Discord gazed out, admiring his work and his brand new world. Who knew what else he could do with these powers of his!
“So much possibility,” he exclaimed, staring at the eagle claws on his left hand in amazement and flexing them. “I guess I’ll just need to practice, eh?” He then squinted in concentration, and a moment later with a flash of light his curved talons were now flower stems sporting brightly colored daisies. He laughed, “Oh hoo, look at that!”
Then suddenly he became aware of something nagging at him in the back of his mind. It didn’t feel like this something was new, but instead that it had already been there and he was only just now aware of it.
Discord looked around. Despite the inherent chaoticness of the land itself, nothing really seemed out of place to him, but he felt that it was something beyond what he could simply see.
“Just how far out does this place go anyway?” he mused aloud. Even though nearly everything here had come from him, he realized that he still didn’t know anything about the world he was in except that it was connected to him and his mind.
Thinking of this, Discord closed his eyes and tried to use his powers to spread out in his mind, looking for boundaries. He found none, but he did find something else - what felt like hundreds of little holes, as if poked through thick jello. These holes felt different from the rest of his world, and oddly enough, the nagging disturbance seemed to be coming from the closest hole, which for some reason seemed to be pulling strongly on him. Discord opened his eyes to look at the spot, which at first seemed to be an ordinary patch of sky where a monstrous floating mailbox was chewing on a squirrel, but when he looked closer he could pick out a faint ripple, like on the surface of a disturbed glass of water.
“Aha!” Discord exclaimed, and, concentrating, he snapped with his right lion paw. A mini rocket materialized next to him and flew straight at the ripple, where it exploded in a shower of multicolored sparks that moved through the air to form different pictures. As nearby creatures oohed and ahhed at the show, Discord zoomed over to the newly created hole and summoned up a balloon telescope with another snap; he was getting faster and faster at this, he thought proudly.
“Now,” Discord mused as he put the telescope to his eye and looked through the hole with it. “What have we got here?”
At first it was hard to make out anything; after a moment Discord realized that he was looking down at an unfamiliar ground from very high above. He reached over and pulled on his telescope; the balloon stretched and gave a much clearer picture of what appeared to be an ordinary green field, dotted with small houses and tall trees near the edge, while in the center it was populated with a crowd of variously and vividly colored ponies, who seemed to be holding some sort of ceremony.
“So quiet and peaceful, and so normal,” Discord muttered with disdain as he analyzed the scene below him. “Goodness me, I doubt I’d be able to stand there for two minutes before dropping dead of boredom!”
But he kept watching; he knew that this very gathering, taking place in what appeared to be a complete other world, was the source of the nagging. He could definitely see why he wouldn’t like it, but there seemed to be more going on. There was some sort of repulsive force coming from the meeting below that was pulling on him, making his insides turn as though he were sick.
He could make out an Earth pony and a unicorn standing on a stage in front of the crowd, and then realized that the Earth pony’s mouth was moving but no sound accompanied it.
Discord sighed. “I guess I really do have to do everything around here, don’t I?” he mumbled as he snapped his fingers and caused a volume dial to appear, which he turned up until he could clearly make out the pony’s words from so far away.
“ - to honor the unicorn here, Gusty the Great, for her actions in finally and permanently defeating the dreaded Grogar!” the Earth pony called, and the crowd cheered wildly. The unicorn next to the Earth pony, Gusty, smiled abashedly at the crowd.
Two Pegasi swooped down and planted a pole on the stage, at the top of which was fastened a rolled up banner that then unraveled fully. It depicted a large, fierce, dark blue ram with a collar of bells, wicked sharp teeth protruding from his lower jaw, and glowing red eyes. The crowd’s boos at the sight of the banner changed to cheers as the Pegasi each brought a torch over and held them to the bottom edge of the banner, where the flames caught the tapestry and slowly spread upwards.
“And now, we will have peace and harmony in this land such as we have never known before!” the Earth pony shouted passionately, and the crowd roared in response.
“Grogar, huh?” Discord said thoughtfully as he lowered the telescope, still gazing into the other world. He popped the telescope with one of his talons, and it whined as the air flew out of it. “Well he certainly sounds like an interesting fellow. I wonder where he went.”
Discord sat back and gazed around the rest of his domain, thinking of all the other holes. Each one of those was a gateway to a neighboring world, and who knew how many holes there were in all, considering this dimension seemingly had no end nearby.
He concentrated again to feel where the holes were. They weren’t hard to pick out, but he realized that most of them felt very weak compared to the one he had just opened up. No, weak wasn’t exactly the right word, more like . . . less powerful. Or with less magic. Either way, the world that he had just peeked into had the strongest aura, which was separate from the repulsive force he had felt from the crowd of ponies. That world didn’t seem very exciting from what he could see, however, so he decided to go check out the others.
Discord moved slowly through the dimension, feeling for the more powerful holes. Most were fairly weak, although every now and then he’d get one that was a little stronger. After a while though, he suddenly felt one that was a lot more powerful, not as much as the first one but clearly one that he should stop by.
He found it next to the floating land mass with the waterfall of jam. With a smirk and a snap he procured a floating bow and arrow, which he grabbed and adjusted to aim at the ripple where there was now a bright red and white bulls-eye, leaning back and squinting one eye near shut.
“Nice and steady . . . ” he murmured softly, “and . . . fire at will.” He released the arrow, which soared gracefully through the air and landed right in the center of the bulls-eye, resulting in a shower of confetti and a cheer from a nearby group of merdogs who were watching.
Discord took a bow, then flew to the new portal. It was a bit small, so he took the inner edges of the hole and pulled them further from each other, stretching the hole enough so that he wouldn’t have to shrink to fit through. Discord barely took another glance through the portal before going through.
“Holy Tartarus” were the first words Discord breathed out as he looked at this new world. Which was saying a lot coming from him.
If his world was chaotic, it was nothing compared to wherever he was now. The sky was a seething, rolling mass of darkness with random bouts of red lightning flashing across it. The very fabric of this place seemed to be shifting and changing at random, and there was a feeling of something diseased hanging over everywhere. It was hard to make out much land or anything solid that wasn’t alive. And wherever he looked, the area was teeming with monsters and strange creatures of all types; but they weren’t like the silly hybrids in Discord’s world. These here were vicious, snarling and roaring at one another, while shrieks from terrorized lesser beings wrought the air.
“Well, it’s not exactly my taste,” Discord declared thoughtfully, looking all around him, “but I suppose it’s certainly one way of running things. And it does spice things up much more nicely than that other bore-show!”
Suddenly there was a furious roar from somewhere in the gloom rather close, causing several others to quickly flee from the spot. Discord, on the other hand, moved a little closer for a peek at the source.
At first he saw nothing but a silhouette - a huge, horned silhouette, pacing back and forth on a rocky patch of ground and occasionally stamping in fury with unintelligible roars.
“Yoo-hoo!” Discord called out, against all common sense. “Not to interrupt your brooding, pal, but it’s kinda dark over there!” He held up his lion paw and a beam of light shot from his palm at the creature. He held back a gasp.
It was a towering ram, nearly as tall as Discord himself, with thick cobalt fur covering a very muscular body and curved navy blue horns ending in two wicked sharp points. When he turned suddenly towards Discord he could see a row of many deadly fangs jutting up from his lower jaw, a crimson collar of golden bells, and thick silver eyebrows that sat upon a pair of glowing red eyes.
“WHAT do you think you’re doing, you insolent nuisance?” the ram growled, crouching slightly as though to attack. “Are you asking for a painful death?”
“You must be Grogar!” Discord exclaimed, completely disregarding the threat. At these words, the ram stopped, straightening up and narrowing his eyes at Discord.
“How do you know my name?” Grogar demanded. “Where do you even come from?”
“Oh I’m just dropping by from over there,” Discord replied casually, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder to where the portal back to his home was. “I had just been watching these ponies in some other world talking about their defeat of some fellow named Grogar, and there was this tapestry they burned that looked an awful lot like you - ”
“That’s because it was of me!” Grogar roared suddenly, stamping his hooves hard against the ground. This violent outburst caused Discord to float back a couple feet in surprise.
“That which you saw must clearly be the land that I was just banished from,” Grogar said bitterly. “I ruled there for several decades. I had come from a distant land in the far north of that same world, seeking a civilization to conquer in revenge against my kind for banishing me from my own home. I found a vast region of ponies who lived separate from each other on small independent farms and pastures, and I claimed it as my own. I created hundreds of monsters - the first ever true monsters of that world. They took what they wanted, destroyed what they didn’t, and terrorized citizens who were not killed or eaten just for the fun of it.” An evil smirk formed on the ram’s face as he reminisced. “It was glorious; I held more power than any weak-minded fool for miles could have ever imagined!”
His smirk suddenly turned into a nasty snarl. “And then those wretched ponies began to congregate together, forming tribes based on their similarities; soon I was facing unicorn covens and Pegasi air teams and Earth pony armies.” He spat on the ground in anger. “They learned to work together, and while I was distracted fighting them off with my monsters, that damned Gusty stole my Bewitching Bell - it had all of my magic stored safely away inside it! But once she took it and hid it at the top of Mount Everhoof with powerful spells, I could no longer access it. I was banished from that world entirely, and now I’m in this hellhole with no means of escape, while all my monstrous creations were either brought here, thrown into Tartarus, or forced to flee for their lives. But if I ever find a way out of here, those pathetic little lifeforms will regret their entire existence, and they will beg for death on bent knee - ”
“When you reclaim your magic bell and reconquer the world, blah blah,” Discord interrupted, now lounging in a lawn chair, as he tossed the last few pieces of popcorn he’d been eating into his mouth. “But wow, truly an epic tragedy, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time! Although I don’t see why so much bloodshed was necessary; I bet you could’ve had plenty of good times without mass genocide, but hey that’s just me. Plus, cleaning up all that blood sounds pretty messy and not at all fun - ”
“Is that minuscule excuse for a brain of yours capable of producing even a slightly intelligent notion?!” Grogar screamed, so loudly that a pair of velociraptors perched on a nearly cliff screeched and took flight. “Your talking is unendurable and the very definition of annoying. What kind of insufferable creature even are you?”
“Uh - ” Discord was slightly taken aback by the outburst, and highly offended at the comment on him and his intelligence, but he decided not to respond to it because he didn’t feel like going to battle with this clearly crazy ram. The second question however made him glance down at his mismatched body, which he hadn’t really given much thought to before. “I dunno,” he replied, looking back up with a shrug and a smirk. “I’m just Discord, and what else do I need to be, really, besides my wonderfully charming sel- ”
“Get out of my sight before I pound you to death with my own bare hooves!!” Grogar roared with enough force that the entire ground he stood on shook. Discord didn’t need telling twice; he procured a bowler hat which he tipped down towards Grogar, then zoomed off further into the dimension away from the ram.
“Gods, someone certainly needs to get that guy a couple chill pills,” Discord muttered. “Talk about anger issues!” But inwardly he was genuinely extremely unnerved by Grogar’s strong tendencies and even enjoyment of such brutal violence. It was like . . . actual evil.
Suddenly Discord emerged in a sort of clearing - at least, there was less gloom pushing in from all sides, making it easier to see - and there was a greater bustle of activity here. Here, the sky was the most foaming and swirling, changing the very shape of the dimension. He looked around at all the monsters passing him, either not noticing him at the edge of the gloom or not caring enough to acknowledge him. There was also a ring of asteroids here, all different sized and irregularly shaped due to their massive amount of craters. Discord smiled; he could start to like this place.
“MY MY MY, WHAT DO I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE?” a loud cold voice suddenly boomed out, and Discord looked up at a sight he had somehow missed.
Up above the center of the clearing, there hovered a strange throne, which seemed to twist and turn and connect in ways that didn’t make any sense, and upon that throne was an even stranger creature. It was really just a brilliantly yellow two-dimensional triangle that emitted a faint glow, but there was a pair of arms and a pair of legs that were both black and very thin. The triangle had a black top hat on its highest point, a bow tie in the center of its front, which bore a pyramid-like pattern, and above this bow one large eye that had a single vertical black pupil, which was currently fixed right on Discord. All the monsters in the vicinity now turned to look at him as the triangle floated down from the throne and came face to face with Discord, while in one hand it swirled a wine glass filled with what looked like blood.
“WELL, well, well,” the triangle intoned, somehow meeting both of Discord’s eyes with the singular one. “We’ve got a newcomer, boys!”