You Can Never Be Free of Your Past
(WARNING: Incoming Trekness and imports from a very complex headcanon. All will be explained in the author's note at bottom.)
It was nice to have a day of fun with friends, but Fluttershy could honestly take only so much of the company of other ponies, even her best friends. So she was looking forward to a nice relaxing evening after her friends all went home. Discord was up in the room she'd given him, doing... something or other. Probably rearranging physics, again. Angel had finally calmed down, having spent much of the day in an absolute snit because he hadn't enjoyed being forced to clean the house, so Fluttershy had made sure to give him an especially lengthy brushing and fluffing and a salad with all his favorite ingredients.
And then there was a knock on the door.
It was late. Fluttershy shrank back by instinct – who would come knocking on her door late at night? And then she heard Lyra's voice. "Fluttershy, are you there?"
Tentatively Fluttershy went to the door, opening it just enough to peer through. Sure enough, that was Lyra. "Um, yes, but, it's late..."
"A stallion from up by Saddle Lake came to my house asking for you. He says he's got a sick rooster."
"Oh dear!" Fluttershy opened the door. "Did he say what was ailing the poor creature?"
"No, just that he had a sick rooster and he needed your help. I tried to point out that Ponyville has a veterinarian, but she doesn't do house calls and he doesn't want to move his rooster. Saddle Lake's just a train stop up the way; he asked if you could head up there, and he'll meet you at the station."
Fluttershy frowned. "He's not going to go with me?"
"Oh, he turned around and headed straight back home the moment I agreed to come get you. Says his roo needs him. I don't know why anyone would want to keep a rooster as a pet, they don't even lay eggs. Maybe he needs to get up early in the morning."
"Or maybe the rooster is just his friend," Fluttershy said. "Not all pets are useful, Lyra."
She notified Angel Bunny of where she was going, left a note for Discord – if he really was playing with physics in there, she didn't want to knock on his door and disrupt his concentration, not to mention that if he'd made the room the size of a large island again he might not even hear her – and headed to the train station with Lyra. Not that Lyra really needed to accompany her, but it was late, and dark, and scary, and Fluttershy preferred the companionship at this time of day.
At least, until her companion, and the entire world around her, inexplicably stopped and went dead still.
There was only one other pony out on the streets of Ponyville, a stallion Fluttershy didn't really recognize, and he was standing completely still, hoof still in mid-step. Lyra's mouth was open – she had gone still in the middle of a word. Fluttershy looked around herself, growing more and more nervous. There was a flower petal, caught in the breeze, suspended unmoving. It was as if time had stopped for everything but her.
"D-Discord?" she whispered. "If you're doing this, p-please, it's n-not funny..."
"He is not, little pony," a female voice, resonant and deep, came from behind her. Fluttershy turned, and stared into the face of an immense, reddish-gold –
"D-d-d-DRAGON!" Fluttershy shrieked, and began backing up rapidly, wings beginning to flap frantically in preparation for a desperate takeoff. Except that gravity caught her back legs, making them inexplicably heavy, so she fell on her rump, tripping on her own back legs. "D-d-d-d..."
"Stop your mewling, pony, I have less than no desire to eat you," the dragon said, her voice a deep rumble but undeniably feminine. "Although if you keep up with that whimpering, I might change my mind."
Dragons didn't have the ability to stop time. "Are – are you – are you related to Discord?" Fluttershy forced out, her voice barely above a whisper.
The dragon smiled broadly. "A cowardly little thing you are, but not stupid, for a lower life form," she said. "Return home. There is no rooster."
"There's – what?"
"You've been lured away from your cottage. Go back home, and do as you would ever do. Hide in the shadows, and tremble, and observe. There are things he will never tell you that it's best if you knew."
"You mean Discord, right?" Fluttershy was calming down slightly. If this was one of Discord's kind, then she wasn't a real dragon. Fluttershy remembered some things Discord had said a few days ago, about the others of his kind. "Are you... Glory?"
"Neither Passion nor Discord know I am here, and they must not. Don't tell him I warned you." She shifted her wings slightly in almost a shrugging motion, as if squaring her shoulders. "I am not helping him in any material way, but the others might not agree, and he is being watched."
"I won't. But... if you don't mind... who is Passion? I've never heard that name before."
"And Discord will never tell you," Glory – Fluttershy was by now certain this dragon had to be the Spirit that Discord had referred to as Glory – said. "Passion was the Spirit of Love, before she and Discord destroyed each other. Some of her work benefited you ponies. Some of it... did not." She closed her eyes. "Go now."
And then there was no dragon there, and time had resumed.
"Fluttershy?" Lyra waved a hoof in front of Fluttershy's face. "You just zoned out for a second."
"Oh, Lyra, I'm so sorry to have made so much trouble for you," Fluttershy said. "I have to go back to my house for my chicken antibiotic kit! I don't know what I was thinking, leaving without it to go see a sick rooster!"
"Oh. Okay, well, I'll walk you back then if you want."
"No, no, I insist, I've taken up too much of your time. I'll go back and get it and then I'll have Discord teleport me to the train station at Saddle Lake. You can go back home. I'm sure Bon Bon is missing you."
"Wellll.... If you're suuure..."
"Nothing bad's going to happen to me in Ponyville," Fluttershy said reassuringly. "I'll be fine going home."
"But you wanted an escort to the train, so... shouldn't you get an escort back home?"
"I was just being silly. Sometimes I get scared and I want company, but I know I was really perfectly safe the whole time! Besides, sometimes Discord can be a little shy around ponies he doesn't know."
Lyra gave Fluttershy a look of frank disbelief. "Discord. Spirit of Chaos. Is shy?"
"Oh, you know, he pretends a lot, but he's really much more sensitive than you'd think," Fluttershy said.
"Didn't he make a swimming pool in the middle of town just a couple of days ago?"
"Thank you so much for all your help, Lyra, but I really have to run. That poor rooster needs me! Bye!" Fluttershy zipped off at her highest land speed, making a beeline for home.
Glory had said she should hide in the shadows and observe. And tremble, which might have been an insult or might have been a warning that whatever she was going to watch was dangerous. Could it be something dangerous to Discord? No, he was much too powerful. He could take care of himself. But then why had his (sister? ex-fillyfriend? what was Glory to him anyway?) told Fluttershy to go observe?
She circled around her home, creeping through hedges and sticking close to the woods, to approach from the other direction... and, as she crouched behind the trunk of the large tree she lived in, saw herself come skipping toward the door, a covered basket on her back.
Terror shot through Fluttershy. Changeling! Had to be. Glory had said there was no rooster, that she was being lured away. The Changeling was going to impersonate her to Discord... to try to bring him under their control? She had to stop it... but Glory had told her to watch. But Glory had also said she wasn't helping Discord. But she'd also said that the others of her kind would disagree. Would Discord be able to tell? Fluttershy resolved to watch and see how Discord reacted. If he thought the Changeling was her, she would come forth to stop it, but if he could tell the difference then there'd be no need. She snuck in through a knothole in the tree, gently pushing Ms. Robin's nest and her baby birds to the side so she wouldn't accidentally squash them, and watched through a gap in the wallboards that separated her living quarters from the tree proper.
The humming Changeling entered her house and called out, "Hello, Discord! I'm back!" She picked up the note Fluttershy had left for Discord with her hooves and crumpled it, then set her saddle basket down on the table.
Discord drifted down the stairs, upside down, head peering down through the staircase opening first before the rest of him came through. "Well, hello there!" he said jovially. "You must be someone stupid enough to think I'd think you're Fluttershy!" The duplicate suddenly went down on the floor, barrel pressed against the rug and legs splayed out around her, with an "oof". Discord's telekinesis usually had a yellow glow to it, but this time there was nothing. "Who are you really and where is Fluttershy?" Discord growled. "And you had better give me an answer I like, or you cannot begin to imagine what I will do to you."
The Changeling laughed, sounding slightly pained and out of breath. Her imitation of Fluttershy vanished in a wave of blue fire, leaving... Fluttershy caught her breath, frozen solid with fear. The creature on the floor was tall, her barrel and neck alone almost Fluttershy's height even with her chitinous, hole-filled legs splayed out under her. She had a mane, the color and texture of seaweed, and a long, pointed, somewhat warped horn. Chrysalis, Fluttershy thought, wanting to scream, but her voice was frozen.
"Don't worry about your little pony friend," Chrysalis chuckled. "She's just been sent on a wild goose chase – or a sick rooster chase, in this case, to get her out of the way. Not a single strand of her mane will be harmed."
"That had better be true."
"I've come to trade with you," Chrysalis said. "I need a service that only you can provide, and I offer information and a gift in exchange. Why would I risk offending you by harming your pet pony?" She breathed deeply. "Oh, I can taste the love you feel for the little thing even now, without her presence. You have so much magic, it amplifies everything you feel."
"Can you also feel how extraordinarily irritating I am finding you?" Discord asked, scowling. "Because if you can't, I could clarify it for you."
"You're hardly my favorite creature ever either," Chrysalis retorted. "But you have something I need, and I have something you don't know that you need, but I'm positive that once you know, you'll know how badly you needed it. Let me up so we can discuss this like civilized creatures."
"I don't know, I'm rather liking the look here," Discord said musingly. "Chrysalis the bug queen, squashed like a bug. Can you flap your wings a little? Maybe make a buzzing sound?"
"And to think you're supposed to be amusing," Chrysalis said, struggling to get up.
"I am amusing. You bugs just have no sense of humor."
"Would you like to hear about the plot to kill you or wouldn't you?"
Abruptly Chrysalis was standing, on her hooves, in a flash of light. "I'm all ears," said a pile of numerous animal ears in the general shape of Discord.
Chrysalis walked over to the basket and removed the cover. "I suspect you'll recognize this."
Discord, no longer made of ears, peered into the basket. His face went completely expressionless – which, on Discord's highly expressive face, was an expression in and of itself. "That's an M blade," he said quietly. "Where did you get that?"
"Lady Passion orchestrated my attempt to take over Canterlot." Chrysalis' voice was sour. "I won't pretend I was reluctant at the time. The thought of getting revenge on the ponies, of taking by force what they've denied to us, was very attractive. But I should have known better. I trusted Lady Passion. I should have realized that when she gave us all that we needed to capture the Alicorn of Love, her own creation just as we were it meant that we meant equally as little to her."
Discord's face was twisted in an expression Fluttershy had never seen on him, looking as if he was balanced on the knife edge between rage and breaking down into tears. "I don't want to hear that name."
"Then I'll never be able to tell you what I came to tell you." Chrysalis' eyes narrowed. "You still love her, Discord? Really? After all you did to her?"
"Shut. Up." Discord was breathing hard. Fluttershy had to control the desire to go to him, to hold him and try to soothe him. "All right. All right. Tell me what you want to tell me. You say Credenza was one of hers? I find that hard to believe. She was stripped of her power 300 years ago; Come Dancing's not that old."
"She placed the potential for power in the bloodline, before she lost her powers. A hundred years ago she came here, and we gave her sanctuary, and she advised us to take certain roles and perform certain acts so that Cadenza's grandparents, and parents, would meet and mate, and so that she would be educated in love magic even as a pegasus, and guided to become what she eventually became. After that Celestia stepped in and we had no further role, not until the Lady sold Cadenza out to us to fuel us for her plan. I was to impersonate Cadenza, feed on her fiancé, take over Canterlot... and then take that blade and plunge it into your heart. The Lady claimed the chaos would wake you, and that we needed to kill you to keep you from waking up and destroying everything." She tilted her head slightly. "Would it have killed you? Because at this point I don't necessarily believe anything the Lady says."
"It's an M blade," Discord said again. "No, of course it couldn't have killed me. She isn't an M, she isn't even a Q anymore. How could she have fueled it?"
"I was to fuel it. It needs to be filled with magic to work properly, I can see that for myself. She showed me the spell I would need to use, in my mind."
Discord frowned. "She... isn't a changeling, is she? I can't see how she could be..."
"No. She looks like a minotaur had a horrible accident with a taffy pull, and lost her horns in the process of being stretched. She has no real magic anymore, except the magic of speaking mind to mind, as I can with my royal daughters, except she can do it with anyone apparently."
"I can't sense her. I can't... I have no idea where she is on this world. I didn't even know she was here. How... oh, right." He laughed bitterly. "Right, that explains it. I can disobey my orders but I can't break the Continuum's geas, not now."
"She sold us out," Chrysalis said. "Once we were blasted away and I felt hundreds of my Changelings die or fall injured, the scales fell from my eyes and I saw. We could never have won. Celestia has a sister. And if we had... enslaving and cocooning ponies and using illusions to force love out of them would only have worked until all the ponies died. There was no plan for feeding them or mating them to ensure a continuing supply of love. There was also no plan for dealing with Luna. All the Lady wanted was for me to have enough energy and enough control over Canterlot that I could kill you for her."
"It probably wouldn't have, even then," Discord said. "I admit it might have made me a trifle uncomfortable, but the magic of this world isn't sufficient to kill me."
"I'm sure you'd tell me that even if it would have killed you... in fact, especially if it would have killed you. I wouldn't admit to such a weakness either. But she is preparing to try again." Chrysalis took a deep breath. "She came to us, where we lay broken and injured, and brought us food she had lured with her powers of the mind. She tended our injuries. I had already become disillusioned, but my daughters and many of my soldiers are more than prepared to believe the fault was mine, that the Lady has our best interests at heart and I am the one who failed. She has been telling them of how dangerous you are, how you will plunge all Equestria into a state where nopony can love another and all are filled with hate and disharmony. But my spies have told me a different story, that Celestia has you on a leash and it's you who fell to the power of love—"
"Friendship," Discord interrupted. "Friendship, not love. And I didn't fall to anything. And I'm not on a leash! I can still do whatever I want. I'm just... rethinking my goals in life, that's all."
"You just keep telling yourself that," Chrysalis said. "And I had spies in Ponyville the day you broke free. Your chaos wasn't nearly organized enough to systematically prevent love. A clever changeling could have taken advantage of the disorder you caused, and if you'd been out for more than a day, I would have had them do so. You're not nearly as dangerous to us as you are to happy, harmonious, idyllic pony life." She fairly spat the last words.
"Why, thank you, Chrysalis. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"We've never met before today."
"And while we're doing compliments, might I add that the chaos you caused at the wedding that day was the finest entertainment I got my entire second imprisonment? I especially loved the ending, where you and your Changelings nearly got destroyed by a fire hose of food." Discord chuckled. "Gives new meaning to the term 'food fight', wouldn't you say?"
"Stop trying to provoke me," Chrysalis hissed. "I want a new home for my Changelings, somewhere we can find food easily, and tend our wounds, without the Lady stirring up my children into some sort of suicide mission to try to kill a draconequus who's now all-powerful again. I believe it's in your interest as well; if you can feel love, or excuse me, friendship, you'll want to avoid collateral damage, and the Lady's been claiming that if someling were to kill somepony you loved and take their place, they could drain enough from you to kill you. Obviously, since you were able to tell instantly that I wasn't your precious Fluttershy, that won't work, but many of them will listen to the Lady before they listen to me, and it does you no good that you can detect a 'ling in your friend's place if your friend is already dead."
"Ah, well, forewarned is forearmed," Discord said, with an extra eagle arm under his lion one and an extra lion arm under his eagle one. The extra arms vanished. "I'm fairly sure I can protect my pals, now that you've warned me. But if all you want me to do is pick up the remains of your hive and dump it elsewhere, I can do that easily enough."
"Someplace with food," Chrysalis snapped. "The middle of nowhere, with no ponies around, won't be sufficient."
"I know a perfect place," Discord said. "A place that just radiates love and cheer! Your lings will love it there."
"Where?"
Discord grinned broadly. "Oh, you'll figure it out when you get there," he said, and snapped. Chrysalis vanished. "Enjoy the Crystal Empire! Say hi to Codependence for me if you run into her!" He looked down into the basket. "Best get rid of this too. Hmm. Oh, that's perfect!" Discord picked up the blade and vanished.
Fluttershy crawled backward out of her hiding place, and into her home through the front door, still shaking.
Elsewhere, Daring Do watched the magical holographic memory crystal skeptically. In the image, Discord was giving Ahuizotl a shining, plainly magical blade, with a broad grin on his face. Both their faces, actually, though Ahuizotl's grin was more sly; Discord just looked like he was having a great deal of fun. "No offense, Professor Pony, but how did you manage to come by this recording? I can't imagine either Discord or Ahuizotl making such a recording, and I'd think Discord at least would notice somepony else doing it."
"Actually, Discord gave it to me," the chocolate-brown unicorn said. "Since he's reformed, you see, and no longer wants a weapon that could potentially kill alicorns in the paws of a villain like Ahuizotl."
"If he's so reformed, why did he give the blade to Ahuizotl in the first place?"
"Oh, he did that the day he escaped from his statue, over a year ago."
"And Ahuizotl hasn't tried to use it yet?" Daring Do gave the unicorn her best skeptical look.
"Well, it does need to be charged with a great deal of magic to work," Professor Pony – who she'd never heard of before, but she'd checked out his references and they seemed legitimate – said. "But really, the safest place for that thing is in the heart of an active volcano. Even if Ahuizotl never gets his paws on a source of magic powerful enough to channel into the thing, the possibility that someone would steal it from him and charge it remains. After all, if you can routinely get through all of his deathtraps, it ought to be a cakewalk for a powerful mage!"
Daring Do glared. "I've worked with some of those mages. They're less talented than you think."
"Ah, yes, of course, no offense intended," Professor Pony said. He sounded smarmy and insincere, but a lot of academic-types did, when dealing with her. "So will you do it?"
"What's in it for you, Professor?"
"Just the knowledge that I've helped to protect Equestria and preserve the safety of our beloved Princesses," the professor said, one hoof over his heart, laying it on so thick there was zero possibility that he was sincere.
"Really." This smelled like a trap.
"Oh, all right," the Professor said, rolling his eyes. "I admit it. Discord is giving me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the oceans as a seapony if I act as his proxy in this. He didn't think you'd listen to him – and truth be told, he probably didn't want to hear a lecture about how irresponsible he was to give the blade to Ahuizotl in the first place, which I'm sure he totally understands and feels he doesn't need to hear any more about."
"Explore the oceans as a seapony?" Daring Do stared.
"Oh, I love to sail, and I've always wanted to be able to see what lies underneath the waves! It's a wonderful opportunity for me, and all he asked me to do was bring this crystal to your attention and give you the location of the mysterious temple that Ahuizotl's stashed the item in, and remind you it needs to be thrown into an active volcano to be destroyed and ensure the safety of our Princesses!"
"And he couldn't do this himself why?"
Professor Pony shrugged. "Who can understand why the lord of chaos does anything? My best guess is, he thought it would be more entertaining to watch you do it."
Daring Do sighed. It was probably a trap, or an elaborate game of Discord's, but she couldn't take the chance. A blade that could kill alicorns really was something that needed to be thrown in a volcano, given that Princess Luna had just returned from a thousand-year-exile on the moon for trying to kill her sister and therefore Daring Do couldn't actually trust the alicorn princesses to secure it themselves. One could go insane and try to use it on the other. As outrageous as the idea seemed, it had already happened, albeit a thousand years ago, and if Nightmare Moon had had an alicorn-killing blade to destroy her sister with, Equestria might even now be locked in eternal night.
"All right, Professor, I'll do it," she said. "Give me the information."
Fluttershy had barely finished putting Chrysalis' abandoned basket away – it really was one of her baskets, that she'd thought she lost a week ago – when Discord reappeared, to both of their startlement. "Eep!"
"Fluttershy! Is that you?"
"Oh, um, Discord, you startled me!" She took a deep breath. "Of course it's me, who else would... oh, I can't. Come down here, please. It's really me."
Discord, who'd materialized in air, landed, a puzzled expression on his face. Fluttershy flew up to him and put her arms around him. "Well, you're certainly affectionate today," he said uncertainly.
"Is there something you'd like to talk about?" Fluttershy asked, pressing her face against his fur, listening for his heartbeat. It was rapid again, and his breathing wasn't quite even. Which could be excitement – Discord frequently behaved as if he were in a constant state of manic excitement. Or it could be fear.
"No, why would there be—"
She looked up at him. "I know, Discord. I was watching the whole conversation through the knothole on the other side of the tree."
Discord sagged. "So you are all right. I didn't feel that anything bad had happened to you, but I was going to go looking for you next. I was just... making sure somepony responsible was going to deal with that blade."
"I'm glad," Fluttershy said. "It sounded very scary. Is it true that it could have killed you?"
Discord didn't say anything. He sank further down onto the ground, half-coiling around Fluttershy, half-holding her tightly. His breathing turned ragged, and his body was tense around hers, but he didn't speak.
"It's all right to be scared," Fluttershy said. "It could have, couldn't it? Would the plan have worked if we hadn't defeated the Changelings? Would Chrysalis have been able to—to—"
"It's not that," Discord whispered hoarsely. "I don't care about might-have-beens. They didn't happen. It's the future—" He stopped.
"But you said that now that Chrysalis warned you, you could protect us. And you sent her hive to the Crystal Empire. Will they really be okay there? They won't kill ponies and Princess Cadance won't try to get revenge on them?"
"That's up to Chrysalis." Discord was breathing hard. "If she lays low, if she gets her hive to assimilate into society – Sombra had so many slaves, working underground in cells apart from other slaves, spending their entire lives never knowing any ponies other than the ones they were chained to. It'll be very, very easy for the Changelings to take pony forms and pretend they're some of those slaves, seeking to assimilate into Empire society now that they're free. They'll be free to find love without having to impersonate any real ponies to do it, and the Crystal Heart amplifies whatever the ponies of the Crystal Empire are feeling, so there'll be enough ambient love and happiness and gratitude and other horribly harmonious emotions that the changelings won't starve. If they try to kidnap and impersonate actual ponies, though... Cadance will find out. She's paranoid, after what happened to her. She has pony counselors circulating through the city, talking to the crystal ponies, helping them to deal with what they suffered under Sombra and how to enter the modern age... and those counselors use code words, so when they check back up on a pony they saw a month ago, they can confirm that that's the same pony. So Chrysalis and her hive will only be safe if they do things in a way that ponies don't get hurt."
"That's good. That sounds like a win-win answer. I think Princess Celestia would be proud of you for coming up with that."
"Don't—don't tell her." His hug tightened for just a moment, a slight shudder going through him.
"Why not?"
"Because then she'll ask—and the only reason I can bear to think of it – it just happened and already I want so much to blot it out and forget, but I can't, not and keep you safe, but I can't—I can't talk about her, about... that one..."
"You don't mean Chrysalis. You mean—"
"Don't say her name, it hurts—"
"I won't," Fluttershy said, stroking his head, which had somehow ended up in her lap. His eyes were tightly closed, but teardrops squeezed out from underneath them anyway. "I won't. I promise."
"I've done things, Fluttershy, such terrible, terrible, things... not just to you ponies, that was, that was part of the job, but to my own—"
"It's all right. It's over now, and you've changed, and you won't do those things anymore, right?"
"Ponies are very forgiving," Discord said, his words partially muffled because he'd buried his head in the crook between her foreleg and barrel, where she'd swept her wing around to partially cover his head as she stroked him with the other foreleg. "The Continuum isn't."
"You have a home here," Fluttershy said. "Nothing can completely make up for your family throwing you out, I know. Believe me, I know." She nuzzled the top of his head. "But you can do what I did. You can find friends where you are, like you have. You can make a new home, here. Chrysalis said you loved me, as a friend. You know I love you as my friend too, right?" Tears started in her own eyes. "I was so scared that Chrysalis would find some way to do something to you. I know how powerful you are, but I didn't know if she could fool you."
"Oh, no, Chrysalis is nothing," Discord said, lifting his head. "She can be defeated with food. Just think, if Pinkie Pie turned evil and decided to defeat Celestia, and she did it by throwing so much cake at her that she ate it all and got too fat to fight back!"
"Princess Celestia doesn't like cake that much," Fluttershy said sternly.
"But wouldn't it be hilarious if she did?" He tucked his head back down, still shivering slightly, but chuckling as well.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Fluttershy said, and felt him tense again, "but, um, what is an M blade anyway, if you don't mind my asking?"
For several moments Discord was still, and she thought he wouldn't answer the question. Then he uncoiled, lifting his head and body to look down at her. "Do you remember the things we talked about the other day?"
"About... you and your family?"
"That, yes." Between his paws there was a galaxy of stars, and another, and another, orbiting around a seething sunlike monstrosity that was so bright it was painful to look at. "There are two kinds of spirits. My kind are... the best way to describe our name for ourselves is Questioners. We live next door to the Heart of the Storm," and here a small stylized red arrow pointed at the roiling ball of energy in the center, "the pure chaos from which all the universes come from, the source of magic and creation itself. We draw our power from that, and shield the rest of the universes from it. We study, we test, and we promote diversity and variety, amongst our own ranks as well as within the universe." He scowled. "Or we did, once."
"That's... chaos?" It looked beautiful the way a flame was beautiful, and very, very dangerous. Fluttershy felt nervous even being near the representation Discord had created, even knowing he wouldn't let it harm her.
"In its purest form, yes. Nothing can exist within the Heart of the Storm, but it gives birth to everything there is, all possibilities boiling off of it and falling into creation over the fullness of time." He stroked it with the tip of his talon. "I said the others are mostly not as chaotic as I am, and that's true, but simply by virtue of where we live and what we are and where our power derives, we are all at least next of kin to chaos." Discord rotated his miniature orrery, bringing a galaxy into focus so Fluttershy could no longer see his rendition of the Heart of the Storm. "The others think of their role as maintaining harmony. They treat the universe as a garden, to prune, and weed, and remove obstacles from. They might best be called—" here he simply hummed a single note. "Or, M. Easier to say. And if we're shortening names, you could call us the Q. Needless to say, we don't get along."
"Are these – M – are the Elements related to them?"
Discord laughed. "Oh no no no. The M's concept of harmony would suggest that alicorns shouldn't exist, because they could be dangerous to the rest of you. They would have a universe where nothing aspires to greatness, because if it's not already great, then it disrupts the balance by becoming so. And the Questioners are becoming just like them... well, that's neither here nor there." He sighed. "The blade you saw was an artifact from a war that was old when your planet was new. With the power of an M behind it, an M blade can kill a Q... but a Q can't kill a Q with it, and... she... was once a Q. Any spell she gave Chrysalis... well, it shouldn't work. She was never an M. And the war is long over; no M would dare risk starting it again by aiding a former Q against another Q."
"But... you're not sure?"
"No one's ever tried to stab a Q who was bound inside a rock with one, so no, I'm not sure. But it doesn't matter. I disposed of the weapon. Nothing bad is going to happen." He laid his head down on her lap again, still shivering, so she wasn't sure he was telling the truth about that.
"I'm sure you're right," Fluttershy said, stroking his head with her wing again, trying to calm him. "And nopony is going to turn you to stone again, so nopony would ever have the chance again, and I know you can take care of yourself as long as your powers are free."
"...someone must have given it to her..." Discord mumbled into her fur, or something like that.
"What? I didn't really hear that?" Fluttershy asked.
"Nothing, nothing." Discord sprang up suddenly, no sign of the emotions he'd just been racked with on his face or body. "So! All this has been very interesting, but it's getting later, and I am just about to miss my window to go play with Moony before she starts her dream rounds!"
"Um, if Princess Luna is on duty then I don't think she wants to play..."
"Pish posh, Luna's always up for a round with me. At least, whenever I show up with a game, she plays it." From his snaggletoothed grin, Fluttershy was guessing that the game in question was probably "Harass the Princess and Rile Her Up."
"Why don't you stay over here tonight? I'll make us some cocoa, and you can get a nice soak and float on the marshmallows again..."
"No, no, duty calls! I'll see you in the morning, Fluttershy. Don't worry about me!" With that, he vanished.
Fluttershy sighed. Of course she was worried. She was very, very worried, particularly after the events of this evening, but what could she do? She couldn't actually stop him, and maybe he'd share some of this information with Luna. If he wasn't willing to talk to Celestia, maybe Luna would help.
It was full dark now, and Luna had just finished poking the last few holes in the sky when several of them rearranged themselves to form Discord's face. "I think you missed a couple," he said, more stars forming a stylized talon pointing at a spot on the sky that was currently unadorned.
Luna gritted her teeth. It was an illusion for her benefit, she knew; he wasn't really disrupting the positioning of her stars, and she was the only one who could see him. Nonetheless, Discord was the last being she wanted to be reminded of while she was setting up the stars. "I choose which stars to show to ponies," she said. "Epilantha and Parachroos are too hard for the naked eye to see even when I expose them."
Discord appeared next to her. "Censoring the sky? Tsk, tsk," he said. "Or are you just getting lazy in your old age? Maybe after a thousand years' vacation from the job, you're not as interested in doing it right anymore."
"It was hardly a vacation," Luna snapped. "Unless yours to the sunny Canterlot Gardens was a vacation as well. And you have long lost the right to criticize how I put up the stars."
It haunted her to this day, whether it was the right thing to show the stars in the sky to ponykind, when the one who had shown her how to do it and had been most adamant that she take on the task had been him. But she wanted to believe he hadn't been evil, the first time he'd come to their world. She wanted to believe that her existence, the fact that she still lived and the fact that she had the power to do what she did, wasn't due to the senseless whims of a beast of chaos. He'd been helping them fight a revolution, then, had saved her sister from the prison for dissidents and the Reformation Spells that would have been cast on her to make her content with the regime. He'd given them both wings, and power. Back then Luna had been so young, a filly who hadn't even had her cutie mark yet when first she'd met Discord. The idea of the revolution had been exciting, and since their cause had been just and she'd believed herself immortal the way every foal did, it had never entered her mind that she could truly come to harm, or that any of her friends in the fight could, or that there could be anything wrong about what they'd been doing, at all.
Overthrowing the Alicorn Masters had been right. Ponies had been far, far happier when they were free to choose their own destinies. Just because later she and Tia had had to overthrow Discord himself didn't mean that the things he'd taught them or the things he'd helped them do were inherently evil... right? But she'd been so much more certain before Nightmare Moon. Now she second-guessed everything, now that her own thoughts and feelings had proven to lead her so far astray.
"Wouldst thou take pleasure to see the stars? The true stars, not these paltry few scattered dots on the night?"
The stars had fascinated Luna from the time she was a foal in diapers. On any given night, there were four, five or six visible dots of light in the sky. Why? What were they? Where did they come from? The unicorns who raised the sun and the moon under the direction of the Masters never spoke of the stars; were the stars simply things that were there, not created by any pony? "I would! And if it please you, I'd fain well see them now!"
He'd chuckled. "So demanding thou art. So unlike to thy sister the peacemaker. And yet thy dominion shalt be the peaceful night. Do the hopes and dreams of ponykind boil within thee so savagely, then, to drive thee to such passion?"
"Stars, Discord. You promised!"
"And so I did, and so I shall." And then they were in blackness, the moon impossibly huge at their backs, and so many glittering lights surrounding Luna, she thought she might go mad from joy and wonder. She flapped her wings but did not move, and didn't feel air flow over them, and it felt as if she were falling forever and yet she didn't move at all. "Stay thy wings, little one, there's no gravity here in the dark between the stars, and the air thou breathest circles solely roundst thy head. There is none for thy wings here."
"Wherefore can there be so many stars? How? What are they?"
"Listen well, little Luna. Each star is a sun, like the one adorning thy sister's flank, and many of those suns shine on worlds much like your own. The magic that blankets Equestria creates a thick fog in the uppermost of the heavens round your world, so that all thou, or anypony, can see are the scant few bright enough to shine through the fog, and of them most are worlds that are sister to your own, sharing your sun. Equestrians cannot see the true stars, and that has played into the hooves of thine oppressors, for ponies denied the stars are denied their hopes. Stars symbolize magic, and the drive to achieve. Stars are the frontier that lies always ahead, the focus of hopes and dreams. And as Alicorn of the Moon, and Dreams, in both wise do the stars fall within thy domain."
"Do you mean to say you have shown this to me before even Celestia? These are mine own?"
"Tis but the truth, little Luna. I shall not show these stars to Celestia; her dreams are for the betterment of your world, not for the drive toward others. 'Twill be thy task to show them to her, and to all ponies of Equestria."
He had shown her the spell to let her sense the position of the stars above, even through the thaumic field around the world, and the spell to connect the thaumic field to the positions of those stars, so she could make a pinhole tunnel that allowed the light of the true stars to shine on the world. Celestia had never learned how to do that; it had driven Nightmare Moon to even greater paroxysms of rage when she'd sensed that Celestia wasn't opening the thaumic field at all, that she was simply taking tiny bits of sun and dotting them around the sky in the exact positions they'd been in the night that Celestia had banished her. For a thousand years, the stars that ponies could see were fake, except for the five planets in their system and Evening Star, the only one bright enough to see through the field without a telescope. For a thousand years, none of the points of light in the night sky moved except the six that were really there.
Luna hadn't been strong enough to raise the moon, her first few days back on this world, but she had done the stars the right way the very first night after her return, even though it had exhausted her and taken her most of the night. She had been placing and reinforcing the holes that allowed ponies to see the real stars ever since, experimenting with spells that would let her keep the thaumic field solid – now that she knew what sort of Nightmares lurked out there – but transmit the light of the stars to the lower atmosphere where ponies would see them. And she was not going to let Discord criticize how she did it. Maybe he had given her the stars, and the charge to give them to ponykind, but he'd lost the right to tell her to do anything when a thousand years of chaos had taken all of ponykind's hopes for generations and ground them into the dirt.
"Touchy, touchy. And here I thought you'd appreciate the reminder."
"Their names are Forget and Faded, in the ancient tongue. There is a reason I don't bother with them."
"Someday ponies will have telescopes powerful enough to see all of them, and then you'll have to."
"Someday ponies will be able to put telescopes on small stars, like the false stars my sister created except made of earth and metal, not sunfire, and then they will be outside the field and be able to see all the stars, even the ones I cannot with alicorn eyes. Until that day, I will choose which stars are worth creating holes in our world's defenses to see, and which are not." She turned her head to glare at Discord. "Was that your plan from the beginning? Show us the stars, and allow corruption from entities beyond them to creep through, as we hold the gates open of our own volition because the stars mesmerize us with their beauty and we cannot take that from ponykind?"
"Would it entirely shock you to know that the Spirit of Chaos sometimes doesn't think things through?" he said, and he sounded strangely tired for a being that she knew never slept. "No, Luna, all I wanted to do was to have you give ponies the stars. I wasn't considering the slightest possibility of emotivore entities drifting through space being attracted to your world and invading it through the mini-wormholes you make for the stars. Even I can be taken by surprise on occasion, you know." He perked up. "Where did you get the idea for putting telescopes on false stars?"
"There have been several proposals to do so that my sister was ignoring. None of them had any thought for how to get the false stars into place except to propose that Celestia raise them there, and now, several have suggested I do so instead. I have been pushing for a more robust proposal. Unicorns used to raise the sun and moon—"
"Unicorns used to rotate the planet. Not quite the same thing."
"Indeed, but putting a small satellite into orbit should be less taxing."
"Well, I'm pleased to see you ponies are moving forward. Satellites will result in amazing things. Such as freeze-dried ice cream!" An assortment of small spots of icy cold something-that-wasn't-snow fell on Luna's head. Discord was levitating above her, shoveling handfuls of the little spheres into his mouth. "Delicious! I'll bet you can't wait!"
"Is there a reason you are here, aside from annoying me?"
He looked down at her with sunglasses that, given the hour, he had no reason to be wearing. "Loonie, when have I ever needed a better reason than 'annoying you'?"
"Then desist. I have work to begin."
Discord swung his legs down and stood on the ground again. "Actually, I came because I was hoping we might bury the hatchet."
She looked to his paws. "I see no hatchet. Have you really missed an opportunity for a ridiculous wordplay pun?"
"Well, given that you don't trust me, I didn't think it was a great idea to be carrying weapons, but here, if you really want a hatchet—" He was now holding a large balloon hatchet, similar to the balloon hammers sold at fairs and carnivals. "We could bury this one." He tossed it to the ground. More freeze-dried ice cream morsels poured onto the hatchet, forming a mound and completely covering it.
"I am not ready to forgive you, Discord." Luna turned away. "You have done nothing to earn redemption except to refrain from further villainy."
"I..." He hesitated. "I shouldn't have dragged you into the rebellion. Not at your age. Celly was completely against it."
Luna looked at him, shocked. "That's what you apologize for? After all these years?"
"There's a reason every civilized society frowns on the use of child soldiers. You should have had the opportunity to be a child. I gave you wings, and a war, and responsibility for stars, when you were far too young for any of them, but I didn't really understand childhood. I've been spending time with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and it's made me realize—"
"Realize what? That you should have refrained from making me an alicorn, with the power to protect myself and others, in the middle of a revolution where my elder sister was the standard-bearer? Our parents disappeared in the night, and they were loyal to the regime. What do you think would have become of me if you had left me behind?" Luna shook her head. "You did not take my childhood. You took my adulthood. You made me raise up a revolt against you, when you were the one who made my sister and myself what we are. Yes, I became ruthless in the revolution, as child soldiers do. Yes, I killed. It was war. But I remembered how to laugh, and how to play. How to love and how to trust. It was those two you damaged when you became the villain we had to set ourselves against, for so many years. Celestia played along with you, to try to make you moderate your behavior, and in that you drove a wedge between my sister and myself, which may have contributed to the darkness that blossomed within me. I have second-guessed my own stars since my return, because it was you who gave them to me. Apologize for that if you would, but do not apologize for making me strong at the time that I needed to be, disregarding my youth at the time."
"I'm not going to apologize for chaos," Discord snapped, folding his arms tightly in front of himself. "You ponies were staid. Hidebound. You needed chaos. You needed to forget every part of your civilization that came from the Masters and rebuild from the ground up."
"Generations tormented? Our civilization crushed completely, turned into anarchy? Our history, lost, such that only Tia and I remember what was? No. I will never believe we needed those things."
"Then I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, because I think you did."
"I am weary of this conversation, and I have much work to do. Go now." Luna pointed at the door imperiously.
"But I came to give you a present." He was above her head again, his own head dangling down to speak in her ear. She flicked it, wishing she could flick his whole head away.
"I have no need of a present from you, nor any desire to take one."
"Oh, but you'll like this." He dangled a multi-faceted crystal ornament in front of her. She lit her horn to bat it away – and the center illuminated, with stars, and some object within the stars, moving so swiftly they streaked by it.
Luna took the ornament, puzzled. The object was some sort of reverse tripod, made of silver, steel or some other metallic grey-white substance, and shaped like... well, like a creature, but no creature she'd ever seen before. It had a huge, flat, round head, a tiny cylindrical body, and cylindrical wing-like protrusions from its back, each almost the same size as the body was. "What is this?"
"A starship," Discord said. He tapped the crystal, and now she was peering into a large room, where a huge window dominated, showing the stars. Beings were seated in chairs, facing the window – some on a lower row, in the center or directly in front of the window, others on a raised balcony behind the center and separated with a railing. The beings were intelligent, for they wore clothing, and a matching piece of jewelry adorned each one's chest, but they were bipeds, vaguely reminiscent of minotaurs. None had horns, and only one had anything close to the upper body musculature of a minotaur, a dark-coated one wearing a yellow shirt and a shining bandolier. Though he had no horns per se, he had obviously horny crest ridges on his head in about the same location where a unicorn horn would be. The others had smooth heads. None had anything like wings. Luna wondered if the dark-coated crested one was something like a unicorn, and the rest were something like earth ponies. All of them had highly articulated, long-fingered paws with opposable thumbs, but no claws like dragons had. "And that is a view of their bridge."
"These are aliens?" Luna said, holding the ornament close with her magic so she could peer into it. As she turned it, the angle of observation changed, so she could see the entire interior of the bridge. "And they sail space as if it were a sea?"
"In much the same way, yes. You'd like the guy with the macro-head, Luna; he takes himself way too seriously, is obsessed with honor, and he's hilarious. Unintentionally so, but still."
"You know these aliens? Personally?"
"Why, yes, yes I do." Discord smirked. "Feel free to spy on their adventures as much as you'd like. Press the bottom of the crystal to get audio; I've placed a translation spell on it so you'll understand them."
"Have you their permission for this spying?" Luna demanded.
Discord made a sound halfway between a giggle and a snort that sounded like "snrk". "Please. They have no concept of magic. They couldn't even begin to understand how I'm observing them. Besides, they keep themselves under constant observation as well; image and audio recordings of this bridge are being made constantly and shipped back home to their superiors for their records. So it's not as if they expect any kind of privacy."
"If they have no magic, how exactly are they sailing the stars?"
Discord leaned down into her ear again. "When ponykind finds that out, Luna, oh, the glorious days ahead of you then."
And then he vanished.
Damn him. He'd hit her where she was weakest against temptation – in her curiosity. Of course she would want to know more of these creatures who sailed the stars. But she was the Princess of Dreams, and she had duties to perform.
She'd watch the crystal later, after she had safeguarded the dreams of her little ponies. Luna set the crystal down and lowered herself into a meditative posture. The stars were out, the moon was high, and all across Equestria ponies had either bedded down for the night already or were in that process now. It was time.
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Huzzah! Updates!
The wonderful things indeed.
Great chapter. I really enjoyed the bit with Luna, her curiosity is going to be fun to read about.
Congratulations on updating. As always, your Discord stories are pretty sad. I understand why it is, but I always wish that Celestia, Luna and Discord could be less stubborn. They may be coming to a too late moment... And I'm a softie that just wants people to be happy.
I really like your interpretation of how Luna arranges the stars and I accept the headcanon that the Enterprise is occasionally observed by a royal alicorn.
6784857
They know intellectually that they're the latest in a long line, but because she waits at least fifty years before even seeking another husband, most of them were either not alive when she was married before, or too young to have been aware of it much. And Celestia's probably quite good at making sure the stallions she likes feel as if they're very important to her, especially because they are; I don't know if she's capable of head-over-heels giddy love anymore, especially not for a mortal, but her husbands were all very dear to her. Without having Luna by her side as a confidant, she really needed someone to be there for her.
They weren't equitable relationships because no relationship with an absolute monarch can ever be equitable. But none of them would have gone into a relationship with the immortal Princess of the Sun thinking they were going to get an equitable relationship. And she only married guys who could stand up to her and had the ability to tell her she was wrong, so she was trying for as healthy a relationship as she could possibly achieve. But yeah, dating and marriage kind of suck when you're the only immortal around. It's kind of why she did things like have friends with benefits relationships with dragons. She couldn't marry a dragon -- Equestria wouldn't accept it and probably neither would the dragons, though dragons are a lot more willing to tell other dragons to shove off and butt out of their life -- but she could take them as lovers, discreetly.
6784931
Really? It was a joke I saw more than once in Star Trek fandom. Probably because Q describes himself as an omnipotent being (though technically, he is only nigh-omnipotent.)
I once had Q complain to Tasha Yar about hating that joke, along with "the one about U following me." Her reaction was "I'm not following you, you kidnapped me!"
6784886
Yes, I suppose that's a reasonable enough way of looking at it. I was talking more about the emotional dynamic of being in a relationship with someone like that - I didn't mean equitable in terms of power but in terms of emotional reciprocity. Getting into a life-long, committed relationship with someone when you know that you don't and fundamentally can't feel about them the same way they do about you, because you're aware from the outset that it's only a phase for you while it's their entire life to them, just seems an unfair thing to do to a person. Borderling exploitative, really - you'll never be able to really give them what they want and return their feelings on their own terms.
6784939
I'm not really that heavily into Star Trek, so I suppose I wouldn't know. It's a classic philosophical argument against the possibility of an actually omnipotent entity actually existing, though - it's self-contradictory, like the idea of there being a thing that isn't what it is. Breaking the laws of logic is a lot harder than breaking the laws of physics, which is why that is one of the benchmarks for whether something could properly be considered to be God in the monotheistic sense.
I read I, Q, but I had forgotten all about the M Continuum, and until the note I just figured it was the Organians, back before they settled down and became pacifists.
How similar is an M-blade to those guns the Q used in their civil war?
Oh, and I do hope Fluttershy drops a dime to Cadance that the changlings are there. I think if Cadance is forwarned, she and her husband have a much better chance of integrating the changlings in then if they get caught by surprise with a changling when something goes wrong (and something always goes wrong, with enough time and complexity). Since Chrysalis is now low on political capital with her own people, a forewarned Crystal Empire Prince and Princess might actually be able to sway the loyalty of the average changlings with promises of unlimited ambient love.
6786883
Very, very similar, but with an important difference. The M-blade has to be used by an M, and cannot be used against an M. The Q had blades of their own, that could only be used by Q and could not be used against Q.
The difference that allowed there to be the weapons that existed in the civil war was that the Q figured out how to make their weapons recursive and ranged. The reason the energies of the weapons take the form of blades is that they are contact weapons; the holder needs to be channeling energy through it at the same time as it makes contact with the enemy, for it to disrupt the enemy. The Q guns are ranged because they're recursive; they are in the Q Continuum, drawing on the power of the Q, which is all around them, to disrupt the Q they touch. The idea of drawing on the thing you are to disrupt what you are is somewhat paradoxical, and there being little motivation for the Q to refine their weapons for billions of years, they didn't come up with the idea for a long, long time.
"Quinn", the suicidal Q, couldn't have gone to the M for a mercy killing; the treaty the two omnipotent races have would have forbidden it. So since there were no Q weapons at the time that could be wielded by a Q to kill a Q, and the weapons the M could kill Q with could only be used by the M, he really had no tools to commit suicide with. It's ironic that they were invented such a short time after his death. :-)
Unfortunately, I think Fluttershy probably won't tell anyone what she knows about the Changelings in the Crystal Empire because it would feel like going behind Q's back to reveal his secrets, and also because she'd fear what Cadance and Shining Armor might do to the Changelings if the Changelings just want a place to feed quietly. And because she has rather more trust in Discord not screwing things up than she should. She knows his intent is for things to work out okay, and she hasn't quite grasped yet that for all his intelligence, Discord can make serious mistakes and have things happen that he didn't intend. She tends to assume that when things go wrong around Discord it's because that's what he wanted to have happen.
6787665 Cool, thanks for explaining that. Kind of sad that only a Q or M could wield their respective weapons, but it makes sense. I could have sworn Janeway waved a civil war pistol at some snooty Q that one time, but it's been like 10 years so I don't really remember.
It makes sense that Fluttershy still believes Discord is nigh-omniscient, like all of her friends do. Discord puts considerable effort into making that seem true, and he partially seems to believe it himself, that he can't be surprised or fooled. Even after it happens repeatedly, he never really loses that overconfidence.
6789059
Q gave her a weapon, which she did not use. Later, after Suzy-Q (Glory) had gotten Voyager into the Continuum, the crew showed up with weapons that were confirmed to work. In my headcanon, Q only gave Janeway a weapon to make her feel emotionally involved; had she shot it, it would really have been Q powering it. But Suzy-Q's great innovation, which made her persona non grata in the Continuum and led to her disowning Q and their son, was to make it so mortals could power the weapon. Worse, she has not shared the technique (basically, has not uploaded it to the collective knowledge of the Continuum), so she's the only one who knows how to do it, which scares most of the Continuum shitless. Any time Suzy-Q wants, after the end of the war, she could bring in a ton of mortals with Q-killing weapons. This is tantamount to arming mosquitoes with fatal poison in their stingers. Mortals are very, very hard to perceive in the Continuum, because they have very little impact on it, so a weapon that could kill Q in the hands of a mortal, in the Continuum, is terrifying -- you can squash the mortal like a bug if you see them, but if you don't and they get a shot in, you're dead. It's only because she's a fundamentally moral Q and, having studied mortal war for millions of years, knows how much she doesn't want war in the Continuum, that the Continuum is safe.
None of this has happened yet as of this story, though; in Q's timeline, this is taking place between "Q Who?" and "Deja Q".
Eventually he might get it, but yeah, whether he's Q or not Discord has had a very long lifespan by mortal terms, in which he has generally been very hard to surprise or fool. The fact that his emotions are involved to a degree they have not been in a long time is something he's going to have to account for if he ever wants to get back to that place.
6789411 Good to get some perspective on the weapons, thanks.
I think Discord (and especially Q) is almost impossible to be fooled when he's on alert, the problem is he's so often not alert, he doesn't see those unknown unknowns he doesn't usually scan for. This story, where he has Twilight doing research on potential threats, is the opposite of what he would normally do, and he's only doing it because he thinks the Continuum may take his powers. Otherwise he'd just let Horsefeathers and the rest come as they may.
This thing with Chrysalis is a perfect example. An alicorn of love is kidnapped by a race of monsters that feed on love and are themselves defeated by a giant blast of pure love. A reasonably paranoid and alert being would think "well, my oldest enemy is was the patron of love, and I know I am specifically prevented from sensing her, it would be smart of me to investigate around the scenes to see if this is her handiwork." If Discord had proactively investigated things, he could easily have discovered everything Chrysalis told him on his own, even with the restrictions of the Geas. But he didn't, so it comes as a complete surprise.
I'm not sure how I feel about that whole M blade thing. The whole idea of a bunch of species so ridiculously powerful deciding to end each other by stabbing the other guy just seems such a weird shift in tone. It feels like more of a Star Wars thing than a Star Trek thing, if you get what I mean.
The difference between the two really feels very Babylon Five-ish, though. The M sound a whole lot like Vorlons to me. Maybe we should start expecting Disqord to start asking everyone he meets what they want of him?
Technically, that's both true and not entirely correct. "You" and "thou" are equivalent to, say, the German "Sie" und "Du." They can indicate social status, but more incidentally than by intended use. What they mostly indicate is a degree of formality or respect. In German, "Sie" is something used with any adult you don't know closely or aren't related to, regardless of relative standing. To use the "Du" without being offered it first is a sign of disrespect or talking down to someone. Not even the German president would "Du" you without asking for it first. "Du" is a more intimate and uncomplicated form of address you'd use with friends, close acquaintances or family. It means you aren't being actively distant and also works a bit differently in grammatical terms. "Sie" is used together with the third person plural when conjugating, while "Du" is used as the second person singular. It's basically impossible to confuse the two modes of address even without ever hearing a pronoun because of that. Incidentally, the Ye Olde Englishe phrasing even uses words that sound similar to their closest German equivalent, due to English being basically a dialect of Old Saxonic German: "thine - dein", "wouldst - würdest," etc.
Basically, Luna would "thou" Celestia and the bearers because they are her family and her friends, respectively. She might "thou" petitioners to her court to appear less distant and to put them at ease by seeming more intimate and informal, an "approachable princess of the people" thing sorta. She probably wouldn't ever use it on any nobles, though.
Well, there's my insight on how centuries-defunct archaic English grammar works based on a completely different language for you.
Based on what I've read up on it, this is basically correct, though. English used to have two grammatically different layers of formality the way German, French, Japanese and some others still have, people just abandoned it centuries ago and went with using the formal version everywhere until it became the informal one to everyone's perceptions.
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Yeah, I always thought that Discord can tell what you want and Celestia can tell who you are. :-) The Q actually find it to be something of a vice to be a planet's god, unless you're managing to encourage conflict and dissent. The whole Vorlon thing of "we are unquestionable gods and you should sing our praises when you see us" is not something the Q would ever do... but yeah, it might be in the M bailiwick. The Q and the M are less obviously villains and heroes than the Shadows and the Vorlons, and have a lot more individual personality per entity, and if either of them are ever as cryptic as Kosh it's because they're deliberately screwing with you. But I do see the connection. (Hell, Kosh 2 said "we are all named Kosh.")
The "blades" only manifest as such in our dimension; Equestria, in particular, takes stuff made by the Q and turns it into crystals. The Tree of Harmony itself is a Q expert system, provided by Discord to Celestia, Luna and a team of now-dead ponies, who used their own magic and will to turn it into what their world needed -- a means of weaponizing the cooperation between pony races against those who would try to drive them apart. This makes it rather ironic that Discord got nailed by them, but I had to make the Tree and the Elements essentially Continuum-level artifacts or they wouldn't have worked. We know the Continuum itself imprisons dissidents in comets, so turning an incarnate Q into stone and binding their consciousness into it seemed like it was close enough to what the Q do to their own in canon. They're not really "blades" any more than the "guns" in the civil war are really guns.
You're right about "thou", I was simplifying somewhat. Luna would probably not have used "thou" to the nobles and would definitely not have done so to foreign dignitaries. However, the social distance between a princess and a citizen in an absolute monarchy, or diarchy, is much greater than the social distance between a president of a democracy and a citizen. Luna probably would have used "thou" for ordinary citizens because ordinary citizens aren't generally viewed by the nobles and royals of an absolute monarchy to be better than servants. That's my explanation for why she thou's everyone in Luna Eclipsed. (Also, normally she would use "thou" to her sister, but when first restored by the Elements, I think she felt her sister to be "above" her -- a combination of terrible remorse and the almost-deaging that the spell performed on her led her to feel uncomfortable with anything other than "you"). Also, thou is never, ever plural. You is more similar to French Vous than German Sie, because Sie literally means She (Italian does this too, there was some reason why the feminine pronoun ended up as the polite You, but I forget.) In French, the plural you, Vous, is also used as the polite you. English did the same thing; you was the plural pronoun then. That's why you are rather than you is. So you cannot address a group as thou, something writers of Luna should keep in mind.
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I always thought of it as being the other way around - the Shadows and Vorlons can't tell you anything about what you want or who you are, they want you to tell them. Definition over your desires versus definition over your identity is basically what their entire conflict is about: one group wants you to act according to your highest ambitions, the other wants you to act according to your nature. That really fits Dissy and Celly quite well also, I think.
I suppose that works well enough as an explanation. Maybe having it take the form of a severed horn or something like that would have brought it out a little better, though - gives it more implied connotations of "a thing of power" rather than "a sharp bit of metal," given what horns represent in this setting, know what I mean? Maybe while still referring it to a blade at the same time, to make it clear that what you see is distinctly not what's actually there.
I can see your reasoning there. It doesn't quite strike me as too fitting for the characters in this case, though - that sort of monarch is also the type who couldn't give less of a toss about whatever Discord does to the peasants, so long as they keep paying their taxes. The Sisters are the type that actually cares. It's why they even stopped him to begin with, really: they wanted to stop their suffering, which I think wouldn't really concern someone who thinks of them as barely better than serfs all that much. Luna was also very intent on making everyone stop fearing her and become closer to her, so I think thouing them in an attempt to seem more "laid-back" by a millennium-old understanding of informality really seems like a natural fit.
It also means "they," which is in this case the intended meaning. "Wie kann ich ihnen helfen?" can mean either "how can I help you?" or "how can I help them?" depending on context. Yeah, the fact that it's third person makes it a bit strange. To the best of my knowledge it otherwise functions more or less identically to the French language's version, though, which I also speak and never noticed to behave particularly differently in practice.
Deeply fascinating stuff in both the present and the past. I do love how Disqord completely refuses to call Cadence by name. Understandable, given her origins. Just being near her must awaken painful memories...
In any case, loving this chapter, especially the structure of the multiverse. I'm a huge sucker for that sort of thing.
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You have established Equus has an unusual magic field than the other planets have not, and that's the reason most sapients in the Star Trek universe (like humans) cannot perceive or harness magic like Equestrians do. Was that part of the Continuum's machinations too?
“Tha dinna tha they tha’ tha’s thee.” (Or however you spell it—I think that’s supposed to be Northumbrian accent or something.)
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Omnipotence without omniscience—terrifying.
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Technically speaking the Borg are harmony. And order. A hive mind is both, because the major distinction between harmony and order is that harmony involves all parties working together freely to accomplish the common goal; order involves all parties being restricted into structured, narrow roles in which the goals they must accomplish are defined. Harmony usually involves chaos because free will is involved, so everyone chooses to do things in slightly different ways. With the Borg, there is no choice. Every individual drone chooses to do exactly what the hive mind tells it to do because it is not capable of choosing differently. So it's still perfect harmony -- each one perfectly performs its task in synchronicity with the others, working together. All goals are synchronized, all desires are the same -- that's harmony. Order doesn't care what you desire, it just wants you to do it. The Borg are a very dark application of harmony, but you can probably trust a guy who calls himself the Spirit of Disharmony to come up with the worst possible applications of harmony as his examples.
Besides, Discord exaggerates a lot.
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well, it has plain and polite…but it also has, orthogonally to that, humble/normal/honorific forms of verbs. So it's kinda more six than two.
And that's just my student's understanding; there are even more nuances…
But I suppose "-さん" is somewhat equivalent to siezen, but honorific suffixes is its own pool to dive into. Siezen and duzen being the German verbs for "call someone Sie/du"…ehich leads to a joke about French and "vouser/tuer" because tuer is actually to kill; the verb for "call tu" has a syllable added that I don't immediately recall…
Ed: vousoyer and tutoyer are the correct French verb infinitives for "call vous/tu"
I love this story, SOOOOOO looking forward to even more! You do such a fantastic job with making the Discord is Q thing reasonable.. as much as fantasy can be reasonable, and it's just great.
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And then I found out that "thou" is also a verb in English. And then I noticed that alarajrogers uses it in the footnote.
I find this touching. Only maybe Pinkie Pie could match this kindness to Discord, and she wouldn't be doing it for kindness and relaxation, but laughter and activity…