//------------------------------//
// 3: The Downward Spiral 
// Story: No Escape From Yourself 
// by alarajrogers 
//------------------------------//

"Mind tellin' me what you're doin' in my apple orchard?"

Discord opened one eye. Applejack was looking up at him with a skeptical expression, which was funny considering that he hadn't yet said anything for her to be skeptical about. "Sleeping," he said, voice still hoarse from having barely woken. "I'd think that was obvious."

"Thought you were sleeping at Twilight's castle lately."

"Is it such a crime to want some fresh air?" Slowly, carefully, he untwined his limbs from the tree. He ached. His thinking tree really had been much more comfortable for sleeping in; the branches had give and flexibility that the apple tree branches simply didn't, so rather than feeling refreshed, he felt as if he'd been tangled in a knot all night. 

Well. At least it was some variety. He hadn't slept well since the day Tirek had betrayed him, but at least this was a different kind of sleeping badly than nightmares or sleeping on a harmonic crystalline floor.

"You about near gave my brother a heart attack when he came out here this mornin' to work and found you. I don't mind you sleepin' in one of our trees if you ask, but you didn't."

Discord made a face. "Isn't it enough that I have to ask for an escort anytime I want to go somewhere even slightly more interesting than Ponyville? I have to ask if I can sleep in a tree as well?"

"Plenty of trees 'round here are public property. You could've slept in one of them if you wanted."

"Yes, because I love the notion of being exposed to random passersby in Ponyville while I'm asleep and vulnerable. In case you hadn't noticed, Applejack, you have the only orchard in the town's limits. I knew if I slept in a tree it would be one of your family that found me."

Applejack rolled her eyes. "Yeah, fine, but that's why you ask. If Granny Smith'd gotten a startle from you being there, she really could have taken a heart attack."

"That mare will never be startled by anything I do." He grinned. Greensmith was quite possibly the last Apple left in Equestria who remembered the old bargain. He hadn't had any of Eris' Kallisti apples – as far as he knew, Ar was sleeping on all of them, someplace – so he'd acquired his own golden Apples, back in the day. Funny how the family was known now for honest dealing and straightforward behavior, when once upon a time they'd used their power as one of the largest and best-known Earth Pony clans to secretly manipulate the newly formed Equestrian government. He hadn't had any trouble getting some of them to act as his agents in exchange for some level of protection from his chaos. Greenie Smith hadn't been interested in renewing the bargain, but she'd known of it, and by extension, she'd known him better than her grandchildren ever had. If he'd known, the day he'd broken loose, he'd have had some much more interesting things he could have done than make her want to dance.

"Maybe so, but next time ask."

"Only if you invite me in for breakfast."

"What in tarnation makes you think there's any breakfast left? We ate up hours ago. Farmers get started early. You want breakfast at this hour, go to Sugarcube Corner and buy some. Or go back to Twilight's; Pinkie's probably in the kitchen baking up a storm. 't That mare just can't get used to not working in a bakery."

"Oh, fine. I'll go have Pinkie make me breakfast. She appreciates me." He flashed out, and reappeared outside the castle, rather than inside as he'd been planning. Oh, right. Harmonics again. 

At least he wasn't forced to walk. If he concentrated, he could levitate himself still, though he felt less like a balloon drifting on air currents, the way he normally did when he floated, and more like a gyrocopter, struggling constantly to stay afloat and balanced. Discord drifted into the kitchen, where he found a large stack of waffles covered with strawberries, blueberries, mushrooms and hot peppers, and a dish of scrambled eggs mixed with peaches and cream. There was a sign on the counter. Discord peered at the sign, studying it for several seconds before giving up and snapping his talon. Immediately the sign read itself in Pinkie's voice. "Discord! I missed you at breakfast so here is yours! Spike and Twilight and I are sorting things so if you want to be unhelpful it would be terrible if a whole lot of new food supplies and cleaning supplies and things ended up all over the kitchen!"

Discord laughed out loud. "Reverse psychology? That's adorable, Pinkie." He considered actually doing it – the hilarity of "helping" by getting food supplies, and strewing them all over the castle randomly (kitchen would be setting his sights too low) appealed, and right now, the thought of actually doing something that helped seemed strangely appealing in and of itself. Wasn't that what friends did? Help each other? That was why he'd rescued Twilight's books, right? And she and Pinkie would be happy if there was food, and also deeply irritated, at least in Twilight's case, at having to put it all away?

But the problem was, he couldn't conjure it – nothing he made outside the castle would survive the harmonics, and he couldn't make anything inside it – and the alternative was going and buying food. From ponies in Ponyville. Who all knew what he'd done. When he didn't actually have any bits on his person. Celestia had been paying him a stipend so he could cover things he wanted to buy rather than conjure, like going to restaurants, and he'd been getting a small but steady income from Stellar Eclipse, a tradespony who was selling copies of the lamp he'd made for Fluttershy as novelty items and paying Discord 70% of the profits. But all of his bits were stored in his pocket dimension, and he couldn't go there without getting one of the Bearers to help him.

Wait. Celestia had said one of the Bearers, or one of the Princesses. Twilight was both, and he wasn't going to go near Luna at the moment, or near Cadance after he'd taunted her husband right before Tirek had stolen the unicorn's magic – besides, he hated the fact that Cadance always seemed to know what he was feeling. What was the point to having shields that kept alicorns out of his heart and mind if Cadance could just waltz through them? She claimed it was because love was as chaotic as it was harmonic, and that she had to know both types of magic to master her domain, but Discord had never seen her use chaos magic, so he wasn't sure he bought that. 

But Celestia herself had smiled at him, when he gave her apology flowers. Surely Celestia would accompany him to go get money so he could buy food for Twilight's castle? How could she possibly reject one of his exceedingly rare noble impulses? At the very least she should lend him some money until he was off town arrest and could go get his own bits.

He raised a paw, prepared to snap... and stopped, sighing in exasperation as he remembered that he couldn't actually go to Celestia in the first place, because she was in Canterlot, which was not Ponyville.

Well. That wasn't insurmountable. But first, waffles.





Outside, he tried to conjure up some amusing shrubbery to decorate the exterior of Twilight's castle with, but a glare from a couple of passing ponies snuffed out the creative impulse like a candle flame squeezed between his fingers. He sat down heavily, legs drawn up and arms wrapped around them, more or less holding himself in a sitting position rather than just using his muscles, or magic. After a few moments of circling around the question of what he could do to entertain himself in his mind, over and over, he lay down against the grass and observed the clouds. Surely, if he altered some clouds, nopony would be paying attention? Oh, wait, no, there were pegasi up there. Ugh.

"Cloud watching? That seems a sedate pastime for you."

It was Celestia's voice. He tilted his head backward, which, since he was lying flat on his back, involved raising his neck so that his head dangled upside down. "I see you got my message."

"Indeed I did," she said dryly. The message had said, "Celestia, I am actually thinking of doing something helpful, but if you don't come here right now and help me do it, I probably won't, and won't you feel awful knowing that you could have aided me in my quest to make amends and instead you sat on your rump and ate cake and the fleeting opportunity to see me actually be helpful for once would be gone, perhaps never to return? You don't want that guilt on your conscience, I'm sure. I'd come see you but somepony doesn't want me leaving Ponyville." He had illustrated it with a picture of a cake in a circle with a line through it.

Discord sat up, grinning cheerfully. "So! You've come to help me be helpful?"

"I am curious as to what you had in mind."

"Well, I was going to go buy food to stock Twilight's castle, at Pinkie's suggestion. But all my bits are in my house, which isn't in Ponyville, and so I thought to myself, 'Oh dear! How will I ever purchase the supplies for Twilight without running afoul of either Celestia's anti-counterfeiting edicts or her demand that I remain in Ponyville? After all, all of my friends are too busy to come with me to get my bits!' And then I thought to myself, 'Oh, but Celestia is my dear friend! And since my lack of money is entirely her fault, surely she'd be willing to help me!'"

"Why don't you just use magic to create the food?" Celestia asked mildly. "Is there something about the castle that makes your magic problematic?"

Damn Celestia. She was far too insightful. "What makes you think that?" Discord said indignantly – not that he was actually indignant, since her speculation was absolutely true, but he had to throw her off. "It's a ... how do I put this? A penance thing. Making food with a snap is too easy. You told me to stay in Ponyville because you wanted me to deal with the ponies my actions harmed, so... going out to buy food from ponies should count, don't you think?"

Celestia's eyes widened. "I hadn't expected that from you," she said. "I apologize. I didn't realize you were actually taking this making of amends seriously."

He glared. "You don't think I'm capable of feeling sincere regret, do you?"

"No. That's wrong, I'm sure you're capable of it. It just surprises me when I see it, because for centuries, I never saw anything like regret from you." She closed her eyes. "I remember the Discord who wept because of all the animals who died when you sank Marelantis. I remember how you grieved for a pegasus soldier who was caught in the tornado you were using against the dragons. But I thought for many years that that part of you was dead and gone forever."

"I thought it was Luna who thought that I was really dead."

"Luna believes you never came back, yes – or, more precisely, that Discord never came back and that you are not the same being as the chaos mage she called her brother. I knew better... but you changed. You changed so much, Discord. The seeds of who you became were always in you, even from the day I met you, but it's as if when you returned all the worst parts of your personality were exaggerated to the point where they filled you completely, crowding out all of the positive aspects of who you once were."

He swallowed. "So you think I'm nothing but evil, then?" He couldn't keep the anger out of his voice.

"If I'd thought that, I would never have had Fluttershy try to reform you." She sighed. "Sometimes I believe that it's nonsensical to describe a being as evil. Beings do evil things, or good things, or things in between, and most of us do all of those things, in different proportion. Then I remember Sombra – and for that matter Tirek – and I remember that yes, there are those who choose to do so much that is evil, and so little that is good, that they can be described as evil. You never fell into that category. But you were unpredictable in the extreme, and many of the things you did were evil. I know you know what it's like to fight one that you once loved, obviously." A wry smile flickered on her face for a moment. "But do you have any idea what it's like to see one you loved change so very much?"

"Do you have any idea how much you've changed? Yes, I absolutely know what that's like. I saw it with you, I saw it with Luna. You're barely recognizable as my Tia anymore, you know that? And Luna is worse – she seems to have forgotten how to laugh. How does the Element of Laughter forget that?"

"Nightmare Moon hid herself from me for months, lying to me, while plotting my destruction, pretending to still be my loving sister. And, obviously, she turned on me. Luna was Honesty, Loyalty and Laughter, and Nightmare Moon stripped her of all three. Honesty and Loyalty, she has recovered, but Laughter... is taking some time."

"Whatever." Discord waved a paw dismissively. He hadn't wanted to get into a conversation about emotions in the first place. "Can we go and get my bits now?"

"In your dimension, correct?"

"Yes, that's what I said."

"I've never seen it before," Celestia said. "I admit, I'm curious."

He frowned at her. "Never? Really? Surely I took you there at some point."

"I don't think you had it before... the end."

"Huh." She was probably right. He'd experimented with worldwalking before ascending to become the chaos avatar, but he hadn't found the chaos dimension yet.

A thought, and they were there in front of his home, which he'd last left as an ornate Gothic mansion floating in nothingness. In front of its door a detached slab of earth floated, with a brightly cheerful garden full of incompetently carnivorous flowers that would snap and clack the teeth he'd given them but never actually catch anything, and a lawn that gently flowed back and forth like the waves of the ocean, but milder. It was also polka dotted, because plain green, eghh, boring.

"What's the password?" the door squawked like a parrot.

"Peanut butter orange time! Peanut butter orange time! Peanut butter orange and a cloudball bat!" Discord sang at the door.

"Boss, can't you come up with a different password? Your singing is really lousy," the door complained as it swung open.

"Nonsense. My singing voice is the height of beauty. You just have no taste." He gestured, bowing. "After you, your highness."

Celestia walked forward cautiously. "Why do you make your doors argue with you and insult you?"

"Who wants to be surrounded by a whole lot of yes doors?"

Inside, Celestia looked around at the cozy cottage décor, chosen to be vaguely reminiscent of Fluttershy's home and also because it didn't match the exterior, with the furniture running up one wall and across the ceiling. "This doesn't really look like what Twilight described."

Discord frowned. "Twilight? How would she... oh, right, that time she showed up and wrecked the place because of my overdue library books. You really need to watch out for that mare's sanity, you know. Did you really think it was wise to load her up with all of the alicorn magic?"

"I thought I had a better plan, but it didn't work out as I'd hoped," Celestia said dryly. "I took someone else's suggestion that I shouldn't involve Twilight to heart, but that just made matters worse."

"I suppose I walked into that one, didn't I," Discord sighed.

"You did."  Celestia turned and lifted her head to look directly into his eyes. "Discord... when you talked me out of involving Twilight and sending you instead... you didn't intend to betray us then, did you? Did Tirek change your mind, or was that always your plan?"

"Do we have to discuss this now? I just want to get my bits."

Celestia sat down on the couch. "I cleared my entire morning to accompany you here, so I'm in no rush. Aren't you going to offer me tea, Discord? This is the first time I've been a guest at your home."

He snapped his talon impatiently, generating a cup of tea for Celestia. "Happy now?"

"Happier, but I'd be much more pleased if you'd answer my question."

"No," he growled. "No, I wasn't planning on betraying you. I was going to capture Tirek and bring him back and parade him in front of you to demonstrate that you made the right decision in asking me to do it. Except of course that you didn't make the right decision because he suckered me in completely. He made me feel like... like he couldn't respect me if I was serving you ponies. He asked me if I wanted to be a pony errand boy for the rest of my life. And it's true!" He glared at Celestia. "Since you let me out, all I've done is run errands for you."

"We can't risk extra-dimensional entities coming into this world," Celestia said. "The spells Luna and I cast with the Elements to seal the rifts you created, after you were no longer there to seal them yourself or defend us from whatever might come through—"

"And whose fault is that? That I wasn't there?"

"Yours, for being so completely unreasonable and unwilling to compromise that we had no choice but to turn you to stone to stop you. But that stoning spell's failure alerted us to the imminent failure of all the other spells we'd cast with the Elements. So yes, I let you out of stone to prevent the otherwise inevitable result of all of the rifts you'd created reopening within the space of a few years. I'm sorry that you feel that it's boring work, and I'm sure it is boring, but you are quite literally the only one who can do it."

"You and Loonie did it the last time."

"We did it with the Elements. Twilight and her friends couldn't have done the same; among ponies, only an alicorn can detect the alteration in the weave of space that indicates a rift. Then shortly after Twilight became an alicorn, she and her friends had to return the Elements to the Tree to protect it from your plunder vines. And now that they have these Rainbow Powers, we don't know how they will activate them in the future, so it seems unlikely that they'll be able to take the burden off you any time soon." She sipped her tea. "Besides, they have jobs. Aside from this, you don't. I'm sorry you find it so tedious, but this is what I had you released to do."

"There have to be other jobs I could do around here."

"I thought so too, and tried you out on 'stopping villains bent on conquering Equestria', but it didn't work very well."

"Look, I know I screwed that up, all right? I'm sorry. I've said I was sorry. I don't know what you want me to do, aside from twiddle my thumbs in Ponyville."

Celestia put her tea down. "I want you to acknowledge that you did something terrible, and that you can't fix it." She tossed her head back, flinging her mass of multicolored mane out of her eyes for a moment so she could gaze directly at him with both of them. "He threw us in Tartarus, Discord. And you stood by and watched, and did nothing."

"Hey, you threw him in Tartarus. For a thousand years."

"What else were we supposed to do? No pony could hold him prisoner; he'd drain any who guarded him of their magic. And he's immortal. Exactly how else were we to protect our ponies from him?"

"You could have thought of something. I hated the idea of using Tartarus as a prison before I spent a thousand years in a much more confined prison myself, and that didn't improve my opinion of it any. You put thinking, speaking beings in a place where they don't need food or water, and they don't age, and most of them aren't confined anywhere near any others so they have no one to talk to, and you let them rot. Just like you did to me."

"It doesn't say much for your sudden moral revulsion about Tartarus that you allowed Cadance to be sent there. She had nothing to do with imprisoning Tirek the first time."

"I already told you I was intending to come back for you, after everything was over. I let Tirek have his moment of revenge, but I was still more powerful than he was, then. And I still haven't entirely figured out how he ever managed to reverse that."

"That's interesting. 'After everything was over.' But you never told him about Cloudsdale. Or the cloud city portions of Las Pegasus. So in your opinion, when was it expected to be over? After Twilight was defeated? After you'd told him about Cloudsdale? After you'd literally stolen the magic from every single pony in Equestria? That could have taken months, or years."

Discord sighed. "I... wasn't going to tell him about Cloudsdale. He couldn't fly, so what was the point?"

"You can fly. And teleport. And carry passengers when you teleport."

"Well, I hadn't figured out how to let him harvest magic from Cloudsdale without killing all the ponies in it. Pegasi can't cloudwalk without magic. They'd have fallen."

Celestia nodded slowly, as if this confirmed something for her. "So you never actually intended to let your ally have all the magic in Equestria. Thus ensuring that he'd never have a full and complete victory, and that resistance to his rule would always remain an option. You also didn't let him take magic from ponies below cutie mark age."

"He thought ponies without cutie marks didn't have magic yet."

"And you never told him otherwise."

"This is sounding suspiciously like you're getting on my case for being a bad ally to Tirek and leaving loopholes for you ponies. Seriously?"

"No, that's not my intention at all." Celestia sighed. "I suppose... I'm still trying to understand. You betrayed us for Tirek, but you were secretly betraying Tirek the entire time you served him, by keeping secrets he'd have needed to know in order to win completely. Whose side were you really on?"

"I didn't serve Tirek," Discord snapped. "We were supposed to be allies. Partners. I kept having to shut him down and override what he wanted because he kept trying to kill ponies."

"And that didn't serve as a clue that perhaps you shouldn't have been working with him?"

"Haven't we been through this already? I thought I could keep him under control. Most of the time it wasn't that he wanted to kill ponies so badly, it was just that he didn't understand why I didn't want him to. The Wonderbolts, I admit, he actively wanted to kill, and I had to convince him that killing them would make him look weaker, not stronger."

"You have always been opposed to wanton killing, as long as I've known you. Why would you ally yourself with a would-be killer?"

Discord snorted. "Tirek is not even in the top ten most bloodthirsty individuals I've met. I've been to worlds where there were heroes, protectors of the 'innocent' and maintainers of 'law'—" He made air quotes with one of his talons and a finger from his lion paw. "—and they thought the only appropriate thing to do with criminals was to kill them. And everyone in their world agreed with them, and saw them as heroes regardless of the blood on their hooves. Or paws, hands, claws, whatever they had."

Celestia's eyes went wide. "There have been times I've envied your freedom to walk between worlds," she said, "but this is not one of them. So you're saying Tirek didn't strike you as all that terrible because he wasn't murderous enough?"

"Kind of. Yes. You don't—You ponies have this notion that morality is absolute, that because you're herbivores you can get away with a belief that all killing of living beings is wrong, all the time, unless there is absolutely no other choice. And you've got the requisite magic that you made mosquitoes and horseflies go extinct so long ago that it doesn't need to trouble you now, and when you have ants or rats, you try to chase them off first. And don't get me wrong, I agree with you, but that's just because I was raised in your world. When I visited ancient Anugypt, the cats considered it their sacred duty to kill and eat the rats and mice that got into the ponies' grain, because grass and wheat only grew for a short time each year and if the rodents ruined what was in the storehouses, ponies would starve and die. And the jackals considered it their sacred duty to eat the dead bodies of ponies, cats and other jackals, because resources are scarce in the desert and dead bodies bring disease. And cats and jackals are carnivores, so a kinder solution like Fluttershy talking to the rats and getting them to go away would have just starved the cats."

"I'm aware that other nations have other customs. The Taur nations are all more willing to kill in battle or to eliminate a nuisance, because they're all omnivores. But none of the Taur nations has an official policy that values killing helpless, defeated enemies."

"I admit it, Tirek was a little on the edge even for a centaur. But I've met beings where their goal was to kill their enemies. Tirek didn't want you all dead, he just wanted your magic, and if he had to kill to get it he wouldn't mourn, but it wasn't his purpose. And besides... I knew he was a bad guy. I'm a bad guy. Or I was, for centuries, and... it doesn't feel the way you might think it would feel. I don't feel guilty over the fact that ponies are entirely convinced that I was a horrible, horrible creature for centuries. I don't feel like there's a huge difference between reformed me and villainous me. Tirek made me feel like... like I couldn't be respected if I was reformed."

Celestia sighed. "Most ponies get over that kind of peer pressure when they're cutie mark age."

"Peer pressure? Is that what that was? I never thought I had peers."

"You learned just enough about what it's like to have a friend from Fluttershy that you were able to make exactly the wrong one. You said he told you he despised friendship, and yet everything you've said suggests that you thought he was your friend."

"Of course he said he despises friendship and that it's a weakness. That's... just what villains do. I said things like that myself. But I always knew that friendship is both a terrible weakness and a tremendous strength; that's why I set out to break up friendships and destroy them. If I'd really thought it was a weakness, I'd have encouraged ponies to make friends so I could use their friends against them." He sat down in a chair heavily. "But I was never sure... it was always possible that that was exactly what Fluttershy was doing to me. Using my friendship against me, trying to control me. I mean, she said she was my friend, but I'm not stupid. That first day, she told her friends she was playing along with whatever I did because she wanted me to trust her, so I'd listen to her. And after you ponies had to return the Elements to the Tree... I knew you had no way to contain me if I decided to go rogue again. I knew Fluttershy being my friend, and the other five at least pretending not to hate me, were the only restraints you could put on me. So even if Fluttershy hated me she'd have had to pretend."

"Fluttershy cares very much about you, and has since you became friends."

"I know that now." He looked down at the floor. "When... when she cried, and she said she never saw it coming. That she really, genuinely thought I wouldn't do something like this. If you're manipulating someone to do what you want, and they don't do it, you don't feel betrayed. You don't cry about it. You might feel angry, or frustrated, or afraid, depending on what you were manipulating them to do. But you'd only feel grief if it wasn't manipulation."

"I'll take your word for it. I've felt grief when ponies have rejected what I was trying to manipulate them into doing, but in those cases the manipulation was to get them to do what was in their own best interest as well as every other pony's, and I did care for them. I'm presuming you're talking about a kind of manipulation where you don't care about your target and you don't have their best interests in mind at all, only your own."

"I'm glad to see you recognize that manipulating ponies to do what you think is in their best interest is still manipulation, though. Is this a veiled reference to me?"

"I was speaking of Brightest Star, actually. Though I suppose it does apply to you as well."

"I wasn't around for the new cutie mark and even I know she's going by Screwball now."

"I know. But she'll always be Brightest Star to me." Now it was Celestia's turn to look down. "And if you were able to hear in stone, then she spent more time with you than she ever did with me. I'd always find her in the gardens, out by your statue."

Discord shrugged. "She's not very talkative."

Celestia set down her tea. "I had hoped... when I had you released, when I asked Fluttershy to reform you... that perhaps we could become friends again. We seemed to be getting along... about as well as you're probably capable of getting along with anypony who represents authority. I know you have to challenge me; I know you have to do your best to break my composure and annoy me every time we meet, because the only reason you ever refrained from treating me that way, when we were young, was our love, and I know that's something we'll never have back. But I had at least thought there was something other than resentment in your heart, toward me. And yet you stood by and let me, my sister and my innocent niece be thrown into Tartarus to fulfill your new 'friend's' desire for revenge. You apologized, and Cadance says you were sincere, and I want to believe it. But how can such extremes co-exist? How can you be so uncaring, or resentful and angry, that you do nothing when we're sent to Tartarus, and then so anguished over the bad decisions you made that you offer that we could imprison you there ourselves?"

Discord's eyes narrowed. "Tartarus has nothing on being in stone, and I knew Kerby would take good care of you. He's a good dog. He wouldn't be able to let you out, but he'd make sure you weren't harmed until I could come back for you. And I was going to come back for you. I did, as soon as I got my powers back. Of course you got your powers back too so it's not like you needed me to but I didn't think of that. And I think a couple of days or weeks in Tartarus is nothing. Luna suffered far, far worse than that and she's your baby sister. If you got a tiny taste of what you were so comfortable condemning others to, I didn't think that was going to be the end of your world."

"You still resent me and Luna for binding you."

"What was your first clue?"

"Do you still not understand why we had to do it?"

"No. No, honestly I don't." He paced on air, tail swishing. "When Luna went loony, she wanted to keep the sun from ever rising again. Which would mean either baking the other side of the planet in eternal daylight, or pushing the sun away entirely and plunging the world into ice. And even if she had a solution for those problems, even if she knew of a way to keep plants growing under moonlight, perpetual darkness is still bad for practically everyone and it's highly unlikely that she wouldn't have caused mass extinctions even if she managed to keep ponies alive. I didn't do anything like that, but you kept me locked up longer than she was and you had no plans to ever release me. You flat out told the Element Bearers you hoped I'd be locked up forever. And she could move."

Celestia looked down. "That... wasn't actually true. I was angry when I said that, and very upset, and off-balance."

"In my experience that's when the truest words come out of ponies' mouths."

"Your experience is limited. You're the Spirit of Disharmony. Of course you see truth in anger." She looked up at him. "I longed to be able to release you, and Luna. I knew that if I had more alicorns, I would have an alternate method of containing your excesses, and I tried to raise some up, but almost every single one was a failure of some sort. When Luna came free, and the Elements purged her of her demons rather than banishing her again, I thought – I hoped – maybe they would do the same for you? Or maybe, once the girls were stronger in their friendships and more tested, I could release you, and years in stone would make you willing to compromise, to moderate your own behavior. But you broke free on your own before I had the chance, and you showed every sign of trying to turn the world into the same madhouse you kept us in for centuries." She shook her head. "The Discord of my childhood believed in democracy, because it was the most chaotic form of government possible, but you decided setting yourself up as an arbitrary and unpredictable dictator was a better idea. In our childhood, you believed in personal freedom; but then you ruled over a world where none could ever truly be free, because they were too busy trying to navigate complete unpredictability to live their lives as they wanted. I remember how you enjoyed it when I read books to you about history or other cultures, because you were fascinated by learning about anypony who lived their lives a different way than we do. Then you destroyed libraries wantonly, turning books into pies and setting hungry foals on them or making them wooden tablets that could never be opened and read. You talked about progress, about the fascination that the study of magic and the physical world held for you, how you imagined a day when the power of unicorn nobles with far-reaching bloodlines was surpassed by earth ponies from nowhere with no known bloodline using devices that could channel magic. Then you created a world that made such studies, and the creation of such devices, impossible."

Discord winced. "I was young. I was a lot more ideological about Chaos."

"You kept it up for eight hundred years. I'm fairly sure you don't get to argue that you were young for the entire length of it." 

"So if I'm so horrible why did you risk letting me out? Why did you ever think it was a good idea to trust me with anything?"

"Because keeping someone trapped in stone is a horrible fate if they're conscious. I didn't know for certain that you were; Luna didn't tell me that you appeared to her in her dreams. I didn't know until you broke free. And in that short time when I saw the possibility of everything I'd worked for, for a thousand years, destroyed in days by a petulant child obsessed with Chaos... yes, then I wanted you locked up forever. Then I was angry at myself for ever imagining that we could be happy again, and my words were bitter, and reflected what I wanted to believe I believed, rather than what I actually did believe. But afterward... I realized you were conscious in there, and I understood then, I could not allow that to continue. I had to free you. I had to wait until I was sure Twilight was almost ready to become an alicorn and Cadance had truly found her power within, and I didn't see how to do it until I saw what power Fluttershy had to tame chaotic nature, over and over. And I had to win over Luna, because we are a diarchy and her trust in me is fragile and I was not willing to lose my sister again in an attempt to save you. But she recognized the necessity of using your power to close the rifts you created, as little as she liked it." 

"I just don't understand what you want from me. I apologized. I can't go back in time and fix it so I never did it, so what do you want me to do? I gave you flowers, and you smiled at me and accepted the token of apology. If you hadn't forgiven me why did you accept that? And if you have, why are you asking me all this, over and over?"

"Contrary to popular belief, I am not a perfect, unfeeling paragon of goodness." Celestia sighed. "Discord... I was terrified. From the moment I learned you'd betrayed us. I turned to Twilight instead, and I trust Twilight, but I'd never trained her for this. Luna wouldn't actually have been willing to see all of ponykind die; you, as you pointed out, wouldn't have killed anypony if Twilight had lost to you; and the whole time Twilight was fighting to save the Crystal Empire from Sombra, Luna and I were standing by, watching from a scrying spell and ready to step in if she failed. I had backup plans in place for Nightmare Moon. I had nothing for you, and honestly that terrified me too, and I never saw Chrysalis coming, but my visions had told me that Cadance and Shining Armor would be married and Cadance would find her power, so I wasn't overly frightened then. But with Tirek... my visions never showed me that we would win. Or lose. I saw nothing except his return. I knew you could handle him, but then you joined him, and I had nothing but fear and self-recrimination. Why had I trusted you? Why had I listened to you when you insisted you could do it alone? What would happen if Twilight lost? I knew Tirek cannot take higher-level magic against the will of the holder until he achieves close levels to that power, and I didn't foresee that he'd get to the point where he could take you, but I was sure he couldn't easily get up to the point where he could take one alicorn with the powers of four... but what if I was wrong?"

He felt helpless, guilty... and angry. He knew he'd done something awful. Why did she keep rubbing it in? "I'm sorry. I already said so. Multiple times."

"I don't need you to tell me you're sorry. I need you to listen," she said. Calmly and peacefully. Why wouldn't she yell at him if she was so upset? "When our powers returned to us and I realized Twilight must have won, I was delighted. When you apologized, I was nearly giddy with relief. And believe it or not, I was deeply moved by the fact that you apologized, and the flowers were delicious." She sighed. "But it's not enough, Discord. How do I know this isn't going to happen again? You resent and hate me for locking you in stone for a thousand years—"

"—I don't hate you—"

"—and I could hardly blame you, because what I did was horrible. I can barely believe that Luna forgives me. And you and I were at odds far, far longer than Luna and I were."

That brought him up short. "You used to flop down in front of my statue and cry about how sorry you were, but I never thought you meant it, because you never let me out."

"I'd have needed the Elements of Harmony to let you out. Once Luna was gone, I couldn't free either her or you."

"This is the first time you've apologized for it after I've been freed."

"Well. Then I suppose we are both breaking new ground with apologies." Her magic lifted her mane out of her other eye again. "I am sorry, Discord. I didn't choose the manner in which Harmony chose to stop you. I did make the choice to stop you, with Harmony, without knowing what it would do to you, and for that I cannot be sorry... you had to be stopped. But I never wanted to turn you to stone. I was hoping it would cancel your powers out, restore you to what you once were when we were all mortals – not to fully strip your power but to leave you with only what you could remain sane with. I didn't dare expect what I hoped for, though; I thought it probably would kill you. I never imagined it would paralyze you in stone, or allow you to remain conscious within. Nor did I ever imagine that I'd lose my sister and be left helpless to free you, or that that state would last a thousand years. None of that was my intent, and if there was any way I could have done things differently and still stopped you from tormenting all of Equestria, I would have." She looked away. "If you cannot forgive me, I understand. It's painful, but I believe I probably don't deserve forgiveness. I had hoped we could find our way back to friendship again, but if it's not to be, then so be it.  We've hurt each other terribly. I understand that." 

"I never said it wasn't possible," Discord said hoarsely.

"Here is what I need, though. Forgive me or don't, as you will. Accept my friendship, or don't. But I need to know that you will never again betray Equestria. That you will never turn on Fluttershy and Twilight and Pinkie again. That you will never make yourself into an enemy of ponykind again. It seems to me that you changed sides so easily. You joked with me, you flirted with me – less than competently, but still – and you called the girls your friends and gave them the hints they needed to understand the keys to the box, and you knew or suspected that something like the Rainbow Powers awaited them. Then you turned on them to aid Tirek. But even as you aided Tirek, you kept secrets from him – you didn't tell him about Cloudsdale. You obviously didn't tell him about Twilight right away, because he didn't know where we'd sent our magic. You didn't tell him about the box. And then the moment he betrayed you, you were completely remorseful for what you'd done – as if deep down you'd always understood how reprehensible your betrayal was, but chose to overlook it because you wanted Tirek's friendship more than ours." She breathed in deeply. "Luna thought you might be lying, weeping crocodile tears and claiming remorse so we wouldn't punish you for your betrayal, but Cadance says you sincerely feel love – for who, and what type of love, she cannot ascertain, but even I can tell it's not for Tirek. And I want to believe, I must believe, that even you cannot harm what you love and still feel no guilt. But... Fluttershy senses emotion, and she didn't see your betrayal coming. She says you are sincere as well. But if she couldn't tell you were about to betray her, how can I be certain she can tell your sincerity? Or, the possibility that may even be worse – you love, you're sincere, you feel genuine remorse, and yet you betray even with all of that true, because you simply can't help yourself. Because as soon as Chaos took you over completely, loyalty was burned out of your nature and you're no longer capable of restraining yourself for the sake of those you care for."

"That's not true!" Discord said hotly. "I... I cared about Fluttershy because I thought she cared about me, but if she was just pretending to be my friend to control me then why would I care? If you see me as nothing but a useful tool then why would I care about you? If Twilight only pretends to be my friend because she's afraid of what I'll do if I know she's not, and she only helped me when I got sick because she was afraid it was contagious, then why would I care about her? If ponies who never even met me, who I didn't do anything to, hate and fear me, why do I care about them?" He was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. "But Fluttershy cried when I betrayed her because she never saw it coming. And Twilight insisted on saving me from Tirek even though she didn't know he was going to kill me and she didn't know I'd bargained with Tirek to get him to let them all live long enough to be hostages. And you could probably have come up with any punishment and I'd have cooperated with it, right afterward, when I was feeling terrible about what I'd done, but you basically just gave me a slap on the wrist and I know that. And Pinkie invited me to live with her at the new castle because she needs me as a companion to keep her entertained so she doesn't harass Twilight when she gets bored. And Rarity offered to dance with me to prove to Ponyville that the Bearers think I can be trusted. And Rainbow Dash says my wings are beautiful when I have them grown out." He shook his head wildly. "I'm not... I thought nopony cared about me. That it was all a lie to control me. I was thinking it before Tirek said anything, but I hadn't gotten a better offer and I didn't want to believe it was true about Fluttershy. If they do care about me, then why would I betray them?"

"You knew I loved you."

Discord shrugged helplessly. "You left me."

"We saw you die!"

"I know."

"Do you have any idea how profoundly irrational it was for you to blame us for abandoning you when the last thing we'd seen of you was your body being annihilated in an explosion of pure energy?"

"Celestia... I'm Chaos. Yes, I'm profoundly irrational a lot of the time. It comes with the territory."

"Are you going to destroy the world when Fluttershy dies because you're angry at her for leaving you?"

He swallowed. "No, of course not," he said, and wondered if what he was saying was true. "I... I'm used to the chaos now. When it came to me, and asked me if I wanted to carry it and live, or if I wanted to stay dead... I was already a chaos mage. I was good at it. I was routinely pushing myself to the limit. I had no idea how much... more it would be. I... I didn't handle it very well, in the beginning. But I've had a long time to get used to it. And... maybe sometimes I don't get to do exactly what I want to do, but... sometimes ponies spontaneously want to do something nice for me. Without being afraid of what will happen if they don't, without caring more about my power than me. If that's real... if they really do care about me... I want to keep that more than I want to be able to do anything I want to do. I just... I thought Tirek cared and no one else did, and I had it backwards. Because he didn't hate my chaos, and I know everypony but Pinkie does. But I could have been the spirit of paperwork and Tirek would have pretended he loved my work just to use my power."

"I don't hate chaos," Celestia said.

Discord blinked. "What?"

She gestured with her head around the room. "This is all beautiful and fascinating. Discord, I'm not going to pretend it's the same thing as what either you or Luna suffered... but I've been a prisoner of my position for a thousand years, and I still am. I don't get to travel to strange and interesting lands without it being a huge diplomatic affair. I don't get to explore anything different. I have to smile and nod and play the part of the perfect princess all the time, and my life is more regimented than you can probably even imagine. I'd love some chaos. What I hate is the suffering of my little ponies. If you could only learn to keep the chaos from causing harm... perhaps it would frighten some of them, but we live in a world full of magic. How can we not embrace the ways in which magic can enhance our lives? How can we not love a little bit of impossible strangeness, when it's our birthright to create?"

"Who are you and what have you done with Celestia?"

Celestia laughed. "Why did you think the filly who fell in love with you could possibly grow up into a mare who hates chaos? Of course, I love order too. Both need to exist in moderation. And I'm personally better at creating order than creating chaos. I've always envied you and Luna for your imaginations. But that doesn't mean it doesn't thrill me to see it, especially from a master like yourself. It's just... in the old days, you caused harm with it. You thought all you needed to do was make sure ponies never directly died from anything you did, but you didn't care how many souls you crushed or hearts you broke or dreams that died in the face of the unending struggle to survive your chaos with anything more than a life intact. You never killed if you could help it, but so many ponies felt life wasn't worth living in the circumstances you created."

"They couldn't adapt."

"You couldn't have adapted either if you hadn't been the one in control of it. Ponies must feel that they can have some influence over their own destiny, or they die inside." She laid a wing on his shoulder.  "Let's get your bits."

"Done putting me through the wringer, then?" he asked bitterly.

"As done as you are with going out of your way to annoy me when I give you an assignment," Celestia said. "Which means no, but I'm done for the moment, I admit."





After the stress of the conversation with Celestia, his nerve failed him when he thought of going to the store. He tried to summon up his usual devil-may-care lack of interest in what ponies thought of him, but it wouldn't come. The ponies who hated him today had reasons, and Celestia had reminded him of those reasons, poking him in the wound of his guilt over and over. So he took the form he'd used to track down Tirek, the fictional gray unicorn with a black mane and a cutie mark showing a tornado, Twister. 

With him in that form, the general store keeper was eager to serve him, cheerfully loading his saddlebags with canned goods and boxes. The canned goods consisted of the most exotic vegetable matter that Discord could find in the store – coconut milk, bamboo shoots, every kind of canned legume they had – after all, they'd have to feed him, because he couldn't make his own food in the castle, and he needed lots of protein – every kind of canned tomato product they had, and all the pie fillings he could find. Including squash. Squash was a pie filling, right? He also got cheese and tortillas for quesadillas, because Twilight was freaked out by quesadillas, and boxes of unusual grains, such as flax seed flour and cardamom rice. He didn't get any cleaning supplies because cleaning was much too much like making things orderly, except that he did get ten mops, and foals' paints. Once he was far enough away from the store that no one could see him, he took back his own form in an alley, filling the alley with swirling darkness so nopony could see him there. He painted eyeballs on the mop handles, by hand so the harmonics wouldn't interfere, and animated them to stroll behind him carrying small bags containing portions of his load of groceries.

Pumping a great deal of power into the mops, far more than he would ordinarily use for an animation spell, right before he entered Twilight's palace, allowed the spell to survive entering the field of the harmonics. He then sent the mops willy-nilly whatever way they would go. They would either run around indefinitely carrying the supplies, or, more likely, the spell would run out and they'd fall over in a random place, releasing their burden of cans to fall out and roll all over the floor, or dropping a pile of boxes. The cheese and tortillas for quesadillas, he thoughtfully put in the coldbox the castle had seen fit to provide, right on top of all the other chilled supplies where nopony could miss it. After all, cheese was perishable.





But he was so bored.

They were all still cleaning, and organizing. He didn't even want to walk into the room with them. Besides, his prank would work better if they encountered the various locations in which the mops would have dropped the cans without him being present. But that meant he had no one to entertain him. He couldn't go back home, and didn't really want to anyway. Fluttershy was still in Manehattan. What was he supposed to do with himself?

Well. It wasn't a schoolday. Maybe he could go annoy the Cutie Mark Crusaders. They were neither princesses nor Element Bearers, so he couldn't take them out of Ponyville, but if he could get them interested in another cutie mark quest, he was sure he could get them to do something chaotic and entertaining.





"What do you mean I'm trespassing? You made me an honorary Cutie Mark Crusader!" He snapped up a copy of the cape they'd given him. "Remember?"

Angrily Scootaloo yanked the cape off of his back. "Yeah, no, we're rewinding that," she said sharply.

"Rescinding," Sweetie Belle said primly. "We're rescinding it. Not rewinding it."

"Thanks, Sweetie, maybe you'll get your cutie mark in being a living dictionary," Scootaloo groused. 

"Stop arguing in front of him," Apple Bloom said, pointing an accusing hoof at Discord. "The last time we got into it about somepony being a dictionary, we accidentally let him out of stone, remember?"

"Right, and that was totally his fault!" Scootaloo glared up at Discord. "Are you using your magic to make us fight with each other again? Are you?"

"Why would I want to do that?" Discord asked, bewildered. "We're friends. Aren't we?"

"Why would we be friends with a traitor?" Scootaloo asked.

"You stole our older sisters' magic! And practically all the magic in Equestria!" Sweetie Belle snapped. "We thought you were our friend!"

"But then you gave all the magic in Equestria to that Turkey guy!" Scootaloo reared up, hooves on hips, flapping her wings just enough to stay upright.

"Tirek," Discord corrected automatically. "Turkey is what you'll be when you grow out of being a chicken."

Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "Oh, ow, chicken jokes. Like I don't hear those practically every single day."

"Did you, or did you not, help T-Rex steal all the magic in Equestria, including our older sisters and all the princesses?" Apple Bloom demanded.

"Tirek. He's a centaur, not a dinosaur. And I didn't help him take magic from any princesses. Celestia had all the princesses give their magic to Twilight, and Twilight surrendered it to Tirek to save your sisters and the other Element Bearers. And me. Because he stole my magic too!"

"Okay, and who captured our sisters and their friends and Spike?"

Discord closed his eyes. "I admit, that was me, but—"

"But nothing. You admitted it." Apple Bloom banged her gavel. "Cutie Mark Crusaders, how do we vote?"

"Vote on what?" Discord asked.

Sweetie Belle glared at him. "We invited you to be an honorary Cutie Mark Crusader. We asked you for help, and you gave it, so we let you join. Our friends get to be Cutie Mark Crusaders. Not ponies – or draconequuses – who hurt our friends and family."

This was exactly what he'd feared, and yet now that it was happening, it seemed surreal. They weren't even letting him defend himself! "I helped defeat Tirek! And I apologized!"

"Uh-huh. That's totally likely," Scootaloo snorted.

"Even if it's true, it doesn't matter," Apple Bloom said. "You can't just say 'sorry' and have it be like you never did anything bad. Cousin Braeburn said you hunted him and other Earth ponies down with a lasso like they were stampeding cows, except they were running away from a danger trying to take their magic, and you lassoed them up and handed them over like it wasn't anything." She shook her head. "That was an awful, awful thing to do. Even awfuller than making Ponyville the Chaos Capital and messing with my brother and my grandma's heads, because you were a bad guy then, but this time you were supposed to be our friend."

"But I'm sorry," Discord said helplessly.

"I thought you were just misunderstood," Sweetie Belle said. "And kind of an airhead, after you let us get almost eaten by a giant bird because you weren't paying attention, but that wasn't you being mean, and we make a lot of dumb mistakes. We'd never say somepony couldn't be our friend just because they made a dumb mistake. But this wasn't a dumb mistake, this was a mean mistake. This was worse than anything Diamond Tiara ever did ever!"

"Take the vote," Scootaloo said.

"Cutie Mark Crusaders, all those in favor of stripping Discord of his honorary Cutie Mark Crusadership because he helped that dumb centaur steal everypony's magic, say aye. All those against, say neigh."

"Wait a minute, don't I even get to defend myself?" Discord vanished from the center of the clubhouse and reappeared next to Sweetie Belle, sidled next to her with his neck lowered and curled downward, and his head up against hers, side to side. "Come on, now, I deserve a chance to tell my side of the story, don't I? Sweetie Belle, have you ever considered getting a cutie mark as a public defender?"

She pushed him away, with hooves since she wasn't particularly skilled with her magic. "This is serious, Discord!"

"I know this is serious! But if this was a real court, I'd be given the opportunity to defend myself!"

"Did you do it or didn't you?" Apple Bloom asked.

"I did, but—"

She banged her gavel again. "The defendant pleads guilty. Cutie Mark Crusaders, how do we vote?"

"Aye aye aye aye aye!" Scootaloo yelled, jumping up and down. "I could say it ten more times if it would help!"

"Umm...." Sweetie Belle looked away from Discord, whose face was maybe showing a little bit more of his dismay and hurt than he'd really intended to show, now that he was thinking about it. "I have to say aye. You can't just steal ponies' magic. That's terrible! He even made their cutie marks disappear!"

"But I told Tirek that foals without cutie marks didn't have any magic!" Discord shouted. "I lied to him to protect you!"

Apple Bloom shook her head. "If you were gonna lie to him to protect us, that just proves you knew what you were doing was bad," she said. "Aye as well." Once more she banged her gavel. "Sweetie Belle! Put it down in the record that Discord is not an honorary Cutie Mark Crusader anymore!"

Sudden rage welled. They weren't even going to give him a chance? They'd already decided he was an awful villain, for something that was done and over and everypony he cared about except them had forgiven him for? Well, then. He could be a villain, if they wanted him to be so badly. He could be as awful a villain as they could imagine, and worse.

The fillies must have seen something in his eyes. They shrieked, and backed away from him, up against the wall of the clubhouse. "You better not try anything!" Scootaloo said, her voice shaking.

"Our sisters will be real mad if you do anything to us," Apple Bloom said, equally shakily. "And now that they have that Rainbow Power thingummy you don't want to cross them!"

The desire to harm the children drained from him – not because of the threat, but because of the reminder that they were children, and that their sisters were his friends, and fighting children was beneath him. But it hurt. "Do anything to you? As if," he sneered. "I was only humoring you by pretending to care about your juvenile little club, or about your issues with cutie marks of all things, as if anyone could possibly care." He drew himself up to his full height. "I don't need to be a part of your pathetic club. In case you hadn't noticed, I am an adult, and I have known what my own special talents were since I was barely out of infancy. Your obsession with your own ignorance is pathetic. No doubt you're all going to discover that your special talents are for mining garbage, or folding laundry, or something equally banal. I don't need to involve myself with anything so trivial and boring as your childish 'crusade.' But do go on questing for your cutie marks, the chaos you make is delicious." He snapped his talon and vanished, reappearing a short distance from Twilight's castle.

He was not going to cry. They were children. He didn't need them, and he didn't need their stupid club. Their sisters were his friends, so why should he care what a trio of mewling brats thought?





Bemused, Discord stared at the disorganized piles of books everywhere. It was beautiful, but it was horribly confusing. Why wasn't Twilight even attempting to organize them?

A moment later his question was answered as Twilight galloped into the room, looking completely disheveled. "Discord! You – uh... were you responsible for those mops?"

"The ones I enchanted to deliver the groceries Pinkie asked me to get? Indeed they were. You're welcome, by the way."

"They got into a war with each other. There is flour all over one of the upstairs rooms. And flax grains. And rice." She sighed. "They were your mops; think you could help clean up?"

"Sadly, cleaning up is simply not something chaos has any natural affinity for," he said, sighing deeply. He threw his head back dramatically, arm laid across his eyes. "Oh, if only my magic would allow me to undo chaos that my magic didn't directly create, I could help my dear, dear friend with cleaning up her castle! But, unfortunately, such is beyond me." Discord tilted his head back down and looked at Twilight. "Perhaps I could possibly animate some brooms to help you with it..."

"No, no, that's fine, that's just fine, we've got it under control," Twilight said hastily. "But hay, I do have something you could do to help, if you're able. I mean I don't know quite how far your inability to organize things goes... you found the pattern with the keys to the box, so obviously you can detect organization even when nopony else can..."

His ears perked. Twilight actually wanted him to help in some capacity? "Go on."

"You see all these books? I'm getting book donations from all over. Which is wonderful, don't get me wrong, but I'm getting massive duplication. You read faster than any pony, including me. Would you be able to read through them and sort them just a little teeny bit?"

"I shudder to think what you consider just a little teeny bit of sorting."

"No, no, Spike agrees with me! He says it's just a teeny bit of sorting! I'd have him doing it, but, well, flour everywhere. And you read faster than he does anyway, with that whole 12 books at a time thing."

Discord sighed deeply. "What qualifies in your mind as just a teeny bit of sorting?"

"I need to assess whether a book should go to my collection, or the library you made for me. So anything that's fiction, if it's genre or accessible, normal fiction, it goes to Ponyville. Weird and experimental and highly literary goes to me. Nonfiction, if it's special pegasus or earth pony interest – like books about gardening, or flying – goes to Ponyville. Also sports. Unicorn interest goes to me, also pretty much any academic topic that isn't something practical you'd use in Ponyville. The second copy of any book that goes to me goes to the library, and the second copy of any book that goes to the library goes to me, and Discord what are you doing?"

He looked up from the floor where he was sitting. "Filing my toeclaws," he said. "It's so very important to keep them in trim, or I might trip all over everything."

"Did you hear anything I said?"

"I don't know, it might possibly have dribbled out the other ear," he said, and tried as hard as he could to produce an appropriate effect. Nothing came. "I think I heard 'give you all the books and if there are extra copies, the first extra copy goes to Ponyville Library and the rest get flung into the Everfree Forest so Fluttershy can teach the manticores to read.'"

Twilight glared at him. "You know perfectly well that is not what I said."

Discord chuckled. "I heard you, Twilight. Never fear."

She sighed. "All third copies of anything, and beyond, go to the library. I don't need more than one copy of anything."

He saluted her. "Jawohl, meine Prinzessin!"

And thus Discord came to be perched on a pile of books, sprawled out, while ten of them read themselves to him. That spell was simple enough – and, presumably, non-chaotic enough – that the harmonics didn't interfere, and when Rarity came to help Twilight and complained (loudly, which had some irony to it) that he was being loud and disruptive in a library, he smirked at her and told her that Twilight had told him to do this. It was even better when Twilight backed him up.

Discord could not, in fact, read faster than every pony in Equestria; he could only read at the speed of speech sped up to double-time, and there were ponies, Twilight among them, who read twice as fast as speech. What he could actually do that no pony could do (or anyone, so far as he knew) was utilize his ability to detect patterns within what ponies perceived as chaos to read many of them at once. Twilight could read close to three times faster than a pony could speak, but not ten times faster. Or twenty, or fifty, or a hundred, but right now Discord was relaxing. His maximum capacity for skimming information was probably fifty items at double speed each, but he didn't feel like working that hard and it was actually more annoying to ponies when he didn't use the high speed. The high speed was a squealing high-pitched noise to ponies, that they found irritating certainly, but when he read ten things at normal speed ponies would get constantly distracted trying to understand ten different sources of information at once.

All Twilight needed was for him to classify the books, but classifying was boring and hard, so he was reading a good bit of each one before tossing it into a pile. Regardless of what Twilight had told him, he was putting most of them in her pile, unless they were duplicates or things he knew for certain Twilight had no interest in. Twilight had been trying to turn Golden Oaks into a nation-class library to rival Manehattan or Canterlot for three years, and Ponyville just didn't support that large a population of readers; the books Discord had rescued for her, at great personal cost, already comprised far more than it was likely that Ponyville would ever need, even considering that she'd taken a number of them back for her private collection.

At some point Rainbow Dash showed up, and was put to work bringing in clouds to hose down the exterior of the castle, because in Rarity's estimation it didn't "glisten" enough. Rainbow came in to ask Discord for help, and the novelty of that was so great, he didn't mind that his chaos skills were being put to use to make something cleaner.  She asked him to make the clouds rain hot, soapy water, and then to help her make miniature tornado funnels and guide them to blast dirt out of the crevices and crenellations at the top. There was a surprising amount of dirt on top, but then, the thing had grown out of the ground, after all. Using tornados to clean with was actually fun; maybe he should get Rainbow Dash to come with him to offer their services in the Crystal Empire. Or Canterlot itself, more likely. The Crystal Heart had the same impact on him that this castle did, but in a wider range.

Then he returned to reading, and eating the pizza Spike had made for everyone – unfortunately made with hay in the dough, but it was a pony recipe, so what could you do? Ponies put hay in everything. Discord had never understood why. He had a pony head – sort of, possibly more goatish but it had certainly looked pony in his childhood – and presumably therefore a pony tongue, but hay was still the most boring food on the planet as far as he was concerned. How could they like that bland stuff? Well, okay, white rice was worse, but only the ponies in Neighpon and Long-kuo put rice in everything, and brown rice was actually rather nice. Whereas there was no variant of hay that Discord had ever eaten that was any good. Ponies were connoisseurs of hay, talking about the location of the field and the quality of the soil and sunlight and the breed of grass and whether there had been other plants, like clover or wildflowers, grown nearby, but Discord couldn't taste the difference. Hay was hay, and all of it was boring. 

Because of how loud his books were, he was the only one who heard the knock at the door. He was still eating his substandard hay-infused pizza and didn't feel like getting up, so he ignored it, assuming a pony or Spike would come deal with it. But the knocking persisted. Eventually Discord realized the ponies, who weren't even in the front hall like he was, but were down further in the throne room, couldn't hear the knocking. Sighing, he animated a book to go fly down the hall and tell them that somepony was at the door. The book got several heads away from him and then collapsed, the harmonics taking their toll on the chaotic spell.

He was going to have to figure out a way around them sooner or later. But that was for another time.

He went to the door and opened the door. "Yoooouuu raaang?"

"Oh, hay. They were right, you are here."

Discord blinked down at the pony in the wheelchair. "Don't I know you?"

"Yeah. I'm Stellar Eclipse. Remember all those lamps I was selling for you?"

Abruptly Discord realized there was a cart pulled up to the walkway, with several boxes on it. "The lamps?" he said, meaning, was that the lamps on the cart? Stellar, apparently, misunderstood.

"Yeah, remember? We met at that bazaar, and you gave me those lamps that look like you?"

At the time, Discord had been sufficiently fed up with the enormously tedious task of identifying and closing the dimensional gates that he'd been actively attempting to find some way of making money that didn't involve working for Celestia. He couldn't counterfeit the stuff, not without putting in far, far more effort than he wanted to; bits were imprinted with a magical signature based on some sort of complex mathematical algorithm, and while cracking codes was within the purview of his magic, it was work. Most of the time he didn't need them, of course; unlike ponies, he could provide himself food, shelter, and entertainment any time he wanted. But getting ponies to cook for him had been one of his greater pleasures, when he'd unruled Equestria; the trouble with making food for himself all the time was that he could predict exactly what he was going to make, and there was no surprise to it. And nowadays, since he was no longer in charge and couldn't exactly terrorize ponies into doing what he wanted – Fluttershy would have greatly disapproved -- he needed bits to accomplish the same end. Which was actually easier, because terrified ponies were generally terrible cooks.

Also, bits could be used to acquire things that were sufficiently surreal or random to catch his attention. He'd been in a bazaar, where ponies sold hoof-crafted goods, many of which were moderately weird. Such as bicycle art, and odd magical-mechanical contraptions like an automatic hoof-buffer. Stellar Eclipse had sold a wide assortment of ridiculous looking lamps and weird little statuettes. Discord had materialized a copy of the lamp he'd made for Fluttershy and asked the earth pony what he'd thought. Stellar had liked the lamp, and had thought the idea of being the exclusive vendor of the only lamps actually created by the Spirit of Chaos was intriguing. His own interest in the strange and bizarre made him one of the few ponies to be willing to converse with Discord and treat him more or less like a pony. Discord had given him a few hundred lamps to sell, with the stipulation that a little over two thirds of the profit should go to him. 

Fluttershy had actually run into Stellar, and Discord's lamps, at the Rainbow Falls Traders' Exchange (where, apparently, bits were not exchanged, and Discord didn't really want half of an antique statue of a chicken, or presumably half of any of the other weird items Stellar had probably acquired in trade). She'd told him that her first reaction had been a little bit of sadness because her own lamp, the one he'd made for her, was no longer unique... but then, she'd said, she'd realized this meant that a symbol of their friendship was being shared by ponies all over Equestria, and that made her happy. 

That had been only a few weeks before Tirek. 

"Yes, yes, I remember the lamps. What of them?" he asked, impatience in his voice to mask the growing dread. 

He was not proven wrong. "Well, I'm returning them. I can't sell them anymore," Stellar said.

Discord swallowed. "But they're still perfectly good working lamps."

"Sure, but you know how it is. Ponies aren't going to buy something that looks like the guy who stole their magic." 

"Tirek stole their magic. I didn't do it."

Stellar gave him a "come off it" look. "I know you didn't do it personally. If you'd done it personally – if I'd even seen you – maybe I could have said something. Though word is you sold out your friends too, so I doubt you'd have done anything for me. But when the ground suddenly turned into tree sap and chewing gum, I was guessing that pretty much had to be you." Stellar looked down. "The wheelchair doesn't do all that well on mud. On that stuff... I was dead in place. I was the first one on the road that the centaur got."

The words 'I'm sorry' came to Discord's lips, but he couldn't bring himself to say them. Stellar wasn't a friend, wasn't anypony he owed anything to. He wasn't entirely without pride, even now. "It... was supposed to slow down running ponies."

"I figured that."

"But listen, Tirek tricked me too! I... He took my magic also... so I helped the Bearers to defeat him. Princess Celestia's confined me to Ponyville for the indefinite future, but I'm helping Twilight out with this castle here."

Stellar shrugged. "That may be as may be, but that doesn't mean anypony's going to buy these lamps. So I brought the last of your royalties, and my entire stock." He waved a foreleg at his cart behind him. "If you could just take these back..."

"What's going on?" he heard Twilight's voice behind him.

After he'd been turned to stone, and before he'd re-mastered lucid dreaming, Discord had had many, many nightmares where something horrible was chasing him – ponies with pitchforks, dragons, monsters from outside this reality that wanted to devour his soul – and he was stuck, paralyzed, unable to run, his dreaming mind too aware that his body was frozen in stone. He didn't want to empathize with Stellar Eclipse; generally he didn't want to empathize with any pony. But he remembered creating that sticky road, and looking down from it on high, laughing, because the sight of Tirek lumbering along it (magically immune to the stickiness, of course), snagging up stuck or slowed-down ponies and stealing their magic, was reminding him of a video game. He hadn't realized that one of the ponies on the road was somepony he knew. And now, all he could think about was being stuck in a wheelchair that wouldn't roll at all, while a monster intent on stealing his magic came straight toward him.

"You can keep the bits," Discord said. "For your trouble."

Stellar shook his head. "I don't really want anything that belongs to you," he said. "I'm going to clear my obligation and then we're done."

"Oh, you're the lamp guy!" Rainbow Dash said, making Discord aware that the audience had grown. He glanced behind him and saw everyone who'd been here – Twilight, Spike, Pinkie, Rarity and Rainbow – had gathered in the hall behind him. "I always wanted to know why the heck you were selling Discord lamps in the first place. I mean, who'd want that?"

Discord glared sullenly at Rainbow. "They used to sell pretty well," Stellar said. "A lot of creative ponies used to like having a symbol of Chaos around. They'd tell me he inspired them, or made them think of freedom, or being brave enough to follow their artistic vision or something."

"Wait, you never told me this." Ponies said he inspired them? Made them brave enough to pursue creative freedom? If he'd known that before Tirek...

"It never came up." Stellar shrugged. "Not that it matters anymore anyway. I've had three ponies return the lamps since... you know, the whole thing. And it's only been a few days."

"Then keep the money to give them refunds with," Discord said. If only he'd known what he had to lose, before he'd lost it forever. He swallowed.

Stellar considered. "That's fair, I guess. But you still need to take back the lamps."

Rarity had gone out to the cart to look at the boxes. "That is quite a considerable quantity of lamps," she said. "I do hope this wasn't a significant part of your inventory."

Stellar turned slightly red. "Um... it kind of was, actually. Discord gave me the lamps for free; other inventory, I had to buy. So I'd been kind of slowing down on the purchasing while I sold off the lamps. It's gonna be a little tight now, but, well, I can't sell them... and I'm honestly not sure I'd want to if I could."

"Well, perhaps we could arrange for something to offset the loss you're talking. Twilight, do you think Princess Celestia--?"

"Maybe. A lot of ponies are getting loans from the crown to rebuild with."

"No, that won't be necessary," Discord said.  "Here, I've got an idea."

He got out of the doorway and out of the castle entirely, going over to the cart full of boxes. With a thought, the boxes levitated and opened, the contents flying out. All the silly, goofy lamps with his own face on them, the face that apparently for a while ponies were buying to inspire their creativity... but not any more.

With a snap of his talon the lamps reconfigured themselves. They were no longer lamps, not most of them anyway... and they were no longer depictions of himself. Instead, they were many, many copies of the Bearers, in their riotous, chaotic glory as they'd looked when they channeled the Rainbow Power.

"Ponies don't want to buy my image because I worked with Tirek? Fine, how about the ponies who defeated Tirek?" He plucked a Fluttershy out of the air, displaying the figurine this way and that. "When they gained the Rainbow Power from the Tree of Harmony, and blasted Tirek with it, this is what they looked like. Spike, back me up on this."

"Uh... yeah. That is what they looked like," Spike said.

Rarity put a hoof to her mouth. "Oh, dear. How... garish."

"Hey, I like it! I think it looks awesome!" Rainbow Dash claimed one of herself. "How much you selling these for?"

"I'm not sure I want to sell them at all. The arrangement was for Discord to get seventy percent of the bits."

"Give them back to the Bearers," Discord said. "It's their faces."

"Oh, I don't need that," Rarity said. "Stellar, I must insist you keep my portion."

"I can't do that," Stellar said. "That wouldn't be fair. Also it'd be a serious accounting headache."

"So give it to charity," Discord said. 

"I... suppose I could take the funds, if I was simply going to funnel them to a charity," Rarity said. "I imagine grants from the crown can only do so much. Perhaps if a fund has been put into place to help small businesses recover from this awful incident, I could put the funds there."

"That's not a bad idea," Twilight said. "We could talk to Applejack and see if she'd be on board with something like that. What do you think, Pinkie, Rainbow?"

"I think you should have plushie ones! I like the one for me, it's pretty, but there should be squishy cuddly mes too! Discord, could you make some of them into plushy mes?"

"I don't generally sell plushies," Stellar said. "Figurines, though... one of a kind figurines... and I'll bet nopony else has statues of you guys with this Rainbow Power stuff on you."

"It's definitely unlikely," Twilight said. "No one really saw us like that except for Discord and Spike. Well, and Tirek, but he's in Tartarus."

"Except for that astral travel thingy with giving everypony their magic back!"

"Okay, yeah, but I doubt anypony really remembers what we looked like all that clearly just from that. Astral travel's kind of like traveling in dreams. We'd have seemed like daydreams, or ghosts."

"I'm a ghost?!" Pinkie waved her hooves in the air. "Nooo! I'm too young to be a ghost!"

"Hey, Discord, can you make one that actually flies? Like with magic?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Discord shook his head. "I really don't think you want me applying any more chaos magic to these than necessary."

"Good point!" She turned to Twilight. "So, Twilight! Could you do it?"

"I guess I'll take it," Stellar said. "Since the money isn't going to you, but to the ponies that saved us... and these would probably sell really well." He looked up at Discord. "Thanks. I kinda thought you'd be more weird about this."

Discord laughed in a way that was supposed to sound casual, but he wasn't sure he was pulling it off. "Oh, believe me, I am the soul of understanding here. I can hardly blame you, or any of the ponies who are buying from you. Here." He focused his energies, creating a wand and perma-fixing it to reality so chaos' general impermanence wouldn't cause it to dissolve. "Touch one of the lamps with this and it'll turn into a Fluttershy. When they return them, instead of taking the return, you can offer them a lovely adorable pegasus in exchange and I'm sure they'll take it."

"There's... actually a lot more of these are Fluttershys than any one of the others. Is that really how you want to do it?"

"Well, of course. Fluttershy is my best friend!"

"Yeah, but if there are more of her than of the others, then her figure won't sell for as high a price. If these are one-time collectibles, then they're worth more if they're rarer."

All of the Fluttershys but two disappeared, replaced by Rainbow Dashes. "So now Fluttershy will be much more valuable than the others?"

"Hey!" Rainbow Dash said.

Stellar sighed. "That's... not gonna work real well either."

"Discord, why don't you make equal numbers of all of us?" Twilight said. "That way more ponies will be able to buy sets of all six. I'm sure Fluttershy would prefer to have her figure as part of a set with her friends than all alone. You know how shy she is."

"As always, your wisdom on matters of friendship is unparalleled, Princess," Discord said with completely fake obsequiousness masking genuine gratitude. He snapped his talon again, evening the numbers of the figurines so there were close to the same number of each. "There's going to be some randomness. I'm working with chaos here; I can't make it all into even sets of six."

"That's fine," Stellar said. "Randomness is good, actually."

"I want one," Rainbow said. "In fact I want six. I'm gonna give one of me to all of you."

"Why don't I take care of that for you?" Discord snapped up six sets, pulling the matter from deep underground and putting a great deal of energy and focus into them to make sure they'd be permanent, just as he'd done with the original lamps. "Complimentary for you six, and look, you each get an exclusive Spike figure as well."  The thought probably wouldn't have occurred to him if Spike hadn't been standing right there, but he remembered how Spike had tried to help him get the cage bars opened.

"Oh, wow!" Twilight picked up her Spike figurine. "Look, Spike! Isn't this lovely?"

"I dunno," Spike said. "I feel like I look a little... uh, babyish."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Spike.  You're a baby dragon. Remember?"

"Yeah, I guess..."

"And wasn't it nice of Discord to add you to our sets?"

"You're a very rare and exclusive collectible now," Rarity pointed out.

"Wow. You're right! Only I hope none of you are planning to sell me to collectors," Spike said. Discord thought he was probably joking, but there was enough nervousness in his tone that he wasn't entirely sure.  

"This worked out better than I expected," Stellar said. "Thanks, everypony."

He rolled out to the cart and hooked his wheelchair to it.  The ponies, and Spike, waved at him as he left. Discord just watched.

When he was gone, Twilight picked up her own set and the sets for Fluttershy and Applejack with her magic.  "I'll pack these up for Fluttershy and Applejack and we can give them to them tomorrow. Fluttershy should be back then."

"I could give it to her," Discord said eagerly.

"No, no, you should be there when we give it to her, but we should be there too, because it's a gift you're giving to all of us."  Twilight looked up at him. "You handled that really well, Discord.  I'm sure Fluttershy will be proud of you."

He shrugged.  "What else was I supposed to do?"  There was a lump in his throat.  "He's right. No pony's going to want lamps with my face on them anymore."  He pouted deliberately. "A terrible shame for them, to miss out on beauty like this, but I suppose even the most attractive face can bring back bad memories."

"Well, it was a very nice gesture on your part," Twilight said. "All right, girls, let's get back to work!  And Spike!  Discord, are you coming back in?"

"I'm bored," Discord said, shrugging.  "Maybe I'll come back later. Right now I want to take a walk."

He really didn't want to take a walk. Not through Ponyville.  But maybe he could find some relatively wild place – nothing in Ponyville or any pony habitat was really wild, but at least somewhere that was mostly animals and growing things and not ponies.

At least Fluttershy was going to be back tomorrow.





He walked through a desolate land, a baking hot desert where not so much as the wind moved. There was nothing. No sign of life anywhere. Above his head, the sun and moon hung in the sky, frozen.

That isn't right, he thought. If Celestia and Luna died, the unicorns would take over, and if they weren't able to, another Sunbearer would be chosen.  Like the chaos avatar, the positions of Sunbearer and Moonbearer would be passed on to another if the holder died. There could be a gap, sometimes, but if the sun and moon simply didn't move for long enough, someone would be granted the power.  The world wouldn't be allowed to die.

Besides, the chaos avatar would never allow this. Even if this was the future and he himself was dead, whoever had the job now wouldn't be able to bear this. Nothing moved.  The world was orderly, still and unchanging. No chaos avatar could endure allowing this.  He snapped his talon, but nothing happened, and he felt no flow of magic. He felt dread, but no surprise. 

Maybe this isn't our world, he thought, trying to convince himself, but he knew better. Reluctantly he looked up. The Canterhorn rose in front of him, and half of Canterlot, in ruins, was still visible on the side.  The part that had needed magic to stay up had sheared off.

He couldn't feel magic flowing anywhere.

The magic must still be there.  Only mine is gone, so I can't feel it, he rationalized.  But there wasn't a cloud in the sky, or a breeze stirring the sand. Nothing moved.  No life.

No magic.

Discord became aware that there was something behind him.  Something coming toward him. He tried to turn, to look, but his neck was stiff. Paralyzed.

I'm stone! he realized, horrified. No wonder he couldn't feel magic. He struggled against the stone's embrace. Something was behind him. Something coming toward him, and he was in stone, and couldn't move.

No! Terror gave him strength. He forced himself outward, shattering the stone around himself, and stumbled forward. Now he could feel magic, but there wasn't any around him. Desolation. Nothingness.  His own magic was all the magic he could feel.

He tried to get up, to face the thing coming toward him, but even though he was out of the stone, his body was still sluggish, unresponsive. With great effort, he fought his own weight and the stiffness in his limbs, his dread growing with every second, until he could finally turn around.

A monstrous Tirek, as tall as a mountain, stood before him. But where Tirek had had black eyes with glowing yellow pupils, and long, curved gray horns, now his eyes and his horns were replaced with featureless clear crystal, and Discord knew without knowing how he knew that there was nothing of Tirek left in Tirek's skull. His eyes weren't made of crystal, they were empty orbits that served as windows to what was filling his head now.

Thank you, Tirek said without speaking, in the emotionless drone of Matrisse. It was much easier to end magic with a host that had the power to draw it in.

No. Matrisse was dead. Matrisse couldn't even do this. The crystals could influence a sapient being's mind to the point where there was no real mind left, only directions from Matrisse, but it couldn't fill someone's skull. And yet the evidence was incontrovertible. Tirek was dead, after Discord had given him the power to get everything he ever wanted and that had made him a target for the Avatar of Order, who centuries ago had given up on its mandate and had decided that the world didn't actually need magic anymore and Discord had destroyed it, risked his life to smash his ancient enemy, and now it was back in the body of his friend/his nemesis/his betrayer and he couldn't run.

His feet were rooted to the ground. His paws refused to snap. He stood, as still as if he were still a statue, except for the shaking, and willed himself to move, but it didn't happen.

Tirek/Matrisse's monstrous hand reached down and grabbed him, lifted him up and sucked out his magic. And then, as Discord tried to draw breath to scream, the hand tightened around him, and he couldn't breathe.





"...quiet now, it's time to go to bed. Hush now, quiet now, close your sleepy eyes—"

Pinkie was pressing a pillow against the side of his head, making him the meat in a pillow sandwich. His muzzle was sticking out enough that he could have breathed if it weren't for her weight on his neck, cutting off his air supply. She was singing a lullaby, a little too fast and desperately for it to be a particularly good lullaby.

Discord wheezed. "Pin-kie! Off! Can't... breathe!"

"Oh my gosh, sorry!" Pinkie leapt off his neck... somehow. "But you have to go back to sleep! You were having a nightmare! You have to go to sleep or you'll remember it!"

"Too late." He sat up, breathing hard.  "What were you trying to do, kill me?"

"No! I thought... well, sometimes when my sisters couldn't sleep we would make head sandwiches with pillows so they could feel the pillow on both cheeks and you always make sure the head is sideways and the muzzle is sticking out enough that the nostrils are clear and I made sure your nostrils were clear but... I guess it didn't work?"

"No, it didn't." He curled into an unhappy spiral, hugging himself. "You seriously thought squashing my head with a pillow would make me sleep?"

"Well, you were whining and thrashing around a lot and I was sure you were going to wake yourself up and I remembered what you said last night about wanting to sleep through your nightmares so I tried... I'm sorry it didn't work..." She looked miserable.

Discord sighed, and unwound his tail enough to wrap it around her middle and pull her in, so she was on the inside of his coil, leaning up against his body. He wished it was Fluttershy – Fluttershy always managed to make him feel safe, when he woke from nightmares. But any pony willing to be cuddled would help, after that vision of a world without magic or life. "I'm sorry too," he said. "That one was bad."

"Was it worse than the one last night?"

He remembered Tirek pulling Fluttershy's head off. "No, but it was different." His breathing was finally evening out.

"Are you going to go leave and sleep in Applejack's orchard again?"

The harmonics thrummed through the palace, reminding him viscerally that there was magic, a great deal of magic, inside him and all around him. "Not this time." He was so tired. His upper body, face and neck, were lathered with sweat; most of the rest of his body didn't sweat, being more dragon than pony, even where his thick brown fur was, but his skin felt almost painfully hot, his dragon scales having heated up to dissipate the unwanted body heat. The sweat-soaked head and neck felt cold, though. He adjusted himself to lay down, pulling Pinkie to the side of his neck, where she wouldn't suffocate him, and made a moderately tight coil so his middle was almost touching her and his legs were behind his head, a pillow propped on his hip to support his head. "I'm going to try to go back to sleep."

"Do you want me to sing you the lullaby?"

"How quiet can you sing it?"

Pinkie started again, in a much softer, quieter voice. It was surprising how much she sounded like Fluttershy when she was being calm and quiet. She was still louder than Fluttershy and faster, but if he closed his eyes he could pretend. Fluttershy had sung him that particular lullaby, more than once. He'd told her it was ridiculous at the time and he was the Lord of Chaos and he didn't need a little pony to sing him a lullaby of all things. But secretly he'd enjoyed it. Maybe not so secretly, given how adept Fluttershy was at reading his moods even when he tried to hide them.

"Surely you saw this coming?" "I didn't! I really didn't!"

Tears pricked his eyes under his closed eyelids, but if he didn't open his eyes, Pinkie wouldn't see and he could pretend that nothing was wrong.