Poker Night

by SvenFoxx

7. Daytime Event Two: The Origin of Discord

"Can his magic be suppressed?" Twilight asked.

Celestia shook her head. "No, unfortunately. It's too chaotic. The only assurance we have against his magic is the Elements of Harmony, but it takes time to get them to work, and I have no doubt he will not let you get another shot at him so easily. Discord doesn't act it, but he is far smarter and craftier than anypony gives him credit for."

"Any kind of enticement? Something that would make him want to behave?"

"Other than giving him what he wants... not that I know of."

Twilight sighed. She had, of course, known that there was probably no real way to contain Discord outside of using the Elements of Harmony. The way Celestia described it, he was a force of nature, one only another force of nature could match. "Is there anything? I'd settle for a clear history lesson on him at this point. At least then I could get some ideas from that."

Celestia frowned. "There... is something." She looked into her tea, considering. "Discord is far older than Luna and myself, perhaps older than even the First Kingdom. I also remember finding records of a reality defying beast helping to topple the tyranny of the Mad Queen Majesty. Discord is not evil. Chaotic and perhaps even apathetic, but not evil. He's only ever been interested in having fun."

"Then... why seal him away?"

"Because it was the only thing that worked," Celestia said with a bit of frustration. She looked away slightly at Twilight's flat stare. "... I know..." she whispered. "I taught you that there is always more than one option. And with Discord... we should have kept searching even after he was sealed. But we were just happy to be done with him. My sister and I did not want to even entertain the idea of letting him out, regardless of the reason."

Twilight was silent for a time after that admission. Celestia could only wonder how she felt. She knew Twilight, much like a majority of her ponies, saw her as perfect and incapable of making mistakes. To be faced with both Celestia's flaws and willingness to allow someone to suffer under the right circumstances, Twilight was probably a bit shaken.

"At the very least, Discord needs to be released," Twilight eventually said. "We'll give him a chance. We'll explain the situation to him, and see what happens. If he insists on continuing to cause too much trouble, we'll use the Elements again. Hopefully though, the girls and I can make it so he's not aware if we seal him again."

"Just like that?" Celestia asked.

Twilight looked up her. She wasn't smiling, Celestia noted, but she wasn't scowling either. "To be fair to Discord... he already spent one thousand years imprisoned and tortured. As far as I'm concerned he's more than served his time. These months in his second imprisonment are just his sentence for disturbing the peace after his brief release. I think he deserves to at least be given the chance."

Celestia sighed. "You are, of course, correct. Very well. However, before you release him, allow Luna and I teach you and your friends how to use the Elements in a more refined way. They can do more than reestablish harmony. This way you have a few safety nets in case Discord gets out of hoof."

---

Discord blinked. Then he blinked again, reveling in the sheer novelty of an action he had wholeheartedly expected to not be able to to for another thousand years. He looked around at the gathered mares. He of course had known they were there even before his release. Sustained awareness sucked sometimes, but at least he knew that he had been released by what was supposed to be his enemies.

That made him curious.

"Now why ever did you release me I wonder?" he asked, slithering into the air and coiling in place. He kept an eye on the trinkets the six mares wore, the accursed Elements of Harmony. His greatest creation, and perhaps his most hated. He noted how the artifacts were already primed for use. He could probably get away before getting hit... but he honestly didn't want to take the chance.

Celestia stepped forward, her expression firm. "Consider this your chance at parole," she said.

"Ahem," Twilight cleared her throat, interrupting her mentor. Discord quirked an eyebrow. He had pegged Twilight as the sycophant of the group. To see her leveling a hard stare at Celestia only further peaked his curiosity. "What Princess Celestia means is that you've served your time, for both sentences, and you're being released."

"Your doodads being ready to fire at a moment's notice say otherwise," Discord noted.

Twilight nodded. "Just because you're being released doesn't mean we're taking chances. No more than we have to anyways." She motioned to the her friends. "I could give you a long speech about the responsible use of your powers, the risk that comes with you just doing whatever you want, and the consequences therein, but I think I'll settle for doing something different." She sat down, the Element of Magic stopped glowing, and she directed a curious gaze at Discord. "Why?"

Discord blinked a third time. "Why?" he parroted, uncomprehending.

"Why the chaos? I can think a few ways you could use your powers for entertainment without endangering ponies, and even for cornering the market on entertainment itself, but you chose to not care about anyone else. Why? Tell me you story, please?"

Discord's jaw opened and closed, but no words came out. He was shocked. No one had ever cared about why he did the things he did, just that he was doing them. "No one's ever asked me why before," he noted after a moment of silence. He frowned after a second. "Would you even believe my story? You could just accuse me of trying to get sympathy."

"Look around you, at the ground," Twilight responded.

Discord did so. It took him a moment, but he noticed a large magic circle surrounding him and the mares. It was glowing a subtle red. A familiar red.

"Blood Magic?" he asked with a quirked eyebrow.

Twilight nodded. "While frowned upon in polite society, Blood Magic isn't actually illegal anymore. So long as you're an adult and known for being mentally stable, you are free to use the magic." She motioned towards the circle. "This particular circle is using some of Applejack's blood. Due to her being closely tied to the Element of Honesty, her blood amplifies the effects of a truth detection circle. If a lie is spoken by anypony within the circle, it will glow blue. Otherwise it remains red."

Discord frowned. Would it even work on him? He wasn't sure. There were plenty of magics that simply did not work on him, transfiguration for example. His Chaos Magic prevented him from being changed physically except when he wanted to. "My name is Celestia," he said, deciding to test it.

The circle glowed blue.

"Huh. Okay." He turned back to Twilight. "You want to hear my story? It flies in the face of what you may believe is the truth of things. I know for a fact ol' sunbutt over there kept a lot hidden. A lot about before and after her and her sister arrived. Perhaps necessarily, I won't deny that, but still. My story is not what you will expect."

Twilight simply nodded.

Discord summoned a chair and settled in it. He smiled. "Right. My story, I guess, would start back before Queen Majesty took the throne. Back to just before the rise of the First Kingdom. The world was known simply as Terra back then, before Celly and Lulu showed up and beat the crap out of everything causing chaos..."

---

Twilight and her friends listened and observed both Discord and the truth circle. Discord told his tale, and quite the tale it was. They listened as Discord recounted his very first sentient thought, that of Who. Who was he? Once that thought had formed, more questions followed. Where was he? When was he?

How was he?

The one question he never asked, though, was What he was. For he knew, instinctively, even before his first sentient thought, that he was the Wave of Change given form.

Discord readily admitted that he didn't know where he came from. All he knew was that Chaos was his passion and duty, and that it granted him great and terrifying powers. Through him mortals were to be led down the road of becoming better than they were. And for a time he tried to do just that, starting with simply asking different people to try harder when they started to get lazy.

Of course, Discord now knows, mortals don't like being told they were anything but perfect.

After one particularly failed attempt ended with him being chased from a town actively trying to have him executed as a "heretic", Discord had discovered that there were dark forces waiting beyond the horizon, waiting for stagnation to fully set in. He knew then that he no longer had the time to be gentle, and had gone about causing change the only other way he knew would work.

Strife.

His first attempt was to create the Monsters, a race of varying creatures and animals, all violent in nature, and all out to cause destruction and mayhem. For a few centuries this worked, forcing the ponies to come together in an effort to stem the tidal wave of hostile creatures. This was when Discord learned his second lesson about mortals.

Mortals can and will be ingenious when necessary, but will often settle for the easy solution if it presents itself.

The First Kingdom rose from the conflict the Rise of Monsters brought about, and eventually an organized military force formed that grew incredibly skilled at combating Monsters. Military tactics, guerrilla warfare, stealth and assassination... the more methods of killing ponies developed, the easier it became to protect the kingdom. And the easier it became to protect the kingdom... the less ponies tried to become better.

The less ponies tried to become better... the more they fractured from infighting and hatred towards each other. It had gotten to the point where Earth Ponies were being summarily imprisoned and/or executed for being the "cause" of the Monsters rising. Not true, of course, but the ruling monarchy at the time took one look at the connection Earth Ponies shared with nature, and the (completely false) myth of Monsters being born from nature itself, and put two and two together to get twenty-two.

Discord stepped in again and upped the ante, creating a breed of Monsters he called (in poor taste, he readily admitted) Boss Monsters. Boss Monsters were far more powerful than regular Monsters, had some direct control over regular Monsters, and worst of all... were just as smart and capable of rational thought as Ponies were. He instilled within them the instinctive desire to conquer.

This gave rise to the Dark Ages, a time when no pony was safe. Under the clever guidance of the Boss Monsters, Monsters descended upon Ponykind like a plague. The current monarchy was slain (Discord held no regret over this. They were all abusive asshats, the lot of them), the army devastated, and the First Kingdom shattered.

Realizing he made a fatal flaw in giving the Boss Monsters both power and intelligence, Discord at first was going to get rid of them, but realized that would only land Ponykind back at square one eventually. Maybe worse, if they decided to expect him to save them all the time. So he sought out ponies. Not just any ponies though, but specific ponies, bearing specific traits and personalities. Positivity in the face of adversity. Sacrifice in the name of love. Purity in the face of temptation. Mercy from the softest heart. Unwavering devotion. And, finally, the bond that binds them together. More than anything though, they had to be willing to fight and die for their fellow Pony.

He found six ponies, each a grand example of the traits he sought, and empowered them.

It did not take long for these ponies to realize they were somehow more than their fellow pony. Faster. Stronger. Capable of far more powerful magic.

Discord didn't empower just these six ponies. He knew that eventually these six ponies, despite all the good they were doing, would die. Either of old age or bad luck, they would die, and Ponykind would become vulnerable to the Monsters again. So he created a system. Once every year a pony bearing what Discord considered to be at least one of the core aspects of Unity would be chosen and empowered the same way the original six had been.

This heralded the beginning of the Age of Heroes, a time when ponykind was saved from extinction by the few who stood up and cried, "Enough!".

This, Discord was pleased to discover, was the longest Age he ever witnessed. There were, of course, problems. Mortals weren't perfect. Greed and Darkness all too easily consumed hearts. But by and far Ponykind chugged along and continued to grow and change, for the simple fact that their greatest enemy also changed with time, developing and becoming stronger. Discord need not do anything else, for his job was to encourage change, not create a utopia. Then, some millennia later... a very special Unicorn came into power.

Majesty.

That was when everything fell apart.

Comments

[Comickook]

Loved the discussion between Twilight and Celestia at the start of the chapter (especially Celestia's admissions concerning her mistakes with Discord) as well as Twilight actually talking Celestia into giving Discord a chance at parole (with appropriate precautions taken beforehand) and the lengths went through to make sure they got a truthful backstory from Discord. I have to admit I can definitely see Discord's points concerning the nature of many sapient beings. Indeed, I can see where he could go from gentle encouragement, to trying to create a common enemy to inspire others to work together, to upgrading said common enemy (more than he was expecting to, in fact), to basically creating the Elements of Harmony.

All in all, really good work on the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up in all the right places. I will most certainly be eagerly awaiting more, but will also respect the fact that real world concerns have to come first.

[badninja]

Interesting very interesting developments in this chapter.

[Dirty Bit]

Not a bad chapter. Would this count as an interlude, of sorts?

[SvenFoxx]

9730629
The Daytime Events are essentially the stuff that happens as a result of each poker game Twilight goes to. Once I'm done with Discord I'll be setting up the second night.

[Flame1hedgehog]

Discord stepped in again and upped the ante, creating a breed of Monsters he called (in poor taste, he readily admitted) Boss Monsters. Boss Monsters were far more powerful than regular Monsters, had some direct control over regular Monsters, and worst of all... were just as smart and capable of rational thought as Ponies were. He instilled within them the instinctive desire to conquer.

This sounds like something from power rangers or Kamen Rider. With the fact their are stronger monsters with some control over lesser monsters.

[SvenFoxx]

9749594
I don't watch Power Rangers. Not since I was a kid. If there is anything in here that bears a resemblance to Power Rangers, it's just a coincidence.

[Flame1hedgehog]

9749995
I figured that it was coincidence but figured I point it out anyway and the reason why was that you stated boss monsters has some control over lesser monsters like how some monster of the week show has the monster of the episode could control minons or "lesser monsters" power rangers was just the first to pop into my head