//------------------------------// // Prologue - Day of Chaos // Story: The Brass Conspiracy // by MadHighlander //------------------------------// Equulaneum Approximately 2000 years ago The young colt galloped down the hallway through a cluster of hovering pastries. As he passed the swarm of apple pies, he noticed that a number of them had sprouted wings of various types. He shuddered and hurried on. The colt was very young, still without a cutie mark. His dull brown coat and dark mane combined to make him look fairly unremarkable. Nopony unfamiliar with his identity would have guessed to look at him that he was descended directly from the line of Princess (Later Queen) Platinum, a family famed for their bright, silvery coats. His messy, ruffled mane hardly aided in such first impressions. The pies hadn’t been the first strange thing to happen to him today. It had all started that morning, when he had noticed that all the surfaces in the palace had been somehow repainted in a garish blue-green-pink checkerboard pattern overnight. Then the castle chef, normally a refined gentlepony, had barged into the dining chamber cackling like a madpony and bombarded the colt and his mother, Queen Stardust, with what appeared to be cow’s milk infused with cocoa powder. The queen had attempted to stop the other pony, telling the young colt to wait in the dining room for her to return. She had not done so, and although he had had every intention of remaining where he was, he had been forced to flee when a bright magenta earth pony had popped into existence somehow hovering just below the ceiling, bombarding him with what appeared to be living crickets made of caramel. And as if that weren’t enough, the Royal Tower – his intended destination – had detached itself from the main part of the castle and was now hovering upside down almost a hundred meters away from the mountain on which Equulaneum was constructed. They were only connected by a single rope bridge which defied physics by seemingly twisting around from the upright castle to the inverted tower section against the will of gravity. Also the ropes were made of liquorice. The colt tentatively stepped onto the rope bridge, but as soon as he put one foot onto it, it wrapped around him and recoiled toward the hovering tower, throwing him forcefully through the edifice’s door. The large portcullis over the entranceway crashed down behind him, retracting and then crashing down again. As if that weren’t enough, he still fell to the tower’s floor, which was now on the top, rather than the former ceiling. He had learned a while ago that whatever was going on, it had basically taken logic, thrown it in a trash pile, and then fed that trash pile to an animate furnace or something. Fortunately, the halls and stairways of the tower had stayed comparatively mundane, except for the inverted gravity, rivers flowing uphill in place of carpets, and the fact that all the pillars had been replaced by what appeared to be barber poles. Generally, the tower would be crawling with royal guards. This was by no means a bad thing – the colt was good friends with a number of guards – but now, it unsettled him that the only guard he had encountered so far had been a single stallion, with every drop of color vanished from his coat and mane. If he hadn’t been tap dancing the colt would have thought he was a statue. He made it to the throne room itself without incident, discovering the door slightly ajar. Voices emanated from within. The colt nudged the door slightly further away and looked inside. Sure enough, Queen Stardust was inside, standing in the chamber’s center, but she was pacing in circles around another creature. It could very loosely be described as partially a pony – its left leg and its head were vaguely ponylike, and one wing looked similar to that of a Pegasus. The rest of its body, however, was a mashup of a lion paw, an eagle talon, a dragon leg, a sea serpent’s tail, the body of a huge ferret, one deer antler and what may or may not have been the horn of a unicorn. One large, sharp-looking fang jutted from the right side of its mouth, a few strands of its scraggly snow white beard – and strangely, eyebrows – flying about its face. It waved a hand and the fluffy pink cloud formations that had been gathering outside the castle all day started spinning into what looked like a hurricane, complete with heavy winds and a rain composed of the cocoa-milk concoction that the chef had been throwing everywhere. It was eerie looking at it out the windows, as the tower was still inverted, and so it looked very much as if the whole tower was standing in a magenta whirlpool. “Stop this, Discord!” shouted the Queen. The colt gasped and looked at the creature. Discord was a name from the old myths, repeated at the fireside to scare young children. It was said he was completely mad. Well, this thing definitely fit the bill. Discord slunk across the room to the balcony, and gestured upwards towards the city streets below. “Why should I, when it’s so funny watching them scurry around like that? Look at them, they’re like ants around a broken hill.” “There is nothing funny about chaos and hate, Discord. Your very presence here betrays the principles upon which this fair land of Equestria was founded.” Discord made an exaggerated pouting face. “You wound me. I do not utilise hate magic; that is solely the domain of the ethereal fiends.” “A phrase which describes you perfectly.” Discord waggled a finger at Queen Stardust. “No, no, no. I am immortal, not ethereal. I am very much here.” “Do not split hairs with me, fiend. I-” “Ooh, I love splitting hairs,” interrupted Discord. “I can get sixteen lengthwise splits on a single strand of hair, did you know?” He summoned a carving knife and demonstrated just that with one of his eyebrow hairs. “ENOUGH!” shouted Stardust. “I will not have you despoiling this kingdom I have worked so hard for. Return to whatever foul place from whence you came lest you force me to return you to your brother Bellum by force.” Discord crossed his arms and smirked evilly. “So be it.” Stardust lowered her horn and scuffed at the ground. With a wave of her horn, she sent two silvery magical blasts towards Discord, who effortlessly reflected them with his eagle talon. They rebounded into the walls, shattering away pieces of marble with their force. The colt ducked behind the door, only barely peeking in now. Discord swung his eagle talon, releasing a cloud of glowing particles towards Stardust. They impacted with loud whistling noises on a magical shield that Stardust had erected around herself, releasing firecracker explosions for each one that hit. Another burst of magic from Stardust and the resultant fireballs marshalled themselves into a cloud and bombarded Discord. He snapped his fingers once more and the onslaught transformed into a swarm of pastel-colored insects with huge eyes and mouths, which buzzed out the window and away. At the same time, the rich carpeting of the room turned into a raging river, flowing away from the door and toward the throne. Caught unawares, Stardust was swept off her feet, carried up the dais and deposited forcefully upon the throne. The river stopped flowing as soon as she came to a stop, and rained upwards, pooling in the ceiling. Discord pointed at her, but whatever he was about to do was lost as another spell from Stardust created a bright flash of magic and loud bang, producing a loud ringing and bright afterimage that made the colt stumble back dizzily. It even forced Discord to shield his eyes, and when he looked back, Stardust was gone from the throne. Discord looked around the room calmly for her, appearing completely unfazed by her disappearance. The colt, however, could see his mother from his perspective, hiding behind one of the barber pole pillars that lined the edge of the chamber. As soon as Discord looked away, she charged him with her horn lowered, clearly intending to impale him. However, the sound of hooves on granite alerted him to her presence and he twisted around faster than would have been possible for any other creature. His lion paw came about, grasping her horn at the base. Continuing his rotation a full three hundred and sixty degrees from where he had started, he used the supreme leverage provided him to throw Stardust to the ground. Stardust’s crown, the very same one brought by Queen Platinum from the Forsaken Lands, flew off and rolled down the hall, fetching up against a pillar. Foolhardy as it might be, the colt rushed to help his mother, but he hadn’t even made it halfway when Discord stepped up to her and casually stomped through the base of her horn with his pony hoof. It made an audible crack that stopped the colt in his tracks, frozen with fear. Discord casually stepped over the stricken monarch, collecting her severed horn from where it had fallen with his scaly crimson tail. And as she struggled to regain her footing, he plunged the horn into her ribcage. The colt unfroze with a yell, running towards his mother. Discord looked over his shoulder in mild curiosity, then cackled evilly and continued toward the throne. A pair of forelimbs suddenly closed around the colt, dragging him back from his mother. “There’s nothing you can do, Cogspin,” said a familiar voice by his ear. “I’m sorry, but we have to get out of here.” He turned his head and saw, through a haze of tears, the blue coat and white mane of a Pegasus noble named Swift Wind. Swift Wind was a descendant of Broadwing, the sole Pegasus king of Equulaneum, and one of Cogspin’s oldest friends, despite being several years older. Swift had tears in his eyes as well, but his jaw was set in determined expression. Cogspin looked back at his mother, lying on her side in a pool of blood. Her eyes widened as she saw him. Go, she mouthed. A trickle of blood dripped from the corner of her lips, and the blood slowly transformed into flowers, folding together and sprouting upwards into a patch of roses inexplicably rooted in the marble. The roses rapidly hid Stardust’s now-lifeless body from view. Cogspin finally went limp and allowed himself to be dragged away. The last thing he saw as he was dragged out of the throne room was Discord transforming the royal throne into a high-backed, imposing granite affair, and sitting upon it, the Platinum Crown perched jauntily over one of the forks in his deer antler.