The Cutie Mark Crusaders blinked a few times to focus on where they were now, as Discord sauntered up to the cottage, beckoning out the Princesses and the other elements of Harmony. Twilight smiled bright as she saw the three of them in one piece each.
“So did they do as well as you expected, Discord?” Twilight asked.
“As well as I expected? Or well enough to suffice the trip to the End of the Chaos Continuum?” Discord had disdain in his voice. “Their efforts should prepare them for whatever threat is burrowing its way through my Chaos Continuum.” He handed over the scale and gave a small grin. “I just hope your decision was a wise one, Princess Twilight.” Discord walked down the path. “We need to be going now, because whatever is on its way to my Left Fang is going to be there before we know it, and we need to beat it there.”
“Very well, any help on the spell?” Twilight was referring to the spell that Discord was planning to send them to the end of the chaos continuum.
“Just let the Scale lead you, it’ll create the link back to me from this side.” Discord was visibly mixed about this journey. “Now, let’s go so we can reach the Fang before whoever, or whatever, is burrowing toward it can be stopped.”
“Ya better keep ‘em safe, Discord,” Applejack commanded. “Or I’ll have Big Mac buck ya so hard ya won’t remember yer own name.”
“Me? Forget my own name? How silly can you little ponies be? I’m Discord, Sprit of Chaos. There’s nothing that will make me forget that.” He smiled. “I will keep them safe—they’re my only hope of taking down this intruder. Now, I wish to get moving, if you would be ever so gracious.”
“We’ve just got some supplies to give you all,” Rarity said, and Sweetie Belle groaned.
“You’re not giving us the whole wagon-full like you did when we went camping, are you?”
“Nononono,” Rarity said, glancing backward at a heavy-laden wagon behind her, obviously trying to cover up her lie. “We just want you to be well prepared for anything.”
“Three saddlebags should be enough,” Applebloom said. Twilight levitated the girls’ saddlebags onto them, and they readjusted to their weight.
“Now, I’ve enchanted these bags, they should be holding enough food for a week, even for Applejack,” Twilight said before being interrupted.
“What in the hay is that supposed to mean?” Applejack sharply asked.
“Well, I did hear about the Apple Family Reunions from Granny Smith… specifically the one where you ate all those Apple Fritters.”
“Ah…” Applejack was at a loss for words. “Ah was a growin’ filly back then… mah appetite has slowed down since then.” Applejack was frustrated. “Okay, so maybe yer right, but ya don’t need to be tellin’ everypony an’ their mother!”
“Never mind,” Twilight said. “Anyway, we need to get you to the End of the Chaos Continuum.”
“Ah’m ready!” Applebloom said excitedly.
“Me too!” Scootaloo seconded.
“Me… three!” Sweetie Belle called out.
“Let’s get going, then,” Discord said, dragging a claw against the air, creating a rip out of nowhere. No one bothered questioning, because it was Discord after all. Through the rip in the air, they could see a world that made what happened to Ponyville seem like nothing. The familiar checkered pattern on the ground was the start, because they could see floating islands which were completely spherical, and the whole world beyond the crack was filled with an ethereal light—not generated by a sun like it was here. Pinkie sighed as she observed the other side.
“It’s a world all about the random things in life!” she smiled sadly, “Too bad I don’t get to go.”
“It’s better that you don’t, Pinkie,” Discord said, “I have a particular affinity for you and your Element of Harmony. I would hate to see the world drained of laughter.” He seemed genuine when he said that. “Now, let’s go,” he said, pulling the Cutie Mark Crusaders into the rift, before a Zipper pull appeared, which sealed up the tear. “We need to be on the look out for that fang, it should be, if memory serves, in the center of this Me-forsaken place.”
“Is that it, right there?” Applebloom said, pointing to a pedestal in the distance as a pig with wings flew by. “I can see something white on top of it!” On top was a conical, curved shape, white and clean. It seemed so simple, so innocent. How could anything about that tooth be evil or chaotic? It was just a tooth, right?
“That’s it! Wow, that was simpler than I thought it would be. Now, let’s just go get the fang and was can dispose of it properly.”
“Wait a minute, Discord!” Scootaloo said, pushing back on the Draconequus, “It’s probably booby trapped!”
“The only booby here is that bird over there,” Discord said, pointing toward a Blue-footed Booby. Scootaloo squelched a squee as the Fluttershy in her wanted to run over and investigate it. She gave a ‘blech’ before turning her attention back to the task at hand.
“Now, I’ve read a few of the Daring Do books, and whenever there’s a treasure in plain sight, it’s usually trapped.” She smiled brightly as she knew something the others didn’t seem to know.
“It isn’t trapped! I made this place myself! I think I would know if there was a—“ Discord was interrupted as Scootaloo took an apple out of her bag and tossed it toward the fang. Upon it hitting the ground, a safe fell from the sky and crushed it, bits of apple flying everywhere. Discord could only scowl. “Okay, so there was this one trap that I forgot about.”
“If there’s one trap, there’s usually more. We need to go around,” Scootaloo said, her smile wider than it had been moments before.
“Now that’s an explorer if I evah heard one!” Applebloom shouted.
“Next thing you know, you’ll have an exploring cutie mark!” Sweetie Belle said, before Scoots excitedly checked her flank, to find nothing.
“Perhaps I need to do some more exploring!”
“Well, we have three options,” Discord said, “we could go through the middle, most direct path, and get out of here, or we could go through one of the two forests on either side of the central path.”
“What forests?” Applebloom asked, before seeing two forests spring up around either side of the central path. One felt like home to Applebloom, less ‘foresty’ and more ‘orchardy.’ The other one was so much more—it was almost a replica of the Everfree, only more foreboding. “Ah suppose those are the forests.”
“I think we should ask our explorer where we should turn!” Sweetie said, pointing a hoof at Scootaloo.
“Well, I think we should go through the one that looks like the Everfree!” She shouted before charging off.
“Aren’t you sure you want to go through the one over here,” Discord said—and was that worry in how voice? Was he actually concerned about something?
“What’s got your tail in a knot, Discord?” Scootaloo inquired. Discord would have refuted that his tail wasn’t in a knot, only to find that it was, in fact, quite knotted. Untying his own body, he brushed himself off and started explaining:
“There’s a reason that I locked away that fang from the world. It holds all the chaos that not even I, Discord, Spirit of Chaos, could contain. While my powers are great, they are not limitless. I need to protect that fang so that Equestria isn’t plunged into eternal chaos and destroyed.”
“I thought that was what you wanted to do when we released you,” Sweetie Belle accused.
“There’s an intricate difference, the Chaos I wreak is harmless, jokes really. The chaos contained in this fang, the pure destruction it is capable of, is nothing that any mortal being should ever come into contact with.
“To put it in terms that perhaps you will understand,” Discord said, pulling out his other fang, “this here is my sweet tooth,” he poured out sugars and candies from the base of it before placing it back into his mouth, “and that one is my sour tooth.”
“Then why did ya need us? Couldn’t ya just teleport yerself over there and get it?” Applebloom contested.
“First, I needed to draw some latent Chaos energy off my scale to open the portal. Second, the fang has a bit of a distaste for teleportation. It’s hard to explain to such young fillies, perhaps I should just demonstrate.” He took an apple from Applebloom’s pack and in a snap, it was teleported over by the Fang. Mere seconds later, it disappeared again, only to land back in Discord’s paw, sliced to bits.
Each of the Cutie Mark Crusaders gasped.
“It may seem like just a parlor trick, but this is very serious,” he explained, taking a bite from an apple slice. “The chaos magic near that fang is too unpredictable. I cannot just simply ‘teleport mahself over there.’” The mocking tone that he used when repeating Applebloom wasn’t really that appreciated.
“Ah don’t appreciate ya mockin’ me like that!”
“It’s how you sound to me, dear Applebloom. Now if you can’t appreciate how an artist renders his voice, then perhaps you shouldn’t listen.” He snapped and Applebloom’s ears disappeared.
“Give her ears back!” Scootaloo commanded, her stern tone even surprising herself.
“Or what? You’ll friendship me to death? There’s a laugh for—wait… For all the Chocolate Rain in the Universe, it’s already starting to happen.” Discord gave himself a full body shake, as a dog would to free itself of the excess water after a swim in a pond. “I do humbly apologize, Applebloom, that fang has such unexpected results on me.” He snapped and the yellow ears were back in place. “We need to hurry, I can’t tell you how much I don’t want that fang to exist anymore.”
The group of four set out through the dark forest, winding their way through tree and bush, trying to make their way to the Fang the only way they knew how. Scootaloo was proclaimed leader; her only credentials being that she had read the Daring Do books.
“So tell me something, Discord,” Applebloom said, breaking the monotony of Scootaloo’s ‘theme song’ humming.
“What could you possibly want to know?” He seemed irritated, but at what the Crusaders could only guess.
“How come ya waited all this time to take care of that fang? I mean, why not just destroy it in the first place?”
“You couldn’t possibly understand the nuances that led to this circumstance, Applebloom.”
“Try me,” Applebloom challenged.
“Very well, when I was a younger Draconequus, I was very reckless, I loved the disorder and the chaos. I knew not what it could do. It was certainly not an understanding I would have in my life until it was too late.
“You see, Chaos leads to things happening that you’d rather not happen if there’s no harmony to counterbalance it. Perhaps you need to know the whole story, but now is not the time to tell it. We shall leave those memories rest for another day.” He turned his snout up to show that he wasn’t going to expand on that issue. “I’ve actually said too much already.”
“Come on, Discord, who else is gonna to know besides us?”
“I do not wish to divulge this information, and that is the last I am saying about it.” He created a zipper pull on his mouth and pulled it shut.
“Very well, but Ah’ll ask again later,” Applebloom promised, making a mental note to interrogate the Spirit of Chaos further at a later time.
“I can’t promise I’ll answer later.”
“You never promise things anyway, Discord,” Applebloom said, recalling one or two of Celesita’s memories.
“Perhaps not, but I cannot say that I would answer your question should you ask it at a later time.”
“Okay,” Scootaloo said, interrupting the circular conversation, “I think we’re almost there.”
Sure enough, the forest abruptly ended, leaving them within three lengths of the fang. It seemed so close they could reach out and touch it.
“Do you suppose there’s traps between us and it this time?” Sweetie asked.
“Usually at this point, it’s one last puzzle. We just need to solve it and the treasure’s ours!”
A bunch of tiles appeared on the ground between them as walls closed up beside the new floor. This all seemed familiar to Scoots, who didn’t panic in the slightest.
“It’s a simple test! It was in the first Daring Do book!” She smiled as she turned her focus to the tiles. Each one had a different Element of Harmony on them, though some were other symbols that Scoots didn’t recognize directly. She knew exactly where to step. “Just follow the Elements of Harmony!” she said, prancing out onto the tiles. Sure enough, the path was no more dangerous than a path through the woods.
“This is all too easy,” Discord said. “The fang must be up to something.”
“I don’t think so, Discord,” Scoots said, mimicking her literary hero, standing at the pedestal.
“Don’t you think that stroll through the forest was a tad bit… uneventful?”
“Perhaps, but uneventful never hurt anypony, so far as I’m aware.” Scoots looked back at Discord. “Can you ever tell me when boredom hurt somepony?”
Rather than list off all the misconceptions that must be running through the Pegasus’s head, he pulled her back toward him with a simple telekinetic spell.
“Hey! What gives?”
“Let me see another one of those apples,” Discord commanded.
Applebloom fetched one out of her saddlebag, hoofing it over to the Draconequus. He threw it with precise aim, knocking the fang off the pedestal. It hit the ground uneventfully.
“That was rather… anticlimactic,” Sweetie said.
“What does that mean?” Applebloom returned.
“It means that what we expected was a lot more than what happened.”
“It is far better to be safe than sorry in this realm, my little ponies.” Discord simply floated over to the other side of the new room. “Now, I need to dispose of this fang,” he said, holding it up into the air, about to snap with his other foreleg, when there came an eminent laughter that chilled him to the bone. His eyes dilated and his fear became almost palpable.
“What is it?” Applebloom inquired.
“I—I… no… that cannot be! It can’t be… not him!”
“Not who?” Scoots asked.
“It seems that I prepared you for everything that might attack this fang but the thing that actually was attacking it…” Discord began actively quivering. “But it can’t be… you were locked away long ago!”
Discord tried pulling on the fang, but it seemed stuck in place.
“There… there is no way that you could possibly be…”
“Discord?” Sweetie called, starting to get concerned.
“Who’s attacking the fang?” Applebloom aksed, her own worry beginning to grow.
“Something I thought I had left behind long ago… a member of this world that never should have been…”
“What do you mean?” Scoots asked. She was starting to grow concerned as well.
“It cannot… there’s… you don’t even exist!” Discord shouted into thin air, and was only met by more maniacal laughter.
“Who can’t be?” Scootaloo wondered aloud.
“What in the hay is going on?” Applebloom queried.
“I don’t like the sound of this!” voiced Sweetie.
There, before them all appeared the figure that had been their villain all along, and none of them even could even begin to imagine who, or what, it really was.