//------------------------------// // Interlude: Fixing Harmony // Story: The Hag, the heroes, and a few other things // by Amaranthine Thought //------------------------------// I was unsure how long I had been in the white. Everything just white, all around me, and nothing different. Not even a little. It was just my breathing and my heart to tell that I was alive. I could feel nothing except the faint touch of something I was walking on. I was growing both discouraged and desperate. I was starting to think that the white was an underworld, a place where the torment was that nothing was with me. I kept walking, but I was losing my calm with each breath. Then I saw a black smudge in front of me. It slowly grew, and I smiled as it encompassed me. It was finally something different and I did not care that I didn’t know what it was. From white to total darkness, and then I faintly heard something, the sound as if it was very far but coming closer. “Emeline! Wake up Emeline! Emeline!” I jolted as I returned to myself. It was a sudden thing, and I was numb and couldn’t move much at all. Even my eyes remained shut tight, and for a moment, began drifting away again. “Emeline!” someone screamed in my ear. That woke me to full consciousness, feeling slowly returning to my limbs. With great effort I opened an eye. A series of colors went past in my vision for a moment and I closed it again. “Sorry about that, just let me… there!” I realized that I was hearing Discord’s voice. I reopened my eye to the interior of my home, Discord hovering over me concerned. For a second I wondered what he was doing in the afterlife. I recalled that spirits cannot be found in the afterlife after a moment of confusion. Since Discord was there next to me, there was only one conclusion. He had somehow saved me from an eternity of regret. And now I owed him far more than I would ever admit, unless I was secretly some undead monster. “Discord?” My voice was rough and I coughed. “The one and only my dear Emeline!” A glowing sign pointing at him and bearing his name appeared in one hand. He was in good spirits, almost bursting with joy. “Where, how did you?” I rasped as I shifted to try and stand. He gently stopped me with his hands. “Not now Emeline, you rest and Discord will take care of everything!” He produced me a set of tea cups as I settled my mind. My last thoughts had been on my… unwillingness to die and the despair when I hadn’t been able to prevent it. I had been certain of my death and yet here I was, watching Discord… I took a moment to decipher what he was doing with a small sheep and a lantern… make tea. Somehow. I took my mind off of his antics and looked about. He started when I called for the forest and whipped his head over. The windows vanished and the feeling faded. A touch too late for me to not realize that I hadn’t seen the woods outside my windows and that I couldn’t sense any forest outside the walls. I looked to him suspiciously, already feeling far more like my old self again. “Where are we Discord?” He seemed slightly guilty. “We are when they can’t find us.” “Who are they?” “Oh, you know: random passerby, the mailman, Pinkie Pie, problems, Twilight, small dogs, large birds, Celestia, the cutie mark crusaders, mayor of Ponyville…” He continued on, trying to fill in the space with meaningless fodder so I would miss the important pieces. I sighed. I was sharper than that. “And where are we that Celestia and Twilight cannot find us? Answer me Discord.” He sighed in defeat. “We are in my home. I cannot describe it to you because you are not me.” In a spirit’s home… a first for me. “Very well. You can tell me what happened as you give me that tea.” He visibly relaxed and began telling me of his daring escape with me. I had been on the very brink of death (really, like I didn’t know that), but Discord had set it up so that I relived the same instant for eternity. At least until I decided that it was time for me to go, and Discord fully intended to turn me immortal normally before then. He had never elaborated on his relationship with the ponies, but I was certain that he had broken any relationship he had possessed. Apparently he had been unable to transport me here instantly and had needed to escape normally due to his fight with Uwe, and he tried to wrap up by saying that he had been successful without telling me how he had done so. I managed to taunt him into revealing that he had turned most of the castle and the city outside into random… anything that had crossed his mind at the time, had a vicious argument with Celestia and Luna over their treatment of me, and escaped with the broken elements after replacing them with a taunting note to Twilight and doodling all over her books. On every page apparently. I chuckled at his antics and he revealed his grand plot for my ascension to alicornhood. I was to fix the elements (somehow) and hold them for ransom from the tree of harmony (I was to try and get the tree to give me immortality). I told him that he was nuts if he thought that would work, and that I would never lower myself to such shameless behavior. I would fix the elements because I had broken them and not because I wanted to gain something for fixing what I broke. I would find another way to gain natural immortality. I drank and ate, and then turned my attention to the broken elements. Happiness, honesty, and magic. I knew that I couldn’t just stick them together and hope for the best. Twilight didn’t have a clue where to begin, but I had a few guesses. I had damaged the tree, thereby breaking its external powers: the elements. I would need to heal the crystal tree before the elements could be fixed. I hoped. And to start that, I would need my hut. “Discord, I will need to return to my actual home before I can begin.” “Done.” With a snap, nothing seemed to change, but I could sense the Everfree once more. I grabbed at my pouch and jumped as it grabbed me. I looked to Discord who had a knowing smile on his face and then shrugged. At least with it holding onto my chest I didn’t need to worry about it falling off my back. The inside was apparently made endless as well. I was able to collect every regent in my old home without difficulty, and pull them free with a thought. “I need to go back to the tree, maybe I can get a hint as to where to begin.” I said, practicing using the pouch. “Then make haste Emeline. I shall follow.” So we made our way to it, Discord nervous for some reason. We entered the cave and I slowed down, my gait apologetic as I sidled up to it. I felt fairly guilty at seeing its grey demeanor, most of its luster stolen away. I was a little afraid of what it might say or do. “I… We didn’t have the best of relationships I think.” I looked up into its branches, noticing that the other elements were still there. “I didn’t even bother to check what you were actually doing before trying to destroy you.” I struggled for a moment, trying to express what I had never expressed, not even when I had broken my love’s heart. “I’m… I’m...” I stopped trying and sighed, unable to speak the word, and I simply hoped that it might know what I was trying to tell it. I put my hoof on its trunk and was stunned by the feeling. It forgave me. I had ripped off what might as well have been its limbs and it forgave me without any anger or need to give it some gift. I was speechless at its mercy and, like the first spirit that I had torn from its grip, offered my services anyway. I asked it how I might restore its previous beauty. I got my response quickly: I had to find the elements I had broken in a physical form. Yes. Happiness, loyalty, and magic in a form that I could touch and feel. I made sure to determine that’s what it meant before I wondered if the tree was mad somehow. It was very sure of the idea despite the insanity of the statement and wished me the best of luck in the search. “Where in all of Equestria am I going to find that?!” I asked it. “Nowhere you’re going, Hag.” Came the response, full of venom. I turned around, seeing a rather upset Twilight and Celestia, the other element bearers just behind them. Twilight glared at me while Celestia looked up to Discord with a faint frown. “Discord!” yelled Celestia, “You have betrayed your friends! Maybe you have something to say for yourself before we seal you again?” “Only that I did not betray anypony. I saved a friend from you trying to kill her!” Twilight gasped suddenly, spotting one of the elements peeking out of my pouch, having been brought to the top by my thinking of them. “Hag has got the broken elements!” Discord suddenly swooped in front of me, his head turned toward me like an owl’s. “You must go!” he said, “I can make sure that they can’t find you so easily, but they might be able to track you anyway!” He winced suddenly, blocking my vision and somehow my hearing of what occurred past his sudden bulk. He ran his paw over me carefully, his eyes softening, “You can do this Emeline.” he whispered to me, “You can do it, even without me by your side. Goodbye.” He and the cave grew misty, as though I was drawing away from him. It was only then I saw that his various skins were stoning, his head the last thing to freeze up, locking him in his protective embrace and a faint smile on his face. I could hear a shout, but then I was gone, shooting through endless clouds. “Where did Hag go?!” yelled Rainbow as Twilight struggled to understand Discord’s last few actions. He had teleported me by the most arcane and non-intuitive manner possible, as well as covering me in chaotic magic, preventing Twilight or Celestia from just sensing me and bringing me back from wherever Discord had sent me. “I’m going to jot down some notes on this.” Twilight said as Celestia continued to try to understand what he had done. Fluttershy just trotted up to Discords frozen face and regarded it sadly. “Why are you lookin at him like that Fluttershy?” asked Applejack, “It’s as obvious as the hat on my head that he dun went an betrayed us.” “Maybe he didn’t.” she softly said, running a hoof over his stony face, “He was protecting her. Maybe… maybe we betrayed him?” she finished with a faint squeak. “Don’t be absurd darling, did you see what the monster did to Canterlot? Or to Twilight’s treasured books? He even used permanent marker!” Twilight sagged, but continued to scribble, “I don’t like to think about that.” “Sorry darling, but Fluttershy is feeling sad for Discord of all ponies.” “Nopony else will…” At the last, they were unable to track me and returned to their homes, Celestia returning to Canterlot. Discord had left such a trail of chaos in his wake when breaking me free of my prison it would take a long time to remove every effect and repair the damage. The notes that he had left behind was what puzzled Twilight, as had his words when he dueled with the twin princesses. ‘You almost let her die’ had been the most common. ‘Friends don’t let friends die’ had been another. ‘You idiots’, ‘blind and senseless’; it was difficult to tell what he meant beyond expressing anger. He had been very upset when they caught me and had me in the underground cage and had simply vanished when they confronted him. Four days later he returned, broke me free, and ran amok, leaving messages scrawled over every page of Twilight’s library and most of what was left of Canterlot. They had lost him after that until that day. A week after his chaos in Canterlot. ‘I saved a friend from you trying to kill her!’ he had said to Celestia before he had been stoned by her spell. ‘Maybe we betrayed him.’ Fluttershy had said. Had Discord broken their trust, causing a massive wake of chaos when breaking out what might be Equestria’s greatest villain from her prison, or had they somehow misunderstood everything, and broken Discord’s trust in them? Twilight didn’t know anymore. “I did visit her, and she always seemed weak, but not dying. She ever made any sense either: ‘the crystal tree is an invader, a blight on the natural world’ she had said, right?” she muttered to herself as she looked through the few notes she had made on me. She hadn’t even been in Canterlot on the day we escaped, but she had been… at the time she had thought I was faking my infirmity. Discord had implied that I had been dying, but that made no sense to her. Twilight put my age at mid-60s. Far too young to perish from age, and my strength during our brief battle had bellied any ideas of infirmity. I claimed to have only know Discord for a few days, but I had lied before. Discord had been, for various reasons, unable to tell them anything that might suggest otherwise. She thought about it. Perhaps we had plotted the entire thing out together? Breaking the only thing stopping Discord would have been expected before he was reformed, but why wait? Was he faking everything for that long, and if so, why? Why with me, then? How had I been able to break the elements anyway? None of it made sense when she viewed it as a whole, and now Discord couldn’t answer any questions and I was somewhere where they couldn’t find me. And doing what? Trying to find a way to break the rest of the elements? Plotting revenge over my imprisoners? Something worse? She thought about what she knew I had done. She knew I had kept the CMC with me, and the three fillies were constantly getting into trouble with their insistence that I was a good pony that helped them, but I did return them safe and sound. Why do that if I had lied to them? Why lie at all? Too many questions and not enough information. Twilight got little sleep that night.