Chapter 1: The Hunt is On

Chapter 1: The Hunt is On

The forest rose above me. A bleak and depressing affair, the trees were ashen with gnarled trunks twisting in agony. Their branches clawed at the heavens, ripping and tearing the tranquil night air apart. Needles burst from the branches, adding their own wounds to the dark and feral night. It tried to fight back, blasting the trees with howling winds, screaming in fury. Amidst the chaos of this bitter battle of nature I heard them. The snarl of wolves and the mad cackle of their master flitted through the trees as the master’s voice whispered in my head, “Run… The hunt is on…”

And so I ran. The voice was worse than Death himself. It had no emotion, no caring. Sure, Death didn’t have those either, but at least he was willing to wait for you to die. I ran among the trees. They lashed at me, cutting deep into my flanks, as I fled. Bending over me, they laughed and pointed. The gnarled faces in their knots and grooves said it all. I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it.

The mad laughter followed me through the forest as I ran, drawing ever near. He was toying with me, giving me the slightest hope. He could catch me anytime he wanted, but he waited and laughed instead. Oh how I hated that laugh. The wolves were pulling ahead of their master now. He’d let them bat me around for a while before taking me out of my misery.

I looked back and saw the beasts. They loped through the forest at an astonishing rate, rapidly gaining with me. Their jaws were crooked and frothing with spittle. Eyes rolled in their head as they gave in to the madness of the chase. They closed in on me as I continued running blindly through the forest.

Suddenly, I ground to a halt and turned around. I wasn’t going to take this anymore. Not from them at least. Gathering all my focus together I willed the world to change. Suddenly, the trees surrounding me moved, creating a circular wall about us. The trees reached out, grabbing the wolves as they pounced.

One got close enough to me that I felt his hot breath on my face. As the trees pulled them away I willed my intent into being. They tried to scrabble away, but I wouldn’t allow it. I had to remove them from the equation. The trees continued to entwine them with their branches, as a snake might its prey. But it wasn’t enough. He would just free them when he got here. Steeling my nerves, I jerked my head and heard multiple large cracks. I had had all of the trees pull in different directions at once, shattering every bone in their bodies. There was no blood. I willed it away, couldn’t stand the sight of the stuff.

I slumped to the ground for a second after they were taken care of. Willing the world to change was far harder than just using magic to manipulate it. Magic used the very energy of the universe to help you poke it along, while willing the change into being took its energy solely from you. There were benefits, however, like the fact that anypony and not just unicorns could will the world to change, and that willpower didn't have as many annoying rules, but it was almost impossible to will something into being unless the universe was willing to go along with the change. Luckily, Discord had that effect on his surroundings.

Unluckily, that had been harder than I thought, and I would need every bit of energy I had ahead. “Forget Something?” the voice whispered. Horseapples! He was here already! I turned to run, but it was too late. I heard the bang of a gun, as the voice whispered in my ear, “Boom. Headshot.”

Everything went black. I felt my skull fracture and explode in a million different pieces. It didn’t stop me from running though. The pain should have been intense. It probably was, since I was dead, but the thing about death is it stops hurting after the tenth or eleventh time you die in one day. It stops feeling real, and just becomes another one of those things that you take for granted. Dying was easy. It was escape that was impossible.

I ran on through the forest, bumping and scraping myself, as I stumbled about completely blind. It was funny, in a way, that I was more annoyed at not having eyes than the fact that I was currently dead. There are so many little things we take for granted. People freak out about death all the time, but they never really stop to think about how much they need sight.

I was getting frustrated as this went on. Another impossibility that just went to show this was all illusion. How could I feel or think anything without a brain to process it? It made no sense. But then, nothing in this place made sense.

Finally, my frustration got the better of me. Scrambling around, headless, without being able to see or hear anything, I felt my rage bubble to the surface. “ENOUGH!!!” rang my voice as I burst through the illusion finally. My willpower being fueled by the rage, I brought the rest of myself back into being.

“You know dying gets pretty old!” I yelled into the forest.

Laughter was the only thing that greeted me. I stood there, waiting, but it just kept coming. Finally, he got bored and stopped. The world colored and blurred. Reds became yellows, yellows white, and blues became violet like a midsummer's night. The world melted apart, becoming one with the void. Everything and nothing happened all at once, as he began to toy. It was pure bliss, as he tweaked the strings of the world, crafting it as he chose. And then everything just settled in darkness.

We weren’t done for today it seems.

Illuminating my horn, I found myself in the midst of a wall of fog. It swirled about me, caressing my skin with its sickly tendrils. It felt tainted, a violation of the world. Finally, I placed what was wrong with it. As it twisted, back and forth, I saw the shapes in it. Faces formed and washed away. Screams of terror, tears of frustration, groans of pain, and wails of fury, all tumbled through the fog. A destructive din of silent pleas asking for one little thing, the sweet release of death.

A lion’s paw fell on my shoulder, and the voice whispered in my ear, “How can you call death boring? All your little friends are crying out for it after all. Fancypants, Soarin, Spitfire… Everypony who was ever trapped in here with me begs for its sweet release. They won’t ever escape, and they know it. What other road do they have but death?”

I whirled to confront him, but he was already gone, like usual. “Come now, you’ll never catch me like that,” he said as the faces continued to swirl about in torment, “You know there’s only one way out of this…”

I spun around, but no matter where I went I found the tortured faces of my friends. All of them trapped like I was. There was no escape. Why did I even try? “It’s no use,” came the voice from behind me again, “Just give in to it… Give in to the madness…”

As I spun round and around, desperately looking for escape, he continued to taunt me. His callous voice grating on the mind as it wove its web of deceitful strings. My eyes gleamed with mad delight, as a break appeared in the faces, and I stole through it, running for my life. The fog clung to me as I ran, dragging me back towards the horror of wherever it was I had just been. I ran in no particular direction. This wasn’t the measured run of an athlete, but the stark terror filled scramble of someone who sought only that little bit of escape.

He was right though. There was no escape from the inevitable. And as my hooves rang out on the floor, I felt the countdown begin in my head. The slow measured ticking to when he knew I’d cave in.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

It was maddening. Howling in frustration, I blundered on, but I could still hear the awful finality of it all. That cursed ticking counting to my freedom for the day. It was moving too slowly. It couldn’t come fast enough. I just wanted it to end.

And just like that, the ticking stopped. The solution was in front of me. Lying on the ground was a knife, a gloriously bloody knife. I lifted it, carefully caressing its sharp sweet release. A rivulet of blood flowed from my hoof, as my caress showed it was real. I raised it, ready for my escape, and stopped. What was I doing? It was what he wanted. He always got whatever he wanted. I danced for him like a puppet each and every day. Enough was enough. So he said there was no escape, what of it? Life had been pretty good here before his so-called training began. I think I didn’t need to escape. I think, if anything, he was the one who needed escaping.

I threw the knife to the ground and stood tall. The laughter I’d been too lost to hear suddenly stopped. Gathering my will, I brought the wind to my command. Blasting a gale forth from me, it cut the fog like butter, and the tortured minds of my friends were set free to return to where they had come from. In the middle of the void that was left I saw Discord. His normally smug face had a slack jawed impression of astonishment. “Run… The hunt is on…” I whispered.

He must have caught what I said, because he started booking it. Before I knew it, the world shifted again. We were amidst a cave of incredible gems. Our reflections danced off them all, as we ran through a veritable hall of mirrors. He ducked one way, and I another, as we wove our way through the maze.

I couldn’t lose him though, not really. Every time I realized I was following a reflection, I simply willed it to point me the right way. His own creation led me to him, whether he knew it or not.

Finally, I got close enough to him to try something. I willed the cave to collapse ahead of us, cutting him off. He turned as the cave collapsed, leaping into the mirror-like gems. I followed suit, breaking them all as I went through. Now he was trapped. With his mirrors shattered, and his path blocked, there was only him and me.

He looked a little surprised, then turned and clapped his paw and talon together slowly. “Bravo, young Baffle… You made remarkable improvement tonight. You can stand down now.”

I looked at him a little, and said the only logical thing, “No.”

“What?”

“I said no.” I repeated, “The game isn’t over yet. It’s not over until I say so, Uncle.”

“Don’t toy with me boy. You think I’ve even begun to use the full force of my will against you? I could break you like a rag doll.”

“Prove it!” I said.

The world shifted again. We were in a city of some kind. Skyscrapers towered above me, casting ominous shadows. Billboards flickered with static, giving off crackling moans instead of advertisements. The street lamps somehow drained light instead of giving it off, and clouds darted overhead, a chaotic whirling of dark masses.

The result was an ever-shifting pool of shadows. Wind rustled through the town, blowing stray pieces of paper around, and as I tried to get my bearings a church bell sounded. Its dark and resonant tone flew outwards in a deeply menacing manner. It was not a harbinger of light, but a bringer of darkness.

The deserted town began to fill at the sound of that demonic tone. Where before there had been nothing but an abandoned city, there were now thousands of ponies walking towards me. They were grey, devoid of emotion and feeling. Their blank faces intoning the same thing over and over, “Give in to the madness…”

I’d lost Discord when we’d come here, and my rage was fading. I shouldn’t have pushed him. He’d offered to stop, and I’d pushed him into continuing on. Now that he was playing serious, or at least trying a little harder, we were back to our inevitable conclusion.

I jumped into flight, willing my body into an endless jump, and nudging the theoretical starting point of the jump to keep me in a constant state of being at its zenith. I flew through the town, searching for my foe. Below me the mob of ponies continued to chant, “Give in to the madness… Give in to the madness… Give in to the madness…”

I was looking at this the wrong way. There had to be something I was missing. If he was playing serious, why hide? Unless this was all just part his twisted form of training. There had to be a way to find him. Willing him to me wasn’t going to happen. He would surely expect me to will myself to him. Perhaps a different approach would help.

I twisted suddenly, turning sideways in a direction no one could see. Suddenly, the buildings were gone. I wasn’t on their plane anymore. Now that I’d turned sideways, I was perpendicular to them. Instead, I was currently in a field of flowers. In the middle of the field a distortion hung in the air. That was probably Discord. He didn’t exactly follow the normal rules of space. I flew, in my endless jump, up to the distortion, and turned again. If I got the best of him again maybe he’d let up.

Unfortunately, he’d been expecting my trick. As I turned back into the city, I found myself impaled upon a sword he was holding out. As my blood began to hit the ground I could only look at him and say one thing, “Uncle.”

Thanks to John Perry for proofreading. Seriously, this was a huge grammatical mess before.

Chapter 2: A Day in the Dwair

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Chapter 2: A Day in the Dwair

I woke up in Discord’s Dwair. A dwelling or lair, he never could decide, so he just called it his Dwair. While it had once been the Castle of Canterlot, being trapped in the mind of Discord had given it some… interesting properties, to say the least. Halls had grown. Towers had shrunk. Stairs decided to become ramps at odd intervals. Every so often they would randomly slicken, causing you to slide down them, or up them, depending on the flow of gravity. The floors would move for you, if you wanted, you just had to ask nicely, and the furniture had a way of thinking it was sentient. Granted, having thoughts meant it was sentient, but it was furniture! It had no brain!

As if to prove my point, the bed I was on, having noticed I was awake, bucked me onto the floor. I suppose it was only fair, since it had to hold my weight while I slept. I was a very active sleeper. I’d given beds bruises before.

As I stood up from my unceremonious dumping, I winced in pain, and started hacking up small rivulets of blood. The sword had been real, it seemed. He was getting more and more pressuring with his training. Every night it was just as bad, if not worse. He said the madness was a boon. That it would grant me willpower unmatched. Perhaps I should just give in. But, as uncle always said, where’s the fun in that?

“Took you long enough to snap…” came Discord’s voice to my left. I turned, and saw my uncle reclining in a chair. His legs rested comfortably on a hoofstool, as he smoked bubbles from a pipe. He was in a gentlemanly mood right now, and, as such, was wearing his charming black bowler hat. One of the many books from the Grand Library was in his hands. It appeared that he’d been waiting for some time.

I tried to see what book he was reading, but the title kept switching. I suppose it fit him to randomly switch books every few words. I wonder what types of stories that made for him.

“Well? Are you going to answer?” asked Discord.

Sighing, I limped to my feet, and willed my injury away. “Why do you insist on murdering me so much? Surely there must be another way?”

“Of course there is! I just love to see you squirm. All the other ways are just so booooring… Although, now that you mention it, I suppose mind games can be fun. Maybe I should try some of the more subtle tactics on you. I’m sure you’d respond hilariously to some of them… Lets see there’s that one… Yes, I could do that one…”

He muttered nonsense to himself for awhile, which I guess counted as a dismissal. I suppose I’d have to hope for something new tonight when he picked up training again. A small shiver ran down my spine at the thought. The difference between the prankster him and the murderous psychopathic him was startling. I was just glad he was too whimsical to stay in murder mode for long. Normally he channeled it specifically to train me. He wouldn’t say for what, just that it was part of the bargain.

I walked through the Dwair, or, more specifically, I had the floor move me through the Dwair. It really was quite fun. You could have it bend to your whim in anyway you want. You could use it like a spring and launch yourself in the air, or just have your feet sink in and zip around the walls and ceiling like you were on a roller coaster. You could even do it to other ponies if you wanted. One of my favorite games as a child was trapping my uncles servants in place and watching them scramble to do his bidding. The faster they moved the faster I moved the floor, until we both collapsed, them in exhaustion, me in laughter.

I zipped to the kitchens, launching myself through the door that had decided to place itself on the ceiling today. I brushed the ceiling as I came through, had it catch me, and launched myself back towards the floor. As I stuck the landing the oven opened and out popped a cake. In it was a card that had the number ten on it. I grabbed a slice of cake and put it in my mouth, savoring the taste of a perfect score.

Instead of sweet marble cake, I found myself biting into blueberry pie. I looked back, and saw an eight in the pie. I don’t know why I ever trusted that damn oven. It seemed to like lies involving cake. That’s okay, because nine was my favorite score anyways. A score of nine gave me any number of rainbow flavored foods. I loved rainbows and their delicious mind-numbingly amazing spiciness.

Distracted from my thoughts of how horrible training was, I continued munching on the pie. When I finished it, I let the floor swallow me whole to go find somepony to prank. I needed a good one after last night.

Swimming through the stone, I sent out small tremors to find people. It was sort of like echo-location, but with stone. Discord said it was good to practice using other senses, especially the ones you don’t have, so that you’ll never be caught unprepared.

I sensed a lot of his ridiculous servants, the buffalos in tutus, as well as a couple ponies. It was surprising how well the population of Canterlot held up being trapped in here. No matter what Discord said about them begging for death, they’d all become attached to the place in some way.

I popped in on Fancypants in his daily money shower, turning the bits blazing hot for a second. Yapping in a very undignified manner he turned to me, and willed the floor away, causing me to fall to the floor below. Unfortunately, he’d miscalculated, and I wound up falling down the hole between twenty flights of stars instead. Laughing, I turned it into a swan dive, and splashed gracefully back into the floor to begin looking for another victim.

He was getting better. My training had gotten him at least rudimentary control of his will. I swam through the floor, looking for my next victim. I found Soarin and Spitfire in one of the many Grand Halls. Soarin, as usual, was stuffing his face. If there is one thing that Discord’s mind did that made up for his depravity it was make food that defied the senses. Sure, it was just as likely to make grass taste like spit, or hay taste like certain things that shall remain nameless, but it made some truly mind boggling foods.

Imagine a starlit night in the middle of a field of flowers. Their sweet perfume as intoxicating as any cider to be had, and in the midst of it all a babbling brook of the sweetest water flowed through the field, licking and tickling your hooves, as you watched it all. Now imagine that as a food you could have here.

I watched them for awhile, deciding what was the best way to prank them. Finally, an idea struck, and I darted up to the ceiling to get the best view possible. Hanging like a bat, I slowly concentrated on the food below me.

There were chickens and turkeys and all other kinds of savory meats on the tables. Most ponies, including myself, avoided them and just let Discord have at them. As herbivores, we didn’t really get the whole meat thing. That didn’t mean they didn’t have their uses though.

I willed the meat to start moving towards the pair. The chickens and turkeys got on their legs and wobbled toward the two. The sausages slithered forward, like snakes humming purrs of delight. The ribs scuttled forward, like spiders, and spun webs of delectable spices around the food that had been piled in front of the two. Soarin and Spitfire handled it well for their part. They stood back to back, wary, but not terrified. They had clearly learned that before you panic you should find out who’s calling the shots on whatever was happening to you at the moment.

Smiling, I let them gladly know who was in charge. Whistling to the meats below, I tapped the conductors baton I’d summoned on the podium I’d willed in front of me and let the music play. Soarin and Spitfire had looked up in relief to see it was me, and not Discord, but they looked back down when my "show" began.

To call it a show wasn’t saying much. Meats don’t have much in the way of natural talents when it comes to show tunes. They hobbled along in their little dance routines, but got off key way too easy. When it was clear that this particular show wasn’t going to work, I let them drop and flew down to my friends.

“Nice to see you’re all getting used to stunts like that finally,” I said.

“Yours aren’t as bad as his,” said Spitfire, “At least you know when to drop it.”

“Umm… I hate to be a bother, but…” muttered Soarin.

“Yes, you can go back to making a pig of yourself.” I laughed, turning towards the door. “I’ll see you later guys. I have a lot to do today, and need to rest up for tonight’s normal batch of horrors.”

“Be Careful!” Spitfire yelled, as I walked away. I tried to resist the urge for one last prank, and failed. As I walked through the door, I heard an audible oink from Soarin, and a predicable yell of surprise from Spitfire as Soarin really did make a pig of himself.

Laughing, I zipped through the corridors. I imagined them trying to sort the mess out. I wondered how long they would try to will him back before they realized that pulling his tail would do the trick. That was the difference between me and Discord. I left you a way out. If you couldn’t have your will beat mine, I left you a chance at freedom. All you had to do was find it.

I trotted through the gardens, watching the birds burrow, and the moles fly through the air. The moles were rather adorable, with their sunglasses shielding their sensitive eyes. The birds popped out of the ground every now and then to chirp at me loudly before digging back underground. The flowers bloomed and wilted on a whim. Sometimes, they’d whither as you pass by, giving off a feeling of sadness. Other times, they did nothing but bloom. They’d bloom, and drop their petals, only to bloom again in a different color, or even as a different flower.

Trees grew both downwards and upwards. It all depended on whether they saw the glass half empty, or half full. Why grow up today if they’d just die tomorrow? Why grow down in the dumps when there was so much to see? These were the questions every tree faced, or so I was told. They weren’t very talkative. The only one I’d ever gotten a response out of had been the one I called Fluttershy. The wind loved to flutter through her leaves, and she’d been real shy, which was why I’d named her that, but I suppose that as she was the only tree ever to talk to me she was actually rather outgoing? I’d have to rethink the name.

As I walked through the garden, day flickered to night and vice versa. The many little stars that acted as suns for varying areas liked to jump back and forth from each state. The day was so bright and warm and energetic, while the night was so smooth and mysterious. They just couldn’t decide which they liked more.

During a particularly turbulent period where the star wanted to be both day and night at once, and was flickering back and forth really fast with some periods of twilight inbetween, I came upon a pony I’d never seen before. He was brown with a rather short mane cut and an hourglass cutie-mark. What was strange wasn’t that he bolted from me when he saw me, but the fact that I’d never seen him before. Newcomers were very rare to the Dwair. Its not like most people willingly enter the mind of an insane being of chaos that you have no hope of ever escaping from.

“Wait!” I called, but he just kept running.

“Sorry! Can’t stop to chat! Wouldn’t want to cause a paradox now would we!”

Paradox? Whatever could he mean? This was Discord’s Dwair, the home of the paradox. I chased after him as he prattled on in his charming English accent about how I really shouldn’t follow him, and how if I really wanted to know him I need only wait a little bit.

“At least tell me your name!” I yelled at him as we rounded a particularly sharp corner.

I had time enough to hear him yell, “Why I’m the Doctor of course! Who else would I be?” and then he rounded another corner and I lost him.

After wondering a bit more, I went back to the castle. It was time to get what little sleep I could before my training began again. I’d need all the pleasant dreams I could get before my usual jaunt with whatever nightmares my uncle cooked up for me.

Once again, this was proofread by John Perry. If there are any grammar mistakes left, its my fault for making so darn many, not his. Trust me.. There were a lot of things wrong before.

Chapter 3: Mind Games

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Chapter 3: Mind Games

“Bishop to A5. Check,” came the voice as the strange stone statue that was his bishop got up and moved. While it was crafted of the most exquisite marble it managed to move fluidly, cartwheeling to its new position before turning towards me with an evil grin.

“Horseapples!” I swore, “Not again!”

When Discord had said he’d have mind games for me earlier he apparently decided that we’d be playing board games for training that night. Unfortunately, as with every other thing he’s said, board game for him means something completely different from any sane pony's interpretation. First of all, he didn’t really think the board was necessary. “Why use a board when the world can be your board?” he said.

The second difference was that he never remembered to mention that in his board games you are the pieces. We’d played 3-Dimensional Battleship where I was every member of the crew for every one of my ships. Let me tell you, its not fun watching yourself get torn to pieces as another part of your ship is destroyed. There were bodies floating everywhere, and, of course, there was too much blood for me to will it all away. I was forced to futilely launch attacks on ships I couldn’t see while thousands of dead versions of me floated by being picked at by sharks. It didn’t help that Discord cheated. I only hit him once, and the only reason I did was because he decided a suicide attack would be fun.

He’d spawned his ship on top of one of mine and without thinking I had another ship of mine fire at it. My shot nicked his ship and blew up the rest of the one he spawned by. I had to wonder what it said about me that I’d kill myself thousands of times to hurt him once. I didn’t even get any of his crew. He had temporarily evacuated all of them to safety.

Blasting my own ship had really hurt me though. The thing about being your own pieces in a board game is that it really is you. When your piece, or any of the multiple pieces you play, dies so does a little bit of you. It wasn’t outright murder like before, but a sort of erosion of the self. You would disappear piece by piece. Memories would fade, perception would blur, soon all that was left was the nagging feeling you were doing this all for some reason but you couldn’t say what. Luckily for me, Discord was gracious enough to at least gather the little chunks of me that washed away from my mind as the night went on. He’d graciously return them to me in the morning so I could savor our... experience.

What he didn’t know was that I was smart enough to make copies of my memories and have them constantly fed to me. If you have no idea who you are or what you’re doing you don’t really have a chance to beat the guy I was facing. I would need everything I had to have a hope of beating him.

Having a hope, however, was different than having a chance.

We’d moved on from Battleship however and were playing chess now. The bishop grinned a maniacal grin at me. It was rather unnerving because it was my grin. Discord was apparently recycling some of the more… dark memories I had to make the pieces for his games now. That grin, for example, came from the other night when I’d held that knife in my hand. The maniacal grin of a pony ready to plunge the knife into the heart and giggle madly as every little last drop of blood spouted forth.

I guess he decided I’d be destroying myself tonight. Looking around the board I saw my strategy was failing. I’d tried getting in a deadlock with him where we’d end up in a draw but once I’d made my first critical mistake things had gone downhill. Guess it was time to start doing a little cheating of my own.

“Knight to A5. Take the Rook with you to B6.”

The little version of me that was my knight got down off his horse clunked over in his armor to the rook next to him. Tying a rope to the castle the rook was standing on he went back and dragged it after him as his horse leapt into battle. It didn’t really make sense for a pony to ride a horse but if that’s how Discord wanted the pieces to look that’s what he got. As the knight rammed his lance through the heart of the partially insane bishop memory his horse twisted, slinging the rook around and bringing him crashing into the poor little gibbering pawn that was guarding the bishop.

As the blood fountained from the pieces they let out an ethereal scream, and I was lashed with the memories they represented. As I re-experienced the bishop’s memory it took a new path. I saw myself drive the knife home, saw the blood begin to spout, and saw myself giggling madly as I gave in to exhaustion and blood loss. The blood swirled in the fog that had terrified me so much before, and I watched as the faces came screaming and wailing lamentations and pleas for release.

In my maddened state I was only too happy to oblige. I willed myself into the Dwair. Blood soaking my coat black, leaving wild and twisting red marks as it trailed down my coat as I stalked the halls.

I tried to pull away from this corrupted memory but its hold was too strong. I walked down the hall simultaneously feeling revolt at what I knew would happen from the real me and the bloodthirsty glee of anticipation from the remnants of the bishop. I found the first pony in the kitchens. It was Soarin, eating as usual.

I didn’t even give him a chance to run. I slammed the knife in his side and willed it into a barbed spear, using it to toss him crashing into the table. The oven door opened, slamming on his head and producing a tray of chocolate chip cookies. The card read 11 but I ignored the better than perfect score. I waited till he managed to regain enough coherence from my attack for him to look at me and see who it was. He opened his mouth as if to say something but I snapped his neck with a twitch of my will. Blood rolled through the kitchen, sticky and pungent from the heat of the kitchens it chugged outward ever so slowly as I walked towards the door.

Spitfire walked in from the door across the kitchens just as I was about to leave. “Soarin you al-“ her words cut off as she saw the carnage. I turned around smiling viciously. Blood still poured from my wound but what did I care? I could just will myself more. It was a mere inconvenience. She started backing away but I slammed the door closed.

The part of me that was still real, that wasn’t part of this twisted not memory was fading. I was becoming one with the memory, one with its world if I didn’t do something I would be swept away and all this would become a reality for my friends.

It wasn’t right!

IT WASN’T RIGHT!!!

Suddenly the little bit of me I had left blazed forth from the cold dark pits of this depravity of a mind I was falling into. I opened the door. I closed it. I opened it. I closed it.

“RUN!” I yelled to Spitfire in one of the brief moments I had control, “Get the others to safety! If I lose, this becomes real!” My minds warred with each other as each version tried to gain sway over the other. I would burn my insanity with righteous fury only to have it stab me back with blood-curdling cold.

The memory world faded into the void and it was just him and me duking it out. I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I COULDN’T!

And suddenly it was over. The life force of the memory had been snuffed out as I’d gained more and more resolve to fight him. In the end he had just given up, just as he must have to bring that knife home in the first place.

I was back on the battlefield of chess pieces as if nothing had happened. “Check,” came Discord’s voice as he made his move.

Screw this. I was done playing this game by anything resembling the rules. He wanted to win? Let him but I’m taking him down in the process. “Queen to G5! Check!”

“Oh come now… That’s not a legal move. The rules clearly state when in check you must play a move that gets you out of check.”

“To hell with rules!” I yelled, “Like you ever follow them yourself! You want me? Come take me! I’ve already given orders to take you if I die next turn. If you take my king I take yours!”

Discord was silent for awhile, as if considering what to do. His pride would never let him lose, even if I was making him lose in a suicide attack, but it also wouldn’t allow him to avoid a chance to take and triumph in a perfectly good win. We would both lose and both win if he took me, so he couldn’t make that move, or any other for that matter, because if he took it he lost and if he didn’t take it he passed up a win.

I smiled at my small triumph but it didn’t last for long. “You know what?” he whispered in spine-tinglingly over-cheery manner, “I’m bored of this game. How about we play a different one?”

The world blurred and swirled about. Flashes of darkness pulsed in the myriad colors of the world as he plucked at its strings. When the world resolved I was strapped to a table spread eagle. It was a dreary grey room filled with whirring machines and gizmos. One of them I recognized as a machine that measures your heart rate. Wherever I was it was definitely not a board game.

I heard a door open behind me as a pony walked into the room. His hooves struck the floor with a measured pace as he advanced slowly towards the table. When he reached me he stopped and looked down. It was me with that horrible grin again.

“Oh hell no!” I said, “I killed you.”

“You killed a version of me,” I replied with sadisdic glee, “Snapped his meager mind in two and threw it in the trash. Did you really think there would be only one place in your life where you could have ended up a monster like that?” He giggled madly at the implication of having called himself a monster. “There are so many ways you could have ended up as twisted if not more twisted than that pathetic wretch and Discord can see them all. It’s such a shame you haven’t given in yet but the Law of Large Numbers says it’s only a matter of time. Maybe I’ll be the one to break you?”

“What happened to our nice night of board games?” I asked sarcastically.

“Ever hear of a game called Operation?” was the equally sardonic reply. I gulped in response. Was he really gonna take it this far? “Thought so…” said my crazy knife wielding other said smugly, “Now where did I put that knife?”

I struggled at the bonds while my other sharpened his blade. I tried everything I could think of, willing myself to freedom, willing a much more peaceful place into existence, even plain old boring normal unicorn magic for once, all to no avail. I couldn’t escape because not only did I have Discord’s will to face but my own. On some twisted level of my subconscious I must either have believed what this little punk was saying about wanting to go on a murderous rampage or I really and truly wanted myself to suffer.

My other self finished sharpening the knife and walked towards the table I was on. “Where should I start?” he said grinning down at me with the glassy eyes of one who’s given in to insanity. He carved away at my body. This wasn’t a game. It was a sick joke. I laughed to try to take away the pain but as he took out my funny bone the urge to laugh just died. Can’t laugh without a sense of humor. I tried to think of all my dreams for a better world but then he cut out my wishbone. Can’t dream without something to wish on. I sort of gave up for a while after that. Discord had more than won this round of training. One of the last things taken out was my broken heart and that was when I stopped caring enough to pay attention.

And again thanks to John Perry for proofreading. I am so bad at grammar.

Chapter 4: Lost in the Darkness

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Chapter 4 Lost in the Darkness

I woke up screaming. It wasn’t a normal scream either. It was as if fifty different reflections of me were scrabbling for release from inside me. Some were terrified, others bloodthirsty, and some were just mad. They didn’t have a reason to scream, they just wanted to.

I tried to shove them down and failed, screaming my own pain all the while. They were me and they weren’t, I didn’t know what they were.

“Good… Good… Your mind is beginning to break. Soon it will hopefully open and you will see all the worlds before you…”

I twisted from where I sat and saw Discord in his chair smoking his stupid pipe again. As I stared at him hatred as I’d never felt before rose up within me. My mind seared with agony as the thousand screams returned and for an instant my coat changed. It was the same as from that horrible corrupted memory. It was blackened from blood instead of its normal blue and that horrible stab wound returned spouting blood. It didn’t even have the decency to spout blood normally. Like before the crimson flowed across my body in various unsettling patterns. It slithered on my skin boiling it at its touch. I screamed as I felt the malice of that memory rise within me.

“What did you do to me?!?”

“I think it would be obvious… I showed you the inner depravity of your mind last night. You thought you were pure, clean, and incapable of the monstrosities I commit to you daily. I just showed you how wrong you were. And now… Your mind has been opened to so many new possibilities. You should be thanking me.”

I tried to will myself away from this horrible place. Instead of blurring though the world shattered. Pain seared through my mind as each and every voice willed myself to a different location. I felt myself being torn in hundreds of directions but I persevered. I threw myself into the void not caring where I went as long it was away from Him.

I fell for what felt like an eternity but finally I landed softly. Struggling to rise I opened my eyes and found myself staring into Discords face. I turned to run but found him in front of me again and again. There wasn’t just one of him. There were hundreds. All of them laughing and jeering at me.

“Oh my, oh my. This is unexpected. I hadn’t expected you to be this far gone for a while. Tell me, do you know where you are?” his voice echoed forth from each and every one of him as he laughed all the while. I just huddled there trying to will him away. “You aren’t in my mind anymore. In order to escape me you fled to your own mind. Now the real training can begin.”

I just lay there in a feeble position muttering to myself over and over. “Go away… Go away… Go away…” How could he be here? I knew he was right. This wasn’t the Dwair. The air was different, the soil clean. It felt perfect to me. But that’s because it was me. How could he have gotten inside my mind like this?

“Now that you’re here you can be put to the ultimate test. I was supposed to forge your willpower into an unstoppable fury that would make even gods quail before you. You’ve fought me well but it hasn’t been enough. It’s time you faced the horrors of your own mind without me messing with them. I can bring your inner demons into a mockery of life like last night but only you could truly bring them into being. Now that you are finally here I can just kick back and watch the show.”

With that little comment he was gone. I could still feel him watching but he had left me to myself. Struggling to my feet I looked around to see what I had gotten myself into. I was on a small floating island that held a quaint little forest. It was very peaceful, relaxing even, but then I saw beyond my little island.

There were thousands of islands out there, all belonging to a version of me that screamed for release. Some of the islands looked peaceful like mine. Some of them held dark clouds about them giving of an aura of dark mystique. Some were big, and others small. Some held entire fortresses on them, and some held the carnage of war.

These drew my attention particularly. Focusing my will I created a pathway to one of them. As I drew closer the sky shifted colors. What had been a serene azure blue shifted into a dark violet grey. Thunder crackled into existence amongst the clouds that started to hang over the sky. The feel of the air changed too. It had felt perfect to me before, slightly cool with a mild, if whimsical, breeze. Now it crackled with the same charge as the lightning. It made one’s skin stand on edge as if they were being stalked like prey and I had the very unsettling feeling I was.

I tried to spread my sense outward but only felt the same sense of dread. As I finally reached the island I met a blood bath. Two armies of me stood fighting in the middle of the island. One was composed of versions of me I only dreamed of being. Knights in shining armor, guardians of the weak. They leapt boldly into battle against my savage other selves. They were barbaric, my other selves, loping in the manner of wild animals, as they too charged into battle.

The darker versions of me were hard to stomach. They had no control of themselves. Their coats shifted colors sporadically and their horns became wings or shifted into other monstrous appendages ponies were not supposed to have. Some of them had crab claws, others tentacles, they all were hideously twisted though, and they continued to twist in their madness. The grin never changed though. It was that same hideous grin on each and every one of them.

They clawed and beat myself to death, tearing at my heroic counterparts like bloody cannibals. For their effort, the ones that were pure and clean fought just as well, but they were overwhelmed by the sheer savagery of my darker reflections. I turned away and went to look for another island. As odd as it was, all those versions felt like small potatoes, mere reflections of the battles I would be facing soon. It was time to go kill some inner demons.

...

I had entered one of the darker islands. One of the ones surrounded by dark clouds. As I walked through the clouds the malice within had become more and more apparent. On the outside the darkness had just felt sweet and oddly alluring. The deeper you went, however, the more maddening it became. I could feel tremors from the monstrous form of me within. His part of my mind brushed with mine on several occasions as he struggled to contain his will. It was sporadic, as chaotic as Discord’s and just waiting to snap fully

Suddenly it radiated power again, and the dark cloud collapsed. The world blurred, but not into the wondrous colors that it normally did. It blurred into a myriad of blacks and greys. The darkness dragged at my skin, as if trying to peel it off, and the maniacal laughter of one who has gone completely and utterly insane echoed forth as the world twisted. The strings were plucked and broke as the laughter continued and things snapped unevenly into place. When it was done I stood on a mountain housing an eerily empty looking castle.

Bits of the world fluttered and twitched as if not fully brought together. These patches were unnerving. Where they the result of a lack of willpower? Or were they a sign of how frayed my mind was at the moment?

As I walked up the path the world shifted around by itself. Barren trees flickered out of existence, only to reappear five feet to the left. Rocks rolled about settling in one place for a second before moving on to another. The stream ran red with blood then green with acid then black with starlight as if the night sky itself ran through it. The path remained roughly the same, although every so often it switched materials.

Finally I reached the castle. It was tall and frail, like a corpse that was stretched forth to its limits screaming in agony. The tallest tower weaved back and worth as it climbed into the heavens, as if writhing in pain, and held a shattered window at its top, shards gleaming like teeth to the mouth of its silent scream. The gate was a mass of barbed black steel stabbing forth into the sky.

As I approached it opened on its own and a voice said, “Enter.”

I stopped there, hesitating. Whoever that was, the voice didn’t sound like me. Could I be so twisted in certain parts of my mind that I wouldn’t even recognize them as me? “I don’t have all day…” whispered Discord in my ear, “If you don’t push on soon I’ll probably get bored… You wouldn’t want that now would you?” I certainly wouldn’t. Putting on a burst of speed I ran through the courtyard and stepped into the castle.

On the inside the stone was just as twisted as the outside. There was no uniform pattern to the architecture. The stone writhed and twisted, sending a silent message of agony. The castle had a strange gutted effect as if I were entering the stomach of a tortured beast.

There was little decorating the place. A few portraits hung on the wall and a chandelier but that was it. Each one depicted horrifying crimes being committed against innocent ponies. One portrayed me throwing foals into a fire. Their bones crackled and sizzled, bursting apart in the heat and their tears were sent into bursts of steam, hissing as they rose away. As I watched I could see it taking shape in my head. The mothers crying as I tore their children from their arms, the screams of the foals as the fire consumed them. This wasn’t just a portrait. It was a memory. A memory of someone I could have become. The other portraits were just as bad.

Ponies hung from chains, half-starved, as I dangled them before a veritable sea of food. Lowering them just enough so they could stretch their tongues and taste the food I left them there. Weeks later, I returned and found them dangling there dead. The rats that lived in the walls had eaten the food as they watched. Then, when it was all gone they had eaten the corpses too.

Unleashing the hounds I hunted ponies just like Discord had done to me the other night. The wolves tore into their flesh and they howled in agony but unlike Discord I didn’t end their misery. I willed their flesh back, gave them life so they would continue to scream. I whispered into their ear how if they only screamed louder I would give them the release they craved… I never did.

“Wow… And I thought I was bad.” said Discord into my ear, “You, my dear Baffle, are one messed up cookie. Maybe I shouldn’t be pushing you this hard? I have to admit even I find this all a bit unsettling.”

“Unsettling!” I shot back, “Do you know what you’ve done in your day monster?”

“I do… Do you know what you’ve done? Or at least what you could do?”

I took in the portraits again and sunk to the floor sobbing. “Uncle? What do I do? I can’t face this. Just look at this! I’m worse than you!”

“You’re looking at this in the wrong way. This isn’t you. It never was. It’s what you could have been. The mind is so much more than a mere impression of yourself. It is an impression of everything you can and could have become. You are not this monster nor were you ever meant to be,” his voice whispered softly into my ear. I couldn’t believe it. Discord was being caring? In the wheel of fortune that spun in his head deciding each and every action he took I was sure kindness was the sort of thing that came around once in a millennium. “Tell you what. If you kill this bastard in your head I will let you out. We will continue our normal schedule of training by night and giving you a break during the day. Just be prepared for some extra pranks.”

I felt a lion paw on my shoulder briefly before he vanished to watch me again. I sat there for a while getting control of myself. I had stood up to Discord before, what could be so hard about merely standing up to myself? It’s not like I was a near omnipotent being of chaos.

Walking through the castle I slowly climbed my way to the top of the tallest tower and made my way out to the window that was the entrance to the highest room. It stood before me, gaping like a giant mouth, its insides hidden from me in the darkness outside and within. Lightning flashed for just a second in the clouds above and I saw the outline of a throne.

Walking into the room the window closed behind me. The pieces of glass littering the floor flew up and past me slicing into my flanks as the window repaired itself. Turning to watch it complete itself I saw what it was really supposed to depict. A red moon hung in the sky of the stained glass window. It wasn’t the red of blood, but of rust and decay. I had the oddest sense it was dead. Below the moon I stood in all the glory of a tyrant come into power. In a pool of blood at my feet were three corpses. One was that of sweet Princess Luna. One was the corpse of a young Pegasus I didn’t know, but felt I would know someday. The final corpse was that of a man. I had only read of humans in old mythology books, but I knew enough of their basic physiology to place it. He looked serene and peaceful, as if he had accepted his death, but gave off an aura of extreme sadness of what his death would mean. I looked back at the moon and saw something that hadn’t been there before. It was a dark shadow that just looked on and laughed at what he’d wrought.

“Do you like the glory of our triumph?” came a voice from the shadows of the throne. It cracked in odd places as if unsure of what emotion to convey. The whispers of madness were there, the cackles of insanity, the howls of rage, and the tiniest whimper of guilt. The voice fluctuated through them all as I turned to find what I’d become.

I wasn’t going to make it easy for myself though. Upon the throne I twisted and turned. My body was serpentine, I could gather that much, but it willed the shadows around itself so that I couldn’t tell much more. I got a sense of chaos to the creature. That it was an abomination of life.

It slithered from the throne and the shadows followed it. I could hear the scuttle of legs scrapping on the floor. Sometimes I even heard the tap of a hoof. What the hay had I become in this offshoot of my life?

As the shadows cleared the throne I saw it was crafted of the same barbed steel as the gate. Upon the spikes my own head was impaled several times. “You’ve tried to kill me before you know. Amusing as I am you, but all in vain as you can see. They were all meant to never be, just like I’m not. You, however, I sense are the true me. You are the one who can become me if only I make it so. What do you say? Will you bring my glorious being into reality or must I force you down the path? You cannot kill me, of that I am sure. How could you possibly stop the might of a god?”

God? Did he just say god? Horseapples! What in Equestria would grant me such power and how the hay was I supposed to kill a version of me that apparently turned into a psychotic deity that put Discord to shame?

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of something through the shadows. It was something I wasn’t expecting to see. It was a breastplate. While the rest of the shadows hid myself from me I saw a breastplate among them.

“Uh-oh…” Discord’s voice said into my ear, “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Discord didn’t respond to me. He just started mumbling to himself.

“Didn’t know that could happen… I was told he would not be the one to use it... What kind of twisted future is this?”

“Well boy? Don’t just mutter to yourself! Tell me! Will you willingly follow me? Or must I tear into your body until you submit?” the mass of shadows hissed.

I looked about the hollow castle and thought of the portraits and the window.

“I would rather die than become you.”

The twisted mass of shadows that was myself laughed at that. “Foolish boy, I can’t believe I was ever so naïve. I will crush your will with my own a thousand times if necessary.”

Suddenly the world blurred into those hideous shades of darkness again. The colors tore at my skin and it peeled off slowly but surely. Blood fell in rivulets down my body, puddling beneath me. Once my skin was gone the darkness retreated. The world still blurred but something had changed.

Suddenly I felt something scramble up my flank. Whatever it was I couldn’t see it. It was just another shade of black in the swirls of darkness. I felt the hard scrabbly bones of carapace legs dig into my muscle, setting my nerves on fire, as the thing climbed up my body. Settling comfortably on me it dug its pincers into me, tearing away bits of my flesh. Although I should have run out of blood by now, blood continued to ooze from my wounds, tickling me like fire as it sleeked down my body.

More of the things, whatever they were, came to the party. As their legs cut into me while they climbed I felt myself begin to suffocate beneath the mass of them. They were everywhere, biting everything. My screams of pain slowly became less and less audible as I lost the organs and flesh required to make sound. Soon, all that was left was my bones for them to gnaw on. As they cracked my bones open I felt them break, despite lacking the nerves to do so.

But that meant this wasn’t real, right? He wasn't doing any of this to me, not really. It was then I realized something. This thing that had once been me, that could be me in the future, couldn’t really do anything to me. He could have snapped me like a twig if he wanted to at first. Instead he had tried to bargain with me. Whatever happened to make me like this couldn’t be forced. I had to willingly commit whatever acts set me on that path to bring me to its conclusion, and the one thing I knew was that I would never willingly become that monstrosity.

I started laughing. It didn’t matter what he did to me. The only way I would ever become him was if I made the mistake of choosing that path. Those portraits in the hall, the window in the tower, they had told me all I needed to know. They’d shown me the events that would twist me into that monster. As my laugh burst from my bones the pain faded away. My bones knitted together, muscle reformed before my newly remade eyes. Blood flowed back over my body even as skin grew back into place.

I was me again. The thing that had been me shrieked and tried to tear its way into me again but I brushed it aside. It was no longer a part of me. By interfering with what was going to be it had sealed its own fate. I laughed at its pathetic attempts and batted it aside. As the blurring of the world stopped I found myself in the throne room again. The shadows were now a small insignificant pile. It tried to run from me but I wouldn’t let it. I tried a trick I’d been meaning to try for a while. I willed the blood in him to freeze.

He shrieked in pain as the shards of blood tore apart his circulatory system. I willed his blood to unfreeze and watched the result. As the vessels in his lungs were now torn they started filling with blood. As he choked on his own blood, the rest of his body spasmed from his nerves being overloaded by the pain of all the different wounds his blood freezing had opened. I don’t think he felt any of it other than the initial freeze though. His brain would have been torn to bits as all the blood flowing through it froze. If there was anything left of his mind while he died it was probably too small of a piece to even feel pain.

It was much more horrifying than I imagined in my head. I turned from the body, vomiting the contents of my stomach. This was why I tried to never listen to the darker side of my mind. I had thought that particular version of me had deserved that… I’d been wrong.

I continued vomiting as the world slowly faded into the clouds of darkness from before. Even after the clouds dissipated from the island I continued to gag and vomit as the horror of what I’d done continued to fill me. I hadn’t just killed somepony. I’d killed him in the worst way that had come to mind at the time. Somehow, I felt maybe I wasn’t as free of that monster as I had thought. Maybe it might have failed, but that didn’t mean another wouldn’t take its place.

I continued vomiting, gagging and spasming until Uncle Discord finally pulled me away from the place.

Thanks to John Perry for proofreading and curse the very existence of grammar and my lack of skill in it.

Chapter 5: Another Day, Another Lesson

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Chapter 5: Another Day, Another Lesson

I woke up gasping for breath. The sheets of the bed were soaked through with sweat and as I woke up the bed dumped me on the floor before shaking itself vigorously like a wet dog and wandering off.

Uncle Discord was standing there waiting for me. “Feeling better sunshine?” I glared up at him but winced as my head suddenly exploded with pain from the simple motion. “Ah-ah-ah…” he tutted at me, “You have to conserve your energy. The trip back was harder than I imagined. Your mind is simply fascinating. Did you know it tried to keep you in? I had to force our way out to give you that break I promised so you’ll have to forgive the headache.”

After several minutes of repeated attempts at getting up and having the headache blaze to life it finally faded to a more manageable level. Gritting my teeth I could stand and walk even if there was a small constant sensation of little knives cutting my head up. But really, what was that to all the horrible things Discord had done to me?

As I walked out of the room my Uncle called back to me, “Just so you know I’ve planned a little entertainment for tonight before training! Come to the coliseum at roughly 5 pm! You’ll know it’s 5 when something odd happens to you!” Something odd? My uncle did nothing but odd things. What could he possibly have planned to make my day that much more odd?

Sighing, I headed for the kitchens. I was in such a foul mood I didn’t even bother zipping along the floor. Colors faded and light dimmed as I walked through the Dwair. I guess I was so down I was modifying it without noticing it. The whimsical side of me noted that it sort of looked like an old time movie from the auditorium Uncle kept running 24-7. Sometimes you would find him there, sitting and eating popcorn, laughing at all the cheesy jokes. Most of the time, however, he leapt right into the movie and screwed every single important scene up until the characters had no idea what was going on anymore. Jaws had ended up a giant rubber duck once. I had no idea you could make a rubber duck that terrifying before I saw that.

My mood had brightened a little thinking of when the Dwair had been so much more fun before training. Keeping up the old movie style appearance I tried saying something. A moment after my mouth moved my vision went black as a sign reading “Testin. Testing. One, two, three.” appeared. Giggling madly, my vision went black again as the words “Hee! Hee! Hee!” appeared. This caused me to walk into the wall, however, as my vision faded right before a corner. My vision returned and I saw what had happened and muttered, “Oww…” Predictably the sign came up again, taunting me.

This was going to take some getting used to but it was definitely more fun than my training.

“WHEEEE!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, zipping down the halls, commanding the floor once more as I dashed for the kitchen. As the sign declaring my excitement appeared several more signs suddenly flashed before my eyes in a very disorienting manner.

“What the hay?!?”

“I’m blind!!!”

“My leg!!!”

All of a sudden I was bombarded by the signs telling me what happened to everypony that had heard me. Some were confused, others shocked, and one in particular had banged his leg pretty badly. He kept swearing over and over again as he just kept banging into more stuff by prolonging how long the signs were there.

After a while, he finally figured out to shut up, but by then Discord had figured out what was going on and was laughing madly. Overall everypony spent about half an hour blind to everything but the signs until things settled down.

Luckily, I had memorized the way to the kitchens. By the time it had finally let up I was waiting outside the door, on the side wall today, and launched myself through again. I willed the lantern hanging from the ceiling to lower as I shot through. Grabbing it, I swung up to the ceiling and landed gracefully there as I reversed gravity for myself.

“Ding!” went the sign for the oven beeping as it opened up. Today a nine came out along with a plate of Rainbow Nachos and an explosion of confetti. Soarin, who had been busy eating, started at the ding. Everything else had been silent after all.

He looked up at the nachos, then up at me on the ceiling. Upon seeing me a silent scream flew from his lips to show up as a sign a few seconds later.

“ARGH!!! Don’t hurt me!!!”

I dropped to the floor and looked quizzically at him. “Don’t hurt you?” The sign showed up with multiple question marks in the margin to emphasize my confusion. “It’s me Soarin. Baffle Buck. I’m not a monster.” Unbidden, the memories of the past two days flashed in my mind. ‘Not yet at least…’ I thought to myself.

His mouth moved for a bit before his response appeared. “Oh it is you… Sorry. I just had the most terrifying nightmare involving you the other night.”

“You and me both…” I said shuddering, “Please tell me it didn’t involve me going on a psychopathic rampage murdering everyone…”

“How’d you know?” came the responding sign. It was highlighted with shocked exclamation points.

“Because that was part of my training… Uncle apparently thought it would be healthy for me to face the darkest and most horrifying things I could become. What you saw was what I would have become if that battle hadn’t gone so smoothly. I hadn’t realized it was that close a battle. If you guys saw it I was pretty darn close to losing it. Did Spitfire have the dream too? Where I told her to run?”

“Yeah! I was already gone from the dream by then but she said she came in and saw me and you. She said she saw you fighting with yourself and then everypony else woke up at the same time. We all had the nightmare dude. Let me tell you, it was freaking terrifying dying like that.”

I rubbed my hoof on my forehead as I felt another migraine coming on. “Great, now everypony will be worrying I’m going to be coming to kill them…”

“Dude! Don’t take it like that. We all have faith in you. We know you would never do that to us. And if you did we would blame Discord. I mean for someone who’s supposed to be your guardian he sure as hay doesn’t care much for your mental safety. I never knew training was that bad for you. All he does to us is prank us.”

I looked at my friend, smiling. “Thanks, you don’t know how much that means… I’m not so sure that I would never do it though. Not after yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday? Nobody could find either you or Discord. It was a bit of a relief not having to deal with sudden one person rainstorms of chocolate milk, or the hallways suddenly becoming soap, but we all missed you.”

The memories of yesterday brought the migraine on more. Rubbing my temples the old movie feeling slipped becoming that overwhelming sadness again. The colors were faded and dead. They weren’t just grey, they were depressing. The lights flickered and dimmed again in an eerie sort of manner and my voice came out rather hollow and emotionless.

“I don’t want to talk about it…”

Soarin let it go, holding out the nachos I had been ignoring. “Hey you forgot your nachos! I’ve been practicing a little. Maybe I can warm them up. I still can’t believe I can do stuff like this in here. Feels like unicorn magic to me.” His voice was echoy and distant, but it still pierced the gathering gloom. I watched as, slowly but surely, he willed the nachos back to being piping hot. He even managed to throw some color in there. While most ponies lacked the proper focus and willpower to shape Discord’s mind to their whim very much it was one of the nicer things about being trapped in there. Unicorn, pegasus, or earth pony, it didn’t matter. In the realm of imagination and chaos that trapped us here with Discord anypony could do anything if they tried hard enough.

Grabbing the nachos I popped some into my mouth. I’d heard rainbows weren’t for eating, but I didn’t really care. As the glorious rainbow flakes touched my tongue seven flavors of amazing spiciness burnt into my tongue. I felt my cheeks shifting through the seven colors as each little explosion happened.

Nothing like rainbows to make somepony happy. Slowly color returned to the room as the memories of the previous night went to the back of my head. I was about to thank Soarin when the world flashed white. This had to be whatever Uncle was planning. The force of the will behind it was immense.

When the light cleared I looked to Soarin to see if he knew what had happened. My mouth dropped in astonishment. He was a chicken. Looking down at myself I saw that it was not my mouth that had dropped, but my beak. Turns out I was one too. Great, just great… I never understood what possessed Uncle to do these little things.

Looking back at Soarin I said, “Well, guess it’s time for today’s entertainment at the coliseum… Do you know what it is? He didn’t tell me.”

“Why would he tell me anything?” snorted Soarin. “I’m a nobody to him. The only reason I know stuff is because he tells you. He just told us all to come to the Coliseum. I really hope this isn’t another session of Cooking with Discord. Remember how he turned us all into turkey’s for that to show us firsthand how a Thanksgiving dinner’s made? He didn’t even tell us what Thanksgiving was! I still think he was making the holiday up.”

“Nah, he wasn’t making it up. Being a creature of chaos his mind has access to bits of information that seem to come from nowhere. Sometimes I don’t think even he knows how he thought about certain things. Still, I really don’t want another Cooking with Discord session either, maybe we can talk him out of it? We just have to give him a better idea. Come on, lets go find him.”

“Soarin! Soarin!” came Spitfire as she ran into the room, “Discords turned everypony into chickens!”

“Don’t you think we’d know that since everypony implies us as well?” I asked dryly.

“Baffle is that you?” Spitfire asked, “I mean the real you, not the bloody, psychotic, rampaging you.”

“Yeah it’s me…” I muttered, “Please don’t take that dream the wrong way. That was all just part of his training.”

“Turning you into a psychopathic villain and having you kill your friends is just training?” snorted Spitfire. “And I thought what I put the Wonderbolts through was intense. That’s a little sick. What the hay is he training you for?”

“I dunno… He never tells me. He just smiles like a smug bastard and does the echoy laugh thing he loves so much. He did tell me that whoever left me with him asked him to train me though.”

“That’s rough…” Spitfire sighed, “But anyways, we have to head to the coliseum now. Discord’s orders.”

“You know what for?” I asked.

“Yeah! He’s actually letting us put on a show! The Wonderbolts are back! We have to go like right now Soarin.”

“Wait! You do know this is Discord right? Whatever show you’re all doing isn’t going to be your standard show. And how are you even supposed to perform as chickens?!?” I called as they ran off. I heard a brief reply about Uncle saying they’d be turned back into ponies for the show. It was rather muffled though, and I missed most of it.

Sighing, I willed the floor to zip me down the halls after them. They must have been really excited to be putting a show on after so long because I didn’t come close to catching them, despite taking every shortcut, secret passage, and bizarre route the castle had to offer to shorten the trip.

When I finally made it to the coliseum flocks of white chickens were pouring through the entrance. Discord didn’t hold entertainment often, but when he did you had better come. He had a way of knowing if somepony didn’t make it. That pony usually ended up at the bad end of all his pranks for the next couple weeks. Once a filly had missed it because she had the feather flu and Discord had her sneezing out feathers for a week after. No pony had any idea how he got them inside her, but they caused the most irritating itch. She just kept sneezing and sneezing more of them. By the end of the week it was like we were in a pillow factory.

The coliseum was rather impressive. It was essentially a giant bowl like your normal spectator arena, but with a few adjustments made. First off, the seats liked to rearrange themselves. You could have the best, or worst depending on what his ‘entertainment’ was, seats in the house when suddenly you switch to being top row and forcing to squint your eyes to see anything. Second was the fact that the seats moved through the field. That meant that any participants had to constantly look out for giant blocks of stone barreling towards them. The third thing was it was Discord’s Coliseum so he could add anything he wanted to to it at any time, but that should go without saying.

As I walked in I turned and went for the VIP section. Discord always insisted that I watch the show with him. Guess he viewed our watching the pain and misery of other ponies as some sort of bizarre bonding exercise. It’s not that these things couldn’t be fun but Uncle had a way of getting carried away.

It took a while since the seating sections kept moving but I finally cornered the VIP section and managed to get on it. Uncle was already there and he’d brought the recliner and hoofstool from my bedroom with him. As I came up he took one look at me and fell over laughing.

“My oh my… Whatever possessed you to stay like that?” he asked, “I would’ve thought the first thing you would have done is willed yourself back.”

“I didn’t even try… I felt the force of your will in that blast. I didn’t think I had any chance of overcoming it.” He just rolled on the floor some more laughing.

“Do you really think all that will was meant for you alone? It was scattered between all these charming guests. It’s quite hard to turn something sentient into something it doesn’t believe it is. Quite frankly I wouldn’t be able to lift a finger to stop you from just waving it all away from yourself and probably half the ponies here. That would just shatter the illusion for the rest of them.”

“I doubt that…” I said, petulantly remembering our training sessions. If he wanted to keep an illusion up he darn well could.

“Oh come now! You underestimate your willpower! My training has been doing more than just kill you a needless number of times you know. Nothing like washing away the point of death to boost somepony’s self-esteem. And whether you know it or not you’ve been steadily gaining power since we began.”

Okay first he’d been kind enough to take me out of own personal little hell last night and now he was encouraging me with a pep talk on how killing me had been good for me? If I didn’t know better I’d say he was becoming attached to me. It was a disturbing thought. Sort of like having a ticking time-bomb for a mom. You never knew when that little wheel that spun in his head determining his next course of action would land on something you didn’t like.

I decided to play along, however, and tried willing myself back to normal. Surprisingly, it worked. There was a little flash of light and I was back to my old self. There was some disgruntled squawking from the others when they saw I was all right. Unfortunately turning back had one small consequence. All the talking I heard before suddenly became an enormous gale of squawking and shrill cries. Apparently the illusion had come equipped with the ability to understand chickens and as I didn’t properly know how to call a chicken, or even talk like one, I was now out of the loop. Oh well, it’s not like anypony would talk to me while they were being terrified out of their minds from also being next to my uncle.

Sighing, I sat in the chair reserved for me and waited for the show to begin. Unlike my uncle, I didn’t callously put my hooves on the hoofstool. It did have feelings after all. The hoofstools had the odd characteristic of thinking they were dogs. Thus, rather than be crushed by our hooves, they preferred being scratched behind the tassels or belly rubbed.

Finally after what felt like an eternity of sitting there and getting a headache from the chickens, I mean ponies, squawking the floor of the coliseum opened up and the Wonderbolts rose up to the crowd. It was nice to see them in the blue jumpsuits again but something looked off… Oh that was it, Discord hadn’t restored their wings.

“You’re making them will their way through the whole show?!?” I sputtered angrily at him, “You know they aren’t capable of stuff like that. I tried explaining to them once how I managed flight and it was a disaster. They don’t get stuff like creating an endless jump and modifying the theoretical force, velocity, angle, and starting point behind it continuously to approximate flight. Not to mention they definitely don’t have the willpower to pull it off.”

“Well then…” my uncle said mischievously, “You better lend them some of yours. They are going to be going through the Extra-Extreme Obstacle Course of Doom and Other Miscellaneous Titles of Dread.”

“You want me to do what and they’re going through what?!?” I yelled.

“The Extra-Extreme Obstacle Course of Doom and Other Miscellaneous Titles of Dread. I came up with it myself. They’re going to need all the help you can give them. You didn’t think your training ended during the day did you? Day training is just creativity training. I normally leave you to your own devices, but I wanted to take an active hand today.”

Great, just great. Still… I suppose it was better than dying fifty-bajillion times.

“Come now there’s no such number as fifty-bajillion.”

And now I had to worry about him reading my thoughts too… Wonder what defense there was against that?

“You could just think about a rubber duck but, honestly, it’s too much effort to read minds.”

Grumbling to myself as I stored that little tidbit as I prepared for the show to start. The easiest thing to do would be to will their wings back but I had a feeling Discord wouldn’t stand for that. He’d just call it cheating and then my training for the night would be ten times worse.

Instead I gathered all of my will and willed understanding into the Wonderbolts. I didn’t make them do anything so much as give them instructions on what they had to do. They jumped a little as their thoughts randomly jumped to what I made them see but they quickly started studying what they had to do.

Next I coaxed the tension from their bodies, replacing it with the heady power of self-esteem they normally had. Emotions were a tricky business to manipulate but by using emotions they normally felt I was able to get them ready for what needed to be done. They were the Wonderbolts after all. It was only natural they should best any flying challenge set before them.

When I’d made them as ready as they’d ever be I said, “Done…” Discord rose up and bade the crowd to silence. A microphone appeared from nowhere and his voice rang throughout the stadium as he spoke into it.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, hens and roosters, welcome!” The crowd screamed in response, but, as I couldn’t speak chicken, I couldn’t tell if it was to cheer or boo him. Whichever it was it just slid past him since he didn’t care. “Today we have a marvelous show for you! The Wonderbolts are back and here to remind you of the good old days. Yet, as always, I’ve added a little twist to the show! Not only will they be performing without the luxury of wings, but they must also make their way through an obstacle course of my own personal construction! I call it The Extra-Extreme Obstacle Course of Doom and Other Miscellaneous Titles of Dread!”

The storm of squawks that assailed him was clearly a round of insults this time. They probably thought he wasn’t being fair. Which he wasn’t, but did they expect anything else? As the course shimmered into view the volume of the outraged squawks grew exponentially. Like usual my uncle had gone overboard.

Giant spiked pistons floated in the air to crush those who passed between them at the wrong time as they crashed together in a seemingly random pattern. Pendulums swung back and forth ready to cut anything that didn’t pass by fast enough. Wintery wind tunnels were scattered about the course to slow them down. Passing through those tunnels wouldn’t just start freezing them as they were coated with ice, but would dramatically shift the required calculations to will yourself through them. I quickly updated the Wonderbolts understanding to include this though it felt rather dirty forcing thoughts into their head. The worst part was the mist cycling through the course. If they got caught in it they’d be flying blind. It was way too much for them to handle flying wingless and turning the mist transparent for their eyes. It looked like I was going to have to do that for them and save them if worst came to worst.

“Are you ready fillies and gentlecolts? If not, too bad, because they’re off!” At this Discord dropped the floor from underneath the Wonderbolts and they barely caught themselves with the technique I had showed them. It was a rather dirty trick. All the initial calculations I showed them were off now and they had to wing the numbers themselves. Whatever training the Wonderbolts normally went through it wasn’t extreme mathematics. While normally unimportant, when you can manipulate the world around you on a whim, math tends to become very important in stabilizing what you do with willpower, and thus performing math under pressure becomes significantly more important. The Wonderbolts, however, had never thought they’d be flying through math instead of on wings and were sort of floundering around trying to get used to it.

While the Wonderbolts were getting their bearings the spectators were either staring in astonishment at them flying without wings or yelling at Discord, probably telling him to return the floor instead of having opened it into that lovely pile of spikes. Discord was just laughing at the wingless pegasai’s attempts to stay airborne. The crowd suddenly directed their attention to me and I got the odd sense they wanted me to help.

I don’t know why they thought I wouldn’t be doing that already. I was currently giving the Wonderbolts a five minute crash course on the history of mathematics and physics in their heads. It took a while, but eventually I pressed it so hard into their minds that on some level they must have got it because they started willing themselves into flight. They looked completely flabbergasted at what they were doing. I smiled smugly and looked at my Uncle. He had always doubted the use of all those math and science books in the library. “What point was there to universal laws when you can change them?” had always been his snide comment to me. Well it turns out you can do quite a lot provided you have the will to set them in place. Now I had proof to back it up.

He looked at the Wonderbolts flying perfectly smoothly, and then looked back at me and clapped slowly. “Bravo. Did you really just teach them everything you learned from those dusty old tomes? That was more than 3 years of reading for you! How did you do it?”

“Temporal shenanigans,” I said, smirking like a bastard. The truth to that was I had willed their sense of time to undergo drastic changes so that they experienced time at a different rate than everypony else. To them more than five years had passed in their mind as I’d taught them everything they needed to know. Then I had to explain to them how to manipulate that knowledge to their advantage enough times for them to actually understand it. The problem with doing that little trick is the stress it leaves on a pony mentally. The Wonderbolts were going to feel as though five years had gone by for them, while everypony else would only have felt a couple minutes pass by. I’d never tried anything like it before so I had no idea what the side effects could possibly be.

After the Wonderbolts had practiced for a couple minutes they moved to the start of the obstacle course. It should be relatively simple now. They passed through the icy winds, willing the air to warm around them, as I’d told them to. By preventing ice from forming on their bodies they didn’t have to shift their calculations to account for the new body mass. The pendulums they passed through easily enough. When they got to the pistons, however, I was stumped. There was no rhyme or reason to their pounding. I looked to my uncle in frustration. How was I supposed to help if there was no pattern? If it truly was random there was nothing I could teach them to get through it. Their will was already fraying from the stress of keeping so many things going for so long.

My uncle just sat there humming a song. This time he was the one looking smug. I knew there was a method to his madness. That all the chaos he had caused today was just the strings of a larger plot. There was always a pattern if you looked closely enough. Some random deciding factor that dictated how his chaos worked.

One of the Wonderbolts decided he was too impatient and tried to test the pistons. He made it about halfway before two closed about him. I had just enough time to realize what was happening and try to interfere. I made him explode in a burst of mist. The others tried to rush for him, but I held them back with an invisible barrier. I hung on to his conscious, willing it to stay connected to the world, which was a complete hell. He was freaking out, trying to turn back. He almost succeeded too. As Uncle said, it was tough to make somepony something they didn’t believe they were. His mind clawed at mine as I drew him through the pistols to the other side. Bringing him back together I slumped to the ground exhausted. I did not have it in me to pull a stunt like that again. This whole thing was taxing my mind like never before and I was about ready to just give up.

I found myself humming along with Discord as I considered what to do. It really was a catchy song.

Ba dum de-doo

Smash crack ker-klonk

Wait… The song… It was matching the rate the pistons smashed together! Sneaky bastard. It was a song he’d just made up on his own too, so I would never have caught it if I hadn’t started humming myself.

Telling the Wonderbolts to wait with telepathy was a lot easier than I had expected. It was just like normal talking really. Sitting there for a while I watched and waited to see the full song of the pistons. Carefully memorizing it I started humming my directions to them. I had them dance through the pistons to the other side, and as they made it out unscathed I heard Uncle whine in disappointment that no pony had gotten hurt.

The crowd cheered, or at least I assumed it was cheering since no pony had gotten hurt.

“Well, well, well… They made it! Who would have guessed? I say we give them a hand!”

I had a split second to realize something was wrong with Uncle being so cheery. He raised his hand in the air to invite a cheer and suddenly the Wonderbolts were rocketing skyward dangerously fast. Uncle had apparently decided to reverse gravity on them.

“Pull on the ground instead of pushing!” I yelled out to them telepathically. Some of them, like Spitfire, did as I said, tethering themselves and stopping their ascent into space. Some of the others were already out of range from me though and I didn’t have the energy to save them. They just kept on going skyward to be lost in the heavens. I hadn’t given them any instructions on how air thins or how to generate enough air in high altitudes to live. Hell, the sudden change in air pressure from ascending too fast might cause their blood to bubble and kill them that way.

I looked at my Uncle very clearly and said with all the hatred that had been bubbling in me since training had started, “I despise you…” There was no anger in it, no emotion. It was a statement of fact. If I hadn’t turned and walked off I might have noticed that for once in his life Discord looked a little guilt ridden.

Thanks again to John Perry for proofreading through all of my many gruesome grammatical errors. Also feel free to comment. I feel sort of like I'm writing blind here. Do I make Discord chaotic enough? Does he come off as only being sadistic? If so I need to get the point across better that Discord is chaotic which means both good and bad can come of him. Chaos is not inherently evil

Chapter 6: Inner Demons and Outer Woes

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Chapter 6: Inner Demons and Outer Woes

“Why can’t you just leave me be?” I said to the darkness around me, “I’m tired of all these games. Why can’t you ever just be normal for a second or two?”

“And what’s so odd about apologizing?”

“You’re Discord. You don’t apologize,” I said flatly, “Everything you do is for your own twisted purposes. Sending me back inside my own twisted mind to have me kill myself again? That isn’t the mark of a good guardian if you didn’t know. Guardians are supposed to protect the mental stability of their charges, not try to fracture it. And don’t make me remind you of all your others pranks and training. But that’s not my main issue with you. I can take all the abuse you’ve thrown at me. I see that it’s your twisted way of trying to make me stronger. I just never thought you’d actually kill another pony. As much as you torture us all I always thought that even if we were just toys to you that we’d be toys that were too precious for you to just kill like that.”

“I saved as many as I could…”

It was remarkable how childish he sounded right now. I had the oddest feeling like I was the guardian at the moment. It was almost like I was scolding him, but I didn’t really care if he learned or not. In my mind I was done caring about Discord in any way. If he was going to just kill my friends off whenever he got the smallest whim to then there was no point to me caring. I’d still go through his training but not because he said I had to. If I was going to train I was going to make sure it made me strong enough to beat the smug bastard I’d once even considered calling my uncle. I’d grind his mind into paste and burn it to the ground, killing him and freeing us all. And once that was done I’d spit in his ashes to show I had no regret.

“Come on! You can’t kill me! I saved Soarin for you! Doesn’t that count for anything? And besides, if I die how will the bargain be kept?”

“To hell with your bargain!” I spat into the darkness of my mind as I searched for a way to synch with the world of the demon in the cloud. I could feel its presence out there. It was taunting me. Dashing from shadow to shadow it laughed as I failed to bring his world into being. Only in the depths of the depraved world it came from could I hope to kill it. Frustrating as it was I took it out on the only thing I hated more than it right now.

“You bring that bargain up all the time but never tell me anything about it! I’m starting to think you made the whole thing up because you picked me to be your special play thing! I guess I should feel so honored to draw your attention from torturing the others just to torture me but you know how it goes…”

“You used to be so happy and carefree… What happened to you?”

“You happened.”

That shut him up. Walking through the darkness I tried to sense the reflection of me in the darkness. While he wasn’t as anywhere near as powerful as the first offshoot of myself had been he was infinitely trickier. The first offshoot had been completely unstable and I’d been able to sense him wherever I went. He even brought me into his world to kill him. This one just watched and laughed at me though.

"You know you could just-“

"Shut up,” I interrupted. This was so frustrating. If the other version of me didn’t bring myself into his world I’d have to do it myself. I really hoped this wouldn’t be a repeat of the bishop incident. I did not want to live through whatever monstrous version of me here lived through.

Gathering my focus I began to will the world to change. Blacks and greys swirled about me trying to peel off my skin like before. Instead of willing the world to what I wanted though I needed to make it the demon’s world. I stood there, waiting to sense his presence again. When he popped up behind me for the briefest second I attached my will to his. I don’t think either of us was expecting it because both of us jumped at the touch.

The mind I touched scraped against my own and we both recoiled at what we felt. I really hoped that my inner demon had flinched because I represented everything it wasn’t. Because if there was some twisted part of me hidden deep in my core being that could make that thing flinch I felt I would have vomit like I had the first night.

Despite our revulsions towards each other, however, I had managed to make the link. As the world popped, twisted, and turned, its strings being plucked, I felt the clouds collapse upon me, coagulating into the whatever horrific reality this little version of me came from.

When it cleared it wasn’t what I was expecting. It was the Dwair. But it was so very different from the one I remembered. The sky peaking through the windows was a deep rusty red. Like the moon on the stained glass window from the other night I had the oddest sense it was dead.

“Oh my…”

“Shut up.”

“But this is-“

“Shut up!”

I walked through the Dweir as Discord continued muttering to himself. I didn’t really care to listen to him anymore, although the words “He actually did it…” continued to come about in his mumblings.

The walls were in shambles, and the carpet was faded. For all intents and purposes it looked like an abandoned castle but I knew it was the Dwair. The odd part wasn’t that it was in ruins though, it was the puppets.

No matter where you looked puppets hung down from the ceiling, laughing at you. Their cold glassy eyes had the same look of insanity I had seen on many of the other demonic offshoots of me. The more I saw how twisted these versions of me were the more I was determined to stop thinking of them as me. To me they were just demons… Or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself… The puppets didn’t just have the eyes though, but the grin. That horrible, horrible grin. Their silent taunting followed me through the halls as I looked for myself. As creepy as they all looked though I had the strangest sense I recognized them from somewhere though.

It didn’t occur to me who they were puppets of until I found the first Wonderbolt puppet. It was Soarin too. No matter the glassy eyes or the grin that wasn’t his I could still tell it was him. What had I done here?

“Aww… What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad to see me?” it asked as I turned away to continue on. My head snapped back to look at it, horrified at what I was hearing. It was Soarin’s voice. “I thought you’d be glad to see me after that little incident today. You know… The one where I died because you let me launch into space?”

The mouth clacked open and closed while it talked. Its glassy eyes rolled back and forth as if he was struggling against unseen bonds. Spittle frothed at the edge of the demented wooden grin that somehow managed to keep its appearance up while it talked.

“I trusted you... We all did… We thought you would help us but you didn’t, did you?” The other puppets danced to life as I backed away, echoing the Soarin puppet. “We trusted you… Why did you fail?” the drone of everypony that lived in the Dwair with me filled my ears, “Why did you let us die?”

I ran through the mass of puppets trying to get away, but they were everywhere. No matter where I ran they were there droning at me, every single one of them. They cackled and swayed as I passed, reaching out with wooden hands to try and catch me. Splinters burned into my flanks as I ran but I didn’t care. I just had to get away.

Suddenly, one of the puppets tripped me, throwing me to the floor. I was sobbing at this point. Torn between guilt for having done this and anger at Discord for having killed my friends. That’s what this was right? A world where I had let him kill them? To hell with the version of me I was supposed to face here. Discord had done this in this world. It was Discord who should pay.

“Baffle…”

“Shut up! This is all your fault!” I said, wrenching myself to my feet as I felt a lion paw on my shoulder. Scrambling away from him I fled into the depths of the Dwair. I couldn’t kill my Discord, not yet at least, but this was my mind I was in and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him get away with this.

Running deeper and deeper into the Dwair I ran into more and more puppets. They no longer just stood there and pleaded with me. They dropped to the floor and swarmed me. I was drowning in a sea of wooden flesh and glass eyes. They batted at me, pleading with me to save them. I tried to ignore them but finally there were too many for me to continue on.

“I’m sorry…” I choked out while crying, “I’m so sorry…” Gathering my willpower I blasted them away from me. Some fell through the windows to the ground below, splintering when they hit, but they kept coming and I could still hear their pleas. Swarmed again, I sobbed as I accepted what I had to do.

Bringing all the hatred and spite I felt into my mind I let it blaze forth. Fires as black as midnight burnt forth from my body, consuming the puppets. I swayed with the power that coursed through me as I considered what I’d do to Discord in here. There’s no way I’d let him get off easy. Not only had he killed all my friends but he had me kill them too. Who cared if they were just puppets, it was all part of his mind games with me.

"Baffle, stop!” As Discord spoke behind me I blasted the black fire that still coursed through my veins at him. He side-stepped it and looked back at me as if he was going to try again.

“Silence! After I’m done with you here you’ll have a taste for what I’ll do to you when I’m strong enough! Don’t you ever think I’ll listen to you again without hating every fiber of your being! You will pay for this!”

I ran down the hall not even bothering to see if he followed. I knew he’d at least watch. And this time maybe he’d learn to fear too. Running through the halls, wooden shells of all my friends accosted me, Spitfire, Soarin, Fancypants, and Octavia to name a few. Everypony I ever knew wailed at me, asking why I didn’t save them.

I burned through them all to get to him.

I could hear his laughter now. I could feel it in the air, and at last made it to where I knew he would be, the throne room. Bursting through the door, I ran into its dark confines. No light shone here. No wondrous day, or mysterious night. Not even the rays of the dead sky outside made it in here to the heart of the beast.

The throne was outlined in shadow but I could see him there, sitting on the throne.

“Welcome Baffle!” the shadow cackled, “You know I’ve been looking forward to this little showdown. Planned it for years really. Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”

The throne room, like the rest of the Dwair, had puppets hanging from every inch of ceiling watching me with their dead eyes and mad grins. The Discord of this world shifted in his chair laughing as I took it in. There was something odd in the movement though.

“You’re going to pay for what you did!” I yelled into the darkness.

“What I did? Don’t you mean what you did?” He laughed, tumbling to the floor. I realized what was wrong now. He was a puppet, just like everything else in here. Another pair of dead glassy eyes stared up at from the massive Discord puppet. Slowly it began to burn in flames as dark as midnight. Smoke filled the room as the Discord puppet burned away and the other puppets began laughing at me. Amidst the smoke I saw another puppet had taken the throne.

“You thought it was me?” said the voice of Discord ringing through the hall, “Well it wasn’t me.” The voice shifted to my own. “It was me.” Slowly the puppet looked up to my face, eyes burning with hatred. “I failed them. You failed them. We all failed them.”

More things dropped from the ceiling to hang now. It wasn’t more puppets. It was the corpses of my friends. They hung there rotting and gaunt. They hung there because I failed them.

Suddenly the puppet was in front of me. I hadn’t even seen it move, but it was there. “Poor little Baffle must be so heartbroken to see such a thing. Or you would be if you had a heart to care. It was that day at the coliseum you know. We let it fester and brew inside us. We swore to kill him. We did it too, but it was too late.” The corpse of Discord dropped to hang from the ceiling now. I hadn’t really thought I would actually ever see him dead. It was almost sad to see him like that. The puppet continued to talk as I stared at the corpse of my guardian.

“We fought him fiercely, valiantly even, but it wasn’t enough, because in the end it was us who killed them all. A battle of wills so great that even the gods would fear to watch. We may not have been born a god but here where willpower is everything it is almost as if we were one. We slaughtered him. Discord never stood a chance, but then again neither did the others.”

“You killed them in your all consuming hatred! YOU DID!” The puppet screamed, kicking me into the wall. I was too horrified to speak back. What had I done?

The puppet picked me back up and flung me amidst the hanging mass of the dead. Puppets and corpses alike clung at me as I was entangled in the mess of strings. The puppet of myself walked slowly toward me. No grin, no dead eyes. Just a burning grimace of hatred.

“We’re going to pay for our crimes…” he whispered when he reached me, “I just want to see how it feels first.” With that the puppet began to pummel me. It beat me with kicks and and bites and rams. As the hail of blows landed on me I accepted them. I was a monster.

Suddenly time seemed to slow. Or at least that’s what it looked like. Everything around me was barely moving.

“Baffle! Snap out of it! This isn’t you!”

“What do you care? You’re that one that drove me to it!”

The puppet continued pummeling me ever so slowly. When it stopped it picked me from the strings and took me towards the throne. There were two strings hanging there from the ceiling. I knew what they were for.

“Baffle! I don’t care if you never listen to me again but I need you to stop right now and look around you! See the world as it is, not as he wants!”

Something in Discord's voice was different. I don’t know what it was but I woke from my slump slightly. Casting my eyes around the room I saw what I had not seen before. It wasn’t the puppets doing this to me, but rather the shadow dancing between them all. It was so fast I could barely see it but it was there. It moved between all the puppets and corpses as quick as lightning, making them all plead and cry for their savior.

Time slowed further and I saw who it was. It was the real me. The demon of this part of my mind. Quick as a flash everything I was supposed to be doing came home to me. This wasn’t my fault. It was his. He was zipping around the room so fast that it was impossible to see him when time moved normally, but now I saw him and his savage grin. As the puppet advanced me towards the strings I thought furiously of a way to beat him. Only one thing came into my mind.

Waiting for just the right moment I willed my body to a new position. It wasn’t much. All I really did was will my leg to stick out at a speed beyond what anyone could catch. As I stuck my leg out my demon came barreling over to move the puppet carrying me ever so slightly forward. The end result, needless to say, was that he tripped.

Flying forward over my leg he crashed into the wall. At such an enormous velocity he couldn’t possibly survive impact. I could hear the bone crack as he crashed. He’d never seen it coming.

Time returned to normal and the puppets and corpses sagged to the floor. I dropped to the floor exhausted from the ordeal. While trying to organize the turmoil of thoughts in my head a shadow loomed over me and a familiar lion paw touched my shoulder.

“Still think killing me is a good idea after this?”

“No…” I said shuddering, “I don’t know what I’ll do but it isn’t that…” Silence hung heavily in the air as I sat there shaking.

“Thanks by the way…” I finally said after a couple minutes, “What did you do?”

“The same thing you did to the Wonderbolts. It was a fascinating trick. I’ll have to remember it for the future. I can slow down and savor the chaos then.”

With that we just sat there waiting for my training to end for the night.

John Perry once again was behind proofreading my many, many errors. So thanks.

Chapter 7: The Doctor is in the Dwair

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Chapter 7: The Doctor is in the Dwair

The next couple weeks were fairly uneventful. Well… They were fairly uneventful for somepony used to being trapped in the mind of a being of chaos and who was put through periodic pranks and psychological torture by said being. Soarin’ and the other Wonderbolts recovered from their near death experience and Uncle found other ways to test me, ones that didn’t involve killing my friends.

I was still surprised he had actually bothered doing as much for the Wonderbolts as he had. When he had told me he’d saved them I’d assumed he’d left them barely in a state where they’d go through an agonizing recovery. He’d actually given them the works. He’d willed away all the physical harm he put them through and set them in a cozy little wing of the Dwair that was like a paradise. The problem with their recovery is that he couldn’t will away the mental wounds he’d inflicted. The stress of having to go through that trial wingless, the fear caused by their plummet to the heavens, and the trauma from all the injuries the rapid change in pressure had caused. Apparently having your blood bubble within you wasn’t pleasant. The good news was they were at least recovering. That was more than could be said for those Discord hadn’t gotten to in time. It still made me furious that he had actually done that.

My nights had also been much more pleasant. There hadn’t been any particularly noteworthy inner demons I’d faced for a while. A couple genocidal dictators, some deals with the devil, even a few psychotic clowns, it was all just your boring old cliché villains like you would find in any old book. Compared to the first few nights they were relatively easy to beat. Something was bothering me about my training though. So far I had only had contact with corrupted versions of myself. I had yet to find any versions of me that represented a good outcome for me. It almost felt like any path I took led me to some sort of damnation. That couldn’t be true though… Could it?

Shaking my head from that rather depressing line of thought I returned my attention to my book. Lately I’d been focusing on fiction rather than fact. Studying those musty old tomes was fine and dandy but truth be told I liked a good story more. All those years I’d spent studying the textbooks of the Canterlot Library had been very laborious. And as much as I loved to learn it just was never as rewarding coming from an inanimate object. I had always learned better academically from the few professors that had been trapped in here. Having an intelligent discussion of why the facts were facts rather than merely memorizing them had always felt more… natural.

I leafed through the pages of the book trying to speculate on what was going to happen. It was one of my favorite things to do when I read and I prided myself on being rather good at it. Unfortunately sometimes Uncle Discord would take to messing with the books just like he did with all those movies. I was almost positive that Little Roan Riding Hood should not have ended with that sweet little filly morphing into a wolf and eating her grandmother in the light of a full moon. Luckily there were so many books in the library that there was no way Discord could have gotten to them all.

I had just found a few key clues I had missed before that were tying in nicely with the clues I had already noticed and the theory I had been developing for some time when the text just up and changed on me.

Meet me in the throne room -Discord

Great… Another day without being able to finish. Closing the book and hoping the text change wasn’t permanent, I trotted off down the hall. As I passed several groups of ponies I saw them whisper to each other and give me odd looks. After a second I realized that, for once in my life, I was walking instead of having the floor zip me down the hall. It was almost shameful. I could do better than mere walking!

The problem was I didn’t feel like zipping down the hall. I didn’t even feel like bouncing my way down the hall which was ten times more fun. Something in the air told me today was a serious day. That rather than some mundane little prank Discord actually had a good reason for summoning me for once.

Walking into the throne room I found him sitting there. No maniacal laughing, no chocolate rain or flying pigs, no smile or smirk of a prank about to commence, he was just sitting there staring at a spot on the wall. For those who knew him this was odd to the extreme. While Discord was rather unpredictable, being the embodiment of chaos, there was, none-the-less, a method to his madness if you watched for it. Staring off into space and contemplating the universe did not fit into that method, not in the slightest. Discord always had an unending stream of fidgety energy. He had to do something. Why do you think he toyed with everypony?

It was truly unsettling watching him like that but I knew better than to interrupt. I sat there waiting for him to acknowledge my presence. Day turned to night and seasons turned as I waited, and I do mean that literally. I could see it happen outside the window he’d placed here recently, which meant he was still being chaotic on some level.

Finally he roused himself from his contemplation to look at me. “Do you know anything about the world outside here?”

I was surprised. He generally didn’t like any reminder that he wasn’t free to terrorize everypony on the planet. “Not much… I know what my books have told me, and what a few of the others told me. If you’re asking about the state of affairs in the world outside I only know a little about that. I know about Nightmare Moon and how she took over Equestria, slaying her elder sister. I know how she defeated you when you escaped by trapping you and all of Canterlot in a prison fueled by your own imagination and chaos, and how it’s impossible to escape because it follows your own chaotic nature. I also heard something about how that wasn’t the proper way to defeat you. One of the scholars said it was cheating to defeat you like that and mumbled something about an artifact called the Elements of Harmony.”

“Ahhh… So you know of the Elements?” Discord mused, “Remind me to flog the scholars with rubber chickens for that. I would have thought they’d lose all faith in the Elements after they failed to stop Nightmare Moon. Oh well… You know more than I expected then which is just as well, I suppose, since I’ve decided to tell you about the bargain today.”

The bargain? Excitement welled up in me. I’d been dying to hear of the bargain for years now. I didn’t know anything about my past other than that I’d been given to Discord as a little colt to be raised by him. The other ponies hadn’t been able to tell me anything. I’d just randomly shown up one day for them. A couple years ago Discord had started making obscure references to this bargain. His comments on it laced with hints that he knew more about me than he had ever told me. The hints had gotten more and more noticeable until he was practically taunting me with it during the months since training began, presumably a part of the bargain, although why my original parents would want me to be subjected to torture like that, or had allowed Discord to put that in there evaded me. I also hoped it would explain my Cutie Mark.

The odd thing about my Cutie Mark was that it was different to everypony. Many ponies told me they saw a Cutie Mark that related to magic. A moon with shooting stars, a pentacle, or even magical runes of some kind. Some saw things related to what they thought of my personality, A question mark to tell them I was erratic, a book telling them of my interest in learning, or, in some cases, a little mini-Discord spiraling inward when they thought I was a bit too chaotic for my own good. What was even odder than the different appearance for everypony else was I couldn’t see it myself. To myself it appeared as if I was still a blank flank. I’d searched book after book in the Canterlot Library and hadn’t found any precedent on a case like this.

“In any case I’ve put it off much longer than I should have. Maybe if you had known your purpose from the beginning your training would have progressed even faster.”

Faster? Did he mean if he told me earlier I wouldn’t have had to have gone through as much torture! I was just about to chew him out over that but curiosity won out over anger. I had to know what the Bargain was. I was almost literally bouncing up and down in anticipation of hearing what he had to say. In fact, I had started bouncing. I was willing the floor into a more elastic state without realizing it. The result was my little hops of excitement had sort of magnified without me realizing it.

Discord smirked at my obvious excitement. Opening his mouth he began to say something when a sudden whirring filled the air. Slowly building from a whisper to a scream we glanced around trying to find the source of the noise. The noise grated on the ears, almost like somepony had left the brakes on on a cart, liking the noise it made skidding around. As it reached a pitch an odd little blue box suddenly appeared above my uncle and plowed his head into the ground as it crashed to the floor. When the dust cleared all I could see were his twitching feet.

“REALLY!” I yelled at the universe, “YOU’RE REALLY GONNA STALL AGAIN?!?”

“Do keep it down,” said a brown pony stepping from out of the box, “Wouldn’t want to draw everyone’s- I mean everypony’s blasted attention to us now, would we?” It was that pony I’d seen a while ago… What was his name? The Doctor? That was it. How the hay had he appeared out of nowhere? I hadn’t thought anypony but me and Discord had enough willpower to teleport around the Dwair.

The Doctor looked around the room apparently trying to get his bearings. Focusing on the window he stopped for a second musing, “I say… How is it day and night seem to be shifting so rapidly? Its rather fascinating, there’s no fixed pattern what-so-ever. I’ve never seen a planet with such chaotic rotation. Wait a minute… I’m forgetting this universe has different rules again,” he turned to me glancing at my Cutie Mark before talking to me, “Hello there… I’m going to guess you're Baffle Buck? Are the Princesses alright? I can’t imagine everything’s all peachy with such radical shifts in day and night.”

“H-how’d you know my name?” I asked ignoring the question, “I’ve only ever seen you once and you wouldn’t even stop to let me introduce myself. Something about a paradox?”

“Oh? We’ve met before? I certainly don’t remember that, but I’ll assume it was very nice meeting you for the first time. I wonder what time it will be for me? Oh well, it will sort itself out in the end. As to your name, it’s just so blatantly obvious with a Cutie Mark like that.” He snorted. “I would have said Perplexing Ponderer but you’re obviously one who baffles not one who perplexes. And I know what you’re thinking and I’m going to tell you right now, yes, there’s a difference. You didn’t answer my question however. Are the Princesses alright?”

“Umm… Are you sure you shouldn’t be asking if you’re alright?” I asked tilting my head in puzzlement, “You had to have crashed pretty hard to forget where you are. You’re in the Dwair of Discord. Nightmare Moon has no power here and I’m pretty sure not even Celestia can do anything from her grave.”

“Wait a minute… Did you say Nightmare Moon? Did you say Celestia's dead?!?” the Doctor glared at the box still crushing Discord, “Well Tardis you’ve done it again. You do have a tendency to toss me in rather odd situations, don’t you? Did you toss me in yet another alternate universe run by candy colored equines? Oh well, I suppose I’m needed here in some way then.”

This pony was without a doubt one of the oddest I’d met. Don’t get me wrong, I had nothing against odd ponies. I was told I was rather odd myself. It’s just normally it wasn’t me calling others odd.

“Umm… Not that I find your ramblings fascinating but do you think you could move that thing off my uncle?”

The doctor glanced down at the bottom of the box, “Oh dear me. It appears I’ve pulled a Wizard of Oz,” Discord’s foot twitched from under the machine. He glanced at the obviously non-pony leg, “Are you sure he’s your uncle? Can’t say I see the family resemblance…”

“I’m adopted,” I said flatly, “Now can you please get it off of him?”

“Can’t say I’ll think he’ll live through the Tardis landing on him but whatever. I think I’ll set my coordinates for Ponyville. I’m sure someone there can explain what’s going on.”

I was about to ask him what he meant by that but he had already scurried into the box. I don’t know how he fit inside, but he stepped in like it was no problem. The loud whirring noise shot up again and the box lifted into the air fading away.

Discord groggily sat up. “My goodness… He certainly took his time getting that thing off me.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “Do you know who that is? I’ve only seen him once around before.”

“No I don’t know… I can’t tell you how infuriating it is that there’s been a new toy running around and I didn’t know about it.”

He hadn’t known? That was certainly a first. Discord always knew everypony in his mind. It was his mind after all. I was about to ask him about that when the whirring noise came again. I had just enough time to brace for the impact as the box landed on my uncle… again…

Really?!? Had he not just said he was going to leave? I was never going to get a chance to find out about the bargain, was I? I moved over to the box opening it up to give him a piece of my mind. My jaw went slack as I peered inside. Inside was an enormous room with gadgets and gizmos and gears. Levers and lights dotted the room and various humming noises could be heard. The Doctor turned as I opened the door. “No! No! No! No! Out!” he yelled, “You’re not supposed to see this!”

Pushing me out he glanced around the room and seeing he was back he suddenly stopped. “Horseapples!” he swore, “Oh good, I got that right. I’d be thrilled if it weren’t for the fact that I’m still here. Why am I still here?”

“What is that little box?” I countered.

“It’s called the Tardis and it should have gotten me out of here and into Ponyville. So again, why am I still here?”

“Pfft! I snorted. “Like that little thing could get you out of here. You’re trapped in here like everypony else. Completely separated from the rest of the world with us in this little pocket of insanity Nightmare Moon created. Now how was that box bigger on the inside than on the outside? Wait! Let me guess! I want to figure it out for myself!” I sat there for a couple minutes considering and tossing out every idea that came into my head. The Doctor, in the meantime, tried rather unsuccessfully to escape several more times and every time he came back Discord got another lump on his head.

“Aha!” I said after what was probably try number eight or nine for the Doctor, “Could it be that I’m looking at this wrong? What if the inside isn’t the inside but the outside? It could be larger on the inside because I’m in the wrong reference point if I’m in fact on the inside of the box then of course the outside will look bigger. But that doesn’t make any sense… That would imply our whole universe was on the inside of a box. Oh my, the implications of that are rather interesting. If I destroyed the box, for example, would it destroy the universe? What does that imply about the machines on the walls of the box?”

“Argh! Forget it!” yelled the Doctor, “I’m through messing around with this thing! I’m going to travel back in time as far as I bloody can and find some time period when this blasted piece of space doesn’t exist. Then I’ll work my way forward, very carefully, until I find out who’s bloody responsible and what the hay I’m supposed to do.” With that emotional outburst he tried again and surprisingly managed to vanish without coming back immediately this time.

“Time travel? Did he say something about time travel?” I mused, not even really noticing he’d gone, “Interesting… That might explain some of the machines in there. If our universe was just in a box and that little box was the way outside it I suppose it would only make sense that the outside of the box be equipped with gizmos that could tweak the parameters of the universe inside it. You know, things like what point on the universe’s timeline you enter, and where the entrance actually lets you out. I must ask him about that. Oh Doctor!” It was then I’d noticed he had stayed gone this time. “Oh drat. Oh well, I’m bound to run into him again sometime. The Dwair isn’t that big and I doubt he’d head to the outlands.”

Discord groaned and got up again. “Is he gone for good this time or should I just get back on the floor and embrace for impact?”

After a couple of minutes of awkward silence as we waited for the whirring to return we finally convinced ourselves he was gone for now.

“Okay! Now that that’s out of the way can we talk about the bargain?” I asked.

“Yes we can finally talk about the barg-“

It was at this point the whirring noise filled the air again.

“Oh for Pete’s sake!”

This time he didn’t wait for it to appear. Discord just got down on the ground and waited for it to crash on his head. The Doctor poked his head out of the box. What had he called it? The Tardis?

“Oops…” he said sheepishly, “Sorry! Guess that tells me what times are safe to visit without being dragged back here. Time to go figure out what the hay is going on!”

I tried to stop him to ask him some questions about that marvelous machine but he’d already popped back in and was whirring away. Discord slowly climbed out of the large indent in the floor that had been made by the repeated smashings.

“Go…”

“But what about the bargain?”

"GO! NOW! The universe clearly doesn’t want me to tell you right now. I’ll tell you during training tonight.”

Grumbling I walked from the room. Sometimes it just felt like the universe liked playing stupid pranks on me. I swear I got enough of those from Discord. Oh well, training it would have to be.

Chapter 8: Mechanical Mayhem and Dangerous Dreams

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Chapter 8: Mechanical Mayhem and Dangerous Dreams

“So are you ready to answer my questions?”

“That depends if you are ready for the answers,” came the expectedly vague reply.

Discord had been avoiding any mention of the bargain since tonight’s training had begun. At first I’d thought he was still paranoid that the Doctor might pop out of nowhere and bash him in the head again but it was something more than that. He brushed aside my questions and tried to draw my attention to other things but I could tell he was dying to tell me. What was he waiting for?

Tonight had been boring to say the least. I entered amidst a roiling black cloud that could only signal some monstrous form of me lurking nearby. Entering the world contained within the cloud had proved easy enough but there were difficulties inside. It wasn’t that it was hard to navigate the facility we had ended up in, it was the fact that it was incredibly tedious searching it for the smallest sign of life.

The facility’s halls went on for miles upon miles. The brief glances I’d taken out of the several windows had shown a spiraling palace of mechanical wonders. Pistons rose and fell in a mechanical rhythm, and gears and cogs whirled about in a frenzy, as steam whistled from the cooling towers. Whatever version of my life I was in, I’d apparently gone a little crazy with machines. It had been awesome to stare about the copper coated walls, at first, but the lack of finding anypony for several hours sort of grated on my patience. After a while I’d started nagging Discord for answers. He’d said he’d tell me during training and, for once, it wasn’t like I was constantly fighting for my life so it was a perfect opportunity.

“I am ready! How could I not be?” I snorted.

“Let’s just say extraordinary questions come with extraordinary answers. Answers you might not like, considering it labels you as a freak.”

“Huh?” I asked. That was a little strange. I mean, sure my parents left me in the care of probably the least responsible being to ever be created but how did that label me any sort of freak?

“You heard me. A freak, an outcast, something to be hated for the abnormality you represent. You are all of these things, just like me. Why rush to have me tell you these things?”

What an odd explanation. He couldn’t really mean what he was saying. I’d been sensing how much he’d been dying to tell me since I first started pestering him earlier.

“Come on! Tell me!” I said stamping my hoof.

“No, I think I’ll let him tell you.”

“Him?”

“You know, the version of you in charge of this little facility. The one you have to kill?” the master of chaos drawled, “So far every version of yourself you’ve faced has been of you after your training. I’m sure you could have learned loads from them if you weren’t so busy trying to kill them.”

“They were trying to kill me!” I yelled.

“So? Did you even stop to consider them as possibly being ponies instead of monsters? Did you even stop to look at their Cutie Marks, to see the little parts of you reflected in them that aren’t evil? If you hadn’t noticed, that one genocidal dictator version of yourself you put down had a family. You never noticed the family portrait with those two innocent little fillies there?”

This was getting a little weird. I had no idea how I was supposed to treat these monsters as ponies. They were all just so twisted. I let it go for now.

After a couple more minutes of wandering through the facility’s halls the tediousness of our search was finally broken as we came upon a door. It wasn’t just any door. It was the door. Towering at least thirty feet above me, a myriad number of pipes from the walls snaked into it. A sluggish rust-red steam burst from some of them at some points, and the multitude of gears spinning in place looked more like little blades than any sort of practical cog normally used for a machine.

As we approached the door my voice came from what I could only assume was some sort of communication device in the walls. It wasn’t like Discord, who made himself heard both physically and mentally. It was just plain old sound I heard.

“Ah… I wondered how long it would take you to find me. I suppose you’re here to kill me, right?” Well, this version of me was certainly odd. All the others had just skipped to the part where they tried to kill me. I suppose it was all just part of his plan to kill me. “I can’t make any promises about that though. Anyways, where are my manners? I haven’t even opened the door yet. Hold on.”

The pipes in the door began to spurt large amounts of the rusty mist. The whistles and shrieks rang through the halls, echoing off the walls. It was beautiful, mesmerizing even. A tune as haunting and lonely as the facility had been. It was fascinating. Not just the music’s beauty, but the fact that such beauty was the key to the door. As air rushed through the pipes I could hear it pushing and twisting mechanisms in the door. The organ that was the door twisted and shifted to the music, as if in a dance. Lights flickered on and off, distorted by the odd mist.

I opened my mouth in delight at the ethereal display, and then promptly shut it when the mist hit my tongue. The mist tasted like blood. All the wonder I’d felt at the little display abruptly vanished as I remembered just what was on the other side of that door, a monster.

Finally, the door finished folding up into the wall. Treading very carefully forward, I walked into the lair of the beast. Thousands more of the pipes darted every which way in the room, all of them connecting to the machine in the center of the room. The pipes ran into the top of the machine, and poured their contents, which I prayed to Celestia’s grave only tasted like blood, into a giant vat. Inside the vat it was murky and unclear, but something clearly stirred in the fluids inside. Screen after screen piled at the base of the machine, showing all sorts of info on them. Thousands upon thousands of numbers flashed on the screens, among other things, like heart rates, neural scans, and any other sort of biological info one could think of. At the very bottom of the machine, mashing furiously on some sort of pad, sat a unicorn. It was me to be exact, or, at least, the twisted version of me this offshoot of time had made.

He didn’t even bother to look at me. He wasn’t even paying attention. It would be so easy to just snuff him out now. It would save me all the trouble of actually fighting him. Why did I hold back then? After a couple of minutes of just standing there I walked slowly up to him. I looked at the screens for two seconds trying to figure out what he was doing and got a headache. Whatever he was doing was way beyond me, which was saying something considering how much I’ve read in the Dwair. Finally, with nothing else to do, I reached out to get his attention.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, “She’s watching us. Any attempt she views as hostile towards me and she ends our little conversation.”

“Who’s watching us?” I asked.

“I am,” purred a synthetic female voice. It came from every direction at once, and it was laced with outright hostility towards me.

“That’s BELLE, the Bio-Electronic Little Learning Emulator. Remember when I said I couldn’t make any promises that you’d kill me? That’s why.” The murky fluids in the vat stirred at his words. For a second I swore I saw a claw, or an arm, or something, try to scratch the surface as if trying to break free.

“Little?” I asked sarcastically.

“Once, she was little,” the surprisingly sane sounding pony answered somberly, “She is a living machine and my greatest creation. She is also my worst. It is because of her I became a monster. It is because of her I stay one.”

“You are NOT a monster!” hissed BELLE.

“Regardless of whether that’s true,” snapped my counterpart, “That is not what this discussion is about, at least not at first. I remember this part of my training, although, I admit, I’m saddened to be on this side of it, and it is my responsibility to tell this charming fellow here a couple of things about the bargain.” I sat on my haunches while my counterpart paused for a second, probably wondering where to begin. It was odd. There was no hostility coming from him. All I sensed in him told only of regret and a terrible mind-numbing sadness. Either he was an incredible liar, or he really wasn’t all that bad. BELLE on the other hand… I was scared of BELLE. Finally, he started to continue.

“We are, above all, a weapon. An abomination. We were made to be used to make and right the wrongs in our world.” This wasn’t the first thing I wanted to hear. I hate violence. That’s what weapons were for, violence. “Even our very birth follows this. It was our birth that created this cursed offshoot of oblivion. It was our birth that caused the Elements of Harmony to fail. It was our birth that upset the balance of this universe.” Okay. He had officially stopped making sense. “This is the first wrong you must right. Before you can do this, however, you must unlock your potential. That is why the bargain was struck. Discord would raise you, unlock your true potential, and then in return you must unleash him on the world.” If this little numb-skull thought I would seriously ever do that he had another thing coming. “This is what I failed to do. I couldn’t bear to follow through on the bargain, so I never left the Dwair. I couldn’t escape and let everypony who was left here suffer. So I relieved them of their suffering and became a monster.”

“You didn’t-“ I began, looking at the bloody liquid in the vat.

“No, no,” he hastily reassured me, “I merely trapped them in an endless dream. They live the lives they always dreamed of, or at least that’s what I wanted. BELLE unfortunately had other ideas.”

“There is nothing wrong with taking this opportunity to experiment,” the computer retorted.

“Quiet you!” my counterpart snapped back. “Manipulating the dreams of others to see what they’re capable of is just wrong. You put them through so many trials and tribulations. You are just as bad to them as Discord was to me.”

“You take that back!” The room shook as BELLE screeched her response.

“Umm… If I can interject,” I mumbled, causing them to look at me. “Before you pull the conversation in the direction where I’ll inevitably have to kill you and BELLE-“

“I won’t let you kill him!” screeched BELLE.

“Okay then…” I changed tactics. “Before BELLE tries to tear me to pieces can I ask you something?”

“I expect this is about your Cutie Mark and parents?” he asked, “My explanation of the bargain was exceptionally vague. I do apologize for that, but it is a requirement of the bargain itself. It is an annoying result of both makers of the bargain loving riddles. None the less, I feel I can answer your questions for a price.”

“What price?”

“I’ll answer your questions first and then tell you, if you don’t mind,” he said. Upon seeing my nod of assent he continued. “Since I know you’ll absolutely hate the answer to your parents I think I’ll answer that second. Your Cutie Mark is by no means special. In fact you don’t even have one yet. The reason others perceive you as having one is that they feel you should have one. Your friends project their own interpretations of you onto your flank. That’s why no pony you’ve met has ever been surprised or perplexed by your Cutie Mark. It’s simply what they expect to see. You don’t see it because you never earned it, and on some level you must have known this. As you can see, I have a couple of gears for mine but that could easily be a result of my particular offshoot of your life. You’ll have to figure out yourself what you’re truly good at.”

Well at least that solved one problem. As embarrassing as being a blank flank at my age was, I would rather be a blank flank then have a Cutie Mark that was different to everypony. I’d rather not have something that makes me even more unique from everypony than I already am. Being Discord’s charge was more than enough for me.

Of course, that thought just opened the door for everything to go to hell.

“As to your parents…” He paused for a while, as if he really didn’t want to say it. “You don’t have any.”

“I don’t have any? That’s impossible,” I scoffed, “If I didn’t have any parents how could I have been born?”

“Who says that you need parents to be given life?” whispered Discord, “Granted, it’s much more normal than the other ways, but it’s by no means the only way. What fun is there in an event that can only happen one way? It would be dreadfully boring if life worked that way. It’s good to know that, if you want, you can simply moonwalk the breath of life into a baby. Not that that’s what happened to you. I’m just saying it’s possible.”

Well that certainly opened up more questions than it solved. I hated when that happened. Still, my questions had been answered, now it was time to pay his price. He had paused to give me time to process his answers, and with a quick nod that I had done so, unsuccessfully I might add, he continued.

“My price is simple. It is, in fact, within your interests at the moment. My price is you must kill me.”

“WHAT?!?” everypony but my counterpart yelled. I don’t know who was more shocked, Discord, BELLE, or myself.

BELLE recovered before I could respond to him though. “No!” she screamed, “I won’t let you harm him!” With a screeching noise, every pipe in the room began spewing that foul red mist again. I felt my limbs turn to lead and my eyelids droop.

“Oh my… I was afraid she’d overreact.” My counterpart was surprisingly calm and collected as we drowned in this red miasma. My vision swam, and the world blurred. Finally, after what felt like hours, I succumbed to the mists.

…..

As I woke in the Dwair the only thing I could think of burying my head back under the pillows and dying. I pushed my head under the blanket to try and shut out the light.

“Wake up sleepyhead.”

There was Discord bugging me again. Couldn’t he let me sleep for once? I pushed my head deeper under the pillows to block him out.

“Oh dear… Whatever are you doing pushing your head into the ground like that. You aren’t an ostrich.”

Ground, what was he talking about? Alarms began going off in my head. Pulling my head up, I looked around. Everything seemed all right. I was home in the Dwair. Why did something seem off? Wait a minute… Why hadn’t I woken up in my room?

In the split second after that thought I lunged to the side, alarms now fully blazing. Luckily, for me that is, this meant Discord’s lunge missed. Rising up, he looked at me licking his lips. Was he trying to eat me? He lunged again.

That was a yes.

I bolted from the room, desperate to get away. Something was seriously wrong. What had happened to me? Why had I woken up in the middle of the Dwair? Why the hay was my uncle trying to eat me? When I finally stopped hearing the demonic laughter from my hungry pursuer I stopped to catch my breath. I was in an unfamiliar part of the Dwair. That couldn’t be right. I’d seen every part of the Dwair. Granted, it was ever changing, but I knew my way around.

“Did you honestly forget that you can’t just run from me,” whispered Discord into my ear. Jumping, I tried to bolt, but he pinned me with his paw. “Oh come now… Did you really think that thing was me? I mean, honestly, I would never eat a pony, much less one that was still living. I may be a few sea cucumbers short of a vegetable basket sometimes, but I prefer to think of myself as a high class lunatic.”

Understandably I wasn’t very receptive to his assurances, seeing as he had just tried to eat me. I struggled with all my might to free myself, kicking and biting, while he shuffled around trying to keep a hold on me.

“Hold still, Baffle.”

“Oww…”

“Stop that!”

“Will you please be quiet and listen to me?!?”

“That wasn’t me that was her!”

Finally, when he finally had me fully pinned, he sighed and tapped me on the forehead. The memory of what had happened to me burst back into life. My training, the facility, BELLE, it all came crashing back. Sagging to the ground I let out a very tired sigh.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

My uncle just shook his head. “Really… It should not have been that difficult to get you to listen. How could you honestly think I would lower my standards enough to resort to eating ponies to get a laugh? Couldn’t you tell something was wrong? Why didn’t you do something?”

I had done something. I’d run like the wind.

“I mean other than run.” Oh great, he was reading my mind again. “Do you know how much time we just wasted? I can’t stay here long. As soon as she figures out I’m here she’ll just block me out.”

“As soon as who knows you’re here?” I asked still completely clueless as to what was going on.

“BELLE!” Discord yelled, “Don’t you get it yet? You aren’t in the Dwair! You aren’t even awake! This is all a drug induced nightmare!” For once my uncle was in a near panic. He was shaking, and looking over his shoulder. This had to be bad. It took a lot to spook a creature as powerful as Discord. Unfortunately, I was a little slow on the uptake as to why.

“So?” I asked, “It’s not like dreams can hurt you.”

Discord laughed. “Do you honestly think that? Dreams are the product of our unfettered imagination. Anything can happen in a dream. This is where everything that is impossible can happen. There’s a reason ponies don’t remember their dreams very well. They aren’t meant to know of all the horrors that can’t exist. You think what I put you through is bad? Dreams can churn out things ten times worse, even more if need be, and BELLE is in complete control of this one. By controlling the flow of chemicals to her brain she can have you experience anything she wants at any time.”

Okay. I was definitely starting to panic now.

“What do I do?!?” I yelled.

“That’s just it!” Discord emitted a laugh, voice cracking, “You can’t do anything! Anything you do to stop her will only work once! Whenever you do something she can map the chemical reactions in your head and release chemicals inhibiting you from doing that action again. As soon as she gets the bizarre little activity going on in your head right now is communication with an outside source she’ll shut our conversation down!”

Okay. Blind panic had been fully achieved.

“Help me!” I screamed at Discord.

He reared back as if he’d been slapped, his own panic slowly slipping away, as he paused for the longest time before saying the only thing I couldn’t stand to hear.

“I can’t… This is your dream. I can barely even talk to you in it. You probably think you see me right now, but that’s just what your brain is making you see to fulfill your expectations. Dreams are one of the few sanctuaries I cannot touch. They are a safe haven for all from my chaos. Your only hope is to level the playing field. Sure, she can do whatever she wants, but you can too. This is your dream after all. Her true advantage over you is the ability to take your powers away. Even you will run out of ideas to stop her attacks eventually. You have to make it so she can’t block your powers.”

“So? How will that help?” I cried in frustration, “It doesn’t help me get out of this place!”

“True… True… I suppose you could fracture your consciousness, and control both your real and dream self simultaneously, but that’s a very risky business. To exist in two places at once is madness. But then again, what fun is there in being sane? It’s dreadfully boring.” Well, he was back to his smug old self. “Of course I am. I do have an image to keep up. I can’t afford to let that slip for too long, can I?” That mind reading was really getting annoying. At least my annoyance at him was starting to overpower my panic. “There we go! Think on the bright side of things! Now, it’s time to get back to business. How can you possibly level the playing field with BELLE? Oh! I know! You can-”

He was cut off suddenly. As soon as the voice stopped, the image of him vanished, and cold synthetic laughter filled the room. “So that’s what it was? Interesting… I had forgotten all about Discord in my calculations. It’s a shame he gave you your memories back. I was going to have so much fun messing with you until you remembered.”

“My uncle does have a tendency to ruin others' perfectly orderly plans,” I said with more confidence then I had, “What did you expect though? He was born to raise chaos.”

BELLE chuckled coldly. “You’re bantering with me? Are you feeling alright? I hold complete control over you, and you have the audacity to banter with me?”

“Well, you’re bantering with me, so if anypony needs medical help I think it might be you. Don’t you know that banter is the leading cause of death for villains? You better go get yourself checked out right away.”

She laughed at that. She actually laughed. “Oh, it’s been years since you’ve bantered with me like that,” she whispered, “If only the Baffle I was protecting was as witty as you.” That was a little creepy. The psychotic computer had a crush on me, or rather my future self. I suppose that explains why she was so protective of my future self. “Enough talk!” she continued, “I have a little game for you. It’s called Nyctophobia. The rules are very simple. Don’t let it get dark, and you don’t die. Do try to keep it lively. Normally, this game ends much too quickly when my other test subjects face it.”

With that my surroundings shifted. I was in a box. It was about ten feet by ten feet, and it was a dull eggshell white. It didn’t last that way for long. Slowly, inexorably, the box began to darken, and as it did the walls began to close about me. If I’d never been claustrophobic before I certainly had a reason to be now.

Desperate to avoid being crushed, I willed fire into being. As it appeared, the light drove back the walls. Suddenly, my ability to focus on it vanished. My flame wavered and then vanished. As the room began to darken, the walls began to creep forward again.

“Ooh! It’s not like summoning flame is the oldest trick in the book. I thought you’d be better than that,” BELLE cooed.

Oh, that’s right. She can stop anything I do. Guess that means I couldn’t channel my concentration into things like making fire. Sighing, I resorted to less impressive means of making light. I summoned wood and flint to light a fire of my own.

“Ooh! That’s a first. Surprisingly, most ponies aren’t smart enough to summon the materials to make fire. It’s astonishing how dull you can all be sometimes. I suppose this gives us a few hours to talk! I do hope you figured out how to factor in the fact you’ll be breathing smoke soon.” I don’t get how a computer could sound so chipper and psychotic at the same time.

Of course I hadn’t considered the smoke. I was about to put out the fire when I had a better idea. I created a secondary organ to attach to my lungs. I now had a filter system built inside me that would get rid of any toxic chemicals in the smoke.

“Very clever!” chimed BELLE, “That could work indefinitely, provided you kept coming up with ideas for fuel you could summon. Too bad it doesn’t solve the problem that eventually the smoke will blot out any light the fire provides leaving you in the dark. Then it will be game over.”

“Horseapples!” I swore. I couldn’t keep this up. There were too many variables to consider with every change I made. Eventually, I would run out of ideas. It was then I was struck with the most brilliantly stupid idea I’d ever had. It didn’t make a lick of sense. Then again, where’s the fun in making sense? Pooling all my willpower together I changed one last thing about myself.

“What did you just do?” BELLE’s confusion was well deserved. After all, to her it appeared as if I’d done nothing. The darkness continued to advance. Slowly, the light drained from the room. The walls sluggishly crept inwards with no sign of stopping. Eventually, I was completely enclosed. My breathing began to quicken as I feared I might have messed up.

The room was half-lit and the walls were beginning to crush me. I had to scrunch down to relieve the pressure. The walls began to grind on my body. I could feel my bones beginning to break under the pressure. Suddenly, the walls began to slow, and my entombment process inevitably ceased. It appeared I had finally started to glow strongly enough to stop the walls advance. Having granted myself the ability of bioluminescence, I figured I would stop the walls advance by simply giving off light myself. Unfortunately, I had miscalculated the change in body chemistry needed, and had almost not been able to give off enough light to avoid crushing myself. Now I was trapped in a box, with very little air, and still no way to beat BELLE.

“Hey BELLE, I beat your stupid game! I won’t be crushed anytime soon. Why don’t you ease up on the box?”

“Aww… But the cube you’re in is so convenient. You’re small, portable, and can easily be carried to the incinerator. I think I’ll just leave you like that until you plummet into the furnace.”

It was at this point I felt a large lurch. It seemed BELLE, like Discord, was just going to throw perilous situations at me until I died. How was I supposed to think of a way to stop her while I was trapped in her endless game?

“It’s all just another stupid game,” I muttered.

“A game…” Then it hit me.

“It’s just like the game! That’s how I beat her!” Summoning my strength, I willed the two things that were my only hope to occur.

“What did you just try to do?” Belle asked, “Your readings just went completely off the charts.”

“Oh… You know… I just felt like messing with your readings. I’m clearly going to die soon. It’s merely a last ditch effort to annoy you.” Even in my cramped little prison I smirked at what was coming next.

“That’s rather childish of you,” BELLE said, “I have to admit, after your little bioluminescence trick worked, I didn’t think you would just give up. It’s actually rather disappoint- WHAT DID YOU DO?!?”

There it is, she tried to stop me. It’s too bad she couldn’t do that anymore.

“I told you. I felt like messing with your readings. You never asked how I did it though.”

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!?” I don’t think BELLE was completely in control of herself anymore. The box was shaking, and her voice was starting to crack.

“Why don’t you figure it out yourself?” I chimed, opening a hole in my box, and dropping to freedom with the last of my strength. Finally free of the box, I shifted attention to the other thing I had done before. The world blurred, and suddenly my body opened its eyes in the laboratory. It was odd, being in control of two bodies at once, but I had to get used to it before BELLE realized what the first thing I had done was.

I stumbled around a bit, bumping into things, as I got used to my split conscious. I was seeing two worlds at once, and it was confusing as hell. Sure, I knocked over a couple of vats of the red stuff in the real world, and I almost walked off a ledge in the dream world, but I managed to learn the ins and outs.

“Fascinating…” Oh great, BELLE was back. It would seem I got a handle on things just in time. “I never would have thought something so brilliantly insane was possible. I’m still not sure my analysis is correct. It’s simply too bizarre.”

I had to stall for time. Slowly, I had my real body shuffle towards BELLE’s containment unit.

“Why don’t you tell me your theory and I’ll tell you if you’re right?”

“Well, I suppose the best way to describe it is that you made an infinite loop. From what I can see, you’re constantly replacing yourself with a memory. You keep resetting your brain to a point in time where I haven’t interfered. It’s astoundingly clever. This reset gives you full access to all of your powers again, and I can’t stop you because, even if I block what you did, another fresh restart is already underway.”

…..

I was now level with BELLE’s control station. Surprisingly, the creator of the demonic machine was back at his keyboard, typing away furiously. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering BELLE’s obsession with him. She wouldn’t want him to experience any drug induced nightmare. I wonder if she saw the irony in that, considering I was a younger version of him.

Moving up to him, I tapped him on the shoulder. His response was to jump ten feet into the air and fall with what little grace was possible onto his face. He got up, with a bloody nose, and turned to me in shock.

“How are you-“ I shoved a hoof over his mouth to quiet him. This of course got my hoof all bloody, causing me to gag on some vomit before I began to whisper as quietly as possible.

“Quiet… All I need from you is information on how to kill her.”

I was exhausted from my ordeal, probably not even in my right mind. I could barely stand while channeling both my infinite loop and the split consciousness. I don’t know what possessed me to trust him, to think he’d help me. He was a monster, he’d said so himself, but not many monsters would actually admit it.

…..

“A very apt deduction BELLE, you’re completely correct. It’s a simple trick, but it’s a very necessary one when you play board games with the mentally insane.” I really hoped she didn’t see my legs shaking while I said that. After everything I’d done tonight, I could barely manage this ‘simple’ trick.

“What are you talking about? We’re not playing a board game.” Was that a hint of amusement in BELLE’s voice? I guess she was enthralled by the prospect of more banter. It really was every villain’s weakness.

“So you deny we’re playing a board game, yet not that you’re insane?” I taunted. “Oh come now, you must know better. The best board games are those without the board. Why not use the world as your board?”

“An excellent point, Baffle, yet I believe it was you who told me insanity was simply creativity to the nth degree.” When had I ever said that? I suppose it was something the version of me who created her said. As much as I hated to admit it, there was a really nice ring to it. I’d have to remember it for later. “I suppose that it was a trick you learned from your uncle. You must tell me all about that. Well, not you, you’ll be dead. My Baffle will probably be just delighted to tell me all about it.”

…..

“Are you sure this will work?” I asked my counterpart in the real world.

“Yes I’m sure. There is however an eighty-seven percent chance that you’ll fry your brain when you cut her free from the network. Are you sure you don’t want me to do it? You can barely stand as it is. In fact, you shouldn’t be standing at all. This is not at all how this portion of training happened for me.” He looked at me quizzically. “How are you doing all this? Everything you’re doing is way beyond what I ever did.”

I waved at all the machinery around us. “I could say the same thing about you, but if you want to know I’ll tell you after this mess is taken care of.”

“What if you die?”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. That was such a stupid question. “Since when has death stopped us before? We’ve died thousands of times at Discord’s hands. What’s one more to add to the record, even if it is permanent?”

“Fine…” my counterpart reluctantly relented, “I still don’t get why you won’t let me do it. Aren’t you just going to kill me afterwards? Isn’t that part of the training?”

“Maybe I’m not going to kill you.” He looked at me completely flabbergasted. It might have been the drugs in my system, the mist was still pumping into the room after all, but I was feeling a bit philosophical. “Maybe I think you deserve a second chance? The funny thing about monsters is they don’t think they’re monsters. You know what you’ve done. You deserve a chance to make amends, even if you’re the only one who thinks you need to in the first place.”

…..

“I suppose it’s time I finally killed you,” muttered BELLE, “I have enjoyed our banter, but all good things must come to an end. Do you have any last requests?” As she said this about fifty different machines popped out of nowhere. None of them looked very pleasant, and there was no way I could muster the effort to escape them. Refusing my body’s pleas to slump to the ground, I stood tall in the face of death and uttered one last quip.

“How noble, you’re gracing me a final request. I just have three questions. First, If a tree falls in the forest, and no pony is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

“As a matter of fact, it does. I was bored several months ago, and set out to solve many of the pointless questions like that you ponies came up with. I videotaped a tree falling, and, given that I watched the tape only after the event, making it so no actually sentient creature watched the event, and the tree made a sound upon falling in the video, I was able to answer that question beyond a doubt.”

“I suppose that works, assuming time was running linearly when you videotaped it. For all you know, time could be an illusion. Anything you do in the future, for you, could actually be coexisting with every other point in time. That would mean you were actually watching the tree as it fell, causing it to make a sound.” I couldn’t help it, even if it was the most ridiculous way to bring doubt on her answer. To a normal pony it wouldn’t make a lick of sense, but I couldn’t resist bringing it up because, to be fair, my life had no normal ponies in it. “Anyways, I’m getting off topic. My second question should be much more interesting for you than going on about how you could be wrong. Can you tell me the validity of the following statement? This sentence is false.”

“Are you really going to pull the old paradox trick on me?” She sounded disappointed. “I thought you were better than that. Very well, I will answer mediocrity with mediocrity. Since you asked me can I tell you, not what, the validity of that statement was, my answer is I cannot tell you. By the way, even if you framed the question correctly, it wouldn’t have worked. I am smarter than the average computer.”

“That may be, but are you smarter than the average bear?” I continued on through her confused responses. I think my uncle was rubbing off on me. I had no idea what made me say that. “I’m quite saddened, however you would think so little of me. My second question wasn’t about the paradox. I was merely curious if you’d notice that I was testing you by throwing in the word can instead of what. You picked up on that I said can, but completely missed the fact that I purposely screwed up to mess with you. I thought it was pretty obvious, but I guess machines haven’t learned to pick up the nuances of pony behavior.”

That was a bit of a stretch. I doubt many ponies would actually think to try something like that, but I was supposed to be distracting her. I was almost in position.

“My third question is my favorite however. You’re trying to kill me, correct? I am, by all rights, your creator from a younger point in his life span. If you kill me, won’t it kill him in the process? I won’t ever grow up to become him. He will not exist. He will not make you. Everything you ever knew and loved will be sent to oblivion when you kill me. I just want to know, how does that make you feel?”

That was when I made my move. BELLE may have begun to respond to me, but I didn’t hear it. I was too busy frying half of myself to death as I broke through the glass surrounding her. Cutting into the wires that connected her to the system, I sent thousands and thousands of volts of electricity coursing through my veins. I should have died, or at least turned into a vegetable. As luck would have it, all the drugs BELLE pumped in my system acted as an insulator. I was like a giant rubber chicken. It was still painful. Apparently, when BELLE lost control of the system, all of those carefully controlled drugs were no longer safely being controlled. Who would have guessed? The mental backlash caused by the sudden flux in the drugs was rather severe. Needless to say, I blacked out.

When I woke, I was covered in that horrible red stuff BELLE had been swimming in. It still tasted horribly like blood. Her broken husk lay on the ground. It was surprisingly fragile looking. Her creator stood off to the side. Discord had reappeared and was chatting with him. As I stood they paused to look at me.

“I’m surprised you’re holding up so well. Also, you may want to take a bath. You’re covered in BELLE’s blood. From what I’ve seen, you’re one of the versions of us that can’t stand the stuff. You know, it’s odd, every version of us I’ve ever met has had some sort of obsession with blood. Either they hate the stuff, like you, or they have a morbid fascination with the stuff, like me, It’s fascinating, really, all the things you can do with blood.”

Of course, I only heard the first half of that. Between being completely exhausted from dealing with BELLE’s mind games, electrocuting myself to kill her, and the fact that I had been not only been covered in blood, but, apparently, drugged with it too, I couldn’t help fainting again.

Thanks to John Perry for proofreading again.

Sorry for the lack of an update in forever. Between college finals, breaking my wrist, a small case of writers block, and trying to spiffy this story up for Equestria Daily, I was too busy to write more. On the bright side my two rejection letters seem to indicate that my only main problem is grammar. (Which I suck at) Hopefully after being psychotically picky before the third submission I can get it in. If not, it doesn't really matter. I'm fine with knowing it was just grammar that barred me entry to the holiest of pony places. Anyways, please give me feedback. If I'm pulling too many crazy or implausible ideas out, tell me and I'll try to cut back. Also was this chapter dark? It didn't feel anywhere near as dark as my other dark chapters. Was it too confusing? I could see that happening with all the weird things I tried to do. Or, if its not too confusing, are my ideas actually derivative? Do they seem weird to me, but are actually a commonplace thing? Maybe I focused too much on the banter? Oops... I'm rambling aren't I? I'll stop now.

Chapter 9: Pranks and Banks and Tiny Tanks

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Chapter 9: Pranks and Banks and Tiny Tanks

As I slowly woke from the depths of slumber, I groggily opened my eyes, failing to stifle a yawn. After looking around the room for a second, I decided to ignore the fact that I was suspended upside down from the ceiling and tried to go back to sleep. I’d woken up in weirder situations, and, honestly, it was pretty comfortable. I was just about to doze off when as if on cue my uncle burst into the room, laughing and towing a very large rock with him.

“Oh that is a good one, Thom, I must remember that. Do tell the one about the armadillo and the pig who was a rabbi again. Actually, before you do that… What’s a rabbi?” It was at that point he noticed I was awake. “Oh wonderful, you’re awake! Baffle, you must tell me, how do you do it? I spent the last four hours trying to get Thom here some rainbow nachos, and all the oven would give me is perfect tens. Is it that hard to screw up? Are you just purposely failing the dismount to get them? You shouldn’t do that, you know.” I knew exactly what it was. That stupid oven was just kissing up to him. It wouldn’t dream of giving Discord anything less than a ten. I was, however, confused as to why Discord was trying to feed a rock.

“I hate to be a stick in the mud, but don’t rocks have this amazing thing going for them called being inanimate? Why are you talking to one? More importantly, why are you feeding one?” I knew I was going to hate asking, but he would probably just carry on with some sort of elaborate charade until I asked anyways.

Discord’s response was, to say the least, dramatic. I honestly couldn’t tell whether it was his normal sarcastic ways or if he truly was upset and he just couldn’t get the sarcasm out of his voice. “How dare you insult Thom and his family with such insults? They invite you into their own home, even throw a party in your honor, and you spit on them by calling them dull, dead, dreary, doohickeys.”

Family, what was he talking about? The only other thing in this room was a ton of rocks. Wait a minute, were they growling at me? I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Please tell me you didn’t-“

“What?” the father of chaos interrupted, smirking, “You think I brought them all to life myself? Well then, you thought right. What can I say? When we got back I had a big urge to go moonwalking.” He was talking about defiling the natural order of things, and all my dear uncle could do was smile like a maniac. “Odd? You think moonwalking a bunch of rocks to life is odd? Where’s your sense of fun? Besides, that isn’t half as impossible as some of the other things I’ve done. In fact, this is quite normal. There are actual spells that can do just this. You don’t need all the powers of chaos at your back. Anyways, we need to introduce you to the family.” He put down the boulder and tapped it affectionately. “You’ve met Thom here. He’s the mayor of this sweet little town. Over there’s his wife Candy, and, before you ask, no she is not actually made of rock candy. That’s just mascara. Next to her are his two darling little kids. Their names are Rock and Roll. Watch out for them. They like to pull the old gag where they switch their names to confuse you. They’re so good at it even they don’t know who’s who anymore.”

I knew what would happen if I interrupted, so I just hung there and smiled.

“That there is Granny Granite. Isn’t she just the sweetest thing? She’s so old she’s almost completely eroded away, but don’t let her fool you.”

I really hoped Discord didn’t see the twitch my eye was developing.

“The crusty old thing next to her is Uncle Ishale. He spent his days collecting barnacles as he searched fruitlessly for the great white rock that crushed his leg. Little did he know, it had disguised itself by growing a thick layer of algae. By the time he found the beast it had become a pitiful shadow of its former self, not even worthy of a valiant death.”

The rocks were on to me. I was fidgeting. I was twitching. I was a complete mess, but I still hadn’t said a word.

“I think that’s all of the mayor’s family. Now that we’ve taken care of the executive side of things we can start on the judicial branch of the government. This is Harry T. Stone. He’s the head of the municipal court system here, and a part-time magician.”

Sweet Celestia! Did he actually name every one of them?

“Yes. Also, quit complaining in your head. You know I can read minds. Why not say it to my face so I don’t have to invade the privacy of your mind? Anyways, where was I?”

…..

He finally finished. After six and a half hours of being introduced to rocks, he finished. I, of course, had to hang there the entire time. After a while, the names had started to get really weird. What kind of name was Bob, Josh, or John? There were thousands of other odd names like that too. When I asked them where he got them from he said that, after he had run out of rock jokes, he decided to take naming them seriously and give them names befitting a species as intelligent as a rock.

“Can you please let me down now?” I asked, “As comfortable as this must seem, I find that hanging from the ceiling gets old after a couple of hours.”

“But you make such a good disco ball,” Discord drawled.

“What the hay do you mean I make a good disco ball?” I bellowed. Honestly, six and a half hours was way too long a wait. I had things to do before our nightly round of tortures began. “Do you honestly think that makes any sense?”

“Do you honestly think a glow in the dark pony makes sense?”

It took me a minute to realize what he was talking about. I was still glowing with bioluminescence from last night. It was sort of odd to see me glow a sickly green color, instead of my normal navy blue. I took a minute to return my body chemistry back to normal. This, of course, rid the room of its only light source. The rocks were not pleased.

“Oh, shut up,” I barked, “You don’t even have any eyes.” The growl escalated to a snarl. I would have continued, but I heard them scraping about the floor. They apparently had the ability to move, despite lacking appendages of any kind. The rumbling continued ominously, and I slowly became more nervous. Suddenly, the rope snapped. I had about one second to scream as I fell, right into the waiting arms of my bed.

The lights turned on and the room burst into laughter. Besides the rocks, there were now about twenty balloons with the creepiest smile you’ve ever seen, a couple of chess pieces, and a certain dummy from the Canterlot Medical School.

“Please tell me that isn’t the dummy from the class on CPR.”

“I thought he should actually be able to enjoy his work.”

“His work is dying repeatedly by choking.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

Why was it a creature as impulsive as my uncle had been granted power over reality itself? I started to walk towards the door but curiosity stopped me as I thought of one last stupid question.

“I hate to ask, and I definitely don’t want to give you any ideas, but how are you planning on having your new species of intelligent rocks live on? They don’t exactly have the ability to reproduce.”

“That’s the best part!” my uncle said, cackling, “I taught them how to moonwalk!” As he said this, the little town of rocks all rolled together. Rising, they towered above me in the shape of a giant pony and began to moonwalk. I thought it best not to comment, and left the room.

As I left I heard my uncle say, “Take the day off! We have a lot of work tonight! Well, you have a lot of work tonight. I think your friends are down at Doughnut Joe’s.”

…..

The walk to Doughnut Joe’s was remarkably relaxing. It had been forever since I’d left the Dwair and visited the city below. The city had been warped from Discord’s chaos, just like the Dwair. Streets would toss and turn, not to mention being made from a variety of odd materials, and the streetlamps liked to get up and perform show tunes. Ice skates, climbing gear, and rubber ducks were just some of the tools you needed to get around. You could bounce along one street that was a trampoline, only to end up hitting a sheet of ice you had to skate for a mile, before having to climb a street that rose straight into the air. Imagine trying to live in a house turned sideways and about 300 feet up a vertical cliff. That wasn’t even the craziest part though. The roads liked to swap places. Luckily, a certain unicorn was kind enough to make and provide maps that constantly updated themselves to the citizens.

Doughnut Joe’s was one of the few places of Canterlot that had escaped Uncle’s chaos. After tasting the establishment’s legendary pastries, Discord had decided not to go overboard on redecorating it. The only thing he’d decided to add was a couple of fountains, one blue cheese and one chocolate milk. That way he could always stop by, terrify the costumers, and have a glazed doughnut dipped in blue cheese with a glass of chocolate milk. Chaotic beings have chaotic tastes. I guess that was why I dipped my doughnuts in peanut butter.

Stepping in the establishment, I scuttled over to my friends table and told them all about last night’s exploits. Ever since Soarin’s accident they had been badgering me about my training. Finally, to shut them up, I’d started telling them all about it. It felt pretty good being able to actually talk about all the horrible things Discord had done to me, and, surprisingly, they had actually been understanding about it all. In fact, they actually seemed intrigued by my adventures. The only problem was it could take hours to explain to them what I actually had done. I don’t know why, but it always took them forever to understand how I’d actually done any of it.

“You’re telling us you killed a psychopathic computer in your sleep?” Soarin asked as he downed his twenty-seventh doughnut. “You have to admit that sounds a bit on the crazy side, even for you.”

“For the last time, I wasn’t fully asleep. By splitting my consciousness I was able to keep half of myself in the dream, and send the other half to control my actual body.” I’d said this about ten times now. It was getting really annoying, considering how simple the concept was.

“But how does that work?” I obviously wasn’t getting through.

“Leave the guy alone Soarin’. If you don’t get it by now I doubt you ever will. Baffle’s obviously been through a lot. Right now we should just relax and listen to him.” That was Spitfire. She always seemed much more understanding than the others. It probably came from a lifetime of training the Wonderbolts. She didn’t question why I trained with Discord because she understood that sometimes a trainer had to push their students to extremes. She also understood how tough that could be on the trainee. It’s too bad she probably still couldn’t grasp the full breadth of what I’d been through.

“You know…” I mused. “I suppose I could show you what I went through. I could project my thoughts and memories of that night onto you so you could actually experience what I went through, but, to be honest, I haven’t told you everything. When I blacked out cutting BELLE from the system she lost control of things. The drugs may have saved my life, acting as an insulator as I cut through her wires, but when she lost control of them they caused some pretty terrible things. Nightmares so horrible that they would leave you a screaming mess on the floor. I’m still running damage control on the half of me that experienced those. You probably thought I just merged myself together afterwards but I didn’t. I had to leave a piece of myself buried so deep inside that I doubt it will ever see the light of day again.”

Oops. That was a bit too much. I was shaking from the memories I had brought up. My uncle had been right. Some dreams were not meant for sharing. I was never going to look at a pineapple the same way again, and don’t even get me started on the cupcakes and rainbows. Luckily, I knew exactly how rainbows were really made. Unluckily, I couldn’t say the same for cupcakes.

A depressing silence reigned for the next half hour as we sat and mulled over our delectable desserts. Thankfully, it was finally broken when Fancypants walked in. Fancypants was always busy with one kind of business or another. We usually only saw him once or twice a week, and even then it was usually only briefly. To see him in the doughnut shop meant that, for once, he actually had some spare time for us.

“Baffle, my boy, I thought I might find you here.” He was bright and cheery as always. It was a miracle somepony as rich and powerful as he was turned out so nice. Most of the successful ponies in Canterlot were absolute snobs. “I hear you’ve been up to your usual antics. Pranking and banking are two radically different things. You may spend all day bringing smiles to the town, but I get stuck in board meetings all day.”

I went to one of those board meetings once. It was the most boring thing I’d ever done, and I’d been banned after I’d decided to lighten things up. The look on Fancypants’ face as I was chased out of the building by everypony else had made it all worthwhile.

“You know, I’ve learned a lot of new tricks since the last board meeting I went to. That includes a way to disguise myself as somepony else. If you want, I could sneak in to one of yours and have some fun sometime.” I smiled maliciously at the thought of what I could do now. I could only have dreamed of pranks like that the last time I was there. Those snot-nosed business ponies wouldn’t know what hit them. “What do you say? Why not mix a little pranking and banking?”

There was no way the jolly fellow was going to pass up an opportunity like that. He may have the most boring job in the world, but that didn’t mean he liked it. A chance to liven things up in the office was irresistible to him. If I offered to do it every day of the week the only reason he’d refuse is that he would need to get at least some business done. Besides that, it was more fun to terrify those snobs with the fact that they had no idea when or where it’d happen again. If I did it every day they’d just end up taking it for granted and ignoring it.

“Would you really?”

“Of course I would!”

“By all means then, please go ahead. There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching the freedom you fellows have. Whether it’s flying up high as a Wonderbolt, or wreaking chaos with prank after prank. I only wish I could join you fellows more often.”

We all chatted amicably for a while. It was fun reminiscing on the past few weeks as we caught Fancypants up. He was surprisingly uninformed from being cooped up in his offices so much. He was particularly interested in our little fiasco at the coliseum since that was one of the few things he had actually seen. Apparently, wingless flight had completely flabbergasted the unicorns and earth ponies in the audience.

“You’re saying you can fly with mathematics?” For someone who worked with numbers all day he was suddenly rather gleeful. “Can you teach me how?”

The question was a bit surprising. I’d tried my hand at teaching how to will things into being a while ago. Most of the ponies I’d taught had ended up walking away with headaches. Spitfire, Soarin’, and a few others had picked up the basics, but anything really advanced left their heads spinning.

“Trust me Fancypants. It isn’t worth it,” said Spitfire. Soarin’ nodded in agreement before stuffing his face with another doughnut. “It took us five years to get it down, and even then it’s exhausting and very hard to do. To be honest, we’ve already forgotten all the specifics on it.” It was true. The Wonderbolts hadn’t been able to handle my version of flight very well, but Fancypants worked with numbers for a living. There was a chance he’d actually understand it.

“Hold on guys. Let’s give him a chance.” Fancypants, who had been frowning from the Wonderbolts’ verdict, perked up at this. “If he can understand the theory behind it he might just be able to learn it. Besides, it’s not as tiring as you think. I never had a chance to explain shortcuts to you guys. There are specific thought patterns you can use to lighten the amount of energy needed to achieve flight.” I looked at the Wonderbolts as I continued. “It would have taken years to explain to you guys because you’re pegasi, but the same concept applies to performing unicorn magic. It’ll probably be easier to teach Fancypants those shortcuts since he’s a unicorn. Before that, however, let’s see if he can actually grasp the theory. How much do you know of physics?”

“I took a couple courses at the university. I couldn’t understand any of the high level concepts, but I was good at mechanics.” That was encouraging, although Fancypants seemed a bit sheepish for some reason. All he needed was an understanding of mechanics.

“That’s good.” I continued. “Do you remember the basics of projectile motion? How the angle of launch, initial velocity, force of launch, and time passed affect the projectile? How the projectile acts at the zenith of the jump?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.”

“Okay then, here’s the basis. To achieve wingless flight one simply has to trap themselves in an endless jump. You have to keep yourself constantly at the zenith of your jump by modifying the initial starting time of your jump. Then by manipulating where the zenith is via changes in the initial velocity, angle, and initial force you will create a flight path. Does that make sense?”

Fancypants mulled it over for a bit before responding. “It sort of does, but I’d need to go back to my old textbooks to make sure I get it. I have a question though. How do I modify all those initial variables? Isn’t the point that their set when the jump begins? I’d have to change the past in order to change them, and that sounds like it takes a lot of energy. I don’t know if I could handle that. Could you just grow me a pair of wings?”

He actually understood it? That was surprising. What was more surprising is he caught on to the key to one of those shortcuts I mentioned. Maybe I just hadn’t taught the right ponies before, or maybe I was just getting my hopes up.

“Okay, I’m going to stomp the wing idea out of your head right now. Not only would such a transformation be traumatic if done instantaneously, it would consume an enormous amount of energy. I have nowhere near the amount of energy required, and, provided he even wanted to, I doubt Discord could resist giving you wings in very unusual and uncomfortable places. I could try gradually growing you wings, but I’d probably just get bored and fall asleep. Do you really want half-finished wings? Overall, I suggest forgetting about that idea. As to adjusting events in the past, that’s a matter of perspective. Most people view time as something that’s linear, but there are a few who have their own unique views on it. I honestly think that the way time behaves changes depending on your point of view, but I have neither the time nor the patience to explain to you why. You said you didn’t have a knack for high level conceptual stuff, so I’m simply going to teach you shortcuts to memorize. Picture that time is an illusion. If time is an illusion then there’s no need to make discrimination between past, present, and future. The order of events doesn’t matter. You feel you’re in the middle of a jump but in actuality you’re simultaneously at every point in the jump. Since you’re at both the zenith of the jump and the initial launch of the jump at the same time, you can modify both points just as easily. You don’t have to fully convince yourself this, but doing so would vastly improve your efficiency. All it takes is focusing on the idea. Does that make sense?” Fancypants blank stare was proof enough. “Don’t worry, we can try and find other shortcuts that match your philosophical bend. Sometimes different shortcuts require different perspectives and philosophies, but you’ll often find the philosophies needed to master shortcuts end up conflicting with one another. Even Discord is unable to organize his thoughts in such a way as to master all of them, so I doubt you will. There are just too many conflicting ideas at play.” It was hard to not crush his hopes. Shortcuts were very hard to master, and that was one of the simpler ones. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this.

We continued to discuss things for a while, but then Fancypants had to go and look at the clock. “Oh dear, look at the time. I have to get going to another meeting. It’s going to be two hours of endless narcissistic droning and smashing my head on the table. Hey Baffle, does your original offer still hold?”

“You mean the prank extravaganza? You want to do it now?” I was practically giddy at the thought.

“Sure. I don’t see a problem with it. All you need is somepony to impersonate, and I have the perfect pony in mind.”

…..

We ended up having to stuff Jet Set’s body in a supply closet. His suit was itchy, and I was getting a crick in my neck from holding my head snobbishly high, but the charade should pay off any minute now. We’d only given Jet Set a weak sleeping potion, so he should be waking up any minute. He wasn’t going to like the chicken suit. I imagined the startled look of various clerks’ faces as the good for nothing snob barreled frantically down the corridor to reach us. I wondered if they’d end up calling security on him. As amusing as seeing Jet Set chased by a couple of security buffalo in tutus would be, that would interfere with the plan.

Finally, just as I was about to doze off from boredom, a scream announced the arrival of our feathered friend. A very agitated looking Jet Set burst into the room. His feathers were ruffled, and it appeared that in trying to escape from the supply closet he’d somehow stapled a couple papers to himself. The assorted bankers took one look at him, and then at me, and dived under the table.

“Look out! He’s got a pie!” Did they really think I’d stoop to something as low as a pie? That was so old school. I had something much more grand in store, and now that they were all in one place I could easily set off the first of my many traps. Fancypants and I jumped onto the table as I detonated the shaving cream bomb I’d planted beneath us. Covered in fluffy white cream, the richest ponies in Canterlot fled in unison from the room. Unfortunately, that meant they ran right into an army of razors. Razors in the Dwair tended to get a little crazy at the sight of shaving cream. They’d foam at the mouth, whipping themselves into a frenzy, before charging like animals to shave whatever they could reach. I still wasn’t sure how the razors had gotten mouths to begin with, but it wasn’t pretty. It was funny however.

As the terrified ponies ran through the building from the razors, they would end up triggering all the other traps I’d laid. Some would be tarred and feathered, and some would walk into helium filled halls. Their squeals of terror would reach notes high enough to shatter glass, and that was only the milder traps. No room was safe. When the bomb had triggered I’d morphed every office in the building into something unpredictable. Freezers with polar bears, caves that were bat lairs, and gator infested swamps were only a few of my additions.

My favorite was a room that closed in on you. It got smaller and smaller, until you were almost crushed, and then it cannoned you out into the sky with all the built up pressure. After being sent hundreds of feet in the air, the Wonderbolts would catch you and fly you down to the safety of the building. They actually brought them down to the room I was in, which only sent them scurrying back into the maze of traps. That was always funny. You’d think they would realize the safest place in the building was right next to me.

After about three hours of having my little guinea pigs scurry around, I thought it was about time I released them.

“Unleash the hounds!” I yelled dramatically, and pressed the big red button before me. A couple hoards of twenty foot tall guinea pigs were unleashed from various locked rooms into the halls. Fancypants had snuck some of the pheromones I gave him into the meeting’s buffet, and those guinea pigs were going to go wild soon, hopefully chasing all our little friends right out the front door.

“Shall we go watch?” asked Fancypants, chuckling.

“Yes, I do believe that would be proper,” I said as snobbishly as possible, with my held so high it almost allowed me to look behind me. We walked out of the building chuckling.

I honestly hadn’t expected them to call in the military. I didn’t even know Canterlot had a military anymore. It was supposed to have been disbanded when everypony was trapped with Discord in the Dwair. I also didn’t recognize the heaps of metal the soldiers were riding in.

“Do you like them?” asked Jet Set, stepping out of one of the machines, “They’re called tanks, and they’re the newest prototypes for mechanized weaponry. They’re ages beyond anything else on the planet.”

Well, that meant we were safe. From the little I saw they were poorly constructed, and, knowing the success rate of most pony inventors, they would probably just blow up when used. Ponies were not known for their advances in technology.

“You know,” I mused, “I should probably tear these things apart. They’re a threat to public safety.”

“You will do no such thing, peasant.” Great, it was Prince Blueblood, king of the snobs. “These are the only things we have to defend ourselves from our enemies right now.”

“What enemies?” I drawled, “Canterlot is trapped inside the mind of the father of chaos. There isn’t any sort of civilization to be our enemies in here. It’s just us.”

“They’re not for other countries.” I didn’t think it was possible for somepony to have a smirk that was more annoying than Discord. “They’re for you and your dear sweet uncle, just in case you decide to destroy what little we have left.”

A particularly strong breeze knocked one of the heaps over.

“I’m absolutely terrified.”

“That’s good to hear.” Apparently somepony had issues with sarcasm. You’d think being related to Princess Luna would have given him a sense of humor. I’d heard she was a riot at parties before that unfortunate incident. Getting possessed by a demonic force would put a crimp in anypony’s day.

“Goodbye, Baffle Babblinsca Buck.”

Oh, he did not just say that. No pony, and I mean no pony, used my full name. I could already hear the chuckles spreading in the crowd, even from my friends. Luckily, the spirit who gave me that horrid middle name happened to like it.

“Hey, Fancypants, remember when you asked how I had the energy to transform the entire building like that?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?” Fancypants was doing remarkably well containing his amusement at my name, although I could hear Soarin and Spitfire rolling on the ground laughing behind me. It was probably from the discipline needed to raise a properly mannered family in high society, and it was a discipline most of the other members of high society in the audience appeared to be currently lacking.

“Well, it turns out I lied. I needed to call in the big guns for that. Discord doesn’t come cheap, but he sure knows how to deliver.” It was wonderful to see Blueblood’s face as I said that.

“You brought your uncle in on this?” My friends seemed surprised, to say the least. I suppose it was a bit out of character, and, come to think of it, some of those pranks were a bit cruel in hindsight. It’s not like I’d really hurt anypony. Discord had set the whole thing up, but I had been in charge of the safeguards. Even if the razors were made of rubber, and the polar bears had been nothing but cardboard cutouts, what did it look like from the other side? I admit the gators had been real, but they had all been babies. They had no teeth, and it’s not like you can be gummed to death. Had I gone too far? They were only a bunch of spoiled ponies who got terrified at a little pie filling ruining their suits. It was something I’d have to consider, but, in the meantime, there was still the matter of the use of a certain name.

“Go fetch my uncle, and tell him it’s time.”

It was amazing how somepony as white as snow could actually manage to pale a couple shades. “What’s the matter, Blueblood? Cat got your tongue?” I couldn’t resist taking the phrase to its literal conclusion, and, after a rather large bout of coughing, Blueblood coughed up a kitten, and then he coughed up a rather angry looking tiger. Apparently my uncle hadn’t been able to resist temptation either. I wondered where he was hiding.

“We had one last gag planned. Uncle wanted to turn the city into a giant pinball machine, but I thought it was a bit extreme.” I crushed the heaps of metal with the twitch of a thought, and I molded them together into a giant pinball. “I’ve reconsidered my evaluation, and, under the circumstances, I’m going to allow it.” The crowd was no longer snickering after my last comment. “I’m going to have to ask you all to get inside for your own protection.” All the onlookers had begun to back away. Would they ever learn? “I didn’t mean to your houses. I meant inside the pinball. “ It was really fun to see their faces as the crowd realized they’d been caught.

It took a lot of persuasion, but they finally piled all in there. The sheer terror that had run rampant when Discord popped into being had been enough to get half of them on, and the others soon followed.

“I heard the good news. Are we ready?” He was bouncing up and down like a foal on Hearths Warming Eve.

“That depends on whether you went about transforming the whole town, even though I told you not to.”

“I am deeply offended that you would even think I wouldn’t go about doing whatever I wanted.”

That was all the confirmation I needed. As our poor victims rocketed forward, my friends and I sat on a rooftop and watched the chaos unfold. It was nice to relax for once.

“So…” began Soarin, “Your middle name is Babblinsca?”

“If you ever bring it up again you’re going to wake up in an alleyway, covered in makeup, and handcuffed to a particular stuffed bear in your closet. You won’t have any memory of how you got there, but the pictures the town will be passing out will say enough. Even the rocks will be talking about it for months.”

It was hard to tell if they were laughing at my name or my joke. Come to think of it, it was hard for me to tell if I had been joking. Something was definitely wrong.

Thanks to John Perry for proofreading.

This chapter was hard to write. It's surprising how hard it is to plan a properly chaotic scene. I'd originally planned on a duel between Baffle and Discord, but that had turned out too dark for what's supposed to be the humorous chapter. I also seem to be running into the problem of skipping certain necessary steps. Since I know how everything works in my head, I seem to be leaving certain important things out of the story. If something doesn't make sense please tell me. I want to make sure the readers can understand everything that's going on, and I can't catch the things that don't make sense because it all makes sense to me. Anyways, sorry about the lack of an update in forever. If you guys have any more rock puns please tell me. Those were really fun to make, and I barely scratched the top of the barrel. Also, what do you guys think of the flip-flop style? To be honest I'm trying to replicate that feel from Sheogorath and the Shivering Isles. You know, the lands of Mania and Dimentia? I always felt there were two different sides to chaos.

Chapter 10: Infinite Implausibility

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Chapter 10: Infinite Implausibility

I fell through the infinite, yet tiny, void separating the physical world from my own little mental mindscape. Well, truthfully, it wasn’t the physical world I was leaving, but the half mental, half physical, prison that kept Discord sealed. After all, what better prison could there be for an all-powerful god of chaos than one as unpredictable as he was? It was rather unfortunate Canterlot had been sucked in with him, but then I would have been raised by my mad uncle alone. I shudder to think what it would have been like going through training and not having friends. I’d probably be more messed up than my mad mentor by now.

I fell farther and farther into the void, which was odd. Normally, I fell for what felt like only a couple seconds. It was a glorious couple of seconds that allowed me a moment of peace from the chaos that was my life, but this was different. It stretched on. I fell farther into the void, and without warning I hit a wall. This wasn’t the fragile wall that led to my little mindscape. It was rubbery, stretchy, and it stuck to me like tar. I tried to tear myself away, but it wouldn’t let go.

As the wall of nothingness encompassed me completely, I could taste it as it forced its way into my lungs. It was then that I knew what it was. I felt every emotion, motivation, and thought I ever had course through me in a brilliant moment of illumination that was too fast for me to process. This was the wall to a side of me I had never seen, a side I was not supposed to see.

I had seen some of what I could be. I had seen my potential.

Now, it seemed, it was time to meet what I was, but refused to acknowledge.

It was time to meet my subconscious.

…..

I woke to the most beautiful sight I’d ever scene. It was a garden unlike any other. It was filled with lush, green brush and trees that towered high into the sky. A tall hedge surrounded me, and it stretched quite far into the distance. I could see it rise on the horizon. It curved around, completing what I could only assume was the inner shell of my subconscious. Above me, at the highest point of the curve, I saw a magnificent manor. It dangled like a massive stalactite, formed of wood the color of the richest amber one could imagine. Its walls were so smooth light seemed to flow in waves over it. It took me a second to realize that the building was actually shifting. Sections of it constantly rotated, moved, or collapsed in a perfect picture of both order and chaos. It was a paradox. I could not see a pattern to the madness, but it moved quietly along like clockwork.

Speaking of clockwork, I noticed what was at the top of the manor, or the bottom from my perspective. A massive clock adorned the wall. Each of its hands spun wildly, but that wasn’t what struck me as odd. What struck me as odd was that there were thousands of hands. Each was unique in their own little way, but it was almost painful to try and view them individually. They were just fragments, pieces of a greater whole.

They were pieces of me.

A soft wind rustling the leaves brought my attention back to my immediate surroundings. Suddenly, I felt very vulnerable. It wasn’t the wind that scared me. It was what the wind had broken. It had broken the silence. If there was one thing I knew about my uncle, it was he was never silent.

For the first time ever, I was alone.

A twig snapped to the side of me.

Okay, I wasn’t alone. I merely was trapped in an obscure part of my own mind and lacked the support of my all-powerful uncle. Granted, he was the cause of almost everything that went wrong in my life, but he also seemed to be equally good at getting me out before things went too far.

“What’s he doing here?” rumbled a voice in the brush. I ignored it. There’s no telling what it would do if I acknowledged its existence.

“Shush! Don’t let him hear you!” whispered another frantically. I felt myself tensing. It was now two of them to one of me, and I had no idea who they were. They could be manifestations of my deepest darkest fears for all I knew.

“Why not?” rumbled the first, “It’s dishonorable to hide in the bushes. That’s what backstabbers and thieves do. We should face him out in the open!” I prepared to beat a hasty retreat.

“I fail to see what’s wrong with tabbing backs.”

“I fail to see what’s wrong with stabbing one’s back.”

These last two spoke simultaneously. One spoke almost in a chirp, while the other had a voice way too smooth to trust. I felt myself getting ready to jump.

“Actually, I fail to see the any point at all to tabbing somepony’s back. Why would you want to stick a label on their back? Is it like that one time Humor glued that sign to me that told ponies to kick my flank? I never did thank him for that. It kept that horrible rash I had covered quite nicely.”

I stopped mid-jump. I had no freaking idea what the chirpy one was talking about, but she was either incredibly dense or remarkably naïve.

“Shush, Naivety! If he hears us, there’s no telling what he’ll do! What if he sets the bushes on fire? I might be allergic to fire for all I know! What if the smoke sets off my asthma?” whispered the second. At least, I think he tried to whisper. It started off that way, but sort of ended in a screech. The sense of danger I had started to fade at that. Now my curiosity was peaked.

“Don’t worry, Panic. He would have to lack any sense of righteousness to do something like that. If he was anything like that, do you think I’d exist?” soothed the rumbly voice. Panic still continued to moan in the bushes.

“You have asthma?” chirped Naivety. I started edging towards the bushes.

“No, Naivety, he doesn’t. I swear; sometimes you’re worse than Drama, Panic. At least he mixes it up.” There was that oily voice again. I felt every nerve in my body scream to run away from it, but I needed to see who I was dealing with. I crept closer as the oily voice continued. “I don’t know why you try to help him, Honor. He’s a lost cause. You’re also forgetting something very important. It’s very possible he’ll try to kill us.”

“Why do you think that?” Honor asked in reply. I finally reached the bushes and peaked through to see that it was in fact four ponies talking.

One was a sickly yellow pegasus with a vomit green mane that looked like it had exploded under massive pressure. I couldn’t see his face because he was curled in a fetal position that looked away from me. That was probably Panic.

One was a magenta earth pony with the biggest violet eyes you could ever imagine. The mare’s head was cocked to one side as if she was currently audience to a joke, but was the only pony that didn’t get it. Her deep purple mane was long and straight. It covered just enough of her face that you couldn’t see all of it. I assumed this was Naivety.

One was a sturdy-looking, golden earth pony. Unlike the others who were hiding in the bushes, he was behind a bush standing tall. The only reason I hadn’t seen him was because he had been standing behind a bush tall enough to hide him without him realizing it. He had wavy locks of amber hair that framed the face of what a pony could only call that of a classic storybook hero. It was the kind of face a pony was supposed to instinctively like. This was probably Honor.

The final one could only be described as adorable, but, then again, little colts generally are adorable. He had big puppy dog eyes, and the type of mane you couldn’t help but want to ruffle. There was the perfect amount of pout to his lips, and his scruffy tail curved around to hide his blank flank in that adorable little subconscious habit some fillies and colts had. It looked like it was completely forced. This was the one with that awful oily voice. The colt’s little pout had turned into a grin at Honor’s question. It was the exact grin my uncle gave me before we began my first night of training.

“I’m Betrayal.”

Then, quicker than the eye could see, his white coat flashed black. He drove his hoof forward, grabbing me before I could react, and pulled me forward. Unfortunately, his other hoof was darting forward at the same, and punched me with way more strength than a little colt should have. Before the others could react, Betrayal kicked up a cloud of dust. Dragging me behind him, he dashed off. I was way too disoriented from that punch to fight back, so he just dragged me along like a rag doll.

After what felt like hours of running, he stopped. The world was sort of spinning like a top, and I had a massive headache. I tried to orient myself, but then the little earth pony decided to grow a pair of wings like it was nothing. Needless to say, that sent my mind reeling again. I had specifically told Fancypants that it was impossible to grow wings. Apparently the subconscious can cheat the rules of the world.

Desperate to get away from Betrayal, I tried to bend the will of the universe and send myself somewhere else. Imagine my surprise when Betrayal teleported with me. He looked down at me with that horrible grin.

“Couldn’t you just die when your powers betray you when you need them most?” The colt sneered.

I figured I’d try the standard teleportation spell instead. It was one of the few actual unicorn spells I knew. I didn’t use it often. Unlike my willpower, my boring old unicorn magic tended to backfire on me, but it was all I had left. I gathered all my focus and cast the spell. Surprisingly, I didn’t come out on the other side smoking. Betrayal, however, did.

I looked at him, flabbergasted. A little horn that was now poking out of his head retreated back inside. That was not natural.

Betrayal snickered at me. “Of course it’s not natural.” The colt’s awful voice responded to my unvoiced thoughts. “What did you expect when you’re the most unnatural thing to ever be created? I’m you. You’re me. We’re all one big happy family.” He sprouted wings again and launched himself in the air. He let me stew in the implications of that as we flew upwards. When we reached about a mile in altitude he resumed taunting. “That’s not to say you’ll ever be able to sprout wings.” He let go of me as if to prove his point. My willpower failed me yet again as my unique method of flying simply decided to shut off after about five seconds of hovering. I fell screaming bloody murder for about three seconds before that backstabbing bastard caught me. “It’s funny how you think you have any sort of control here. This is your subconscious. You can’t control your subconscious, at least not directly. Didn’t you wonder why we happened to be there when you appeared? You were afraid of this strange new place. You were naïve enough to believe we were harmless, despite the feelings Mistrust was trying to give from within the tree he was warily watching you from. You probably didn’t even notice him since he mistrusts himself so much that he never even talks. You were honorable enough not to strike out at us when you realized we weren’t an immediate threat, but you were ready to backstab us if it turned out we were crazy. If you want to blame anypony for being kidnapped, you should blame yourself.”

“J’accuse!” yelled a voice from somewhere down below.

“Right on cue,” said Betrayal, “That’s Blame, by the way. I’m guessing I don’t need to explain what that little outburst meant, right?”

I had no control here, how wonderful. Actually, he said I had no direct control. That implies I have some control, just not the type of control I normally do. I settled down in my captor’s clutch to think. How do I get myself out of this one?

“Hey Muse! What are you doing outside your little hermit hole?” Betrayal called to a pegasus sitting on a cloud we passed. “You never leave that place.”

Betrayal was too busy flying to notice the grin on my face.

…..

My flight was interesting to say the least. I was curious about how I might influence my surroundings, and had nothing but time to think as I was dragged who knows where. This, of course, let me meet Curiosity. She was a bright orange pegasus with sparkling eyes and an unkempt mane. As one would expect, she did nothing but stream an endless amount of questions. It was sort of charming at first, but distracting.

“Hey! Who are you? I’ve never seen you before! Are you new around here? What do you do? You look just like the boss, but you can’t be him. He’s not allowed to visit us lowly fragments. I’m a part of him, and he’s much more than me! What does it mean that I’m me though? I’m a mare, but he’s a stallion. Why would some pieces of the boss be mares if he’s a stallion? Are you not really a stallion Mister Boss Look-a-like?” This massive stream of words was followed by an extremely awkward session of being poked, prodded, and harassed. I now had a marvelous insight into why my friends found me so annoying during some of my speculative rants.

“Hey, listen! I hear wings flapping. Do you hear wings flapping? I mean more wings than before.” I pleaded to Celestia’s grave that it would be somepony to end my misery. I just wanted this little nuisance to go away. That bubbly little voice would just not shut up. “Annoyance, Misery, is that you? I hope it’s you! It looks like it, but what if I’m delusional again? The last time I saw you was when I asked Madness what it was like to be mad.”

Two more pegasi flew up to us. One was an obnoxious shade of yellowish green. He had a spikey mane and wild eyes. The other was a dull greyish blue. His mane was hung limply about his face, and his eyes had the glassy look of one who has given up.

“You really do seem to like making things worse for yourself, don’t you, Baffle?” Betrayal was chuckling. “There’s nothing worse than somepony who sabotages their own plans. It is a truly heinous form of betrayal if you ask me.” I shared a look with Misery. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen next.

Annoyance flew right up to me, putting his face the perfect distance from mine to maximize the effect of invading my space without being too close for a complaint to sound reasonable. “Hey! Are you feeling lucky, punk?” One of his eyes rolled to the left as he said this. I don’t think he had a lazy eye. It just made his comment seem more invasive, so it happened. That was why Betrayal could move with me when I teleported. I effectively sabotaged, or betrayed, myself by putting myself into a situation with no escape. At least, I think that’s what it was. I was trying to avoid thinking about it right now. It would probably just set curiosity off on another rant.

“What do you think?” I asked sarcastically. “I have a lovely view of a fall big enough to kill me, a lovely companion who kidnapped me because it fills his sadistic desire to betray everypony he comes in contact with, and two block heads I accidentally summoned that are distracting me from doing what needs to be done.”

“You could just ask me to let you go, Baffle.” Betrayal smiled slyly as he spoke. “I’m sure you can figure out something I want to give me in return.”

“Yes, I could,” I drawled, “The problem is you would probably betray yourself by ignoring what was in your best interests rather than accepting.”

“Darn it. You failed to fall for my ruse.” I don’t think I can express how much I hated that voice. “Please tell me, Baffle. Did I construct it poorly to betray my attempt to fool you, or did you jump to a hasty conclusion? Did you sabotage yourself, yet again, by assuming you cannot reason with somepony that is a slave to their nature? If you want to reason with somepony they must be able to change. Isn’t betrayal the epitome of change? I take everything I am and turn it around to hurt others. I must change. There is nothing to me but change.”

“How would I know?” I snorted. “I’d have to run so many experiments to even understand what you guys are. I’d have to-“ I stopped at the grin on Betrayal’s face. “You just said all that to make me curious again, didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes I did,” he replied.

“I hate you so much right now,” I muttered, preparing for the inevitable onslaught.

“That’s an awesome idea!” Curiosity was circling me again. “Are we slaves to what we represent, or do we evolve over time like any other pony?” I immediately tried to tune her out, but it was annoying enough to start Annoyance again.

It started with simply being poked. After five minutes of no response, he switched tactics. “Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself…” This went on for twenty minutes. In the end, it was only annoying because he refused to mix it up. Finally, I could take it no more.

“Shut up! All of you just shut up!” I had heard that some unicorns can actually set themselves on fire when they get mad. It was apparently the way they subconsciously let others know to back off. I’d never done it before, but I was close. I really didn’t want to know what happened when a spell that was cast subconsciously was cast inside your own subconscious. Thankfully, I didn’t have to find out.

“Oi! Annoyance, you owe me five bits!” Out of the blue shot a flame red stallion with a brilliant orange mane. What surprised me was that he wasn’t a pegasus. He was a unicorn. He barreled past us at about a hundred miles an hour. I was about to ask how he was up here when I got my answer. After overshooting us, he turned around in midair, and shot himself like a cannon right back at us using magic.

“Book it!” yelled Annoyance as he dashed away. Misery and Curiosity turned to follow him and the new comer as they raced away. I guess Misery has nothing better to do than make himself miserable by hanging out with the worst pieces of me. Curiosity probably wanted to know why there were bits in my subconscious.

Betrayal chuckled again. “That’s Rage for you. Do you have a way to escape yet?” I shook my head. “You might want to hurry on one. Carrying you around is starting to lose its charm. I would just drop you, but I have no idea if it would destroy this place. I suggest figuring out a way to get out before my need to betray everypony, including myself, compels me to kill you to find out.”

“Why do you care?” I spat.

“I don’t,” he retorted, “I am merely betraying myself by telling you the full extent to which I’ll betray another.” He paused for a second in contemplation. “Irony would love that. I’m actually sort of surprised he hasn’t shown up, especially now. It would be very ironic if Irony appeared as we were talking about irony, but I suppose it ruins the irony to talk about why something is ironic. I never got that. Did I just betray Irony by denying him access to an ironic situation?”

I silently begged Discord to pop out and say this was all just one of his overelaborate pranks.

“Perhaps Irony decided not to come because it would be ironic for him to miss a conversation about how it would be ironic for him to appear just as a conversation on irony started,” I drawled, “That contains at least three levels of irony, not counting the added level of irony that we probably aren’t even talking about truly ironic situations any more.”

Betrayal was about to respond, but I interrupted him. “Will you please just shut up now? I thought you wanted me to escape so you could go betray somepony else.”

Betrayal shook his head. “I would shut up, but I think betraying myself made you consider me an uncontrollable ally. If you haven’t picked up on it, we sort of thrive on your thoughts. You just thought I could help you if you could convince me to betray another, thus I’m a temporary ally. I am now obligated to betray you until you think otherwise.”

I wondered if the fact that I currently had a migraine meant all these fragments of my mind were forced to suffer one too. Irony, at least, would have one.

“I am going to make you pay for this,” I whispered.

“Aha! I found you, you scum!” A blue pegasus shot past us. “You will pay for your crimes! Justice demands it!”

Betrayal had barely dodged out of the way from the newcomer’s assault. “Well, it seems my business is done here. Have a nice fall.” I had about one second to glare at him before he was gone, leaving me in the middle of the sky. I really hoped Justice did a number on him. He deserved every bit of it.

I’d been so busy trying to escape that I forgot to keep track of my surroundings. I was currently falling upwards towards the mansion’s courtyard with about two miles between me and the ground. Considering how I couldn’t exactly save myself, I simply braced for impact. A quick calculation gave me about twenty-six and a half seconds to live, provided I hadn’t made an error in my math under pressure, so I decided to count them down. It’s not like there was anything else for me to do right now.

At about sixteen, Curiosity showed up. “What are you doing?” she asked. I was already past her, but I heard another pegasus reply.

“He’s trying to get us to help,” said the newcomer.

“Should we do that, Common Sense?” asked Curiosity.

“Do I really have to answer that?” he retorted. I thanked Celestia I finally found somepony who was sane here. “He’s too far away from us to do that now.” That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

At about ten, two more newcomers showed up.

“You know, I find it absolutely refreshing that you’re taking this so well,” said the first, matching my speed as I plummeted. “I would simply fall head over heels for you if you weren’t already doing that.”

“Oh, stop that Humor. We don’t know that he’s going to die,” said the second as she swooped away, “You just got to believe!”

“Oh, Hope, I’m just dying to see the day being optimistic gets you killed.” Humor turned to me, chuckling, before he flew off. “Nice to meet you, boss. I’d love to stay and chat, but I hear that you’ll be meeting the ground soon.”

It wasn’t until I had one second to go that I was saved, by an iron grey pegasus.

“Don’t tell me,” I bristled. “It’s ironic for the damsel in distress to be saved at the last second.”

“No,” said Irony, “That’s just cliché. It’s ironic because I’m showing up for something you’re mistakenly assuming is ironic after I missed the earlier conversation on irony. I think that puts it at a five levels of irony, but I suppose irony is subjective. Does that make it ironic, if I, Irony, mistakenly mislabel something as ironic? I’d love for that to mean I’ve now achieved six levels of irony.”

“I’m starting to wish you had let me fall,” I mumbled as he let me to the ground. “Please tell me you know a way for me to get out of here, or at least a way to contact my uncle to get me out.”

“Sorry,” Irony rumbled, “Everypony in your subconscious has orders to keep you away from Discord. We’re currently having Deception lead him on a wild goose chase. If you want to get out of here you’re going to have to talk to Madness.”

“Who the hay gave everypony orders to keep Discord away?” I barked.

“What do you mean who gave the orders?” Irony seemed bewildered. “You did! You’ve wanted to get away from him for such a long time that Madness came up with the brilliant idea of bringing you here to help teach you how to escape him. She said it fit perfectly with the masters’ designs.”

“That’s mad!” I yelled.

“Aha! I knew I could make you say that,” said Irony, smiling, “I’m on a roll.”

“Sweet Celestia!” I screamed, “You are all driving me insane.” This was of course the moment Panic showed up again leading a group of ponies to meet me.

“Did you all hear that? He’s trying to make Madness stronger! Run for your lives!” shouted Panic.

“I knew he couldn’t be trusted!” yelled another, “You all said I was paranoid, but I was right! Don’t you see? Mistrust agrees with me!” Mistrust was nodding his head, probably not trusting himself to speak.

“That’s because you are paranoid, Paranoia,” somepony said, “It’s in your name.”

“You’re part of the conspiracy!” shouted Paranoia. “You speak in lies!”

“That’s highly unlikely Mister Paranoia,” droned yet another. “It isn’t logical that Honesty would lie.”

“I can’t trust you!” rambled Paranoia. “You’re Logic! We all know you’d lie if it was the most logical thing to do. That’s what a white lie is, isn’t it? It’s a lie you’ve used logic to rid yourself the guilt of telling.”

“I didn’t do it!” yelled who I could only assume was Guilt. “It was him. It was always him, right Blame?”

“J’accuse!” barked Blame.

“I can’t believe it!” said Disbelief.

“This is an outrage!” Righteousness bristled.

“Maybe we should reason with him,” murmured Timidness shyly.

“No!” shouted Justice. “We must bring him down!”

“What do we do? What do we do?” said a panicked Doubt.

“What honor demands we do,” said Honor. “If he wishes to harm all of us by making Madness even stronger, we are obligated to stop him. Forgive me, Baffle.”

I had almost stopped paying attention at that point. Instead, I had been backing away from them towards the door to the mansion. What refocused my attention on them was that they had pitchforks and torches. “Don’t tell me,” I muttered, “Cliché is in there, and he always packs torches and pitchforks for emergency mobs.” Irony nodded at me. I took that as a sign to make a full on bolt for the mansion’s door. There was no point in seeing if they followed. I just ran inside and bolted the door. Leaning against the door with my eyes closed, I caught my breath.

“You are just too easy. You know that, don’t you,” said an oily voice from behind me.

“Hello, Betrayal.” I sighed. “Care to tell me if it was you who led Panic here?”

“Oh, it most certainly was.” Betrayal snickered.

“I take it you’re about to let them all in here.” I really didn’t care anymore.

“Maybe I am,” said the mischievous colt, “maybe I’m not.”

…..

It turned out Betrayal wasn’t going to let the mob in after me. Instead, he was leading me somewhere through the giant funhouse I was now in.

“Will you just tell me who ordered you to do all this already?” I asked for the umpteenth time.

“I would if I could, but that would be a betrayal of trust,” he responded.

“Tell me how you can possibly say that!” I was fuming. “You are Betrayal. You are supposed to betray others. It’s your nature. How can you use that as an excuse?”

“I’m not using it as an excuse. It would be impractical to betray everypony all the time.” His voice was serious and business-like. “It’s a matter of quality over quantity. I find it better to maximize how deep the blade sinks into a pony’s back. I could betray somepony every chance I get, but nothing feels as good as the elaborate traps that a long term betrayal is made of.” There was clearly no reasoning with him right now, so I fell silent and observed our surroundings.

The mansion we were in was odd enough to give the Dwair a run for its money. There were stairs that led nowhere, or to sliding walls that moved only under certain conditions. Sometimes there were multiple switches scattered throughout different rooms on a floor that ended up granting access to a location on the other side of the mansion on a different floor. Staircases, halls, walls, and rooms were prone to moving about. Sometimes they collapsed. Sometimes they expanded. Sometimes they rotated. The most annoying feature by far was the gravity. It was completely unpredictable. We ran into a couple hallways that would slowly spiral until you were supposed to be on the ceiling. Sometimes gravity curved with the hall, sometimes it simply kept itself relatively downwards to us, and still other times it randomly shifted in the middle. Gravity could be different for every room you walked into. Somepony could walk through a door, and fall sideways through a window that was actually a door in disguise. Then they would fall upwards into yet another room where gravity seemed perfectly fine, and tumble through it with their remaining momentum into the chimney which launched them upwards. This chimney doesn’t launch you out of the house though. It turned out the room was upside down, and this unfortunate pony was actually falling back through a hole in the roof of the room they started in. That actually happened to us, twice.

Not even counting the bizarre behavior of the rooms themselves, every room just felt off somehow. For example, the foyer we started our trek in had a swimming pool. Other than that it looked completely normal. After the third time we somehow circled right back to it I asked Betrayal, “Why is there a swimming pool in the foyer?”

Betrayal simply looked at me quizzically. “You think this is a foyer? Why would you possibly think that? This is clearly the bathroom. Don’t you see the toilet?” He pointed to the swimming pool.

“You use the swimming pool as a toilet?” I asked, aghast.

“You use the toilet as a swimming pool?” he asked, aghast in his own right. After about a minute of increasingly awkward misinterpretations I realized what was going on.

“Wait!” I yelled, as my backstabbing little host started to say something, “Explain what you mean when you call that a toilet. It’s way too big, has no flush mechanism, and there’s a diving board.”

“That’s no diving board,” he scoffed, “That’s the flush mechanism.” To prove his point he climbed up and jumped on it. There was a clearly recognizable, if much deeper than usual, flushing sound as the pool emptied.

I think my jaw hit the floor. “Why is the first room you walk into in this house the bathroom?”

“Oh, that’s why you thought it was a foyer.” Betrayal grinned. “There are no true entrances to this house, only exits. You may exit the garden outside by coming inside, and you may exit the house within the walls by going outside, but you cannot enter them without an invitation. Foyers are meant for entrances, not exits.”

“That doesn’t make any sense! How can you exit one place without entering another? Why wouldn’t I have an invitation? This is my subconscious! You wouldn’t exist without me!” My voice was getting so hoarse from all frustrated yelling I’d done today that I could barely understand myself.

“The masters of the house would disagree with that statement.” Betrayal’s voice was flat. The oily sound I hated so much was gone. “Do you want to know why I can’t betray them to you, Baffle? It’s because they’re the ones who made me. They made all the little fragments of your mind you’ll find here. They made me, and they made you too. I can’t betray them, because they’re the two things I was made not to betray.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I inquired. “Nopony wants to be betrayed.”

As the little colt spoke, a spark of rage entered his voice. “I don’t think you can understand what it’s like. They made me to betray anything and everything, but I cannot betray them. How do you think a colt would feel if his parents told him to use his special talent anywhere except in front of them? That colt would be crushed. That is what it’s like for me. When you discover who and what you are, all you want to do is share it with those you care about. My very nature denies me the ability to have friends. The only ones I had any reason to love were the masters. They were the ones who gave me life. They deserved to experience my talents first hand, to see the beauty they themselves created, but I was forbidden. They laughed with Humor, and they talked with Intelligence. They embraced everypony’s talents, except for mine.”

I honestly didn’t know how to react. I could understand what he said, but it was almost impossible to wrap my head around the idea of being proud of betraying others. I could grasp the idea of wanting to prove yourself, but not like that. Who would make a creature like that?

Was it me? Did I create this mass of madness in my head, or am I just as much a tool as the rest of the ponies I’d met today?

“That’s enough, Betrayal.” Another pony had entered the room. “It’s appeared, darling,” she said, smiling at me. “There are no entrances here, only exits. I only appeared.” I tried to object, but her airy smile suddenly turned into a glare. After making sure I was quiet, she turned to Betrayal. “You had better learn to still your tongue, lest I cut it out for the masters. We can’t have you betraying us after all.”

“I can’t betray you, Madness.” Betrayal’s voice was a hollow whisper. “I never can, and I never will.”

“Now, now, Betrayal, you should buck up! You may not be able to betray the masters directly, but that doesn’t mean your nature doesn’t make you slip up accidentally every so often.” Betrayal perked up at this.

“I can betray them?” he asked, almost like a puppy.

Madness demurely descended from the alcove she was on. “No, my little pony, you can’t.” Betrayal’s head drooped towards the ground, but Madness lifted it so the little colt gazed into her eyes. “I’m afraid they wouldn’t allow it, and then I’d have to kill you. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t have the ability to betray them.” For a second, I swore something broke in his eyes. I thought he had cracked in his own little twisted despair, and then they filled with a burning determination.

“Yes, mistress, I understand.” After saying this, the little colt got to his feet, and he began to walk away. “Baffle,” he said, right before the exit, “Madness is a fickle creature. It is made of mass illusions, grand delusions, and great confusions, but it can also be lucid and clear. You must take care to figure out which kind you’re dealing with.” The door slammed darkly behind him.

“Ah, it is truly wonderful to be touched by Madness.” The mare sighed contentedly as she turned to me, finally letting me get my first good look at her. She had a dark violet coat and wavy magenta mane. Her tail was also wavy, and her eyes were lavender with icy blue cracks spreading through the iris. Her smile couldn’t help but warm my soul and send bone-chilling tingles down my spine. “Hello there, Baffle. I think you’ll find I’ll lead you along much better than Betrayal. I am the steward of this manor after all.” Was she implying what I thought she was implying? “Come! I have a room all set up for us in the room to the right. It’s actually on the eighty-third floor right now, but it’s due to shift downwards in about five seconds.”

There was a deafening thump as the room in question plummeted eighty-three floors and hit the ground like a meteor.

“It was actually forty-two, darling,” said Madness nonchalantly. “Before it was released from the floor it was on, the entire floor it was on shifted down about twenty floors downward. Meanwhile, our own floor shifted upwards about twenty-two floors.”

“Why is it only the insane ponies in my life can read my thoughts?” I muttered.

“I didn’t actually read your thoughts, Baffle,” she purred sweetly, “I simply knew what you would assume, and I decided to correct you. I am nothing, if not an excellent host. I always consider my guests.”

“Are you sure?” I asked sourly.

“Yes, most of the other fragments can read your conscious thoughts when they try, but I’m much too busy to listen to whatever mundane thoughts you have.” I felt so honored by that statement. “Besides, it’s much more fun to simply change your thoughts to what I want them to be. I wish the masters let me do it more often, but that would violate that silly bargain they made with your uncle.”

I tried not to let the idea that my thoughts weren’t my own make me fall flat on my face as I entered a spacious living room. It was surprisingly normal in appearance. In fact, the only oddity the room had was the potato clock on the coffee table.

“Please, sit.” Madness reclined in one chair and gestured to the couch beside her. It was the kind psychiatrists let their patients use. After I took my seat, Madness sat quietly for a while. Finally, she turned to me. “What I am about to tell you violates everything the bargain stands for. I would not be telling you this, except for the fact that both masters accept it as a necessary sacrifice in their game. Each one stands to gain something from it.”

“How do you know anything about the bargain?” I asked. “If you’re a part of me, you know just as little as I do.”

“Madness doesn’t always come from delusions, Baffle.” Madness shook her head like she was lecturing a child. “Sometimes it’s the rest of the world that’s deluded. I hear that which others refuse to hear. I see that which others blind themselves to. The universe works in mysterious ways, and some, like us, are the conductors of its music. I hear that music. I see the instruments that weave it.”

“You do know how crazy and egotistical that sounds, right?” I muttered. I needed to think of a way out of here. “Doesn’t Discord get a say in this? It was his bargain after all.”

Madness grinned again. “Is that what he told you? The father of chaos wasn’t the one who was bargaining. He was a neutral third party they agreed upon, more of a referee than anything else. Your uncle was only there to help settle the differences between the masters.”

Who in their right minds would ever think of Discord as a neutral third party?

“Tell me who your masters are.” I wanted to escape, but I needed to know. I had apparently been created by somepony, and I had to find out why. I might as well play along until I figured out how to escape.

Madness shook her head. “I can’t tell you yet. You need to understand what you are dealing with first. I told you before that I hear the music of the universe, and see the instruments that play it. Some instruments are so disjointed and small that you would never suspect them to be in tandem. You would never think to listen and see if your hoofstep falls in time with another stallion halfway across the world. That would be mad. Other instruments, like your uncle, are obvious to anyone with eyes, but without hearing the complete orchestra they are impossible to truly understand.”

“What are you talking about?” I snorted.

Madness glared at me. “I am saying there is a certain order to the universe, a method to the madness. I prefer to think of it as music, but perhaps you might prefer to think of it as a series of systems meant to create balance.” I smiled slightly at having annoyed Madness. “Discord is a part of one such system. He was created not as an entity of chaos, but as an entity of change. His counterpart, Nightmare Moon, represented order. Both of them were created to help govern and control the development of this planet, but a complication arose. Discord changed too much. His ability to open a pony’s mind to new things became a way to turn them into the very thing they hated. Nightmare Moon changed too little. Her ability to possess others and walk among their dreams was supposed to help her still the chaos of a pony’s mind. It became a tool to silence ponies, and set them on the path she deemed wisest. They became creatures of chaos and tyranny, embodying the worst extremes their purpose had to offer.” I yawned. I’d heard variants of this from the scholars in the Dwair. Madness just continued.

“The system was unbalanced, so the universe sought to correct it. It nudged events in Equestria to set up a meeting. The universe decided to send two sisters on a quest of enlightenment. At the end of their quest, they were to confront Discord and Nightmare Moon. I take it you know the story of Celestia and Luna’s quest to forge the Elements of Harmony, so I’ll skip that and head to what you need to learn from it.”

“Not so fast, missy, I think you forgot something.” The room shimmered, leaving a pony who looked exactly like me and my uncle standing nearby. I should have known he was too smart to fall for whatever ruse Deception had played.

“It’s about time you showed up,” I grumbled, gesturing to the pony beside him, “I take it that’s Deception. How long did you actually fall for their wild goose chase?”

The draconequis gave his usual cocky grin. “Oh, I knew all along. I just let the little guy have his fun so I could drop in on you like this.”

There was an audible smack of my hoof meeting my face.

“Please tell me you weren’t able to find me anytime you please.”

“Oh, I most certainly could have. I just wanted to see what brought us here in the first place, and I must say I’m pleasantly surprised.” He turned to Madness. “Before you put me back to sleep with your lecture, I’m afraid he needs to really know what happened when I faced Celestia and her sister. You see, I let her win.”

“You did what?” I nearly shouted.

“I let her win. What else could I do after they convinced me to create the Elements of Harmony?” I think my brain was officially on meltdown. Discord just stepped forward and picked my mouth off the floor. “Their so-called confrontation was an attempt at negotiation. They thought they knew the one thing that might restrain me, and they were right. You see, as a creature of change, I accept that anything is possible. There is always some chain of events that I could change in such a way as to make whatever outcome I desired occur. Their method of reasoning with me was simple. What if I one day changed something in such a way that I couldn’t change it back? I knew I could do that, and that terrified me.” Discord could get scared? I didn’t know if I should believe him, but why would he make a lie like this? You wouldn’t expect a god to lie to try and make himself seem weaker. “They showed me that I could make a different kind of change. They argued that creating a cycle would be best. I would never be left with a world I couldn’t change, because I would create an artifact to balance the world before events spiraled out of control. Unfortunately, what they proposed meant both Nightmare Moon and I would need to be sealed away. I agreed on one condition. The seal created by the Elements would contain a leak. This would allow Nightmare Moon and I to affect a limited amount of control over things while we were sealed away, and it would allow us to escape once in a while. We wouldn’t permanently escape. We would just take a little breather. Think of it as a vacation where we get to unwind and let loose like the good old days. They accepted, and everypony but Nightmare Moon the control freak was happy.”

Madness grimaced. “I was trying to avoid that. It approaches sensitive information.”

Discord stuck out his tongue. “I know. That’s why I jumped in.”

“Will you two please not start bickering?” I pleaded. “All I want is to leave, and I can’t do that if the only two ponies who have the power to let me out of here are arguing.” I turned to my uncle. “Why are we even still here?”

“We are here because you need to learn of Hymn, and I am obligated to tell you nothing.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked.

“Hymn,” my uncle answered.

“Him, who?” I asked again.

“Hymn.” Was the draconequis smirking for some reason? I really wished it was easier
to read his many different cocky grins.

Madness snorted in exasperation. “If you don’t mind, Discord, I can’t tell him if you continue being cryptic.”

“You’re such a spoilsport,” the draconequis muttered before looking at me. “Can’t you tell her not to ruin my fun?” Before I could open my mouth to respond he continued. “Nevermind, you spoil my fun just as much as her. You’ll probably just side with her.”

“Anyways,” Madness grumbled, gritting her teeth in annoyance, “the point I was
trying to make before was that to balance the system a third tool was created, the Elements of Harmony. They act as a neutral agent capable of good or evil, despite what the history books claim. Their sole purpose is to bring the world to a state of balance determined by the mortals who use them. This is how a proper system normally works.”

Madness took a breath. “Baffle, you and I are part of a system that is not so clean or efficient. The first problem is the entity involved in our system. Its name is Hymn, and it fancies itself as the creator of everything.”

I was not going to buy that drivel. It seemed almost like something Cliché would come up with.

“You’ll notice that the system governing just our one planet was pretty screwed up before the Elements. Imagine that problem with a pair of deities that are supposed to rule multiple universes. Luckily, we don’t have to deal with all of reality. The rules of their system operate a little differently. The two halves of the entity known as Hymn simply jump from one world to another playing a number of games. The exact rules of each game vary from world to world, but much of it is the same. If the half of Hymn that represents creation wins, then the system governing that world stays in place. If the half of Hymn representing destruction wins, then the system is destroyed along with the world and everypony in it.”

That sounded a bit more reasonable. There was no way I was going to deal with multiple universes. It would be way too messy. It did seem a bit much to ask me to save the world though.

Madness wasn’t done talking. “The main problem with these games, however, is the proxy. A proper system needs a neutral third element. Hymn’s games don’t work like that. It creates a living, breathing, proxy capable of being manipulated. The point of the game is to drive the proxy to a critical point, or points, in a historical moment, and have it either save or doom the world. The proxy is not neutral, and that is the problem. Creation is passive. It seeks to preserve what exists to make sure whatever it creates will not come into an unbalanced system and destroy it. Destruction is aggressive. It has no need to preserve, and can act however it needs to. Thus, most of these games are stalling wars in favor of Destruction. All it takes is one carefully planned move to drive the proxy past the point of no return.”

I was almost missing being chased by the mob. Did I really sound that bad when I lectured my friends on something? It was incredibly hard to listen to her voice drone on, but I needed to learn what she was saying.

“Your first critical point,” Madness continued, “was supposed to be helping defeat Discord when he was freed. There were complications.”

“You mean somepony cheated,” Discord droned.

“Actually,” Madness replied, “it was a perfectly legal tactic according to the rules Hymn follows. The half of Hymn representing destruction made a side bargain with Nightmare Moon.”

“Can we please give them separate names?” I asked, trying to rub away my headache. “It’s really annoying to keep trying to keep track of them when they’re all Hymn. How about we call them Crea for creation and Desi for destruction?”

Madness sighed. “I’d tell you that they’ll hate those names, but you’re probably dead set on them.” I nodded. “Fine, but it’s your funeral when they find out.” Discord and I shared a grin, knowing much mocking was to come from this. “Anyways, Desi had a hidden deal with Nightmare Moon. Desi would interfere with the Elements of Harmony resealing Nightmare Moon, and she would trap you and Discord in limbo to return the favor. You would be trapped with no way to escape without destroying the system. The only thing that stopped this from happening completely is that Crea was able to make a side bargain with Discord to have the draconequis use his power to shift the focus of the critical point from defeating himself to defeating Nightmare Moon.”

“He was a charming fellow when I talked to him. A bit full of himself, but he was lovely nonetheless.” Discord turned to me with a yawn. “I do believe that’s enough for now, however. I’m about ready to fall asleep!” I wasn’t about to complain. Uncle picked up the potato clock on the coffee table. “Do you mind if we take this? I’ve always loved these things. I never understood how a potato had the capacity to tell time.”

“Sure,” said Madness, smiling that really creepy smile. “It’s not much of a gift, but I would be a horrible host if I didn’t give you something. It doesn’t tell time or work as an alarm that well anyways. The bell never goes off at the right time.”

That smile was getting really creepy. I wanted out.

“Come on, Discord. We really need to get going.” I scurried over to my uncle, nearly tripping in my haste.

“Hold on a second, Baffle. Something seems off about this clock.” He turned to Madness. “Is it broken?”

“No time!” I yelled. I could almost feel that smile trying to peel my skin off.

“Alright!” the draconequis barked. “I’m going. I’m going. I was just going to ask Madness if we could come back here for training, but I guess we’ll just come back unannounced.”

I had about a second to process this and try to convince him otherwise, but Madness beat me to the punch. She shouted something about being able to come back any time before we vanished. When we landed back in my room I was about to chew him out, but somepony, or rather something, interrupted me.

“Finally, I’m free from that hellhole where sanity is sent to die.”

The potato was talking.

“You would not believe what I’ve been through in there because of you idiots. I’m lucky I caught what you were doing before I completely fried.”

I looked down at the potato in dread. I really, really, hoped that potato was not talking with the voice I thought I was hearing.

“I can’t believe I ended up looking like a potato clock. What kind of imbecile cares about the ridiculously small amount of voltage a potato can produce? All I wanted was to try my emergency download function, and I ended up trapped in a potato.”

I looked up at Discord. He looked back at me. He dropped the potato.

“Ouch! Why did you do that?” The sadistic voice was slightly muffled. “Oh, yeah, you’re probably still hung up on the whole failed murder attempt. Let’s try things again, shall we? I am the Bio-Electronic Little Learning Emulator, BELLE for short. How would you like me to kill you for trapping me in this asinine body today?”

Author's Notes:

Author's Notes box? Yes!

Anyways, first, sorry for the massive delay, but I've been ridiculously busy with a number of things and had a bit of writer's block as well. On that note, sorry if this chapter is subpar to your expectations. Besides the fact that I might be a bit rusty from writer's block, I wanted to give this chapter a different feel. I wanted to to try and practice a bit more subtle dark/creepiness (In retrospect all my previous chapters except BELLE's seem a bit more bloody than I originally wanted. I meant to use pain symbolically more than anything else, but when I looked back it didn't seem to come off that way. I'm not sure I succeeded on getting that subtleness this time, though.) as well as combine it with a bit of humor (I at least think I got the humor for this chapter down. Problem is it's very hard to be both humorous and dark in the same chapter. It's all a matter of proper transitions, which are one of my weak points. Sometimes I leave necessary steps out that screw up transitions. That's why I try to flip flop the chapters, but I wanted to see if I could do both at once.) I was thinking of using Baffle's subconscious for future training, but if you dislike it I won't. I hope Madness's explanations weren't too heavy. The reason I've been vague on what's going on so far is that, when I do reveal something, I can't stop talking and it comes out almost like a lecture. That's another one of my weaknesses. I tell either too much or too little. Too much makes it boring, and too little makes it a little frustrating or confusing, so sorry.

Second, thanks again to John Perry for proofreading. I probably wouldn't have the small number of readers I do if he didn't fix the massive grammar mistakes I make.

Third, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've ever given a properly detailed description of the appearance Baffle himself. I'd like to give you a visual reference, but the Pony Generators are sort of frowned on, and I'm not that good an artist. Are you all right with a simple Pony Generator image to start with? Do you want to suffer my lack of an ability to draw? Do you just want me to leave him to your imaginations?

Once again, sorry for the delay... Hope you enjoy...

Life in the Mind of Uncle Discord

by I Thought I Was Toast

Chapter 1: The Hunt is On

Chapter 2: A Day in the Dwair

Chapter 3: Mind Games

Chapter 4: Lost in the Darkness

Chapter 5: Another Day, Another Lesson

Chapter 6: Inner Demons and Outer Woes

Chapter 7: The Doctor is in the Dwair

Chapter 8: Mechanical Mayhem and Dangerous Dreams

Chapter 9: Pranks and Banks and Tiny Tanks

Chapter 10: Infinite Implausibility