No sooner had Twilight planeswalked to her new destination than she had been assaulted by an intense dry heat. It was a blind jump, one she was reluctant taking given her past experiences, but in the end she knew she couldn’t learn all she wanted to know about the planes just by reading about them. She was more than willing to brave the unknown for the sake of further study, and now that she knew exactly how to return to Equestria at any moment, the risks involved would be minimal.
All around her, Twilight could see nothing but an endless expanse of arid sand, the very air itself seeming to shimmer and wobble in the sweltering heat. She could feel the individual grains becoming wedged in her hooves, her saddlebags feeling uncomfortably damp with sweat as they pressed against her sides. She almost felt like shaving her entire body bare if it meant being spared at least some of the scorching temperatures.
“Ugh! Why’d I have to end up in the middle of a desert?” Twilight lamented out loud. At the very least, she hadn’t ended up in the center of an active volcano. That was an experience she didn’t care to repeat.
Still, if she wanted to learn anything, she had to put in at least some effort to explore. Closing her eyes, she pointed her horn towards the sun and sent out a tentative scanning pulse. The pulse bounced off the sun and landed somewhere else in the plane, transmitting a map of the area into her mind. To Twilight’s lack of surprise, it only showed more desert. She sent out another pulse, this time at a slightly different angle, and the pulse landed again in a different location, though once again it only showed another expanse of desert. Another pulse, yet another, and yet more after that, and they all returned the same result.
Finally, after a number of attempts she hadn’t bothered counting but felt like more than a hundred, Twilight saw something. It was an area that appeared at first to be another expanse of desert, but then something else made itself clear on the edges of her mental map. It was a large city, wedged between a massive lake to the south and an ocean to the north, with stone walls and a gigantic single lighthouse standing tall above the other buildings.
“Well, here goes nothing,” said Twilight, before teleporting away.
———————
Twilight was eventually brought to the outskirts of the city, where she could already see the bustle of activity as people made their way through the streets, some riding on horses or camels, but many simply walking. She noticed that their skin tones were darker on average than on most other planes; she figured it had something to do with the amount of sunlight the desert climate received.
Her horn glowed, and her body shimmered and twisted as it vanished into nothing, hidden by the invisibility spell she’d placed over herself. She’d found the spell to be a useful way of exploring a plane without drawing attention to herself, at least before she could come up with a convincing enough disguise. With a beat of her wings, she lifted herself up into the air and took towards the city.
Flying above the main roadways, she couldn’t help but notice that the environment felt a lot cooler. While still much hotter than her home, it was no longer unbearably so, and it no longer felt as dry. Being wedged between a lake and an ocean had no doubt cooled the city’s climate considerably; all things considered, they really couldn’t have built a lasting settlement in a desert land without putting it next to a body of water.
Taking in as much visual information as she could about the people bustling around her, she quietly ducked her way into a vacant alley, and dismissed the invisibility spell. Her horn went alight once more, and her body was wrapped in an illusion that made her appear as a human with brown skin. It was such a convincing illusion that it fooled even her own perceptions, making her truly feel like she was standing on two feet, with a bipedal stature, with a body much taller than she was as a pony. It was a vast step up from the illusion spell that she had used during her first visit to Ravnica, and there wasn’t a single plane she’d traveled to where she didn’t make use of it in some capacity.
It was a shame she still couldn’t figure out how to change the school clothes, though. Her best guess was that she just couldn’t properly imagine what an alternative set of clothes would look like; she certainly didn’t have the designer’s mind that Rarity did. The only part of her outfit that looked different was the deep purple backpack that her illusory body carried across its shoulders, and she could only really create the image with her similarly-colored saddlebags as a reference.
Journeying out into the streets once more, she took in the sights of the city, observing the scene around her. The buildings were crafted from sand-colored stone, and palm trees were planted intermittently between the constructions. The people around Twilight all moved with the swift pace that she had grown to expect from large cities, though she noticed that she was given a few strange looks, her illusory body’s clothing clearly not matching the desert garb that the native people wore.
Her wandering eventually brought her to a bazaar, with a vast number of colorful tents and booths lining the streets, set up by merchants seeking to sell their wares to the many patrons that gathered before them. Twilight aimlessly shuffled, drinking in the sights and sounds, and absorbing the unfamiliar smells. Though there was a subtle stench of meat that turned her stomach thinking about, it was far outweighed by the aroma of fruits, incenses, and spices.
Her attention was eventually drawn to a merchant’s booth that had a variety of artifacts laid out on display. While the goods themselves appeared unremarkable, there was a subtle aura of magic about them that Twilight could feel tingling in her spine. As she approached, a single customer in front of her was engaging in a heated exchange with the merchant, before walking away. With no other customers left in front of her, Twilight quickly applied a translation spell and came face-to-face with the merchant, a small mustachioed man with a brown vest and a white turban.
“Welcome, traveler!” he greeted cheerfully. “You’re not from around here, I take it?”
Twilight blushed, and glanced down at her illusory clothing. “That obvious, huh?”
The merchant chuckled. “Hey, don’t worry about it! Come, take a look. I have the finest magic items in all of Rabiah right here!”
So this place is called Rabiah. Good to know, thought Twilight. She leaned in and examined the items strewn about the merchant’s booth more closely, a variety of knick-knacks and antiques whose purposes she couldn’t quite discern. Her eyes finally settled on what looked to be a brass oil lamp with a long nozzle.
The merchant immediately took notice of this and grinned. “Ah, you have a discerning eye, my friend!” he said, holding up the lamp to display it. “This right here is a true rarity: a real, functioning magic lamp!”
Twilight stared at the merchant incredulously. “A magic lamp? You don’t mean the kind with a djinn in it, do you?”
The merchant’s eyes went wide. “A djinn!? Oh, no, no, no! The king would have my head for that! What this is, is the most durable light source you will ever own! Just give it a rub, like so...” He held the lamp and rubbed its body in demonstration. Almost immediately, a bright blue flame erupted from the tip of the nozzle, radiating an intense magic aura. “Behold! A heatless flame that will never be extinguished! Perfect for long nights of reading!” The merchant rubbed the lamp again, causing the flame to disappear, before setting it back on the table. “So, what do you say?”
“I’ll take it!” Twilight exclaimed, having been sold the moment the merchant had said ‘reading.’ With an ear-splitting grin, she reached into her saddlebags and placed a large pile of bits onto the counter, a motion that was mimicked by her illusory body reaching into her backpack and doing the same.
The merchant peered at the coins warily, picking one up and examining it through squinted eyes. “You must truly be from very far away, my friend. I’ve never seen any currency like this before.”
Twilight’s body suddenly seized up. “Eep! I mean, um, uh... is that a problem?”
“Oh, not at all! Gold is gold, after all,” the merchant reassured. He bit into the coin, leaving a bite mark on it, before reaching out to shake hands. “You have yourself a deal!”
Twilight’s false body returned the gesture, grabbing the merchant’s hand and shaking vigorously. “Yes! Thank you! Thank you so much!” Still giddy from the excitement of having an everlasting reading lamp, she stuffed the artifact into her bag and happily walked away.
As she retreated from the bazaar, a sudden realization began to crawl onto the edges of her thoughts. When she finally became fully aware of it, she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Ack! That was all the money I brought with me! I was supposed to haggle!”
———————
After mentally kicking herself for her moment of impulsiveness, Twilight was soon able to find out more information about the city with little effort. Despite the number of odd looks she received, its denizens were more than willing to tell her what she wanted to know: the city was called Alexandria, and it was widely considered to be one of the largest centers of scholarship, art, and culture on the plane of Rabiah.
Which, of course, brought her to the Library of Alexandria. Twilight had visited many different libraries during her travels in the multiverse, and seeing what knowledge the planes had to offer never ceased to excite her. Seeing what centers of study had been built was her favorite part of visiting any new plane.
The Library of Alexandria, the largest known library on Rabiah, was no exception. It was less extravagantly designed than some of the libraries that she’d seen Ravnica, and less wondrous or exotic than the Sylvan Library of Shandalar, but it was still an impressive work of architecture nonetheless. A large staircase led up to a square structure with four castle-like walls of alabaster and four turrets on the corners. It was a building far less ornate than the castles of Equestria and more like a fortress, though the four windows on the front made it unlikely to truly withstand a siege. Each of the turrets was tipped with a brass dome shaped like an elongated onion, and an extremely wide central tower in the center of the library stood tall above them all, tipped with a wider onion-shaped dome of its own as well. The two front doors were carved from wood, swinging open and shut as people made their way in and out of the building.
The interior of the library was structured much more like a university campus than a single library. Exploring the inner rooms, Twilight found classrooms where lectures were given to listening students, a room fitted with tables for shared dining, meeting rooms, and even a small courtyard near the back containing a botanical garden. Eventually, she found the central collection, a hall with numerous study tables placed between alabaster columns. Shelves lined the walls, each of which contained a collection of scrolls. Through her translation spell, Twilight could read an inscription carved above each of the shelves: ‘The place of the cure of the soul.’
Though she initially found herself put off by the lack of modern book bindings, Twilight had soon become engrossed within her studies, sitting down at one of the tables and voraciously reading through as many scrolls as she could carry. Much of the work that was written on magical theory was information she had already learned elsewhere, but things became truly fascinating when she started reading written accounts of myth and legend. She had read many apocryphal tales of the Thousandfold Refraction, an unknown event that split the plane of Rabiah into a thousand-and-one different parallel planes, each being recognizably Rabiah, yet no two of them being exactly alike.
A sudden epiphany drew Twilight out of her study. She wasn’t in the plane of Rabiah right now. She was in a Rabiah. Arabia. Like Saddle Arabia.
The pained groan that Twilight made at the pun was so loud that it earned her angry glares from everyone else in the vicinity.
———————
Twilight’s study eventually lasted well into the afternoon. The amount of concrete information she could find on the Thousandfold Refraction was frustratingly scarce, and eventually she’d given up on it entirely.
Seeking more tangible information, she soon turned to history. There was more of it to be covered than she could have hoped to read in a single day, but the most fascinating part of history she’d learned about was the effort made by King Suleiman to wipe out all djinns and efreets from the plane. It was no wonder the merchant that sold her the magic lamp had insisted there was no djinn hiding inside of it.
At the thought of the magic lamp, Twilight realized that the library’s natural light had already begun to fade, making the words on the scrolls more difficult to read even with the aid of her translation magic. It was probably already almost sunset outside, which seemed like as good a time as any to put her new light source to the test.
Reaching into her bag, she placed the lamp on the tabletop and gave it a rub. What came out was so loud and startling that it nearly caused her to topple out of her chair.
“POWER! UNLIMITED COSMIC POWER!” The booming, very familiar voice shouted, as a wisp of smoke poured from the lamp’s nozzle. The other library patrons scattered and ran away in all directions, their faces frozen into perfect portraits of fear.
The smoke soon coalesced into a solid shape: a grey, goat-like face with a striking assortment of different animal parts for a body. On his head was a white turban with a blue feather sticking out on top, and the lower half of his body was a wisp of smoke that extended out from the lamp.
“Thank you for freeing me from my prison, mortal!” said Discord. “In exchange for releasing me, I will grant you three wishes!”
“Discord!” Twilight shot back in a stage whisper. “What in Celestia’s name are you doing here!?”
“Well, aren’t we ungrateful today?” Discord scoffed. “I don’t think you quite understand what I’m offering you, Twilight. Why don’t you sit back, while I show you the possibilities?”
With a grin, the library vanished in a flash of light, and Twilight found herself standing in the middle of an endless black expanse, with a single spotlight shining on her from above. A group of nasty-looking desert bandits surrounded her on all sides, grimacing and brandishing their swords. Before she could try to defend herself, Discord’s voice echoed out in song, accompanied by instrumental backing.
“Well, Ali Baba had them Forty Thieves—”
“No! No Songs!” Twilight shouted back. The music stopped with the scratch of a record needle. There was another flash of light, Twilight found herself sitting back where she was before, with nobody else in sight besides Discord.
Discord crossed his arms and frowned. “Well, aren’t you being a party pooper today? Your first wish should be to have that stick up your behind removed.”
“Enough,” Twilight hissed. “Why. Are. You. Here?”
“Ah, ah, ah! If you want me to answer your questions, you’ll have to wish for them,” Discord said with a grin. “Sorry, but those are the rules.”
Twilight facepalmed. “Okay, fine. I wish you would tell me why you’re here. Happy?”
“Yes, very,” said Discord. “I’m here because I followed you here. Now, what is your second wish?”
“What?” said Twilight. “Oh come on! You know that isn’t what I meant!”
Discord gleefully held up a finger. “First rule of wishing, Twilight: be careful what you wish for. Now, are going to word your second wish a bit more carefully?”
Twilight closed her eyes, inhaled sharply, and counted to ten in her head. It was a stress management technique she’d learned a while ago, and it had served her particularly well when dealing with Discord. Exhaling loudly, she turned her head up and looked Discord in the eye.
“Alright,” said Twilight. “I wish you’d tell me how you got here. Do you expect me to believe that you’re a planeswalker, too?”
“Hmm... technically two questions,” said Discord, rubbing his chin, “but I’ll be generous and answer them both. Unlike you and your fleshy compatriots, I don’t need a so-called spark haphazardly wedged into my soul, and that’s not just because I don’t have either of those things.”
Twilight blinked. “Wait, you don’t have a soul?”
“Irrelevant!” said Discord. “The point is, the only reason you can travel between planes is that you have something separate from yourself that grants you that ability, something you acquired in a stroke of blind luck. For yours truly, traveling between planes is a part and parcel of who I am.”
Twilight paused. In a way it did make sense that a being like Discord wouldn’t be bound to one plane, but she couldn’t rightly understand why, at least not at first thought. “I’m not sure how being the Spirit of Chaos necessarily grants you that ability, but alright.”
Discord chuckled. “Oh, Twilight, you really haven’t figured it out? I’d have thought someone as clever as you would have realized by now. ‘Spirit of Chaos’ is just a title that I’d given to myself. What I really am is something more subtle than that. Shocking, I know. Subtlety was never my strong point.”
Now Twilight’s curiosity had begun to overtake her, pushing any of the initial anger she’d felt out of her mind. Despite how long she’d been on more-or-less friendly terms with Discord, she’d never really given any thought to exactly how he worked. “So what are you, then?”
“You know the rules Twilight, I can’t answer a question unless you wish for it,” said Discord. “Then again, I never much liked rules, so I’ll answer anyway. I,” he said, elaborately gesturing to himself, “am a manifestation of the chaotic energies of the Blind Eternities, transformed by planar reality into a more worldly form of chaos.”
Twilight’s looked at Discord with a gleam of understanding in her eye. “The Blind Eternities? You mean... Of course, that would explain everything! You can travel between planes because you’re made of interplanar energy!”
“Now you’re getting it!” said Discord. “You seem happy to have learned something today. And of course, I’m happy to have helped a friend.”
Twilight shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “Um... thanks? I think?”
Discord opened his mouth to respond with what Twilight could only assume was a ‘you’re welcome’ when a sudden voice interrupted them both.
“Halt!”
Suddenly, there was a storm of rushing footsteps in the halls. Soldiers dressed in heavy robes and steel armor poured into the corridor, each brandishing a long polearm and carrying a curved scabbard at their side. Soon, both Twilight and Discord were surrounded on all sides by hostile forces.
“Wait!” said Twilight. “This isn’t what it looks like!”
“Silence!” one of the soldiers shot back. “For summoning a djinn, the penalty is death!”
“Discord!” Twilight cried out. “Do something!”
“You still have one wish left,” Discord replied. “I suggest you make it quickly.”
As the soldiers began closing in, Twilight’s mind and body became snared in the icy grip of panic. Without even thinking, she immediately went for the first escape option she could think of.
“I wish we were back in Equestria!”
“Done!” said Discord. There was a sound of snapping fingers, and then everything vanished in a flash.
In the very next moment, Twilight had found herself standing in the throne room of her castle, her illusory body having vanished, with Discord and the magic lamp sitting on the floor at her side. In front of them both, on the crystal table where the Cutie Map was holographically projected, was Starlight Glimmer, lying down on her back. Straight above her, Trixie stood on her hooves with half-lidded eyes, leaning down with her face nearly touching Starlight’s.
“What the hay!?” Trixie exclaimed, startled by the bright light of Twilight’s sudden appearance. She reared back onto her hind legs, and then promptly toppled over backwards, falling off the table in a crash.
“Well, that was fun!” said Discord. “It’s a good thing you made your last wish when you did, am I right?”
“Never do that again!” said Twilight.
“You’re welcome!” Discord replied. With another flash of light, he vanished, leaving the magic lamp wobbling as it lay empty on the ground.
Twilight let out a heavy sigh, and then turned towards the Cutie Map. Trixie, now standing upright beside it, was gritting her teeth and glaring daggers at her. Starlight, meanwhile, remained lying on the table, trying to hide her furiously blushing face beneath her hooves.
A similar blush crossed Twilight’s own muzzle as the sudden realization hit her. “Oh, um... Right. I’ll, uh, just pretend I didn’t see that. Sorry!”
Feeling like she’d die of embarrassment, Twilight hastily ducked out of the throne room. One of these days she’d have to talk to Starlight Glimmer about what public rooms were supposed to be used for.
———————
Discord, Spirit of Chaos 3RRR
Legendary Creature — Chimera Avatar
Flying
At the beginning of your upkeep, each player exiles a permanent he or she controls at random. Each player then reveals cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reveals a permanent card, puts that card onto the battlefield, then puts all other cards revealed this way on the bottom of his or her library in a random order.
6/4