you focused your attention on breaking Twilight.” “Chaos is defined by randomness,” he defended as he found himself against the wall. “If you love me, Discord, then show me,” she said softly, letting only an inch remain between them, her ethereal mane brushing against his neck. “Kiss me.” The two stared at each other for a long moment before Discord suddenly lunged at her, plastering his lips against hers as he turned her around and pressed her against the wall. Celestia wrapped her forelegs around the draconequus’s neck, running her hooves down the length of his mane, completely lost in the moment. Her body rejoiced at the feel of him against her, shivering as his claws dug into her skin, stopping just before blood was drawn, fully realizing just how much she missed him. "You keep asking me to end my riddles, to talk seriously for once,” he said the moment he broke off the kiss, both their chests heaving as they stared lustfully into each other’s eyes, “Well once and only once will I grant your request. Yes I still love you, I always have, and it appears I always will. I remember our old days with fondness, and forever I will wish we could reclaim what we once had, but that is impossible. You were born and bred for order and stability, but chaos rules my very nature and design. However, I am entitled to hold a grudge against you for imprisoning me in stone for so long, and it is only natural that I disable the one thing that can return me to my prison. Like it or not, Equestria is mine once again. Arrivederci, la mia principessa,” and with a final, soul-searing kiss, he snapped his fingers and disappeared. Celestia sunk to the floor in shame, covering her face as the tears flowed freely, ashamed of herself for giving into his seduction once again. If I obeyed my elders and hated him from the start, Equestria would have never known his madness, I wouldn’t have lost Luna, and I wouldn’t endure such heartache. Would you have discovered Equestria then? A voice inside her argued back. Would you give up all your happy years here? Would you give up your most faithful student? A brief image of her beloved unicorn was all it took to revive the great alicorn’s will and she leapt to her feet. “I foolishly got involved with you, Discord; I deserve your haunting, but my subjects do not.” She unlocked the cabinet which contained all of Twilight’s friendship reports, treasuring not only their valuable research but the knowledge that the mare was thriving in a way she never could in Canterlot. “Forgive me, Spike,” she apologized as she began to send back the scrolls one by one, knowing that all the belching would not be good for his little body. “These letters always renew my spirits; I pray they can do the same for you, Twilight. Only you and your friends can defeat him and stop his chaos once and for all!” For hours after his defeat, Discord’s statue remained where it was. Ponyville residents refused to go within six feet of it, afraid that they would somehow release him again. Even the girls refused to go near, though Applejack angrily kicked dirt in his face before walking away, never to acknowledge him again. The sun princess did her best to distract the towns ponies, inviting them all to Canterlot to celebrate the victory against the draconequus, and to reveal the latest window to adorn Canterlot Tower, quickly crafted by the finest unicorn artists in the city, and by nightfall, everyone was safe in their homes, continuing to praise the princess and the bearers for protecting them once again from harm. The grass muffled the sounds of hoofsteps as a brave soul approached him, looking down with sadness and disdain. “If you simply ran away, made a home for yourself away from Equestria, you wouldn’t be back in your stone prison,” Celestia said, wishing he had the ability to speak to her. “Is this our fate, to keep chasing after each other, fighting futile battles to dominate the other? There is no victory for either of us, only despair and sorrow.” She leaned down and gently kissed his open mouth. “If you can hear me, then know this. I love you, Discord. I always have, and it seems I always will.” She laid the tip of her horn on his forehead, and with a burst of magic, she transported the statue to the crystal caves below the castle. “You’re right; it was egotistical of me to keep you in the sculpture garden. Maybe you wouldn’t have escaped if you couldn’t feed off of negativity. Enjoy your captivity, for the only company you shall ever have for all of eternity is me, and sadness is the only emotion you will ever receive.” With one last kiss, she turned and walked away, leaving tears in her wake.