//------------------------------//
// Chapter 31 REVISED 
// Story: A Journey Unthought Of 
// by Hustlin Tom 
//------------------------------//

Discord smirked down at Lyra as she backed away from him slowly, her ears laying on her skull and fright in her eyes, "Finally, the reaction I've been needing all along.  Now, 'How did you-'"  

"How did you escape your prison," asked Lyra.  Once she realized Discord had predicted her very next words she was even more disturbed.  

"My dear, sweet, ignorant little pony," he said as she felt a patting sensation on her head before his face was right next to hers, "Surely you did not think that someone with the title of 'Lord of Chaos' could be confined to an itty bitty singular corporeal form, did you?  Disorder is my profession!  I have a degree in it in fact: self-ordained.  I also have secondary degrees in Disharmony, General Mayhem, and Mischief."  He then showed her a diploma with all the various mentioned subject matters before offhandedly finishing with, "Oh, I also have a Minor in Anarchy."  A small Post-It note unfolded out underneath the edge of the diploma to add in his last pronouncement.  

When Lyra continued to look up at him with a look of fear that was now mixed with confusion, he put his lion's paw to his chin and slowly pulled down his beard with a sigh, "Ugh, barely like Twilight at all, and nothing like dear Tia.  Still, you'll do I suppose.  There's not exactly a great deal of luxury in the slammer now is there?"  

Lyra blinked with realization at this latest statement, "You mean you're down here in the RSD as well?"  

A brass clang rang out above her before a pebble fell down on her head, causing her to involuntarily blink.  She now noticed there was a medium sized gong suspended above her, levitating without string.  It still resonated from being struck.  

"Aaaand she's got it, Fillies and Gentlecolts," Discord said with a wink and a snap of his fingers to an unseen cheering audience, who abruptly stopped when he waved his other hand, "It's true, my dear, we are in fact together in this place, or at least we were until your friends came and got you."  

Lyra's eyes widened and she now stepped closer to the mismatched being, "Adam and Bon Bon, are they safe?  Was it the Elements who rescued me?"  

She fired question after question until Discord, evidently becoming irritated with it, pinched two fingers together in the air and drew a line across space.  Suddenly, Lyra's mouth was sealed by a comically oversized zipper to which her hooves immediately flew when she realized what had happened.  

"If you want to actually learn something from someone else, you must let them speak," he said before cramming his face in front of hers, "It's called 'Di-a-logue.  Speech 101!  Are we clear?"  

Lyra wordlessly looked back up at him from her sealed mouth and nodded her head softly.  "Good," he said, a smile growing on his face spontaneously, and with a snap of his fingers the zipper vanished, replaced by her mouth.  "Yes, your friends are all perfectly fine, and yes Twilight and hers were somewhat involved, but the real reason I stopped by was because you've got one friend in particular who intrigues me ever so greatly: the biped."  

"Adam," she asked, "What about him's so interesting to you?"  

"Oooooh, plenty," he said, and he gestured to something behind her, his paw became covered with red energy.  

Suddenly she was hit from behind and forced back into what she soon realized was a seat, a very cushioned velvet chair with thick armrests.  The light of a projector appeared above her, shining just over her head to fall on an invisible wall a few feet in front of the both of them.  Discord was at her side, levitating with his legs crossed and his tail curled beneath him, "In a bygone age, the three most important pony species, because no one cares about the zebras or bat and sea ponies, banded together to make the magnanimous nation of Equestria."  

Slides appeared in the field of the projector, showing the founding of the nation, the creation of the flag, and the eventual spread of ponykind to Equestria's modern borders.  The slides began to reverse, and there was the sound of a record scratching.  Discord's narration continued, "There was, however, one small problem: the land and all the universe had a ruler: the intelligent, wise, handsome, and humble chimera that is me."  An overly muscled parody of the draconequus appeared in the slide, a ridiculous rock candy crown on his head and a sword hilt without a blade in his hand.  The image looked down at them with a cheesy roguish grin.  

Suddenly the image was rotated out of the frame and dragged downward, to be replaced by a swan with a gold crown on its head and a dark horse with buck teeth.  "The golden age was brought to an end, unfortunately, when two alicorns who simply did not appreciate his guile or humor sealed him away in a stone prison.  And so Swanlestia and the Ugly Duckling began their rule as separate but equal royals, who lived in unfunny peace and tedious tranquility for several years."  

"What is the point in this," Lyra asked him as she gestured to the imagery before them, the Ugly Duckling Princess now being shot out of a cannon towards the moon, "Even if this weren't a parody of history it still wouldn't tell me what you care about Adam for."  

"Hmmm," he said as he stroked his beard, "You're right; though artistic this film lacks historical accuracy."  A wicked grin crossed his face which she didn't notice as he snapped his fingers, "Let's change that."  

Like a shutter being quickly opened and shut the imagery changed from cartoon portrayals of pony figures to a dark wasteland.  The stars were bright in the sky, but the world around was cold, ice frozen in strange sorts of formations all over the valley they saw before them.  There was no wind.  There was no life.  There was only ice and darkness.  

"What," Lyra started to ask, then she spoke up, "What is this?"  

"Oh wait, sorry," Discord said as he grabbed a remote from nowhere, "I skipped over the part that actually mattered."  

With the press of a button the scene changed again, and now the world was filled with lights flashing all around.  Into the frame ran someone just like Adam: he was wearing some sort of armor that covered the majority of his body with the exception of his face.  He brought up a device that he braced between his shoulder joint and his chest, and from it came a flash of light.  

"This is total crap," he yelled behind him to someone they couldn't see, "We're never gonna make it out of here a-"  

A flash suddenly appeared from nowhere.  It caught him right in the chest.  He fell.  

Lyra was confused, assaulted by the visual spectacle of the lights, the booms in the background, everything about the scene in front of her.  It was too much to take in all at once.  

"Do we need a Med-Evac," another voice, a male called out as another figure came into frame.  The new focus of the camera looked back at them, and Lyra was surprised to now see what a female of Adam's species looked like.  "He's dead," was her quick reply.  

"Wha-" Lyra was about to say in alarm, but the scene interrupted, "Incoming!"  

Something shot down into frame, forcing the woman to fall on her back.  

The second male came into frame.  He shouted, "Droid!"  

From out of the missile stepped some sort of man, but instead of a human head on its shoulders there was some sort of box with a single bar of light that went from its 'chin' to its 'forehead'.  The metal man pulled something like the humans' flashlights from a belt at its side and aimed for the two of them.  Before it could shine its light on them another missile came down with a whine.  The image was lost in a flash and a screech.  

Another appeared in its place.  It was an image of the sun.  

"Commander, there's only five minutes until the wavefront reaches us."  

Another male human said this to a grey haired female.  They were both wearing clothes more like what Lyra was accustomed to seeing Adam wear but they had stars on their chests and other blocks of colors.  They must be military.  

"Tell everyone to pull back to the ships and bunkers," she said with a defeated tone, "The planet's surface is done for."

Suddenly their view of the sun changed.  One second it was lit, the next it was dark.  Ruin and devastation were everywhere.  The ice began to form, and the scene returned to the one they had first witnessed.  

Discord began to snicker to himself, trying unsuccessfully to hold in his laughter.  Lyra, drawn from her stunned silence into anger looked over at him and asked loudly, "What is wrong with you?  What was that?"  

"No no, wait," Discord exclaimed as he waggled a finger at her, "It gets even better."  

The scene skipped forward.  It was a dark room now full of cages.  From out of them appeared all sorts of eyes.  A human walked passed the cages down the hallway, the eyes of the creatures in each cage backing away, some hissing or growling in fear.  

There was one reaction that was different though.  

"Wh-h-h-h-h-h-hy."  

The human stopped dead in her tracks.  

The voice hadn't been the human's Lyra thought to herself, in fact it sounded like it came from one of the cages.  

The question repeated, "Wh-h-h-h-h-h-hy?"  

The voice who had asked sounded like they were crying deeply, or like-  

Lyra froze, her eyes wide and her mouth partly open with dread.  

The scientist walked back the way she came to the source of the voice.  She took a small pen from her jacket pocket and from out of it came a light.  Within this particular cage was a pony.  No, Lyra thought, not a pony but a horse: large and clumsy looking, colored like a dusty road.  The horse was sitting on its haunches at the back of the cage.  It looked the woman straight in the eyes with a grief like Lyra had never seen, and from deep in its throat and out through its mouth came another whinnied declaration, "Wh-h-h-h-h-h-hy?"  

"Oh my God," the woman whispered with no small amount of horrific realization in her own eyes.  

"Bwahahaha," Discord raucously laughed as he pointed at Lyra and her own look of horror, before he exclaimed, "Wait, we need to capture this moment!"  He pointed a camera towards the both of them, and with a quick flash the picture was taken.  The camera spat out the picture even as it was developing, and the caption beneath it was 'Sometimes the truth hurts'.  

"This," Lyra tried to vocalize, "This-"  

"Come now, Lyra dear," Discord said as he patted her on the head, "Use your big filly words."  

"This is a lie," Lyra at last blurted as she looked up at him, desperate and angry, "You're liar, and you always were a liar!"  

" 'The truth doesn't change according to our ability to stomach it,'" the draconequus said with chuckle, "But who’s to say whether you can trust what I’m saying at all?  You see, Lyra, I’m Chaos incarnate; I might be lying, I might be telling the truth.  But, ironically, I’m consistent in at least one thing, and that’s being inconsistent.”

The chair and the projector light disappeared and Lyra was rudely dropped to the floor.  Frantically she looked around until she found the mental invader, who was now floating in midair belly down while tracing an invisible line on the floor with his finger, while propping up his head with his paw.  “I’m the closest thing this world has to a god you know; I might be stuck in a stone prison, but I won't remain there for too long.  I’m a part of the universe!  Celestia and Luna can never fully stop me, because you know what would happen if they did?  The entirety of existence would collapse and nothing would work.  Everything would die, because without chaos there is no life at all, and order is the death of everything.  It’s inescapable; you need me, and you always will.”  

"Adam would never do anything like what those things did," Lyra yelled at him, "He's kind, and caring.  No matter what you say I'll stand by him!"  

"It doesn't matter what you think, Lyra Heartstrings," he said nonchalantly, "For all my power, there's nothing even I could do to change the self-destructive compulsions of the human heart, and why would I want to?  Life is cruel, destructive, domineering, and fickle, and they loved life with all their hearts."  He righted himself to stand back on the ground without a care in the world, "You're much better off with me as your ruler than them.  At least I wouldn't cage you."  

He slowly moonwalked backward out of the light, leaving a crushed and confused Lyra.  “You’ll remember what I said, and then you’ll find out whether what I’m saying is true or not.  Goodbye Lyra.  It was lovely dropping in for a bit.”  His chuckle grew and grew into a roaring laughter even as it faded into the background.  

Lyra’s eyes grew heavy.  "No," she said as she tried to fight off the weariness, tried to stay aware so that he couldn't sneak up on her.  Her willpower faded quickly, and she fell to the floor gently, curling up as she did, her forelegs clutching her backlegs against her barrel.  The tears started to flow even as her eyes closed, and the moans of fear and sorrow died away as she lost consciousness.