//------------------------------//
// Discord is a Jerk, and Magic can hurt. 
// Story: The Story of Ian Camron 
// by Swordoath 
//------------------------------//

	I’m not so sure what everyone avoids this place for, I thought as I walked in the Everfree forest. I mean, it’s a little humid and overgrown, but not unpleasant.
I was walking along what I assumed was some kind of animal’s path, barely lit as the canopy of leaves blocked nearly all the moonlight. The path was lined with eerie looking trees, but I paid them little attention, as I was focused more on not tripping over the roots underhoof. It was rather strange how grass grew underneath here. Surely the forest floor would be covered in dead, decomposing leave and-
I stopped, hearing a sound, a twig snapping. I turned around. Nothing there.
Probably just some wildlife, I thought. Probably harmless.
I was about to continue again, but… Something was off. I wasn’t totally sure exactly what, but something in the atmosphere gave it an air of tension.
I turned around again, and saw a pair of glowing, yellow eyes. The eyes belonged to some kind of tree monster-thing, vaguely reminiscent  vaguely of a dog. 
Whatever it was, it was growling at me, slowly approaching.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod, I silently panicked, backing away from the tree-dog-creature. 
A second growl joined the first, and judging by the hot breath on my rear end, I knew there was another behind me.
I’m not exactly proud of what I did next, but it was necessary.
I ran. I ran deep into the woods, far off any path I’d been following. I heard those beasts in hot pursuit. It was only a matter of time before I tired, or was obstructed. They’d catch up, and I’d be toast.
“My, my, we’ve gotten our self into a little predicament, haven’t we?” Said a familiar voice in a mocking tone.
I looked around, still running full speed ahead. “Where the hell are you Dis-”
I’d stopped looking where I was going, which was the first mistake. The second was that I’d distracted myself with that stupid blender-made god. The third was crashing into a tree wider around than the library. 
“Owww…” I said, wincing as I touched my jaw, which had been the first thing to hit the tree. 
“Hello again, my inter-realm friend.” Discord said, materializing overhead. “It seems you managed to get lost in a dangerous place?”
“You don’t – ow – say?” I said, fairly annoyed at the Draconequus. “What do you want?”
“Me? Oh, nothing.” He said, drifting overhead. “Just checking in on my favorite and most volatile friend.”
I don’t have time for this, I thought. Those dogs could be right behind me.
I got up and started to turn away, but Discord reappeared again right in front of me.
“Whoa easy there. I noticed you were in a bit of a pickle here.” He said. “I was wondering if you’d want some help from your oh-so-very sorry friend.”
“You? What the hell could you do? Give them searchlights?” I snapped.
I heard one of the dogs howling.
“Yes please.” I said. By this point, I was so terrified I was willing to ask this guy for help.
“Oh, this is going to be so fun!” he said.
He poked me in the forehead with a claw, and, everything went blurry for a second.


--30 SECONDS LATER--


“… What the hell was that?!” I shouted, now backed against the tree. “What was that even supposed to do?!”
He’d left right after ‘helping’ me. By then the tree-dogs had caught up, and now there were seven of them surrounding me, and I had nowhere to run.
“… I hate you, you sick, twisted bastard!” I screamed at the sky.
Something in front of me exploded into a shower of splinters and twigs.
The dogs… they’d all exploded, just like the vase, the pillar, all those things before had.
Brushing off the fine layer of wood from my front, I stepped away from the tree, trying to ignore the little streams of blood that ran down from some parts of my body. Thankfully my sweatshirt had taken the brunt of the shrapnel for me. I kicked at one of the splintered skulls of the tree-dogs’ corpses.
“Damn dogs…” I muttered.
I saw the sun was starting to rise. I must’ve been out here longer than I thought. I began wandering through the woods, attempting to find my way out. I fumed about how useless Discord had been back there, how stupid I was to actually go to the one place everyone who actually lived in the area dared not go, and most of all, how completely and utterly lost I was. Anything within a foot of me seemed to burst, from trees to stones to little insects. Any other animals in the forest that may have wanted to mess with me were likely driven off by this, or maybe the furious mutterings of ‘Stupid Draconequus’ and ‘Damn plant-dogs’.
Finally, hours after the wolf attack, I found my way out of that stupid forest. I was somewhere along the edge of Ponyville, in some kind of park, and I could see Lyra’s house from where I was.
By now I was a wreck. My face and chest were covered in splinters and blood, my hair looked like a bird’s nest, complete with leaves and twigs, my hoodie was torn in several places, and looked like I’d been running a marathon in a dust storm thanks to my  chase through the dirt and mud of the woods.
“God… No one’s going to want to see me like this…” I said softly, looking at my reflection in the town’s decorative water fountain. “Not much I can really do about it right now.”
I walked over to lyra’s house. No one was home, and there wasn’t a note.
Lyra probably thought I went to work, I surmised. Good. She doesn’t need to see me like this.
I headed into the bathroom to wash up and clean up. I was able to get most of the splinters out of me and clean up the trickles of blood. I had a nasty bruise welling up on my chin, and a gash by the corner of my mouth, probably from a stick slashing across it when the dogs exploded. There wasn’t much I could do about the tears in my sweatshirt either. 
I sighed in frustration, then checked the wall clock in the living room. It was already past noon. I’ve been up for more than twenty four hours now.  I’m incredibly late for my job, was attacked in a forest by plants, practically broke my jaw against a tree, and had a run in with a completely maniacal deity. 
Absolutely a waste of a sleepless night, I thought. Dammit.
Now the question was where do I even go at this point? If I showed up this late, there’s little doubt I’d be fired. Even the explanation for why I was would sound crazy, even to me. And I was there. 
Bah. So what? It’s the truth. I thought. Besides, maybe that’s normal here.
So I headed over to sweet apple acres to explain myself.

“…So that’s what happened.” I concluded.
Needless to say, AppleJack was mortified at my initial appearance. After convincing her she didn’t need to get the first aid kit, I explained to her what had happened. She was skeptical at first, but as soon as I mentioned Discord and what he did, she started believing me. 
“Discord!” She exclaimed once I finished recounting my tale. “That darned old crazy-”
“Lunatic?” I supplied. “Menace? Abomination? Utter waste of space and life?”
“The second one. We have to go tell Twilight about this!”
“Why? What she going to do that you or me can’t?”
“Twilight can tell the Princess, and we need her to use the Elements of Harmony.” Applejack explained. “C’mon! Let’s hurry!”
ApleJack began running in the direction of Twilight’s house, with me scrambling to keep up.
“Whoa, wait, the elements of what?” I asked.
“The Elements of Harmony. We can use them to turn him to stone!”
“Why hasn’t this been done before?” I asked. 
“It has, but we tried to reform him so he’d stop doin’ this kinda thing!”
“And we can all see how well that turned out.” I mumbled.  “You should have smashed him when he was made of rock.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. “
We arrived at the tree house and explained what had happened to Twilight. She said she’d suspected Discord was up to something when he brought me here. When I recounted what he did to help me, she looked at AppleJack, who looked back and nodded.
“Ian, please hold still for a minute.” Twilight said.
Twilight walked toward me, her horn glowing. She touched it to my forehead. I swear it split my head open. I felt like she was driving a knife in my forehead. It burned. It showed a few images of me through her eyes, but that ended quickly. After that it was just a white oblivion, a void filled with the skull-splitting pain.
I pulled away from her. I was furious.
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!” I shouted. Several books in the room burst into a flurry of pages the wooden horse head carving on the table exploded in a manner similar to the wooden beasts from earlier.
“Why would you DO that, you damnable shut-in bookworm!?” I raged.  “You thoughtless half-wit! That hurt, dammit!”
“Hey! Don’t you go yellin’ at-” AppleJack interrupted.
“Oh, shut up you tree-kicking false-accented waste of space! You didn’t stop ‘Little Ms. Genius’ over there from doing that bull crap!” I screamed as more objects were reduced to scraps and slivers. “You two are completely useless! GOD, why am I stuck here with these MORONS!?”
Twilight had tears in her eyes, and Applejack turned away from me. Spike ran down the stairs to see what was happening. “What’s-?” 
“Oh look, the servant boy is here. Do yourself a favor and run far, far away from this place.” I said to him as the door shattered behind me. “I sure am glad as hell I am.”
I left the library as a broken mess.
Ditzy was right outside, a letter in her mouth.
“What the hell are you looking at?” I snapped. “NOTHING HAPPENED.”
I walked far away from the library, and found myself back at the fountain. Someone else was there. It was that mare from the night before, the one who turned and bolted when I tried to talk to her. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, as if she’d been crying recently.
This time she came over and spoke to me.
“Excuse me…” She asked, stepping in front of me.
“What?” I snapped at her.
“I believe I know someone who’s looking for you. He requested me to take you to him.” She said, not looking me in the eyes.
“Who? Oh wait, let me guess.” I said in a mocking tone. “Discord wants to apologize?”
“No, not him. Please, come with-”
“Listen, I’m not some gullible idiot like you’d find in the rest of the town.” I said spitefully. “I’m not-”
She sprung forward and clasped something around my foreleg.  “Yes, you are. Otherwise, that doesn’t come off.”
She’d put on the disperser. Suddenly I knew what had felt so wrong this whole time. I hadn’t put it back on after the party. She must’ve taken it- That was what she had in her hoof last night. 
“Who the hell do you think you are?! Take it off right now, you little bit-”
She flew around behind me and shoved my face into the fountain, and kept me under. I was unable to breath, and I couldn’t get her off me. I was drowning in ten inches of water.
“I knew you’d be difficult. I knew it…” I heard her say as I blacked out.