Dreams in Discord

by Gsbrill

Chapter 4 - Sprouting of War

Once again without remembering how the hay she got there Twilight wakes up in her own bed after collapsing somewhere. With a pounding headache and blurry vision, she tries to recall the recent events, without much success. As she moves around the bed she touches something soft with her hoof. Looking to her side she sees Fluttershy with her head laying on the bed as she fell asleep watching over her. She runs her hoof through her mane, which had fallen to her face as she sleeps peacefully.

She then remembered her mission. The reason why all her friends were concerned about her, and the reason why she allowed the presence of a strange creature inside her own mind. Seeing the way they worried and cared about her only motivated Twilight to unmask the fake goddess, since she was not the only one being toyed with.

Slowly awoken by Twilight’s caress, Fluttershy opened her eyes and seeing her friend already awake and well, jumped up to her and gave her a tight hug.

“Twilight! You’re okay! We were all so worried about you fainting like that and I thought you might be sick”. Once she calmed down from her little outburst and noticed what she was doing she immediately backed off from Twilight, red like a brick, with her head down and whispered “Sorry for that”.

Twilight was still not able to fully control her expressions, emotions or words very well, but tried her best to maintain a straight face and not sound like a crazed psycho. “I’m better now, I was just tired. Now that I could get some sleep I just have to get back to my research. Thanks for worrying about me”. Fluttershy didn’t seem to take that very seriously, after all she was really behaving strangely lately.

“Sorry Twilight but we can’t leave you like that. You really need help, so we... asked Spike to send a letter to the Princess, she wants to see you at the castle” The last part was barely audible as Fluttershy slowly shrank while she mentioned the letter, not wanting to make her friend angry for doubting her, but she was heard.

Seeing a look of fright form in Twilights face, Fluttershy slowly walked away while she spoke. “I’ll just let the others know you’re awake, please don’t run away”. She finished as she left the room closing the door behind herself.

“Sid what do we do now? The princess wants to see me and I still have no idea of what to do! I need a plan and fast!” She fell back to the inside of her mind to avoid anyone listening to her conversation. “You’re the smart one around here, QI gave you the book and the spells, improvise. I know you’ll come up with something”.

“NO! You don’t understand! I don’t improvise, I plan ahead! There’s no way I’ll just go in there and say ‘hey Princess why don’t you come with me to this isolated corner with no guards around so I can shove my horn up your chest!’ That would be just brilliant don’t you think?”

“Calm down already, the sarcastic jokes here should be my department. Look, just wait until you get there, wait for a moment when you two are alone and do it. Go with the flow of events. Easy as that”.

She had to leave her introspection for later as she heard the sound of many hoofsteps enter the room. As her friends entered the room she found herself surrounded by worried looks, and an awkward silence took place. Pinkie was the first one to manifest.

“Seems like she’s fine. Twilight are you sick? Because you fainted down there and we were really worried about you and you look fine now but if you’re sick we could throw you a party and you would get well faster!” . Twilight opened her mouth to say once again that there was no reason to worry about anything, but she was cut by Applejack.

“Look Twi, no matter what ya say to us, we know you just ain’t fine. We saw you acting all strange down there and Spike told us what you’ve been doing. We gonna help you you want it or not.” She seemed dead serious about it.

“Look, I may have been behaving a bit different lately but I just need some rest. No need to get the Princess involved or anything, I just need sleep, that’s all.” She lied once again, convincing herself that it was for the greater good.

It was Rainbow Dash’s turn to speak up. “Actually, we just came by to tell you to get up and grab a snack for the trip, she already sent a chariot to get you there, and also wants us all to go too. Seemed really urgent.”

“Don’t freak out, what did Sid say? Go with the flow of events. Right. I only have a few hours to come up with a plan. Argh, this pressure isn’t helping!” She held her hoof in front of her face, frowning, with a thoughtful look, ignoring her surroundings.

“Darling are you okay?” She quickly snapped out of her thoughts and answered quickly.

“Never felt better! Let’s go then.”

Going through the kitchen she grabbed a few apples, just to appear acting normally, and went outside the library. She could spot the chariot easily enough, since it was a very large one, similar to the one they used for the Gala, but even larger, and pulled by six pegasi instead of earth ponies this time around. It was causing quite a commotion in the small town and the area became quickly crowded around it.

As the six ponies and the dragon approached it, two of the pegasi forced the crowd to open up way for them to pass through and enter the chariot.

The flight to the palace was long and quiet, as Twilight quickly ate the apples and fell fast asleep, as the others didn’t want to disturb her. She used every second of the flight to try and build up a plan and account to all possible chains of events and discuss them with Sid.
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“Why did you have them all come here to the palace? I thought that your student was the only one that had gone mad. Or, you could have just gone to Ponyville if you wanted to see them so much.”

“Whenever I leave this place I end up getting too much attention. I need to speak to them particularly, it is an important matter indeed, but this sudden outburst from Twilight gives me the perfect opportunity to do it” Celestia seemed really worried about her student. After all, she felt really close to her after all those years of tutoring.

“I really understand your worries but what is it that you need to discuss with such urgency?”

“I want to talk about my abdication of the throne” Luna was dumbstruck. “Here we go again with this! Look haven’t we discussed this already? You can’t hand over the crow to a mortal, we have duties that need taking care of that require power, power that no other has.”

“But I won’t be handing over the crow to anyone like this. I will hand it to another alicorn.” She smiled happily as she made that last statement. Luna was now even angrier than before. “My dear sister, there are no other alicorns in the world. Solaris created us, and only us. We cannot bear offspring since there are no other male alicorns and no other exists. Explain to me how would that work?” Her tone getting more sarcastic as she got angrier.

“You will see when the time comes. I have to go, they should be arriving soon.”

With that, she left the room and left Luna pondering to herself what she could have possibly meant by that.
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The chariot didn’t take much to get to the palace. The pegasi were strong and fast, as they had to carry the Princess around quite often and had to stay in shape. Twilight woke up as the chariot hit the ground, and one by one all of the passengers left the chariot. All of them were amazed by the beauty of the palace itself, except for one that stared at the ground, contemplative.

They were guided by the guards through many vast corridors, and no one dared to break the silence that permeated the entire place. They arrived in a wide room with two very large couches and a table in the middle, filled with food. And once again everyone looked at it mouth watered, except for one that didn’t seem to realize she was alive. Twilight was sunken so deep in her thoughts that she looked brain dead.

What brought her back from her daydreams was the grave voice of one of the guards that announced. “Twilight Sparkle, the Princess wishes to see you at her quarters, I have orders to take you there. For the others, she will speak to you once she is done talking to her”.

His voice echoed through the large room. Twilight mechanically followed him. “She’s making this too easy!” Laughed Sid inside her head. “She asked for a private audience with you. Alone!. This is going to be a piece of cake.”

“Yes, and how do I get away after it? This isn’t easy for me and you’re not making it easier.” They both silence as the guard stopped before two very large doors and knocked. “Twilight Sparkle is here to see you” The guard shouted.

A calm and known voice came from the inside. “Send her in, and guard the door so that no one bothers us, and only enter upon express orders from me and thank you very much for bringing her so fast.” Slowly the door opened and the guard and Twilight bowed before the princess.

Twilight walked in with uncertain steps.

“My dear student, I have heard from your friends that you have been acting different lately. I wish to know if there is something bothering you, and I wish you would answer me sincerely.”

“If you’re going to trick her, this is the time to do it. Don’t waste the opportunity.” Sid had a wide smile on his face. “Trick her with what? You’re the conspiracy guy, say something”. She was starting to get desperate. Suddenly, a crazy idea came up to her. It was ridiculous but it sounded fairly good comparing her other ideas, that were pretty much nothing.

“That’s it! I can’t hide it anymore” Twilight said dramatically, looking like a bad actress coming from an equally bad soap opera. “What are you doing now?” Sid was perplexed. “Improvising”.

Celestia looked at her not knowing whether she should be really worried or amused by that, hoping for the second one.

“I have been violated! Oh what tragedy!” She screamed as she tried to fake a crying face, not really convincing anyone. Even Sid couldn’t really figure out if he was supposed to be laughing or worrying about the odds of her having finally snapped.

Twilight then walked until she was standing in front of the princess and cried. “I AM PREGNANT!” The Princess couldn’t hide a shocked face and barely had time to process that as Twilight quickly lowered her head and pointed her horn at her and channeling all of her energy towards it. With a loud bang, once again caused by trying to cast the spell without the proper catalysts, her horn turned into a scarlet spear that flew out of it, this time directly into Celestia’s stomach, even though she had aimed for her heart, but the strong explosion and the “recoil” of the spell itself made her lose her aim.

Something to be noted is why the spell even worked against Celestia. Being a powerful sentient magical creature, she always held up some sort of barrier around her, even though invisible to all. Equestria was at times of peace, but old habits die hard. But the Spear of the Anti-Mage had that name for a reason. The energy inside of it was twisted and corrupted by a kind of magic long forbidden, for it corrupted the user. It “vibrates” in a different frequency than normal spells, allowing it to not be blocked by them. And also the “spear” being made of pure energy, sends pulses of energy inside the target, efficiently knocking them down.

As Twilight pulled her blood covered horn from Celestia, her mane and face also tinted in red, could hear her talking in a faint voice. “Why Twilight? What happened to you?” She coughed a small puddle of blood.

Celestia couldn’t stand due to the pain and the shocks, from the spell and the sudden and unexpected betrayal. She was confused and desperate. Not for herself but for what could have happened to Twilight and what would happen now.

“You know why I did this! You have been fooling us for far too long, you fake princess!” Her voice sounded a little bit too enthusiastic “And I trusted you all this time! But know it’s all over!”

Twilight let out a maniacal laughter, but she was accompanied by someone unexpected. This time Sid was materialized right at her side, with his dark shapes twisted by following spasms of laughter.

“Sid! How did you get here? I did it, what do I do now?” Sid was in ecstasy, like he hadn’t been in thousands of years. “Now? Now we wait for the chaos! Now we wait for the mayhem! Now we just wait for war!” He shouted and his voice filled the room with desperation.

“Who are you? What have you done to her?” Asked Celestia, coughing more blood in the process.

“You know me too well Princess. It fills my heart with joy to see you like this, miserable, eyes filled with fear. And about her” He pointed towards Twilight, who just watched without really understanding “I just enlightened her on your “lies”” He finished with another loud laughter.
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“Is it just me or it’s getting darker?” Applejack inquired.

“C’mon, we have been here for almost an hour, it is supposed to be getting later of course. Or is that your farmer sense tingling?” Dash remarked sarcastically, earning herself an angry look from the farmer pony.

“But it’s still not even midday” Fluttershy complemented. Hiding behind her mane as everyone turned to look at her.
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“Still no clue of who I am? Wait a minute and I’ll show you. Not like you can get anywhere anyway.”

With that Sid crashed through a wall that led to the palace’s garden, and Twilight walked to the window. There she saw Sid flying up, higher and higher, and then descending fast as a bullet. He was heading straight down to a statue.

Discord’s statue.

Just as he hit it with an amazing speed, he vanished in a small black cloud, and the statue shattered from the inside out. Nothing inside. What the hay was going on there?

Twilight heard a strange noise behind her and turned to look, and she saw Discord, emerging from the ground, laughing nonstop.

“Discord! Was this all your doing?” Still down on the ground the princess muttered, not even being able to speak properly anymore. “Me? I did nothing. I only gave this one here a little bit of incentive. She was pretty easy to control, seeing as her little heart can become the very portrait of confusion and despair, given the proper “incentive”. I just gave a little push.”

Twilight was desperate. She wasn’t fully aware of what she had done, since she was still under Discord’s spell, but was still willing to get out of there as fast as possible.

“Look, Sid, Discord, whoever the hay you are, please just help me get out of here, if one of the guards came in here now I would be executed.”

With talon, Discord held Twilight’s head, and turned it to the window. “Just look outside my dear, do you think you have any chance of escaping here safely?”

The Sun was now reduced to a flickering light, still providing a fair amount of light but visibly weakening fast. And as the princess coughed a last puddle of blood she said, with tear filled eyes.

“I’m sorry Twilight”

And as the princess went silent, the Sun’s light flickered for the last time, and dimmed down to nearly full darkness.

“Okay, now I’m screwed.”

Comments

[Evilpresident]

This is gonna be good.

[gurbok]

really like the story the take on equestrian history is interesting. just want to point out a mistake in the intro "A strange yet convincig creature". beyound that i didnt catch anything. cant wait for the next chapter.

[Gsbrill]

42575 Thanks for ponting it out, already fixed (no idea how did that pass spellcheck)
I'm trying to make the history as plausible as possible, without making it too long or confusing
The next chapter might take a while since my finals are sucking away my time like leeches, but I'll try to work on it asap
Thanks for commenting