Dripping.
Darkness.
More dripping.
"Mrmmmfff..."
Rainbow winced.
"Mrmmmsshhhhhtttt..."
Rainbow hissed.
She brushed one forelimb against the other, feeling course hair and leathery skin.
"Well, Sparky Sparky Sparky... I must say..."
"Hrsshshkkkttt..." Razor sharp teeth parted ways, and Rainbow Dash exhaled through them. A red-on-yellow eye opened... then a second.
A dragonequus hovered in the air just a few starlit feet away. The horizon was tilted upside down at seventy-five degrees, and yet he smiled evenly with her.
"...that is a most dashing look for you." Discord smiled, fang glinting. "If you do pardon the pun, of course."
"Hresssssssh!" Rainbow snarled, flicking a forked tongue. It was then that she saw a set of talons dangling in front of her. They were her limbs. "Shkreeeeee!" She let out another beastly shriek through her fangs and thrashed at the air. She was dangling high above a craggy plateau, her dragon tail caught in a cleft of limestone.
What was more, her pendant was missing from her neck.
"Shrkkk—Hrskkkkkttt!"
"Don't blow bubbles through your nose, it's very rude." Discord brushed his lion's paw and examined the pads with a bored expression. "Of course, if I was allowed to be Chaos Lord of Equestria, then I would have made even the most kindergarten of habits more than acceptable."
Panting, snarling, the creature that was once Rainbow Dash looked all around.
She saw loops of limestone... jagged rock formations... a flash of ruby—
There!
The Loyalty Pendant lingered on the edge of a cliff just beneath her, teetering. She saw the mutated, reptilian shadow of a dangling creature rustling between her and her treasure.
"Shrnkkkkkt!" Rainbow wriggled and writhed and reached for the elusive Element.
"Take flatulence, for example!" Discord twisted his skull so it would smile at even level with Rainbow's bobbing skull. "Why do harmonic beings frown on it so? It's a natural part of digestion! If I was allowed to rule over Equestria, I'd make it so that ponies would simply pass piano cords instead of gas! Now... don't you think it would be an improvement?"
"Hrkkkk!" Snarling, Rainbow curled her serpentine body upwards. Antlers scraped against the roof of limestone as she sank her razor-sharp teeth into the cleft of stone holding her in place. Her eyeslits flickered as more and more growing hair draped over her brow, nearly blinding her effort. "Scrkkkkkkktt!"
"If only ponies could... give chaos a try." Discord snapped his finger, producing a ghostly monocle which he proceeded to polish with a handkerchief borrowed from hammerspace. "Certainly, I may be preaching to the choir right now, as it were, but you of all horses... the easthorsiest of horses should understand..." He fitted the monocle on and smiled. "Chaos is your greatest ally right now!" He blinked, and the monocle spat out a grilled cheese sandwich—(FLASH!)—which he proceeded to munch on. "Mrmmmfff... it's practically sustenance, see?" He held the meal out towards her. "You want some? Or... wait. Too soon?"
"RAASSSSHKKT!" With a savage headbutt, Rainbow Dash finally freed herself from the chunk of limestone. Smasssssssh! She fell several feet—THUD!—and landed sprawling on her back. "Rrrrrrrrrrrrgh..."
"Ugh!" Discord rolled his eyes. "Such a drama queen." He tossed what was left of the sandwich behind him and the remaining morsel erupted in a ghostly explosion. "You must get it from that marshmallow one. I mean... just look at you!"
Panting...
Hissing...
...Rainbow Dash crawled across the narrow plateau. She pulled her self forward by her claws, inching desperately towards the Element of Loyalty. It teetered further towards the edge, the ruby lightning bolt losing its luster.
"You always like to do things the hard way! That's what harmony's got in store for you from here on out, after all! Especially on this side of barfspace! But chaos? Pffft!" Discord zipped in front of her and pulled his eyes out. Red and white flower buds sprung out of the sockets. "Here, it's a veritable bed of roses! Why fight it?" He smacked his head, and a pair of eyes popped back into place, expelling the ghostly flowers. "After all, it's keeping you alive. You do know that, of course. Nothing else can be given the golden Smol Pone Award for Good Spark Resuscitation. It's sure as heck not your precious princesses back home, living on the opposite side of the Celestial Matriarch's toenail—or whatever this crazy curved thing is called. Pffffft... 'You're a Ginger?' Goddess, I hope not! HAH!"
The creature's hair had almost lost all its color now. All traces of hooves vanished beneath glinting silver claws. Mutated nostrils flared as it whimpered and drew itself forward, spitting up bile and blood. A single limb stretched—shaking—towards the pendant.
Discord's eyes flared momentarily. "I thought I had you back there, y'know. Back in that un-fun dungeon inside that mesa. Back when I told you to do the unthinkable to your friends. You respond in all the wrong ways to threats, don't you, Sparky? Well... tell me..." He leaned in, phasing his smug grin through the pendant in an effort to confuse her. "...how are you going to respond to yourself when all of this is said and done?"
The creature wheezed. It clawed forward... scraping limestone... scraping—
Discord cupped his hairy chin with two talons. "How do you expect to get anything accomplished... as a simple, mortal girl-horse...?" His eyes lit up again, and he grinned harder into the starlight. "You can afford to be hard on yourself. But what can your so-called 'friends' afford?" He blew into the air with magical timing...
...for the pendant was falling like an anvil.
"HRKKK!" A set of claws lunged.
The creature caught the pendant.
Rolling over—hissing and spitting—the beast struggled with itself like wrestling a shadow. It let loose a blood-curdling roar, muscles ripping as it slowly... painfully forced the pendant back around its neck.
Then—
FLASSSH!
—the ruby lightning bolt flashed.
A breath squeaked weakly into the air. Red-on-yellow eyes rolled back as the creature... melted from the outside in. Antlers dissolved to dust. Hair and scales peeled away. At last, razor sharp claws and teeth billowed into calcified bits, carried off by a wayward wind. Curled up inside a moist patch of chaotic smegma, Rainbow Dash shivered... alive and exposed and trembling...
...and herself.
When her eyes reopened, they were ruby-on-white. Tears magnified the edges as she whimpered for a solid breath. She clutched her pendant the entire time. At last, as her pulse returned to normal, frantic colorful shapes materialized on all sides of her.
"—Rainbow!" Twilight Sparkle gasped.
"Rainbow, darling!" Rarity yelped.
"She can see us, y'all!" Applejack hollered.
"Oh my goodness!" Fluttershy rushed up. "We lost you for so long! Are you okay?!"
"Snfff-snfff!" Pinkie Pie's muzzle scrunched. "... ... ...Do I smell grilled cheese?"
"Rainbow, speak to us!" Twilight rushed up to the quivering pegasus' side, her forelimbs phasing through in a friendly gesture. "Are you okay?"
"Oh you poor thing..." Fluttershy's ears drooped. "That must have been awful!"
"Shhh! Let Dashie say something!"
"Just..." Rainbow hoarsely pronounced, still clutching her pendant. Tears streamed down the sides of her face as she fought the urge to hyperventilate. "J-just..." A shudder... a whimper. "...g-give me a few m-minutes... g-girls..."
"I'm afraid we dun have a few minutes, darlin'," Applejack said in a motherly tone.
"What... why...?" Rainbow Dash gulped. Her moist eyes darted around, and she swallowed the billionth lump down her throat. "The wagon... the Herald... where are they...?"
"Well..." Twilight Sparkle looked Rarity. "...uhhhh..."
Red on yellow eyes flickered. "Where?!" Rainbow asked viciously.
Rummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmble!
The earth shook.
Rainbow sensed the entire horizon shifting. She lazily tilted her head aside to see a mountain of deathly stalks rising... falling... slithering. The gigantic entity was slithering its way towards Alpha, and columns of smoke and billowing debris followed in its wake.
"We think they..." Pinkie Pie pointed nervously. "...might be somewhere on the other side of that."
"We almost thought we had lost ya when the dang oversized varmint slammed into the earth somethin' fierce," Applejack said. "The entire hover plank thingy went flyin'! It all happened so fast!"
"But... b-but they're alive...?" Rainbow stammered, sitting up and wincing.
"Rainbow, take it easy—" Fluttershy reached forward.
Rainbow's eyes stared daggers into her. "Are they alive?!?"
Fluttershy gulped. "Yes. I... I think so..."
Rainbow's ears drooped.
"I-I just can't exactly judge where. This creature..." She gulped, gazing at the shifting horizon. "It's so terribly big. That much active life is throwing my senses for a loop!"
"I'm afraid I'm not of much help either," Rarity said defeatedly. "So much of the landscape is being destroyed or reoriented that I just can't get a fix!"
"I-I might be able to help!" Twilight floated upright. "If you get us high enough, Rainbow, then I might be able to sense the enchantment Flynn put into place!"
"You mean y-you can find the wagon?"
"Yes."
"Well... it's a start..." Wincing... popping her joints... Rainbow Dash stood up. "Let's go..."
"But Dashie!" Pinkie Pie protested.
"I can't w-waste anymore t-time..." Rainbow started flapping her wings.
"Rainbow, darling, you're just one little pony!" Rarity pointed at the cataclysmically moving mass. "You can't face off against something that immense!"
"Which is... precisely... why... I must..." Gnashing her teeth, Rainbow Dash spread her wings...
...and glided towards the rumbling mayhem.
Well, I didn't expect that to be the opening of this chapter. I hope the rest of the Herald is alright, I'm sure they can take care of themselves for a while.
This is true.
8441452
You are a truly beautiful individual and I am in awe of you.
Hold on a tick...
Dash was killed, revived and managed to stay in control of herself for long enough to wake up, free herself and grab Loyalty.
I'm assuming she was killed with the impact, otherwise why would Discord mention resuscitation like that.
I'm aware we've seen her stay in control for partial transformations before, such as Foxtaur, but if the flashbacks from Yaerfaerda are anything to go by, a revival should have had her reverted to a feral state, like when Roarke pulled Loyalty off her to revive her when she'd been crushed by the Jury's crash.
Heck, she went feral real fast in Red Barge, but that could have been an emotional state thing.
Perhaps since she didn't need to have her body rebuild itself like it would have when she was smushed between the rocks and the Jury's hull, her mind didn't need to default to a more animalistic state.
Bodily trauma must be easier to manage control through than cranial or emotional.
-Through the path long forgotten, into the darkness long begotten. Ofolrodi.
8441468
Could be. Could also be that she maintains control of herself when she's in chaos form, but only on the chaos side of the plane. It'll be interesting to see whether she starts losing control of herself in "harmonic" form, and has to spend more time as Chaos Dash to avoid hurting her friends.
While most of what Discord is saying is solely to get under her skin, some of his words do have a grain of truth to them.
To be fair Discord, Dash is only part Ginger. Which means she's only missing part of her soul.
Now is it just me, or did it seem like Dash actually had more physical and mental control of herself in her transformed state? I mean usually she goes from zero to face-murder in no time flat when the pendant comes off. Now she wakes up transformed, spends a few minutes crawling to her pendant, all pretty much in solid control of herself while Discord yaks at her. Am I reading the situation right?
8441475
Reading your comments, I just realized that this is a LOT like Link taking the wolf form in Twilight Princess, or Riku embracing darkness in Kingdom Hearts 2. The realm itself was so different that they had to literally adapt or die. Am I making any sense here?
No way. Did it eat them?!
Welp
Please team up please team up
Whuh?
Look what you've done, Austraeoh Fact Checker! All your research about grilled-cheese-based farts caused this! ...wait a second...
DAMMIT SKIRTS
This'll take like, 15 minutes tops. 10 if there's an ex machina involved.
Also, Dashie must have channeled her inner hedgehog, because that was some excellent chaos control.
That's... the most control Rainbow has had over her transformed self that I've seen in a while.
I was not expecting this.... And is it just me or does she seem more in control of herself then all the other times this has happened? Or maybe I just forgot something...
...I'm actually not surprised this happened..
8441468
I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious, but nobody has mentioned that this may be the first time she has transformed while Discord was manifesting outside of her.
8441478
That bit of music always gave me a headache.
Too discordant.
The horrible, chaotic self-repair that has restored Dash from even the grey line of death is known in many forbidden books as "Regingeration".
Doctor Hooves desires it's secret, but would never desire it's price.
8441509
discogenie.dyndns.org/imgur/pota.jpg
Holy throne...
Oh no...
If she turned, then she might well be the only survivor.
... oh whew. Maybe not.
I kind of wondered if Discord would show up if she took off her pendant while on this side, and I guess now we have the answer. I really, really want to figure out Discord's angle. To be honest, maybe he is trying to convince her to take of the pendant and eventually allow him to be freed . . . somehow. I don't know. I am still a big fan of the important question:
If the Harmonic Prism could revive the rest of the main six, could it also revive Discord? Would it? Because honestly, we have no idea how this works, and if it purges all chaos, then we have many conflicting scenarios that could happen. I feel that maybe Discord knows something about the journey ahead and maybe even the destination. We have no idea how long Discord has been around, so there is no telling what kind of knowledge he may hold.
Or he might just be a major dick. This is also a very big possibility.
It's interesting that Discord can manifest without the pendant being on. I thought that Discord had been freed from the final seed and was bound to her just like the girls were, however this shows that he has a completely different set of rules.
At least on the bright side, all of the injuries she sustained fighting before (and during) going over the edge should be perfectly healed now.
Discord is gonna come back to life (Corporeal body and all) just so Rainbow can strangle the ever loving shit out of him.
If you can have faith as a grain of mustard seed, then surely you can achieve anything.
Jokes on the worm. Killing it is gonna help Dash and the Job Squad bond with Sera
8441810
How does one measure the physical size of an abstract concept? 🤔
If Dash dont want to be Discord but still keep her chaos form on the Dark Sidhe, then she should instead aim not so much for Eris, as Genies cousin, H'Sad?
How rough a state is the Plank left in. Hopefully they have at least one nail left stuck in it. At least that would give them power.
8441452
I'm sure somewhere IC is shaking his head.
8441953
Shaking his head... taking notes... whatever.
I hope that's not a mispelling of what I think it's a mispelling of.
Man, talk about accelerated narrative pacing!
Well this is terribly interesting. Dash actually retains control of her chaos-mode on the Dark Side.
This'll come up later, methinks. Chekhov's gun cocked and loaded...
That escalated quickly.
I really hope Sera was not around to witness the start of the transormation, as it might reignite certain negative attitudes.
8441670
Maybe got any chaplains to spare? Cause I'm pretty sure that counts as a Greater Daemon
You just had to piss off the terrasque, didn't you?
Time to fight the Eater of Worlds
8442391 Nah, it's more like time to defeat the Wall of Flesh whilst Speedrunning.
Well, I mean...she's not an uncontrollable murder machine this time. I suppose that might have been part of the work of the last seed - Discord is able to manifest/speak to her, and she is now in control of her chaos form.
Neat. Wonder if/when/how that'll come into play.
Okay, after reading this, I really want to watch Rainbow trying to harness his inner chaos with Discord's help.
8442512
*Gets flashbacks of trying to beat the Wall of Flesh over and over again with Molten weapons and armor*
Brrr.....
I really hope Dash eventually just gives in to her chaos form, since it seems like she is in control of it on the Dark Side. Being a draconequus surely has its perks.
That was almost disastrous. The last thing we need is a feral chaos!dash on the dark side
I've not thought of Discord as a bad guy for some time now. Twists and turns are his master plan. I think he may have schemed this whole adventure to prevent the death of the ring-remnant How was dash able to defeat him in the first place?
Uhh... "waste"?
Times flying? :) Throw your hips into it.
8442076
Hasn't she usually been able to control herself for a little while after the pendant comes off? I mean, she managed to avoid going full-chaos here, so it may just be that.
Discord being serious about something is always a reason to take note. This question however is something to take seriously whether or not the one asking is being serious. It also implies Discord knows she is going to make it. Foreshadowing, or just messing with Rainbow's head?
10/30/2017
13:56 UTC
8519681
I'm starting to think he's the same discord from Appledashery.
This is very very interesting. She is able to control her chaotic side while on the dark side it seems. I wonder if she can learn to master it and use it to her advantage.
Cough* cough
Huh...interesting. She’s garnering more control over her chaos form this time albeit not completely. She’s still transforming, but despite that, she was able to at least keep herself in control when most of her body is almost laminated by the chaos layer.
Either her being on the dark side is augmenting her adaption to chaos or the harmony she gathered through the obelisks and seeds helped to assist her sense of control.
Pinkie may smell grilled cheese, but I smell the moment
we've allI, at least, have been waiting for. The moment Rainbow realizes Chaos can be useful on her quest, so long as she can wrangle it.