Kindness and the Heart of Shadow

by Raven-Flight

The Heart of Shadow

“Now, sir, y-you did the right th-thing in bringing her to us, but I need you to let me h-help her...”

“You mustn’t hurt her! She’s already suffered far too much!” The distressed draconequus stood defensively on all fours over the unconscious Fluttershy. While he was threatening the nurse, another hippogryph crept in behind him. She carefully lined up her needle and inhaled.

In the blink of an eye the syringe was emptied and the brave doctor had catapulted herself across the room. Feeling a prick, Discord screeched and whirled around, but his lion paw slashed through empty space.

“What was that about?” He demanded. The doctor and the nurse merely stared, each pressing themselves into a corner. “What did you… do to me...” Discord tottered from his perch upon the hospital bed, and his eyes drooped. The two hippogryphs rocketed back to the bedside just in time to catch Discord’s limp body before it crashed down onto Fluttershy. With some heaving and struggling, they managed to slide him off the bed and onto the chair beside it.

“I’ll hazz you knoww dis iz a CAPITOL ovvence!” The draconequus slurred, weakly lifting an arm in accusation before he watched, bewildered, as it fell back into his lap.

“I thought you were going to sedate him,” said the nurse to the doctor.

“So did I,” she shrugged. With the Lord of Chaos out of the way, however temporarily, the two hippogryphs got to work on their patient.

Discord awoke by degrees. First he noticed white, everywhere. Then he noticed walls, then a little table with two glasses of water upon it, and finally, the bed where a strange pony was sleeping. He rubbed his eyes and then the memories all flooded back. In half a moment, he was standing over Fluttershy again, but he quickly relaxed when he realized that he was alone in the room with her.

Despite all the little tubes and wires those hippogryphs had connected to her body while he was unable to defend her, Fluttershy looked worse. Her eyes, closed as if in peaceful slumber, were sunk deep in their sockets. Her mane and tail were turning black like smog and billowing more steadily. And that one vein with that infernal shadow infection, it protruded from under Fluttershy’s thin, translucent skin like some vile snake coiling greedily along her neck. At its end, where the black line dove deeper into her chest, Discord could practically see her swollen heart pushing against her ribs, beating slowly and erratically. The impression of decay overwhelmed him and he collapsed beside her, wrapping her in a gentle hug.

“Oh Fluttershy, please be okay. Please don’t leave me. Not like this...” Discord let himself shed a few tears onto her pillow, then pushed himself up off the bed again. He took one of the glasses of water and slowly poured a drop onto Fluttershy’s lips.

At first, she was still. Then without waking, the patient licked up the water.

“Yes!” Discord celebrated. “More!” He slowly poured just a little more water. Fluttershy again licked.

And then she bolted upright, bloodshot eyes wide open, and coughed violently into her lap. Discord tossed away the cup he’d been holding (it transformed into harmless bubbles behind him) and lunged forward to help her. It only took a few firm pats on the back for the coughing fit to cease, and then Fluttershy crashed backward again, unconscious as ever.

Discord sighed and slumped back into his chair, never taking his eyes off the suffering pony.

Twice the doctor and nurse came to check on Fluttershy, and Discord followed their movements with his eyes, but did not move from his spot. The hippogryphs eyed him back and gave him a wide berth as they worked. The second time, once she finished writing something on a clipboard, the nurse clicked her tongue in pity and shook her head. She didn’t make eye contact with the draconequus.

Another hour passed. Discord stared. Nothing changed. Nothing except that her breaths were becoming shallower and shallower, and every once in a while a moan that sounded almost like “Sombra...” escaped her throat.

Then, a hiccup. Fluttershy opened her eyes and slowly stood herself up on the bed, ignorant of the cords and wires attached to her. Discord too rose in anticipation.

A great tremor shook down the mare’s body. She suddenly arched her back and vomited all over the bed. What came out of her, it… squirmed. Like thousands of tiny black worms. Fluttershy stared at the mess as transfixed and horrified as Discord. As the worms started sizzling and somehow vaporizing into black smoke that quickly dissipated, Fluttershy toppled onto her side. Her eyes stayed open, but they were glassy.

Discord watched her chest expand shakily as she took a huge breath, and then… stillness.

“No!” Discord went wild with terror. Before he could think, his ear was at her chest. Quiet. His paw was against her nostrils. Quiet. He let out a harsh wail and snapped his claws.

The chaos he wrought caused him to collapse too, but he fought hard against his body to remain conscious. Grunting and panting, he reached up and grabbed the bedpost, pulling with all his might until he was halfway off the floor and could see Fluttershy.

She was breathing again. Deep, even breaths. Discord let himself fall back down and just lay on the floor. His chest ached immensely, and when he looked down at it, it was swollen.

Discord awoke again when he felt the telltale shockwave of a teleportation. Standing all the way up, he wobbled, then recovered his balance and steadied himself against the bedpost. His chest still ached with every heartbeat, and now he was looking into the face of a pony he desperately did not want to see.

“Hello, draconequus. I believe you have taken what is mine,” King Sombra grinned.

“She belongs to nocreature but herself, you creep!” Discord growled, and punctuated his accusation with a snap. The small hospital room was suddenly huge, and the bed where Fluttershy still lay was a long way away from Discord and Sombra. “Shouldn’t you be with your little pals, conquering Equestria or something right now?”

“Some would say I should be,” Sombra’s fangs glinted in his grin, “but I thought it far more important to come and rescue my beloved Queen.”

“Rescue? QUEEN?!” Discord thrust forward his arms and flexed his claw and paw. Flames sprung from the floor under Sombra’s hooves, but the King transformed himself into shadow before he could be singed.

The shadow laughed. “Is that the best you can do, Chaos Lord? Why not save us both the trouble of a battle you will lose and let me carry her off to safety?”

“You lie!” This time, a lightning bolt. Sombra dodged and then precipitated back into smug unicorn form. Discord clutched his swollen chest, panting.

“What’s the matter? Your hideous mis-matched body not agreeing with itself?” He laughed again and fired a blast of magic at Discord.

It hit, he fell, and his body twitched up and down. Then he forced his consciousness back into place and, still clutching his chest with his claw, shoved himself back to his feet. “What are you trying to achieve?” Discord dodged a blast. “Do you think,” another dodge, “she actually loves you?” The next blast he canceled with a blast of his own magic.

Sombra paused his assault. “Think? Ha! I know she loves me. Just look how much she’s changed in order to please me!” He gestured to Fluttershy off in the distance, who was now awake and sitting in the bed. Her ruby red eyes were so wide, the rest of her face could hardly be discerned around them.

“She didn’t change voluntarily! You forced this upon her!” Discord wielded his tail like a whip and cracked it at Sombra.

The King lunged out of its way, then powered his horn and grew a ring of tall black crystals around Discord. “She told me herself that her body changed like that because she has so much kindness for me. It sounded pretty voluntary to me.”

Discord roared. The crystals turned into black licorice at his touch and he ripped them aside. “You tortured her and fed her lies!”

“And you have never lied to her?”

“I… Not any more!” Discord took a firm stance and thrust his left arm up and the right one down, causing two columns of rock, one above and one below, to crush the spot where Sombra stood. But Sombra was already a shadow again, and unaffected by the blow.

“Are you so sure?” He hissed. “How do you know you aren’t lying to her when you spend all your days lying to yourself?” Purple flames appeared at the corners of Sombra’s eyes, and Discord stood still and dumb as they appeared in his eyes too. He didn’t notice himself falling over, not even when he collided with the floor. Sombra returned to pony form and stalked toward him. “Do you really think you can love her, a mortal, harmony-loving pony, the way she needs to be loved?”

Discord convulsed, his eyes flaming.

“Do you really think she could love you, a creature of chaos, the opposite of harmony, and so wily that you were imprisoned in stone for a thousand years because pony-kind simply couldn’t tolerate you? I at least am a pony, and one that can give her everything she needs!”

Discord convulsed again. Sombra stretched his neck down and whispered into the draconequus’s ear. “Fluttershy could never truly love you.”

That was the wrong thing to say. All at once, Discord broke from the nightmare spell and seized Sombra by the throat. He stood with the King in his clutches and doused the magic from his horn with a bucket of water. “You say nothing that is true,” he snarled, his voice rising, “and I refuse to be fooled!” Discord slammed Sombra into the floor and summoned a shining golden javelin. He stepped down on his victim’s stomach and took aim.

The King merely smiled, patronizingly. “You can’t kill me. She’s watching, you know.”

Fluttershy was indeed watching, and seeing Sombra at the end of a javelin prompted her to wail a protest across the vast hospital room.

While Discord was distracted looking at Fluttershy, Sombra transformed to shadow, slid out from under his foot, and summoned a sharp crystal to stab the draconequus through the spine.

Discord caught the crystal in his claw and crushed off the point before it could hurt him. “Very well, I will not kill you, much as you deserve it.” Sombra launched a magic beam. Discord launched a canceling blast. “But I will never succumb to your lies! Whatever you may have taught her to think, I know you do not love her as you say you do!” A floor tile with razor-sharp edges rose and spun toward Sombra. He dodged, but it grazed his side and left a deep scratch. Smoke, rather than blood, seeped from his body.

“Discord, you wound me,” the King joked, ignoring his pain. “Of course I love Fluttershy. Why do you think I came here all by myself to challenge you for her?” Crystals sprang up under Discord’s feet and catapulted him into the ceiling.

He recovered his breath and decided to stay up there, running along the ceiling like another floor. “You don’t love Fluttershy! You love power! You have taken control over her mind,” he launched down a blast of chaos magic, “and her body,” another blast, “and her heart,” a third blast, which struck Sombra square in the chest and stunned him, “but as far as I can see, the only love you’ve demonstrated is love for that control!” Discord materialized a pile of apples to fall on Sombra and keep him in place as he dropped himself back to the floor and stalked over. “I used to be the same way,” he gritted his teeth, “but dear Fluttershy spent an enormous effort to teach me that’s no way to treat a mare or anycreature, and I listened to her.”

Sombra had been struggling among the apples, but when Discord stood over him and finished speaking, he gave up, rested an elbow on the pile and rested his chin on his hoof. “You speak so harshly, yet what have you ever done to demonstrate your correct and harmonious love for that mare, hmm?”

Discord whacked Sombra’s smug face and sent him and half the apples flying across the broad room. “Well for starters,” he shouted, “when I saw she was dying, I took her to a hospital and stayed with her to help her heal.”

“Anycreature could do that,” Sombra scoffed, pushing himself back up onto his hooves.

“And then,” Discord continued, “I saw that her heart was failing—because you infected it,” he summoned a cage over Sombra, “—and I saw that my own heart was healthy.” He took a step toward the cage, and it began to shrink. The magic Sombra fired couldn’t break the enclosure or stop the shrinking. “So do you know what I did?” Another step. “I switched them! I switched our hearts!” Another step. “Let my healthy heart heal her sickly body, I thought.” Step. “And let my healthy body heal her sickly heart!” Step. “So now I fight you handicapped by Fluttershy’s own infected heart, because I love her too much to see you take her back and finish draining the very life out of her!” Step. The cage shrank until it was tight against Sombra’s skin and he could not move at all.

Nevertheless, the King smiled. “You have taken her heart. How sweet!” His eyes started flaming. “Unfortunately, your valiance will be your demise!” The purple flames started pulsing slowly at first, then faster and faster.

Before Discord could understand what was happening, the heart beating in his chest sped up. It was racing so fast he could hardly breathe, and his vision started going dark.

The tight cage around Sombra melted harmlessly away when Discord fell over. He watched the draconequus push against the floor, but fail to lift himself.

“You’re one of the most powerful beings in Equestria, and yet you are weak!” King Sombra kicked the defenseless draconequus, sending him sliding several feet away. “Clearly, your idea of love is flawed, if you loved Fluttershy so much and could not save her.” Sombra powered his horn, and a few black crystals sprouted out of Discord’s chest.

Blood started seeping from his mouth and nose. “Please, don’t,” he breathed. “You can kill me if you want, but let her be free...”

“Ha!” Sombra pulsed his horn, and a crust of tiny crystals now grew over every inch of Discord’s body. “Fluttershy is mine.”

Discord exhaled and fell unconscious. Sombra grinned in triumph and began powering a massive blast of magic.

“STOOOOP!”

Crystals, not black, but beautiful and clear and sparkling, grew from the floor and ceiling. The enlarged hospital room became a cave with the glassy growths scattering beams of gentle light here and there. The suddenness of the landscape change arrested Sombra mid-attack and he turned about to seek the source of the transformation. Fluttershy delicately hopped off her bed and weaved her way through the crystal shards.

“You stay out of this!” Sombra now powered his horn at Fluttershy as if to blast her back into her bed.

He leaped backward out of the light and looked down to see burn marks on his chest and sides. “How are you doing that? I said stay out of this!” Sombra’s voice was a screech and his legs jerked stiffly with every step backwards.

Sombra crouched to fire a blast of magic, but the power died from his horn when another crystal appeared above his head and streamed down its singing light. The wild King reared backward and as he did, a glassy crystal erupted from beneath and engulfed him. Sombra was trapped inside.

A new beam of light, brighter than all the others, streamed from the ceiling and illuminated Sombra’s crystal until it appeared to glow from within. The Shadow King’s face stretched tight in anguish, but he was frozen in place.

Sunnybreeze arrived at her patient Fluttershy’s door. She didn’t expect to see any improvement—indeed, she expected the opposite—but she let out a sigh and pushed the door open anyway.

Her clipboard dropped from her talons.

It looked like a giant bubble was occupying the entire room, and her beak was just about to pop it. Inside the bubble was a sort of cave of tiny crystals, and in the center, Sunnybreeze could make out the shapes of Fluttershy, Discord, and another pony she didn’t know. Curiosity bid her touch the strange bubble. Her talons went through its outer wall without damaging the structure, and Sunnybreeze gasped when she saw that her own hand at the end of her arm now looked tiny. Tiny, or far away…

She came back with a team of hippogryphs to enter the bubble together. When they got inside, they found themselves at one end of a broad space. Gazing in wonder as they walked among the crystals, the group eventually reached the center where the three figures, now life-sized, rested. They extracted Fluttershy and Discord, but the unknown pony was inside a crystal that they could not move or break, so they left him.

After the hippogryphs and their two patients were all evacuated from the room, or cave, or whatever the space had become, Sunnybreeze closed the door again and locked it.