//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Stay Frosty // Story: Something Cosmic // by DannyJ //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle reached the top of the staircase and burst through the wooden door, emerging into the freezing night air. It had gotten darker since her arrival at the castle, and the blizzard was worse than ever, but still she galloped out onto the ramparts. The skeletal gargoyle followed close behind, his wine-stained robes billowing in the winds. Two fur-clad gargoyles worked the snow ahead of Twilight, one shoveling it over the side of the wall, and the other salting the path. She screamed to them for help as she ran by, startling them both and making one drop his torch and shout a curse after her. But neither made a move to help, even as the skeleton weaved between them in pursuit, yelling threats of his own. "Get back here and let me skin you, small quadruped! It will not hurt if you only remain still!" This can't be happening! Help me, Discord! Can you hear me? Please, I need help! There was no answer, and Twilight was running out of breath. She wasn't even halfway across the ramparts yet, and already she was starting to slip and slide. The guards with the salt clearly weren't doing a very thorough job. She wanted to scream, but nobody would hear her; the wind was too loud to even hear herself think. Even the shouting skeleton behind her was becoming indistinct. As Twilight ran, she struggled to keep her balance on the slippery ice. The castle courtyard loomed below to her left, without so much as a guard rail to protect her, so she hewed to the right instead, hugging the battlements. With no magic to steady herself, Twilight grabbed ahold of them by hoof, and pulled herself along, skating over the ice and occasionally having to maneuver around a cannon. She looked back at the skeleton, who was also having balance problems. He slipped while trying to give chase, rattling as he fell on his face. Twilight allowed herself a brief smile. Up ahead, another guard was shouting something at her while waving his torch back and forth, but the storm was deafening by now. She began to hear him more clearly as she slid closer. "...Inside! Get inside!" he yelled frantically, barely audible over the storm. "Why?" Twilight shouted back. "Frost giants!" That was all he felt the need to say. The guard ran past, heading across the wall walk in the direction Twilight had just come from. Spiked boots on his feet prevented him from slipping on the ice, much to her envy. Since she had none of her own, Twilight kept dragging herself along the battlements to the far end. She still had to escape the skeleton before she worried about whatever he had been raving over. Suddenly, a set of bony fingers closed around her neck and pulled her down. Twilight and the skeleton both fell over and slipped towards the edge. She grappled with her attacker and tried to flip them over, but he pinned her down against the icy stone. His perpetual grin and the red glow emanating from his eye-sockets made Twilight's blood freeze in her veins. "What is your problem?" the skeleton shouted in its echoing voice. "I told you, just let me eat your skin, and this will all be over quickly!" Twilight kicked up with a hind leg, striking the skeleton's pelvis. To her surprise, he howled in agony and let go of her, cupping his hands over non-existent genitals. Twilight didn't question the logic of it, but instead shoved him off and struck him in the skull as she climbed to her hooves. Then she brought her hoof down again. "Argh!" the skeleton moaned. "Stop it! Stop it, fleshy!" Twilight didn't relent, only hitting him harder, again and again. She had no idea if it was even possible to knock a skeleton unconscious, but she wouldn't know unless she tried. A warhorn sounded in the distance, making Twilight pause mid-stomp. She looked around for the source of the noise, until it came again from the castle tower ahead of her. Through the white haze of the blizzard, she saw a fiery glow at the top of the tower. The skeleton, recovering from Twilight's attack, stopped to stare at it with her, his expression still frozen in a perpetual grin. But this time, when he spoke, there was something that sounded like fear in his voice. "Oh no..." "'Oh no,' what?" asked Twilight. "What's happening?" "No, no, no!" The skeleton scrambled to his feet and tried to get an even footing on the ice. "Not now! Please, not now!" Twilight looked out across the battlements, towards the land outside the castle. The blizzard was getting worse; the snow was so thick that Twilight's view was nothing but a wall of white. But above the howling wind, she heard the wailing. There was something alive out there. Something angry. Then, gradually, she noticed the motions through the storm. The skeleton immediately skittered back the way he'd come. Twilight couldn't even see from one end of the castle to the other anymore, so he soon disappeared from view. Her heart was beating rapidly, but the exertion was not enough for her to ignore the cold. She started shivering as it crept into her body, and dropped to her knees. The howling grew louder, and Twilight looked up into the oncoming snow. For a moment, she almost thought she saw a face. "N-No..." She barely heard the pop from behind her, and was too numb to notice the paw on her side until Discord turned her around to face him. "We need to go," he urged. Twilight nodded shakily, but then looked aside into the storm again. And as it emerged from the blizzard, the face of a gargantuan creature bore down on them. It was a cruel face, snarling and angry, pale as the snow itself, and perhaps worst of all, familiar. "W-W-Windigo!" Twilight cried. An enormous ghostly hoof crashed down onto the castle ramparts, shattering the stone with a noise like thunder. The stonework crumbled, and Discord and Twilight fell with it, snow and salt and all. Twilight screamed for their split-second of free fall, but they vanished in an instant, reappearing on solid ground, knee-deep in snow. Her teeth chattered, but Discord was soon there, wrapping his lion arm around her. Screams, warhorns, and the tolling of bells echoed somewhere behind her. She looked back over her shoulder, realising that they were not in the castle anymore. The blizzard obscured her view too much for her to see it, but she could hear the distant sounds of chaos somewhere back there, in the midst of the storm. "W-We have to help them!" Twilight chattered, air freezing in her lungs. "The best thing we can do to help them is to leave," said Discord. "Th-They'll die!" "Maybe! Or maybe, the monsters will turn around and come after us!" "U-Us?" Twilight, still shaking, collapsed in the snow. Exasperated, Discord grabbed her and pulled her back up. "Twilight, think. It's a windigo. Did you see any disharmony in that castle? Do you think it came to feed on Wulfred's grumbling about uppity draconequus tribes? It came here because we did! It's here because it wants to eat me!" Twilight hadn't even known she could feel any colder than she already was. "C-Can it?" "It can try, but I'm not going to give it the opportunity. I'd rather just let it have Wulfred and his lot. I promise you, they won't be missed." "N-No!" said Twilight, fighting her own chattering teeth. "Y-Y-You have to h-help them! Y-You can't let them d-die out here!" Discord sighed and ran both of his hands down his face, stretching it to an extreme length before letting it snap back like an elastic band. "Fine. Fine. As you command, princess. But you owe me double for this." With a mocking flourish and bow, Discord popped away. And Twilight was left in the snow. "Wait! D-Don't leave me out in this!" She curled up on the ground, wrapping her wings and her hooves as tightly around herself as she possibly could. "P-Please..." Was there anything worse than the sanctimonious whining of ponies? For as long as Discord had been around, Yggdrasil had been teaching primitive species how best to annoy him, and ponies were one of her greatest success stories. Twilight was usually an exception, a challenge for him to aspire to, or at least a more amusing plaything than most of her peers. But sometimes, she was just so predictably equine. Discord cleared the air ahead as he flew through the storm, throwing the wind aside with a casual swish of his claws. Of course, it came back just as quickly as he banished it, but it didn't matter so long as he could move forward. His power was ill-suited for calming any chaos he hadn't directly caused, but he didn't need to. He was the chaos. Nothing could harm him here. Nothing except the windigo he ran almost headlong into. "Oh, hi there!" said Discord, backing away from the monstrously huge spirit and grinning. "Sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going." The windigo glared down at him, churning mists pooling in its eyes. It opened its mouth and let out a ghostly screech that echoed through the storm in a thousand iterations. In the cry of a windigo was every kind of conflicting emotion a mortal could know. It was the pain of the wounded, the sorrow of the heartbroken, the anguish of the orphaned and widowed. It was vengeful rage and scornful jealousy, and the guilt of every being that had ever made a terrible mistake. It was an incomprehensible mess of sobbing, wailing, and moaning, with no apparent meaning. But Discord heard the meaning in it. Finding the signal in the noise was second nature to him, and the windigo's eldritch tones were as clear to him as any other spoken word. "WHAT IS THIS?" it said, suspicion burning in its voice. Discord backed away slightly and summoned a map, sunhat, and colourful shirt. "You wouldn't happen to know the way to Goldfeather, would you?" he asked, laughing awkwardly as he indicated the map. "I think I'm slightly lost." The windigo leaned down until its huge nostrils came up to Discord's face. "YOUR VERY BEING IS DISHARMONY. WHAT ARE YOU?" "I could very well ask you the same question!" said Discord, taking off his hat and shirt and throwing them away into the storm. "But I don't have to, because unlike yourself, I pay attention." The windigo drew itself up. "YOU... HEAR MY VOICE." It leaned in again, this time bringing its eye closest to Discord. "YOU ARE... WINDIGO? BUT NOT..." Discord sighed. "Perhaps I should just give you my card," he said drolly. With a flick of his claw, he conjured a stack of business cards, and threw all of them at the windigo. They scattered in every direction, caught in the swirling winds, but the windigo reached out with its magic and pulled several towards itself. Every card was different, each featuring Discord in a different seductive pose, but all of them had the same rainbow-coloured lettering in the same messy font, all reading the same words: DISCORD, SPIRIT OF CHAOS AND DISHARMONY. The windigo snarled and threw the cards aside. "LIES! THE SPIRIT OF CHAOS WAS BROKEN BY THE DAUGHTERS OF THOR! HE ROTS IN HIS STONE TOMB IN THE SHADOW OF MIDGARD!" "Ugh, don't remind me," said Discord, summoning some stone dust to brush off his shoulders. "YOU ARE A DECEIVER. I, THIASSI OF THE NORTH WIND, SHALL REND YOUR SOUL ASUNDER, AND MAKE A GIFT OF IT TO YMIR." "Please don't," Discord said sardonically. "Pulling my soul back together takes a long time, and it'll give you some fierce indigestion." Thiassi opened his mouth and unleashed a torrent of freezing breath. Icicles burst out of Discord's body, piercing him like swords, but prompting only a yelp from him. His muscles went stiff, and he felt his magic being sapped almost instantly. "Okay..." he muttered. "As first volleys go, not a bad move." Drawing from his deepest magic reserves, Discord shaped a spell that he hoped would turn out as heat. The spell would do as it wanted, of course, but he gently suggested that it might want to warm his body. It crawled up his arms and into the icicles, turning their insides into glowing liquid fire, and making the ice explode outwards into hundreds of shards. With the leftover parts of his spell, Discord channeled a chemical change into the shards to see if he could make anything useful. They turned into slightly warm catamar juice, a product of a fruit native to a planet some light years distant. No good, but it was worth a try. The freeze hit him afterwards, coming from within. Discord choked and fell, no longer supported by his magic. Thiassi was still leeching him, but that wasn't what was causing his magic to fail. The same spell that had birthed the icicles had another effect weaved into its composition. It was some kind of chaos feedback parasite, latching onto his soul. Whenever he tried to use chaos magic, it would drain the spell to create cold within his body, even if he was using a warming spell. Thiassi was trying to make him freeze himself to death. Discord hit the ground, his fall cushioned by a thick bed of snow. Thiassi's face loomed overhead in the storm, eyes full of wrath. "...This is annoying." Thiassi's winds whipped around his body and lifted him into the air. More icicles burst from his arms and chest, each one making him spasm in unexpected pain. "THIS IS THE FATE OF DECEIVERS, OF ALL WHO HAVE DISHARMONY IN THEIR HEARTS. EVERYTHING THAT LIVES IS A WINDIGO'S FEAST." If he stopped and thought some more, Discord was sure he could have come up with a cleverer solution. He didn't want to hurt this creature in a way that it couldn't fight against, and it always felt unsatisfying when he abused his magic for the easy win after he had otherwise been outplayed. But he had encountered chaos parasites like these before, and they were very difficult to work around when playing fair. If he were any other being in the universe, he could've simply used another type of magic to subvert its function, undoing the spell with magic that wasn't chaos. But those were doors that were closed to him forever. Instead, all he could do was parasitise the parasite. Discord closed his eyes and focused. Deep within his soul, he drew upon something beyond magic, an abstract, alien thing that lay quiet but eternally present. It awoke at his call, and through the Fundament of Chaos, Discord opened up his connection to the bedrock of magic. He felt the chaos all around him, in himself, in the storm, in the spell in his heart, and even within Thiassi. All of it was connected. All of it was a part of him. All of it belonged to him. As Discord giveth, Discord taketh away. The spell within him unraveled. Its magic broke apart, absorbed back into the Fundament of Chaos. The icicles broke. Discord pulled away from Thiassi's grasp and floated free. The windigo glared at him still, but now there was a hint of apprehension in his look. "HOW... DO YOU DO THIS THING?" Discord reached out a hand, and channeled the Fundament to deconstruct his form. Thiassi noticed almost immediately. As a spirit, he was composed entirely of magic; having it pulled away from him must've been terrifying, like being melted alive. Discord knew the feeling well. Thiassi's edges broke away in wisps of purple light. Without the energy to maintain his form, he started to collapse into a featureless cloud of magic. In his panic, the windigo scrambled to pull himself back together again. He succeeded, and managed to hold onto his natural shape, but there was nothing he could do about the drain. And as Discord bled more power off from him, Thiassi began to shrink in size. "NO! NO! WHAT IS THIS TRICKERY?!" The light swarmed towards Discord, swirling around him and then seeping through his skin. The chaos flowed through his soul, but invigorated him only slightly; Thiassi's power was barely a drop in the ocean for him. "MERCY! MERCY, YOU FIEND!" By the time Discord dropped his hand and released Thiassi, he was the size of a small rodent. The tiny windigo turned and tried to fly away into the storm, but Discord reached out and gripped his claw around him, pulling Thiassi up to his face. The blizzard around them quietened as Discord gave him a look of profound disappointment. "You think I like having to do this?" Discord asked with a gentle shake of his head. "You think I have nothing better to do than smack down uppity little demons all day? I'm bored of this, Thistle, or whatever your name is. But I keep having to do it, because every windigo I've ever met always insists on annoying me." Thiassi thrashed impotently in Discord's hands. "I will not stand for this!" he shrieked, his wailing voice reduced to timid squeaks. "In the name of Ymir, I demand you release me!" "Ever looked up 'hubris' in the dictionary?" Discord willed a dictionary into existence, and floated it beside Thiassi as he flipped to the relevant page. "Notice the picture of your face." Thiassi tried to respond, but didn't have the chance. Discord summoned a hamster ball around the spirit, trapping him inside the enchanted plastic, and pitched him like a baseball into the storm. His panicked cries disappeared into the distance as Discord shouted after him. "Tell your brothers! Gods are not food!" With the windigo gone, the storm cleared quickly. The winds slowed, and the snowfall lessened, until Wulfred's castle emerged from the white haze. Discord floated on high, while down on the battlements, several gaping gargoyles stared up at him. The guards dropped their torches when he looked their way, and by one of the cannons, a robed skeleton cowered and tried to make himself as small as possible. I should leave them alone, Discord thought. I should take Twilight, go right now, and not look back. But as much as he tried to ignore them, all the old urges were flaring up again. Twilight awoke in the jarl's feasting hall, still curled up into a ball, beside a roaring hearth that hadn't been in there before. Gradually, she stretched out her legs and yawned, feeling unusually rested after her ordeal. It was almost as if she'd had a full night's sleep. Almost. The dismal murmur behind her made her turn around. She found herself atop Jarl Wulfred's raised platform, looking down at the hall. The gargoyles who'd been feasting before now gathered in a standing crowd, many looking much worse for wear. Most were armed and armoured, fresh snow resting on their winter clothes while they grumbled to themselves. The tables had been pushed to the sides of the room, with cold, mostly-eaten food still strewn over them. She looked behind her, at the rest of the platform. On the far side from her, Wulfred and the robed skeleton who'd been chasing her before were stuck in a pair of iron cages. They raged and pounded at the bars, all in total silence, their cries blocked out by magic. Wulfred's table had been flipped over and placed in front of them as a barricade, and upon it flashed a neon sign. In both Equestrian and an unfamiliar runic language, it spelled out presumably the same word: "SHAME." And then there was Discord, sitting in the jarl's chair, draped in gold and jewellery many times too big for him. Wulfred's iron crown hung around the wrist of his eagle claw like an ill-fitting bracelet, and when he looked toward Twilight and grinned, she saw that even his snaggletooth had been replaced by silver. Carthfried of Gaulmore stood by his side, looking extremely uncomfortable with a dog collar around his neck that chained him to Discord's chair. Twilight climbed to her hooves and tentatively approached. This whole scenario was uncomfortably familiar. She recalled Discord sitting atop another throne as he lorded over a world of utter chaos. These gargoyles didn't look like they were willing subjects here either. "Discord," she whispered carefully. "What are you doing?" He smiled at her briefly, but then stood up from his chair and walked over to the edge of the platform to address the crowd instead. "Good gargoyles of the Stormcliffs!" he said, spreading his arms wide. "Feudalism is a contract. A wonderful, orderly contract, which I'm sure you're all very much in love with. It states that you pay homage to your lord and obey him, and in turn, he protects you! Well, that sounds like a wonderful idea to me, only... it seems to me that the Skeleton King has failed you. Jarl Wulfred failed you. Only I answered the call. Me, Discord! I suppose... this makes me your new lord... right?" "Dis—" A zip appeared over Twilight's mouth. While she reached up with her hooves and struggled to open it, Discord continued. "Only, I'm afraid I don't play that game." He took off his jewellery as he spoke, one piece at a time, and started dropping it on the floor. "Do you know why? It's because lords and aristocracy and nobility and feudalism... are a cancer. A recipe for a disaster. You're practically inviting tyranny and oppression on yourselves, because you can't trust these people." Discord removed his silver tooth and flicked it away, a new one immediately growing in its place, and gestured over to the cages. "Now, Wulfred isn't that bad, I'll grant you. He's a friendly sort, and a very gracious host to travelling strangers, which my friend and I appreciate. But do you know what makes him a bad liege lord? It's that he's submitting to the Skeleton King. Do any of you know who that is? Who he really is?" The crowd murmured amongst themselves. Discord let them for a moment, before continuing on with his story. "...Because I do," he said softly. "I was there back when his flesh first burned from his bones, eons ago before time and space and matter as you know them. And for as long as I've known him, he's always been a nauseating presence, the kind of guy that you wouldn't hang around with if you had a choice, unless you enjoy being regularly stabbed in the kidneys by bored sociopaths. Personally, I think there are plenty of far better ways to channel violent urges, but that doesn't matter to him. The Skeleton King resents other people for having kidneys at all. Beings like him can't be persuaded." Twilight got the zip on her mouth open, and it faded away immediately after. She coughed to clear her throat, but didn't try to interrupt now; wherever Discord was going with this, she wanted to see. "Look, I know what you're thinking," said Discord, floating back and forth along the edge of the platform. "If the Skeleton King is so bad, and tyranny is something you want to avoid, then how can you possibly fight him without rallying around another liege lord like Wulfred, with their own army to oppose his? And the answer is, easily. The Court of Bones may not fly Order's flag, but they're just as representative of his ways. And do you know what's best for fighting Order? Chaos. "Armies may destroy other armies, but so does random chance and bad weather! Poor planning, guerilla warfare, low morale, sneak attacks and betrayals, the list goes on! All these things can stop even the mightiest war machines, and you know what? Less people die that way, too! Trust in fate some more. Chaos is what will ruin the Skeleton King, and what will ruin Order, and your jarl, and feudalism. Chaos is the beginning and the end, the first snow and the last song, and every system succumbs to its eternal grind eventually. This is my promise to you, as Chaos incarnate. You are Jotuns; give anarchy another chance!" Discord snapped his claws. The cages floated over and turned upside down, and shook until Jarl Wulfred and the skeleton somehow tumbled out through the iron bars. "I leave it up to you now," said Discord, sweeping a hand over the crowd. "Forge your own future, whether with Wulfred and his ilk, or without. Your destinies are your own to seize! Just remember, when the frost giants come again... and they will... none of these people will save you." With that, he abruptly hopped off the platform, the crowd parting to make way for him. Looking over his shoulder at her, he beckoned Twilight to follow. "Come along, Sigyn. We have quite the journey ahead of us." Twilight scrambled after him, keeping to Discord's side as the crowd closed ranks again behind them and approached the stage. The silence spell that Discord had cast seemed to have faded, because Jarl Wulfric's voice called out. "What are you—? No, stop! Release me! I am your lord!" His cries of protest were drowned out by the crowd of gargoyles, chanting the same unintelligible words over and over again in something that started as a low murmur but built into a roar. Twilight stayed by Discord's side until they were out of the hall and the doors slammed closed behind them, leaving them alone in the gently falling snow of the deserted castle courtyard. "Discord..." Twilight whispered. "What did you do?" "What you asked me to," said Discord, not looking at her. "I saved them." He raised his talon and snapped.