Her hoofsteps echoed in the cavernous crystal palace. Shadows were being cast all over the castle as the sun began to slip into the final throes of its downward slope in the sky. Death was all around Twilight today, it seemed. She noticed that Granny Smith had been sleeping more often than not. Rarity had been inundated with requests from all three of her boutiques, always working, always searching for inspiration; Applejack needed to get the harvest done for the year before the winter moved in, the bits from the latest harvest going to help expand the farm’s production capabilities; Rainbow Dash was busy preparing for the onslaught of winter, and attending the Wonderbolts Academy. Mayor Mare had retired, but still oversaw the running of the leaves festival, and all of her other friends were living their lives. They were all busy with something, and Twilight found less and less time to spend with them as her own duties began taking over.
The more she mulled things over, the more she came to realise that the world was changing. They weren’t young mares anymore, able to sit up all night by the light of a dying lamp telling each other ghost stories. They were no longer able to pop in on each other for a quick cup of tea and a light lunch. They couldn’t spontaneously take their pets out for a play date. Everything had to be meticulously planned weeks, or even months, in advance, and she was becoming sick of it.
More than that, however, was the fact that young Twilight Sparkle had come to the conclusion that all of her friends were beginning to age. They were rapidly approaching the stage where they looked for less spontaneity, less adventures, craving instead for structure and stability. They were, each of them, growing up, and Twilight had been hit with the realisation that she hadn’t changed a single bit since her ascension, now four or five years ago.
By no means were they withered old hags, of course; each still looked full of vim and vigor, but age had begun to show its cruel stinging stress on their faces. Applejack had laugh lines, for Celestia’s sake.
It all raised the question; what was Twilight going to do when they were all aged old mares in hospital beds, and she was as baby-faced as the day she stepped out of the Aether with Celestia?
Was there anything she could do? Or was she doomed to watch them all die?
She knew the answer. As much as it pained her—as much as it made her chest constrict every time she thought of five gravestones side by side instead of six—she couldn’t deny that she was immortal. She was ageless, timeless, constant; a slap in the face of entropy, and every law she knew of physics and thermodynamics. She had never thought of Celestia’s age before now. How did she continue on when so many ponies around her aged away into dust? How did she continue to face every single day, offering everypony such compassionate and graceful smiles, knowing that by the time she finished blinking they would all be underneath her hooves?
A story that never reached its conclusion was boring. A story that never saw a full stop was one not worth reading, as everypony would never care enough to know it. Was there any point to her own existence now that she didn’t have an ending?
"Oh, Twilight Sparkle!” A voice slashed her musings into ribbons like so much confetti, and Twilight sighed. “Fancy seeing you here!" the voice continued from above.
As the Princess looked up, sure enough, she saw the snake-like body of a certain demigod of chaos floating above her friendship map.Twilight couldn’t even muster the will to morph her face into a snide grimace. "Hello Discord," she sighed, settling for a simple, flat and monotonous greeting while she walked across the room. She had no real destination in mind—not that it mattered anyway, since she could pick a direction and walk for decades, centuries, millennia, never aging a day.
Twilight pushed open the doors at the other end of the room and kept going, leaving the bemused Discord behind. It wasn’t often that his arrival elicited such a reaction, and it disturbed him to no end.
He shook it off, skirting through reality with a snap of his fingers to appear above the princess again. "Oh, no need to sound so excited. Please try to curb your enthusiasm next time," Discord griped as Twilight walked by.
She listlessly kept walking, not even sparing him a parting glance. "It's been a long day," she said, stepping through large double doors into one of the kitchens. Perhaps some food would put some joy back into her heart. Maybe Spike was cooking; she always loved his cooking.
Then again, even Spike would leave her one day, and she wouldn’t be able to sample any of his cooking ever again. Why bother now?
"Oh I know, I know exactly what you mean darling,” came Discord’s voice from in front of her.
Twilight deigned to look up, and her face fell.
Discord had transformed the kitchen into a hair salon, a moustache on his face and garden shears in his hands as he cut another Discord’s hair into a big, black, bushy afro. Several other Discords were sitting in the chairs around the room, waiting to be served. The hairdresser turned to face the Princess and waved a hand, cocking his hips to one side and adopting a slight flange to his voice. “Tell me all about it, marefriend."
Twilight shook her head and turned away from the scene, walking out of the room and muttering, mostly to herself. "What's the point?"
Discord popped into the world in front of her, getting her full attention. He held up a rubber ear;pink, and folded in on itself in ways that made Twilight cringe. It almost reminded her of an ape-like ear, but it was Discord’s follow-up statement to producing the thing that made her blood boil: "I find having an ear to confide in to be most helpful."
The Princess wasn’t in the mood for anything, least of all the being in front of her. Chaos wasn’t something she wanted to keep her company, especially now. "Enough jokes, Discord."
Discord’s eyes twinkled. "Ooh, crabby, aren’t we?"
Twilight ignored the novelty crab-mascot costume that the Draconequus had summoned from thin air, stamping her hoof onto the crystal. "Discord!" she shouted angrily, the floor under her hoof cracking.
Discord saw that now was not the time for games. The Princess was not in a playful mood—not that she ever was to begin with. "Fine, fine.” He snapped his fingers and the costume disappeared. “Despite what you may think, I've grown fond of you over the years, Sparkle. I never thought I'd be friends with a prancing, pretty, purple, pony princess," he made sure to enunciate each ‘p’ sound as though it were the funniest thing in the world.
"Your point?" Twilight would have laughed at her choice of words could she feel but anything.
"My point being,” he said, twisting his body around and bending over backwards to look her in the eye, “that maybe we've reached the part in our relationship where you actually trust me?" He fluttered his eyes slightly, his lips pursed in an overly-emphasised smile that made his cheeks puff out. “Hmm?”
He wasn’t going to go away; if anything, she would only make him more curious the more she rebutted him. Instead, Twilight decided to stare him straight in the eye, and summon all of her apathy into repeating a question she asked earlier. "What's the point, Discord?"
He arched an eyebrow, twirling his face around before his entire body seemed to fold in on itself to get into a matching orientation. "The point to what?" he asked.
"This,” she began, waving a hoof. “Anything. I've noticed it, my friends have noticed it…” she trailed off, pushing open the doors to one of the castle’s many balconies, stepping out into the sunset. “I'm not aging."
"What do you mean?” Discord slithered over the balcony railing a few feet to Twilight’s right, waving a claw and turning all the fur on Twilight’s body to a muted white, her mane a complimentary shade of ashen grey. “I can already see the gray hairs."
Twilight shook her head to dispel the illusion. Discord’s abilities seemed at odds with every rule of magic she knew. If she cared enough, she might have studied him long ago. Duty, friendship and sheer volume of distractions stopped her before; apathy stopped her now.
"No, Discord. I'm not growing older. If anything, I'm growing more powerful. I can run for longer, I can do more exercises, I can exert more magical control, I can fly faster,” she lit her horn, summoning a chain of blue fire. It was drawn from the air around her, a transmutation spell that turned matter into energy without the messy chemical or physical reactions. It swirled and danced in the air, separate strands entwined, joined, parted, belched flame and pure, raw magical power into their surroundings. Twilight could feel the power come from within her, washing over her body and leaving goosebumps in its wake. The static charge of the spell caused her fur to stand on end and her mane to dance in an invisible wind. By all rights, as the strands split and more and more magic was used in the maintenance of the spell, she should have collapsed, drained of all of her latent ability—but she kept going. She felt unstoppable, like she could continue for days. It was, all at once, an exhilarating and bittersweet feeling, as it only proved her hypothesis. “Spells that would have exhausted me five years ago are nothing anymore. I'm immortal.” She dispelled the magic with a thought, and a flick of her horn. “And I've been thinking..."
"Oh, terrible affliction, thinking.” Discord’s gaze wandered away from the display, checking his talons and filing them with a comically oversized nail file. “I try to avoid it as often as I can," he jabbed.
Twilight closed her eyes. She desperately wanted a serious conversation with Discord, but he was testing her every nerve. His voice had become grating far too quickly, and his own careless tone when added to Twilight’s was finally enough to break the mare. She wanted someone to listen. She wanted someone to care. She wanted someone like her who could understand—and who better than a fellow immortal.
"Discord, please!” she walked up to him, rearing up on her hind legs and placing her hooves on his hands.
Discord was brought firmly back into the conversation by the sheer amount of sadness in the mare’s tone. The normally twitchy and restless Discord was oddly still and somber, staring down at her with wide eyes. His claw and paw both grasped ahold of her hooves in a comforting way. He was even running his fingers over her fur to soothe her, almost absently. Twilight noticed the contact, and briefly wondered whether or not Fluttershy’s kindness had started rubbing off on him.
She looked up at him with glistening eyes, full of doubt, of sadness, of rage, and so many other emotions that she hadn’t felt since that same morning. Since she started viewing ponies as clocks, ticking away to their doom. Since she stopped seeing her friends’ faces, and started seeing merely skin draped over bone that would inevitably break off a hundred years in the future.
“If I'm truly immortal, then my life is infinite. I will experience everything in this world eventually, except my own personal death. I will never see my friends again when they pass away.” Her eyes squeezed out a tear. “I’ll never know the joy of growing old with a family,” she sniffed. “I’ll never be a wise old mare passing her wisdom down to her grandchildren, I will always, and forever be—” she choked on the words as though they were the most foul tasting things in all the world “—Princess Twilight Sparkle!"
The wind whistled over the balcony in reply, but nothing else did. Discord paused, twiddling his fingers together with his claws. They were moving in such a complicated pattern that Twilight could barely follow each individual digit. The draconequus was opening and closing his mouth, like a fish straight out of a pond. "I need to…” he trailed off, clearing his throat and stepping away. “I need to run an errand."
Twilight’s eyes squeezed out a fresh bout of tears as she dropped to the floor on shaky legs. She shook her head desperately, keeping her eyes trained on the reflection of Discord, rather than the actual one standing meters away from her. "Please,” she begged him. “Please don't go..."
"This is obviously beyond me, Twilight.” The reflection of the Draconequus wasn't looking at her, but rather, at the pale imitation encased in the crystal beneath her; the damnable crystal pony staring back at her with glassy eyes and a sad frown, trapped inside a mirror sheen like she was inside the realm of the living. She may as well have been that mare—frozen in time and forced to watch the world from behind a screen. “I can't answer your questions,” Discord’s reflection continued. “I can't allay your fears; not alone at least. I will be back, don't go anywhere,” he told her, turning around and raising his fingers.
Her brows knitted in anger. Her eyes flashed up to him will all the rage of a storm. Her hooves dug into the crystal and left gouges in the polished, reflective surface. "If this is another joke—" she hissed, only to be cut off almost immediately.
Discord moved faster than Twilight could blink. In an instant, his warm lion’s paw came to rest on Twilight’s cheek. "Look at me,” he commanded gently, tilting her face up so her lavender eyes met with his yellow ones. “Have I ever been more serious?"
There was no moustache attached to his nose, no monocle over one eye. He wasn’t smiling, his eyes holding no mirth in them. There was a fire she had never seen, burning behind red irises. He had knelt down in front of her, choosing not to appear as though the forces of gravity were his plaything. His eyes were level with hers, but his serpentine body held none of the lithe, chaotic, predator-like grace that was normally associated with him. Twilight opened her mouth to speak, to question him, before his own question registered in her mind. She shook her head in answer. "No. No you haven’t."
He flashed her a snaggletoothed grin and held up his eagle claws. "Then trust me." He snapped his fingers and the air popped. Twilight made a mental note to set up instruments to read thaumic background levels when he did that. It would be interesting to know how the use of chaotic magic differed to the use of more conventional spells, when interacting with the magical spectrum.
Then again, what was the point?