//------------------------------//
// Déjà Q 
// Story: Eris's Riddle 
// by hahatimeforponies 
//------------------------------//

Twilight nearly fell over in her surprise, swerving around to face the voice. "Discord!"

"Well, well! We meet again, Twilight Sparkle." The serpentine form hung in the air, his face painted with his patented knowing smirk. "Feel like giving me a few lectures on how I won't get away with this? Because we have all the time in the world..."

"Save it!" she snapped. As soon as she opened her mouth, a crude hand puppet in her image appeared on his lion paw, flapping along to her. "I'm not interested in your games!" The puppet kept going.

"Somepony certainly is in a mood this morning!" Speaking out of the side of his mouth in a high-pitched voice, he continued. "Oh but Discord, I love you! Oh! Steady on, Twilight," he chuckled. The unicorn fumed, but forced herself to calm down with a couple of deep breaths.

"Fine, let's get this stupid riddle over with."

Discord sighed. "All business then? Very well..." With a snap of his fingers, he vanished, and reappeared sans-puppet on the parapets, sitting in the middle of Eisen and Blueblood's squabble. Twilight quirked a brow at the irony. "At your leisure, my dear."

"Hmm..." She started to pace while she mulled over the problem. She hadn't had the time to stop and put some of the pieces together until now. "Well... if the three days are the three days since you put the riddle to us... the two thousand years is the time since you were imprisoned by Clover the Clever..."

"You're a lot like her, you know."

Twilight stuck out her tongue, and carried on. "... and the one angry pony is this great big doofus over here..." she nodded at Blueblood with a frown. "... then..." What do these do, what do these do... two thousand years ago Discord was sealed away, he comes back with limited power, then Blueblood comes along and... oh no. She looked again at what the Prince was doing, and went white.

"Well? I'm waiting."

"... Equestria will burn. That's the answer." That's not fair. That is so not fair. "Blueblood performs a ritual to release you, as the culmination of three days and two thousand years of scheming."

Discord pouted and bounced his head around. "Halfway there. Two out of four is alright, I suppose."

"What?"

"If it's any consolation, your answer was correct. But, I can at least show you what you got wrong!"

"Ugh... fine."

"First, the three days were those between the moment you pulled a certain secret history off the shelf of your library, and the moment you banished that... thing posing as a Princess."

"Celestia."

"Whatever. Those three days. As far as 96-hour brackets of time go, none have been so pivotal in the history of Equestria as then."

"That was going to be my second choice for that, but okay..."

"And second, the angry pony isn't Prince Blueface here." Discord gave Blueblood a little flick in the side of the head. Twilight tilted her head and frowned pensively. "It's not Jetstream either. It's not the Mayor of Ponyville, it's not Commander Hurricane, it's not Princess Platinum, it's not Chancellor Tiramisu, it's not Colonel Mustard in the pantry with the lead pipe, and it's not any of these featherbrains, if you think I'm trying to pull something funny." He gestured to the gryphon horde circling the forest below. "It's so much simpler than all that!"

"Well who is it?" she snapped. With a little smirk, he kicked from his perch on the parapets to float over to the unicorn.

"It's you, Twilight."

She blinked, and dithered a moment. "M... me?"

"You, Venus Dawn Twilight Sparkle. You're far more influential than you'd like to think you are. Your ire, your indignation, your wrath has been at the heart of two of your kind's three defining events in history. And, well, one fake one. I'm not saying you're wrong, but considering you instigated a revolt, drove your friends to attack a djinn, blew that same djinn's cover and banished it back to the fire plane on the most circumstantial evidence, destroyed two cities in the process of defending them - one of them twice - and been responsible directly and indirectly for what must be thousands of deaths at this stage, your image is looking less like 'mild-mannered librarian' and more like 'harbinger of destruction'. See? You're even angry right now!"

"Shut up!" she barked, positively steaming.

"You're not helping your case."

"My brother's just been stabbed, of course I'm angry!"

"Ah, but! Where pink tiara over there went rushing to his side, your first instinct was to start throttling this little brat." The draconequus perched atop Eisen's crown and gave Blueblood's mane a little ruffle. "Choices like that are the difference between two ponies living and two ponies dying."

Twilight grumbled and glared at the ground. Her cheeks were burning, and she was struggling to think. Rather than press the point any further, she decided to get back to the riddle. "So how does all this contribute to Equestria burning?"

"I'll admit, it's a little more... circuitous than your solution. When you're trapped in a lump of astral ice and can only use a fraction of your potential, you have to think outside the box. Fortunately, some ponies take 'negotiation' quite well, isn't that right, Bluepants?" Discord lightly slapped his cheek with a chuckle. "In order for me to escape, the correct ritual must be performed on the crystal. However, because you ponies were so busy in my absence, I now had another cosmic entity to compete with, haemomancy had been forgotten for the best part of two millennia and I was stuck in a part of the world that for the average pony may as well have been the far side of the moon. Fortunately for me, the gryphons had already planted Aurum's account in your library, and you were going to find it sooner or later. Ponyville was a bit too far away for me to just... drop it on your head, so that was a waiting game.

"Once the one angry pony had done her job over the three days, I just had to line up a couple of pieces. Getting Eisen to take the Apple was easy - gryphons have a... decidedly strange sense of style, and he thought it would look good in his crown when he found it. Blueblood and Jetstream were the only tribe leaders I could reach, but getting them to start plotting against each other was a snap. They remind me so much of Platinum and Hurricane, they really do. In the end Blueshirt seemed more interested in taking any measure necessary, so a little bird told him that you had a couple of things he was interested in. While you were off playing in the forest, his men had a rummage through your stuff for the manual for this thing," He gave the Apple a little tap. "And all he has to do now is put the pieces together."

"Wait... if your influence couldn't reach Ponyville... then how were you playing tricks on us in the forest?"

Discord shrugged. "As hilarious as that all was, that wasn't me. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's other things lurking out there that share my sense of humour." Twilight gave a worried frown. "Anyway!" He clapped his hands together, generating a flash; when the light subsided, there was a wreath and a medal around the unicorn's neck and a few streamers were flying around. Her shackles had disappeared, much to her relief, but it was still unsettling. "Your starting points may have been off, but your conclusion was correct, and that's good enough for me! You win, Twilight Sparkle, and your prize is a front row seat of the action."

"That's it? You're going to let the horde ravage Equestria anyway? That's... that's horseshit!"

"Tsk, tsk, such language. Been spending a little too long with Rainbow Dash?"

"Ugh!"

"I can put those shackles right back on you if you like." She snorted, and stepped off. "Now, if we're done screwing around, lights!" Discord pointed to the sliver of burning white edging over the peaks, and it gave a shimmer in response. "Camera!" He slithered behind her, looking over her shoulder. When she looked, he was invisible, but she could still feel his presence, the uncomfortable sensation of being entirely too close to someone. She could also hear him whisper, in the same moment as she felt her head jerk involuntarily towards Blueblood and Eisen; "Action."

In an instant, time resumed. There was no wind-up; it just began playing again in a snap. She was perfectly poised to see the events unfold in front of her, blow by blow. She wanted to do something, but something was paralysing her - all she could do was watch helplessly. Blueblood peeled the Apple away from the crown and let it fall away; Eisen immediately dove for it, giving the Prince a moment to work. After quickly checking a page in the book, he snatched the crystal out of the air, freeing up his magic to move the blood shed from his sword around, arranging it into a pattern. The circle was small - only a foot or so across - but it was enough. He levitated the crystal over to it, and slammed it forcefully at the cobblestones. The friction produced a spark, which in turn gave a flash, and in that flash the sigil ignited. Twilight could hear a mad cackling behind her, as if Discord was still there.

Something was off though. Laughter gave way to screams of dread. As the seal lit up and consumed the crystal in blinding light, it didn't shatter. Rather, the Prince himself began to glow, and he hunched over as the deep magic took effect. Nobody could see what was happening; the light hurt to look at, and those who still had free control over their own limbs shielded their eyes. When it eventually subsided, Discord was silent, and another voice was indulging in a hearty fit of low, ominous laughter. Blueblood was picking himself up from his hands and knees. The ground was charred, but his suit was absolutely pristine. Even King Eisen, hovering in the air behind him, looked shocked.

Click.

With a snap of his fingers, the space behind him flashed, and a pair of wings shot out of his back, spanning far beyond those of a normal pegasus. "He didn't..." Rarity gawped. Blueblood just blew a kiss to nobody in particular, and did a back flip off the wall.

Cadence sighed. "He totally did..." Twilight shook herself back to reality, and turned back to her friends.

"Uh, darling, where did those come from?" Rarity nodded at the winner's medal and victory wreath she was still wearing. She hurriedly threw them off and tossed them to one side. Before she forgot it again, she grabbed the book and tucked it under her arm.

"Doesn't matter. We need to get out of here!" Without hesitating, she drummed up her focus and took the four of them away in a flash.




A burst of light lit up the underground room, startling three half-asleep ponies. The most alert of them jumped right to her feet and raised her fists. "Who's there? Ah'll teach you to wa-"

"Applejack?"

"Twilight? What are you doin' here?"

"I could ask you the same thing, but there's no time. Everyone, this is my brother Shining Armor, he's uh... just been stabbed," He gave a weak salute of acknowledgement. "And his fiancée and an old friend of the family, Princess Cadence," She too gave a timid wave. "And there's... a bit of a situation going on out there."