“Chaos magic,” I repeated.
Discord sat his teacup down on the table he sat next to. Well, he set it up on the table, since it and his chair were affixed to the ceiling of the room I was in. He leaned back and affixed me in his gaze.
“I am quite sure you heard me the first time I mentioned it,” he grumbled, adjusting his scarf in his claws. “You are practically radiating Chaos magic, almost like a tether of some sort. It’s different enough from my magic that I can’t affect it or see what it’s doing, though. It’s mildly annoying.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, lifting a glass of water and rinsing the last of the bile from my mouth. I had apparently suffered another mild seizure. Thankfully, this time I maintained control of my various bodily functions, just a few mild returning of my lunch and breakfast. Possibly some of yesterdays as well, from the amount that came out.
Discord turned his gaze on me and I felt my ears pin back against my head. “No offense,” I added quickly. “It’s just, so much of this is so different from my understanding. Two hundred years is a long time.”
“To a pony, at least,” Spike rumbled. I was still trying to get over his size and the changes to him. He was much more reserved, and the grizzled appearance was something I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to reconcile with the innocent dragonling I had known. “For him, it’s almost like a blink of an eye.”
“Or for you?” I asked, wondering how he was dealing with knowing he would outlive his friends most of the time.
He closed his good eye, sighing in agreement. “Maybe eventually,” he admitted. “Right now, it’s still a fairly good length of time.”
“Why me?” I asked. “Why was I placed into a coma but not Dash? I wasn’t worth the trade for one of the Bearers of the Elements.”
“You weren’t placed there by us,” Spike replied with a confused look. “The final strike from the Pony set you there. We just trailed to keep you healthy.”
I frowned. “Spike,” I asked carefully. “How many students did Twilight have after me?”
He gave me a confused look. “None,” he said. “You were the last private student. She had a few that she mentored, especially when she ran the school for a year or two while Celestia was training Sunset.”
“And Trixie’s foals,” I continued. “How many of them did she teach?”
“Well,” he said, eye going distant for a moment. “With the exception of her second filly who happened to be a Pegasus, all of them. And her grandfoals all enrolled in the school if they were Unicorns.”
“I know you’ve been out of touch for a while,” I said. “But do any of you know of a descendant of Trixie called Echo?”
Spike glanced at Discord, who shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t particularly keep track of the get of a common stage illusionist,” he gave as an answer.
“Says the draconequus that writes Fluttershy’s lineage on her birthday every year.”
“I’m just honoring the memory of the best friend I had,” the former Lord of Chaos sniffed. His form faded slightly as he said that. “It’s perfectly rational.”
“That’s why I’m worried,” Spike said before focusing on me. “I kept tabs until I left, and I still get letters from Celestia, discreetly. I’ve never heard of a pony named Echo, though.”
I nodded. “I was given a guide,” I said. “By Twilight called Starlight Echo, who looks remarkably like Trixie did. She wanted to study time magics, and was using me as a test subject as well as wanting to hear about Trix.”
“Time magic?” Discord said. “Isn’t that your particular forte?”
I opened my mouth to respond but was cut off by a disembodied laugh.
“Of course it is,” the voice continued. “It’s one of the reasons I took an interest in her.”
I blinked. “Echo?” I whispered to the air, but the voice was off subtly. It sounded almost like…
A wall of mist appeared, and a Unicorn mare walked out of it, revealing Echo.
“You are so much more than just a guinea pig, Starlight,” she said, her eyes flashing red for a moment, matched by a faint glint at her neck. Her form shimmered and shifted, her coat shifting colors and her mane resettling.
“You are the final piece of a puzzle I never managed to figure out…”
The microphone cutie mark disappeared, replaced slowly by another.
“But now, I think I know that I was being a bit too subtle.”
She gave herself a little toss of her mane, the pink coat pristine as my own, and a jagged shard of a pendant hung from her neck. Her hair was a perfect match to how I had worn mine a lifetime ago in this very village, as was her tone and malicious glare.
What gave me and the other two in the little house pause was the red sheen to her horn and the pendent hanging from her neck. it held a faint resemblance to something I had heard Twilight and Trixie talk about.
“The Alicorn Amulet?” I whispered.
“Remember what I said about you never ceasing to surprise me?” Discord said with an amused chuckle.
I stared across the room at the other Starlight Glimmer, shocked beyond words.