Silence.
It had been far too long since Kyle had been able to enjoy silence. With the hustle and bustle of daily life in Ironwall, every day was a mass of noise. Even his long hours of relative rest in his office were punctuated by the sounds of hammers and saws as the workmen continued their construction. By now, the outer walls were nearly complete, and construction had begun on both the new Mage Tower and the greenhouse. Between those buildings and the remaining work on the walls, the sounds of construction often didn’t fade away until after sundown.
But right now he could forget all that, if only for a little while. The familiar grove of trees provided a shelter from life as the commander of a small military town. A shelter he was only willing to share with one other creature. A creature that just so happened to be just across from him.
“Deep breath…” he said calmly as he watched Scootaloo’s progress. The orange Pegasus was balanced precariously on one hoof. Her other rear hoof was bent at a somewhat awkward angle so that it rested against her opposite leg, with her front hooves folded up in front of her. “Find your inner balance.” He could see her wings straining against the rope that bound them to her sides, begging to be released to help her balance. “There you go. Now… hold it…”
It was a simple balancing exercise, designed to get a trainee adapted to balancing on a single foot. This had been one of the simplest exercises in Kyle’s training, though to be fair it had been designed with a bipedal creature in mind. It was clear that it was a struggle for the young filly to keep her leg bent that way, much less keep herself balanced. Nevertheless, Grand Master Hight had instructed him to, at the very least, attempt to apply them to Scootaloo’s training. Whether it would work or not, he couldn’t say.
Scootaloo wobbled slightly. “Hold it…” Kyle repeated. He watched for a moment as Scootaloo recovered her balance, and began a mental countdown. “Fifteen… Fourteen…” Scootaloo’s jaw clenched as she struggled to maintain the unnatural pose, but she maintained her balance as Kyle continued to count in his head. “And… release.”
As the words left his mouth, Scootaloo fell back onto all four hooves. She hissed quietly under her breath and extended the rear hoof that she had not been standing upon, shaking it violently. “That hurt…” she grumbled. “My leg isn’t supposed to bend that way.”
“I know,” Kyle replied, “but Grand Master Hight said we need to at least try and see if Ponies are capable of these exercises. If not, we’ll adapt them as we have in the past.”
Scootaloo reached out with her front hooves, stretching her back. “Well can we go ahead and say we’ve tried and it didn’t work?” she asked. “My back is killing me…”
“Let’s give it another day or two. My guess is that part of the problem is that you’re using muscles in ways that you’ve never used them before. If we loosen them up, maybe it’ll become a bit more comfortable.”
“If you say so…” Scootaloo’s wings tried to unfurl once more, and she let out another grumble. “Can we at least get rid of the rope now?” she asked. “Don’t see why my wings need to be tied up…”
“We can’t have you cheating and using them for balance,” Kyle explained as he reached for the knot that held the rope in place. “This is supposed to be about building your core strength and balance, not using your wings to wobble you from side to side.” The rope fell to the ground. Scootaloo’s wings instantly snapped open, nearly smacking Kyle in the head as he recoiled.
Scootaloo let out a small sigh as she gave her wings a few small flaps. “So, what now?” she finally asked after a few moments of stretching her wings.
“Well, I’ll admit that that last exercise didn’t look… particularly comfortable.” Kyle rubbed the back of his neck. “So I guess we’ll end it here for today. Same time and place tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Scootaloo cocked her head to one side, and a small smile crossed her lips. “Are we finally gonna get back to a regular thing again?”
“That’s the plan, yes. Assuming no other deadly, world-ending, near-apocalyptic threat rears its ugly head.”
“You say that as if you expect it to.”
Kyle shook his head and sighed. “I got some news a couple of days ago that… doesn’t exactly bode well,” he admitted. “It’s nothing big,” he assured her quickly. “Not yet. But I’m gonna need to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand.”
“Well if you need a helping hoof…” Scootaloo’s voice trailed off, and she gave him a knowing smirk. “... just let me know.”
Kyle grinned and leaned forward, rustling her mane. “Thanks squirt, but I think the guys at Ironwall should be able to take care of it. Now go on, enjoy the rest of your day. I bet Sweetie Belle and Applebloom are waiting for you.” He pulled his hand away and watched as Scootaloo spread her wings and took to the air, spiraling out of the grove of trees that they used as a training area.
Kyle soon stood up and pushed his way out of the small grove in the middle of the park. He would usually receive an odd look as he would push emerge from the treeline, and today was no different. However, what was different was the Pony who happened to notice him leaving the training grounds. He only had a few seconds to prepare himself as a familiar mint-green Unicorn all but galloped over to him.
“Kyle!” Lyra’s toothy grin was as wide as ever as she came to a stop in front of him. “I haven’t seen you around in… like, forever!”
“Yeah, I guess it has been a while.” Over a month, as Kyle now realized, since he had spoken with her for any length of time. “Sorry, these past few weeks have been insane for me.”
“You and me both. The orchestra’s been running practices almost non-stop. This is the first day off we’ve gotten in weeks.”
Kyle barely stopped himself from snorting. “Oh, you get days off?” he laughed. “Lucky. Wish I could get one of those every now and then.”
“Then what do you call this? You don’t seem to be at work right now.”
“I call this ‘post-work relaxation’,” Kyle replied. “I’m done for the day, barring any pressing matters that arise.”
Lyra nodded. “Alright. So what exactly are you doing for this ‘post-work relaxation’?”
Kyle glanced back at the grove of trees he had just emerged from and gave a small chuckle. “Work of a different nature, I suppose you could call it.”
Lyra’s smile faded away into a frown. “That’s not relaxing. That’s just more work!” she argued. “C’mon, let’s go do something that isn’t work.”
“And what exactly did you have in mind?”
Lyra opened her mouth, but no words emerged. She quickly shut it and glanced away. Apparently, she was having trouble thinking of things to do that would be relaxing for them both. And to be fair, so was he. There was always Sugarcube Corner, but dealing with Pinkie Pie’s antics could often be more exhausting than any day at Ironwall. The arcade was out of the question - Kyle had already tried his hand at a couple of those 'video games', and found that he was terrible at them. The local club wouldn’t be open until the sun went down, and he still had to get up in the morning. And while it was certainly a nice day, just spending it lounging around not doing much seemed like a waste.
“I’ve got it!” Lyra exclaimed suddenly, drawing Kyle’s attention back to her. “The Starswirl the Bearded Traveling Museum is in Ponyville for today only. We could go there.”
Kyle cocked his head slightly. “Who now?”
“Starswirl the Bearded.” Lyra repeated. Kyle simply gave her a blank stare. “The Unicorn?” she added. Still no response. “The greatest magical researcher who ever lived?”
“Never heard of him.”
“What?!” Lyra reared up and planted her forehooves on Kyle’s shoulders. “You’ve never heard of Starswirl the Bearded? And you lived with Twilight for how long?”
Kyle adjusted himself to more comfortably support the sudden added weight that Lyra’s hooves on his shoulders brought. “I’m guessing he was important?”
“Twilight always says he was.” Lyra dropped back down onto all four hooves. “Said he invented over two hundred different spells, including something she called the amniomorphic spell.”
“In Common, please?”
Lyra shrugged. “Something to do with bowls, I think. So how about it?”
Kyle reached a hand up to rub his chin. If he was perfectly honest, looking at a traveling museum dedicated to a long-dead researcher didn’t exactly sound like fun. But then again, there wasn’t really anything else that he could think of to do instead. His only other real option was to go back to Ironwall and try to find something to occupy his time. Meditation maybe. Assuming that he wasn’t interrupted. And if this Starswirl fellow did as much as Lyra claimed for magic in Equestria, maybe Kyle could bring back some information that the researchers at Ironwall would appreciate. Something to keep them busy for a few days and out of his hair… “Alright, you talked me into it.”
Lyra beamed. “Great! Let’s go!” Her horn let up, and Kyle found his arm enveloped in a faint green aura. He quickly scrambled forward to avoid falling, and tugged his arm out of lyra’s magical grip as he followed her away from the park and out of the town.
As they approached the edge of town, Kyle began to see the tops of what appeared to be tents poking over the roofline. Sure enough, as they left the last rows of buildings that made up the town limits, they entered into what appeared to be a second, smaller town comprised entirely of brightly-colored tents and stands. A fair number of Ponies were moving among the tents, many of them sporting the same outfit - a multi-hued blue robe with star and moon designs, a matching pointed wizard’s hat with bells around the rim, and a fake beard tied around their chins.
“So… is this it?” he finally asked as they moved among the tents.
“Yeah, this is it,” Lyra replied. “Let’s take a look around, shall we?”
For a while, the pair simply meandered through the streets of tents. Occasionally they would stop to look at a particular object, though most of the items on display were unknown to both Kyle and Lyra. It didn’t help that the vast majority of the items, which already looked like mere household items, were also unlabled, so neither of them could tell what most of the items were.
After wandering around for a while, Kyle felt his stomach rumble. The soft growl was echoed by another one, this time from Lyra. With a wordless nod, the two made their way over to a tent that was serving food and ordered a pair of sandwiches. They walked around to the side of the tent to find a small resting area set up, with numerous chairs and tables scattered about. For a while, there was silence as they took their seats and began to eat.
It wasn’t until they stood back up that Lyra finally broke the silence. “So…” she began slowly. “What do you think so far?”
Kyle paused for a moment. “I, uh… I’ll be honest,” he said. “For such an important figure, I expected a bit… more.”
“Hm?”
“I mean, aside from the books, most of this stuff doesn’t look any different from just random junk you could find lying around.” He glanced around to find an example, and spotted his target on the opposite side of the street. “Like that thing,” he continued, moving towards a small candlestick within a glass box. “It looks just like the candlestick on my bedside table. Or any number of other candlesticks, for that matter. What makes this one so special?”
Lyra shrugged. “I dunno.”
“And there’s not even a card here or anything to tell you what makes it different,” Kyle continued. “It’s like… if you don’t already know what each of these things are, then you’re clueless here!”
“Well all you had to do was ask.”
Kyle turned his head towards the new voice that had spoken from his left. His eyes were met with a large, pointe wizards hat, identical to the ones he had seen other Ponies wearing around the museum. The brim of the hat, laden with golden bells, was large enough to obscure the other Pony’s face from view, but the pink-and-purple mane poking out from underneath the hat was enough to give away the identity of the newcomer. “I should have figured you’d be here, Twilight,” he chuckled.
“Of course,” Twilight replied happily. “An entire museum dedicated to Starswirl the Bearded? It’s the perfect way to spend the day with your sister-in-law!”
“Sister-in-law?”
Something hard prodded against Kyle’s right shoulder. He turned his head once more, and this time found himself face-to-face with a familiar light-pink mare. “Princess Cadence,” he greeted, inclining his head slightly.
“Oh please, enough of that,” she scoffed. “You’ve done too much for me to still have to be so formal. Just call me Cadence.”
“Right…” Kyle glanced back and forth between the two Alicorns. “So… what are you two doing here?”
“We’ve been meaning to get together and spend a day together for a while now,” Twilight explained. “The museum in Ponyville is the perfect thing to do!”
“If you know what any of this stuff is,” Lyra spoke up. She trotted over to stand between Twilight and Kyle and leaned forward, peering at the candlestick in front of her. “I agree with Kyle - I can’t figure out what makes all of this junk so special.”
“Well as I said, all you had to do was ask.” Twilight turned her head back towards the stand in front of them. “This is the candlestick that Starswirl the Bearded used to light the way when he was exploring the caverns of Maretania.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “And that makes it important enough to put on display at a museum?”
“Of course!” Twilight stared at Kyle wide-eyed. “Without this candlestick, he would not have discovered the writings within the caverns, and…” her voice trailed off as a small rattling noise interrupted her. The candlestick in front of them began to rock from side to side. Suddenly, it began rapidly rotating within the glass box. With a flash of white light, the candlestick disappeared, replaced with a very small, very familiar, and very blue Draconequus.
“Gah!” Twilight, Cadence, and Lyra all reared up as Discord popped into existence before them, taking several steps backwards. Kyle was only just able to stop himself from doing the same, forcing himself to maintain a slight frown as Discord stared up at him with a miserable expression. Discord’s eyes twitched, and he took several small gasps before sneezing violently. The Draconequus seemed to explode into a mass of blue slime, and several nearby hats floated away. The front of the glass box opened up, allowing the slime to slither onto the floor. Discord's headless body soon emerged from the slime puddle, now standing at his normal size. He pulled his head out of the ground and reattached it to his body before looking back at the group in front of him.
“Discord!” Twilight glared angrily as she took a step forward. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh dear, dear Princesses.” Discord leaned forward and sighed dramatically. “I’m sorry to say that I’m sick.” He turned his head and coughed loudly. “Blue Flu.”
Lyra raised an eyebrow. “Blue flu?”
Discord nodded sadly. “I’m afraid I’ve already given it to poor Applejack and Rarity.”
The Draconequus twitched slightly, and he took several deep gasps. Kyle’s eyes opened wide, and he raised his hand as Discord leaned backwards. A swirl of green mist left his hands an swirled around him, forming a small protective bubble. Not a second later, Discord sneezed violently once more, spraying bits of mucus forward. Before they impacted with the life cocoon, however, they slammed into a second barrier. Kyle turned his head to see Cadence’s horn dying down. “Magic Health Bubble,” she explained with a smile.
“Good thinking.”
“Indeed.” Discord pressed his face up against the invisible barrier, causing it to glow brightly as he touched it. “How would Twilight nurse me back to health if she were sick too?” Twilight’s eyes went wide with panic as Discord twirled one claw across the surface of the Health Bubble.
“Hold on now,” Kyle interrupted. “So you’ve got this disease called Blue Flu?” Discord nodded glumly. “Right. Now stand still.” He closed his eyes, and his hands glowed with green energy. Another blast of green mist surged forward out of the Health Bubble and swirled around Discord. The mist continued to swirl as Kyle grunted slightly, but nothing seemed to happen.
Finally, Kyle let the energy around his hands die, and the mist faded as well. “I don’t get it,” he murmured, eyeing Discord suspiciously. “The Detox should have purged any disease from you…”
Discord smiled weakly. “Magical disease,” he corrected. He turned his gaze back to Twilight. “You will be letting me stay at your place until I'm all better, won't you?”
Twilight glanced back and forth between Discord and Cadence, opening and closing her mouth repeatedly. “Stay? With me?!” she exclaimed. “Uh… now is not really the best time, though I'm sure you already knew that…”
“But taking in the sick and the desperate -” Discord reared backwards to stand upright. Six small butterflies flew away from him as he extended his arms. “ - isn't that what Fluttershy would do?” He leaned forward once more and pressed his claw and paw against the magical health bubble, smiling. “Isn't 'helping' something that friends do for friends?” His expression suddenly went wide. He narrowed his eyes and turned away. “Unless, of course, you're really saying that you're not my friend.”
Twilight growled lightly. “No, that is not what I'm saying.” she murmured through gritted teeth.
“Oh, how elated I am to hear that!” Discord fell to the ground and slithered like a snake around the bubble, finally coming to rest on top of the magical dome. “Shall the three of us head back to your place? I don't want to get anypony else sick.”
Cadence and Twilight exchanged an exasperated glance. “Guess we don’t have much of a choice,” Twilight sighed. Kyle and Lyra stepped aside as the two princesses began to move away, moving the bubble with them. As it moved, Discord remained in place, falling to the ground behind them. His mismatched wings detached from his back and floated down to the ground.
“Carry me?”
Cadence shot a glare at the blue Draconequus. “It isn’t far. I think you can manage.”
“Oh poo.” Discord frowned, but scooched along the ground after the retreating tails of the Princesses. Soon, the three were out of view.
For a long moment, Kyle and Lyra simply stood there, staring after the trio. Finally, Lyra cleared her throat. “Well… that was certainly something…”
“Yeah. Something not good,” Kyle agreed. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Something certainly wasn’t adding up. His Detox should have cleared any disease within Discord, and it should have at least attempted to purge a magical illness. But it hadn’t detected anything wrong with him.
Lyra glance over at Kyle and laughed nervously. “Well, let’s not worry about it,” she said. “They’re both Princesses, I’m sure they can handle whatever trouble he throws at them. Why don’t we head over to my place and play some cards or chess or -”
“I’m going after them.”
“I was hoping you weren’t going to say that,” Lyra sighed. “C’mon, we were supposed to be doing something fun together. Watching a sick Spirit of Chaos doesn’t sound like a good time.”
“Sorry Lyra, but this is too fishy for me to let go. Discord’s up to no good, and I intend to find out just what he’s up to. We’ll catch up some other time.” With that, Kyle set off at a quick run to catch up, leaving Lyra alone.
The mint-green Unicorn sighed. “Great,” she murmured. “I finally get him to spend some time with me, and something goes horribly wrong. Fantastic.” She glanced down and idly kicked a rock with her hoof. “Stupid Discord. Stupid Twilight, stupid…”
The sound of glass breaking from behind her caused Lyra to jump. She spun around to see what had caused the noise. The front of the glass display box, which had been flung open when Discord had emerged, had fallen completely free of the rest of the box, and now lay shattered on the ground. More importantly, however, she noticed that the candlestick had not returned when Discord had left.
“Nope.” Lyra shook her head rapidly as she turned and galloped away. “Nope, nope, just nope. Everypony thinks I’m weird enough as is. I am not explaining to anypony what happened to that candlestick!”