It didn’t take long for the diamond dog to finish the emergency exit that I wanted built, as well as another room for my experiments that use more volatile ingredients. It was all finished within one night and all that is needed to finish it is to reinforce everything. With that out of the way they went back to their pack without notice by any of the ponies. I almost worried that they may have still been up to their old tricks when I found Scootaloo gone in the morning, but I saw her in town later that morning before I ran off to the castle before the Princess arrived.
I learned of the disasters that turned out during that event from Twilight the next day. Throughout the rest of spring I had little else to do so I spent my time on various tasks. The same couldn’t be said for Twilight and her friends though. I found that the Crusaders had been going around asking various ponies about their cutie marks and how they got them which had me go out of my way to try and avoid them more often though I disliked doing so.
I was even able to meet some of the pets that they all had, and was surprised at how helpful Twilight’s owl was, even though Spike reacted poorly to him. During those months I actually saw something scarier than most of the creatures I have faced in my life. It really makes me reconsider my deal with her as a depressed Pinkie Pie is one I never want to see again.
I did enjoy hearing about their adventures at the Gala event they went to, even though Spike had to explain many of the embarrassing parts of the story as the six mares were really hesitant about admitting that they had unrealistic expectations. Even with knowing them all for less than a year, Fluttershy for the shortest time of them, I could see them doing the things they did mostly. The only exception to this is how Fluttershy broke down like she did; it is something I would have never expected from her.
I do wonder about Princess Celestia as she invited the six of them to liven up the event, and was even happy that they pretty much ruined it. When I asked about Princess Luna none of them remembered hearing anything about her, but rumors say that she is still recovering from her ordeal and is trying to catch up with the times through study. After hearing the stories I get an idea and tease Rarity by tossing her a ruby and saying she could have used one of these with her.
After explaining how it is enchanted to block physical objects, and that it would have stopped the cake she immediately incorporated it into some future dress ideas to the laughter of the group. I did manage to cheer up Twilight a bit over what happened there by pointing out that, while she didn’t spend it how she wanted, she did get to spend some time with the Princess along with her friends for some friendly conversation at that donut place.
Things had been moving along smoothly since I had moved into Ponyville, and it made me realize that after next month with the summer solstice I would have been there for a full year. This is longer than I’ve been able to stay at any one location alone as something always managed to happen if I stopped too long. I really hope nothing goes wrong to force me to leave here; I haven’t been able to just stop and relax in so long even with the occasional problem that pops up.
Those thought turn out to be the wrong things to think as various clouds around the area turn pink and start raining some brown substance. It takes a while, but I manage to drag one low enough with my magic to examine. “Is that cotton candy?” I tentatively taste it to find that it is true as well as what the other thing is. “And chocolate milk? What is going on around here?”
I head back towards my house to consult the books there as well as my journal for spells, but not before spotting Pinkie Pie on the way. Seeing her dancing underneath one of the clouds with her mouth open just makes me shake my head. “Of course Pinkie Pie would do something like that in this situation, it almost seems like the weather is tailored to her.” I wonder if it has anything to do with her Pinkie Sense but brush it off as unlikely as it has never shown the ability of doing something like this.
Digging through the few books I have I find nothing, not that I expected to find anything in them really. My journal doesn’t help either as any spells I attempt just seem to bounce off of something. Deciding to at least prepare my home for whatever is happening I focus on the hearth stone and try to enhance its protections while feeling for any oddities in the area.
This yields nothing out of the ordinary, yet I feel something familiar as one of the clouds pass within range of the territory. I try to place where I’ve felt it before as I head back outside again. I find that things have gotten worse since going in as I know spot various buildings floating in the air, many of them not in the same shape as they should be. I climb up to my roof to try and get a better view, but with the distance I can’t make anything out beyond that. “One of the few times having a telescope would have come in handy; stargazing is Twilight’s hobby, not mine.”
At this time the sun and the moon start to randomly switch places turning things from night to day and back again. As I get down to the ground again I feel a shock of something entering the area covered by the stone. Focusing on it I can’t tell what or who it is, just that it is giving off a crazy sort of power that I can’t pin down. I worry that it is something created by whatever is causing all these strange events, so I use my magic to cloak myself in as many spells as I can think of before sneaking around to behind the creature.
The creature doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to its surroundings as I get pretty close behind it without it noticing me. It almost did sense me a couple times but I had enough warning to hide each time. Getting a good look at it I find myself more confused than ever. It is some sort of serpentine creature, but it is formed out of a variety of other creatures, with no two body parts matching.
It’s like some kind of chaotic amalgamation of whatever creature just happened to be nearby. I pause as the chaotic part sticks out at me, as that seems to be the central theme of whatever is going on. I hear it saying something, but I was too distracted at the moment to catch it, but I did feel some force start to build up from it though aimed towards my house. Sensing the same feeling from it that I got from the clouds I try to reach out with my magic and give it a little twist.
What happens next surprises not only me but the creature as well as he is buried under a deluge of some custard-like substance, and probably is custard considering what has been happening. I watch as he looks down at his fingers, and with him making various motions causes random things to appear around him. “Well that was odd, nothing went wrong that time. Oh well it must have been a random glitch in the system, never know when those will happen. Let’s try that again shall we.” I hear him say this in a melodic voice while he attempts to do something again.
This time I speak up while dropping all my concealment spells while performing that same twisting feeling I did before. “Hey! What do you think you are doing to my home, and who are you anyways!?” Me appearing behind him out from nowhere like that causes him to jump in surprise, and with his spell thrown off again it causes some weird structure with a roof to appear around him causing him to hit his head hard. When he lands I can actually see birds flying around his head which he soon swats away.
“All right you annoying things, get out of here. Really now, two glitches in the span of minutes? Well I guess you sneaking up like that can be blamed for the second.” He focuses on me as he says the last part, though when he sees me he squints as if trying to see something. “Odd, you look like a pony, but something about is off, speaking of off this whole place here seems a tad off as well. Ah excuse my manners, you asked who I am and what I was doing.”
He pulls a playing card out of somewhere before handing it to me revealing a joker on it with his features. “Oh wait, I don’t have a card, I got that one from a friend. Anyways I am Discord, God of Chaos and Disharmony at your service. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to get back to what I was doing, this house is just so awfully boring and I feel that it needs to be spruced up a bit.”
He turns back to my home yet again and charges up a third time, but this time with even more power than the last two attempts combined. Strangely enough my attempt at diverting it, which I assume is what I’ve been doing, is even easier than before, using less energy than I would have thought. The results though are still as spectacularly random as the before as he is suddenly hit by a flower pot, an anvil, and then a grand piano from above. Looking up expecting to see Derpy I notice that the skies are clear.
Shaking my head I just try to ignore whatever happens from now on. “No thank you, I prefer to change my home on my own time, there’s already enough chaos going on trying to do that as it is.” This time when Discord recovers he takes a closer look at me as if realizing something. “Once I could ignore, two times as well as it could be a coincidence, but three times my magic going haywire? No there is something about you, who are you?”
He starts to sound menacing as he says this so I try to play dumb. “What? The great God of Chaos is surprised when something chaotic happens so he blames somepony else?” He just glares at me as he raises one of his limbs to try and cast again causing me to sigh and grin as I give that twist again. This time the ground erupts under him in a torrent of water blasting him back towards town with one word trailing his launch. “FOUL!”
Watching him go I know that this isn’t the end so I refresh myself from the hearth stone and prepare to dig in. His title of God of Chaos isn’t for show as he tries to sneak into my territory in a variety of strange ways.
His first attempt it to be disguised as all three of the Cutie Mark Crusaders and being chased by a timberwolf. I recognize that it is him as soon as he enters my area and send him flying in a barrier surrounding him. I almost do the same to the real ones but I stop myself as soon as they cross the invisible line marking the edge. I send them into my house to hide after they tell me what is going on in town and how even the Elements have been affected by the chaos.
Discord next tries to sneak through as a swarm of gophers, but when he tries to magic up something to keep me from stopping him instead it gives me a can of gopher repellent. I’m not sure why it worked but it eventually sent them all away, even the one dressed as a funny little man.
Next attempt involves him burrowing under the ground which is easily stopped as the waterspout from earlier is still going. Using a barrier to create a temporary ‘pipe’ I just place it in his path to uncover and he is soon flushed away like a rat in a sewer.
By this point I am starting to enjoy myself even if I have to dip into the hearth stone’s reserves to recharge. His attempts start to get more and more elaborate and I find I can even do things to stuff he summons as well. I’m not sure where he got that giant metallic bipedal thing, but learning that my magic could do that allowed me to cause it to fall into five pieces that looked like some sort of feline before he ran off again.
By the end of the day I started to feel weary from trying to focus all that magic into stopping his various attempts, even if I was still full on the magic side. I soon noticed a rainbow rising up in the town before descending again and I wondered what he was up to now. I realized that this was something else as the town started going back to normal again. I sigh as I realize that somepony must have finally stopped him as I sent all the magic I could back to the stone again and called the three fillies out.
Escorting them back into town I find Twilight and her friends and learn what happened that day. Everything from how Discord had escaped, to his elaborate plan to cause them to give up, and finally his defeat. I facehoofed when they mentioned that he actually pulled out a target for them to hit in the end as it was just so… well… random.
The Crusaders then told them how they had gotten back home on the train to find everything in chaos and they eventually found that my home was the only place that didn’t seem changed so they ran over there to hide. They even described some of the things I did while they watched from an upper floor of the manor. After that they all turned towards me in surprise and Twilight was the first to speak up asking the question they all had.
“How in Equestria did you manage to do all that when even the Princesses couldn’t do anything?” I wonder at this myself as I had no idea what I was doing most of the time as he felt vastly stronger than anything I could pull off. “Honestly, I’m not even sure myself. I was mostly just acting on instinct most of the time. The odd thing is that I could somehow sense when he was about to do something and it felt oddly familiar. I was able to reach out to it and give a sort of magic twist to it and it would cause it to backfire on him.”
I think back on how things had escalated as well. “What is even stranger is that as he poured more power into doing something the easier it was to stop him as it took less power.” Most of the others just stand there open-mouthed through the explanation, yet Twilight seemed to be thinking hard about something. Eventually she starts to share what she was thinking about.
“Flarenza, remember how on the day we first met you were describing the types of magic you were good with, your affinities I believe you called it?” I nod at her, partially remembering that day, though mostly the fear of the ghost. “Well you said that you didn’t know what one of them was and you said it was related to, oh what was it, something about breaking rules? I think that had something to do with what you did today; it might not just be breaking rules but chaos magic in general.”
She seems to be both excited and wary about this at the same time. The excitement is probably from something new to study, yet wary from what just happened today. I consider what she said and try to compare my previous experiences with that magic and what happened today.
“You might actually be right yet it doesn’t change what I said about it. With his massive power he should have easily been able to just swat me aside like nothing, which would be the rule. Yet with just a tiny bit of power I was able to turn what he did against him.” Of course what I don’t mention is the home ground advantage that I had that Discord noticed but didn’t recognize.
Applejack regains her wits and gets a question of her own in before Twilight can get another one out. “So ya’ll are saying that ya could have faced down Discord and beat him alone? Why didn’t ya come and do that then instead of hiding in yer fancy house?” I just roll my eyes as she misses the obvious, to me at least, reason. “Well I didn’t know I could at the time, and if I went into town after him who would be there to protect your sister and her friends? Bringing them with would have put them in even more danger as I had little clue as to what I was doing.”
She looks a bit sheepish when I remind her that I was protecting her sister and friends from Discord the entire time. I noticed she even took a closer look at me as well before replying. “Sorry about that, I kinda forgot. Looking at ya I just noticed that ya look tuckered out as well.” At this the two unicorns take a closer look at me before looking at each other and coming to an agreement.
I look as they both go to different sides of me, and I look worriedly at between them. “Um, is something wrong?” I ask trying to see what they are up to; the others there look just as confused. Rarity speaks up first. “Oh it’s nothing much darling, just that Applejack is right and seeing as you got this way protecting my sister as well there is only one way to repay you.” Twilight speaks up as well. “And since you were using magic the entire time to cause this it means you are nearly burnt out magically as well as physically so there is only way to fix that.”
I look between the two in confusion before I notice the grin on Rarity’s face making me realize what they mean. I just sigh before answering tiredly them even though it’s not that big of a hassle. “Let me guess, a spa trip?” They just nod as the others laugh at my tone.